soundtrax

"What's that sound?

You may think it's an orchestra, but most movie music is scored electronically

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/

17/MO228614.DTL"

---
Hanuman Zhang, musical mad scientist

"Welcome and explore and inquire into everything, new or old, that comes
your way, and then build your own music on whatever your inner life has been able
to take in and offer you back again." - Henry Cowell

"Music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a
copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this
reason, the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is
that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music
of the essence." - Schopenhauer, _The World as Will and Representation_

"...improvisation is about change, about flux rather than stasis. ...
improvisation is about a constant change." - Steve Beresford

improvisation: "a process of liberation, a working around the assumptions
that define our civilization, and the results are open-ended." - John Berndt

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream. Wandering by
lone sea breakers, and sitting by desolate streams. World losers and world
forsakers, for whom the pale moon gleams. Yet we are movers and the shakers of
the world forever it seems."
-<A HREF="http://www.quoteland.com/author.asp?AUTHOR_ID=708">Arthur
O'Shaunessey</A>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, czhang23@a... wrote:
> You may think it's an orchestra, but most movie music is scored electronically

That article seems to be very accurate, except for the line you quote above (and is from the subtitle of the article). The author offers neither proof nor evidence of the "most" descriptor, and the article focusses on composers who are primarily electronic or part of a younger crowd.

Electronic scoring has been going strong for at least a decade - the Roland S-760 sampler alone was a big boon to them. But many, many scores are still recorded live, even if the mock-ups - which, believe me, can be amazing emulations - are done by the composer in his project studio.

I have a number of friends in the film music industry, and many of my colleagues drive up from San Diego to LA to record on sessions; just recently, "Legally Blonde 2", "Freaky Friday", and that recent Harrison Ford cop movie.

The trend will continue, until there is more and more synth/sample score material, maybe entirely replacing acoustic players. That's life. For the moment, even rockers like Danny Elfman know the value of a scoring session where you can ask for changes from players and it happens instantaneously, rather than having to re-program a sequence or patch.

But not for long, I bet.

Cheers,
Jon