Home -> Magazines -> Issues -> Articles in this issue -> View
Electronic Music For Films | |
Article from Electronics & Music Maker, January 1982 |
Richard Mitchell explains his use of electronic music for film.
Getting into the film music business is hard and is usually a happy accident when it happens. When I was 18 or 19, I never thought I was going to write music for films. My musical background came from doing quite a lot of music at school, including having piano, classical guitar and theory lessons.
I have always had some kind of small studio set-up at home for multitracking experiments. Turning away a career in architecture, I changed direction at the last minute and ended up at St Martins Art School in London doing a 'film based' sound degree course. During 1976 to 1979, I started writing film music for people at the Royal College of Art and the National Film School, from a small studio I'd put together in Charing Cross. In fact, most of my time from then on has been spent with film makers rather than musicians, so my work has been almost entirely directed to the world of sound dubbing and writing music for film from the outset, putting me out on a limb from most composers.
The film sound course was an invaluable foot in the door and after I had obtained my degree I had to go out and meet film makers and producers to get the first few contacts. One good piece of work for the same studio usually brought more work until I had sufficient contacts to maintain the flow. Some producers also did TV commercials, so that led to another area and although I've only been writing music professionally for two years (I'm 25 now), most of the successful producers are also freelancing from one job to the next and keep me busy. Now that I'm writing full time, what in fact happens is that several jobs all come at the same time and then there'll be a break where I'll write letters, send demos and make contact with the film people again. Out of this hopefully comes some more work, but only one contact in a hundred may give you something. Writing music for a living doesn't happen overnight — it has built up during my student years when I took on composing and arranging for agencies as well.
Early on, I joined the Performing Rights Society as an individual, although many composers do their work through their publishers. All my music legalities are handled by the PRS and they take their 14% of all royalties, but I'm completely independent and don't use an agency. I completed my first film, which was a Thames TV documentary for the Ministry of Defence on free-fall parachuting, whilst I was still at college.
If you want to write film music, you must learn about sound editing, track laying and how the whole sound dubbing process works. For example, you might be producing a full symphonic style electronic score and if it's for a scene in a car, for a start you won't hear any of the bass because the engine noises will dominate. So each film sequence needs careful choice of the frequencies used (i.e. the instruments for electronic effects) in order to let the music through, as well as the sound effects and general dialogue. This can often be highlighted at the final dubbing stage, when the music is mixed with the soundtracks for the film spot effects, sound effects and dialogue. One way round this problem is for me to do all the sound effects as well as the music.
Many musicians like to doodle around with ideas when composing until something good comes out of it. I have to work to deadlines! Recently I had to do a Sensodyne toothpaste ad and the production company gave me a 'line test' on video. This was a 3-dimensional line image of the product moving about on the screen, which eventually ended up as an animated series of shots that fitted into the images. The company spent the weekend doing that part whilst I was getting the music done, but by Monday morning the music written was not at all satisfactory and I was told to have it finished by the next day. So in 24 hours I had to conceive, write and record the whole thing. The shortest time I've ever been given is around eight hours to do a job, but it's surprising what can be done when you're under pressure!
I often think that doing pure maths and statistics at school has given me that kind of logical approach one needs for getting timing and sequences exactly right. Each film poses different problems and I am expected to solve these myself. Sometimes I am given a 'rough cut' film which contains all the sequences, but not necessarily with the correct time lengths. The film editor and I work out where we are going to use music and whether we are going to cut or fade from one sequence to the next.
An example of a dubbing cue sheet that shows the music synchronisation in terms of frames is given in Figure 1. I use a calculator to work out the seconds for each event and record on to four tracks using the A-3340S Teac machine. Occasionally I've used a mono Nagra portable for live recording of effects. Since 99% of film music only requires mono, I don't often prepare a final stereo master tape. Another important point is the monitoring of the mix through a small 'average' speaker to get the feel of its sound on the television, although I do use full range speakers as well.
The first step in preparing the tracks for recording is to use a click track or constant beat as the sync guide. I find the Boss Dr Rhythm very useful — you can leave it set at a tempo and it will still be virtually the same when you come back to it later. The sync points are then calculated to be a multiple of the rhythm/click track (the tempo of which is chosen to be suitably fast to embrace all syncs, unless it's actually going to be a drum rhythm in the music).
Beginning the process of composition doesn't entail putting together one sequence after another in order — it usually starts with the highlights giving you some musical themes or melodic/rhythmic ideas to work with which become the underlying character of the film. So the horror film has an ominous, perhaps menacing atmosphere, but the TV commercial aims to be bright and punchy, or warm and homely. Videocues can also be given by five second wipes — literally a diagonal chinagraph pencil line that is drawn over the film frames, leading you to a cue when it's moved across the screen.
It may be surprising to readers (especially after hearing samples of my film music on Demo Cassette No 5), that I use very limited resources to make my electronic music. Because of this, I often have to resort to using acoustic sounds that can be electronically treated, as in musique concréte techniques. A lot of composers would not be happy unless they used multi-keyboards with micro control and so on. I have had to exploit every possible aspect of sound making from the few instruments I possess. In my early days I used the Dewtron synthesiser modules, but now I always use the Powertran Transcendent 2000 monophonic and polysynth instruments which I find ideal for composing. These are synchronised by the Boss Dr. Rhythm and are complimented by a host of acoustic instruments such as piano, guitars (plus electric), bouzouki, autoharp, harmonium, violin, banjo, numerous flute/whistle instruments, a drum kit and various percussion instruments from bongoes to Indian finger cymbals.
These are recorded directly or with AKG and Shure mics on the Teac A-3340S (with remote) and mixed down to Revox B77 (with varispeed) using an RSD 12 into 2 mixer. I also use an EMI stereo tape machine (with independent tracks) for building up tracks and echo delay. They are monitored through a Leak Delta series amp with Wharfdale speakers.
I get a nice fat sound from the harmonium which I'll put through a slow modulated filter. In fact, nearly all the instruments find their way through the synthesiser for some kind of treatment. But I've now reached a stage where I'll have to consider eight track and a more concentrated use of 'pure' synthesiser rather than the acoustic/electronic medium. Generally, I never go beyond using six tracks, which are made by mixing one set of four tracks to stereo on the Revox, then re-recording these on the Teac, leaving two more tracks to make the six. I do like to build up my string sounds with several tracks which are thickened up using a chorus delay. Ron Geeson and Robert Fripp's multi-tracking ideas come in useful too — I've used one oscillator to build up whole textures from multi-layered sounds and use tape loops quite a lot that have recorded rhythmic sequences from the acoustic drum kit. Echo often comes from the Revox and EMI tape machines. The parametric EQ on the mixer is useful for removing any unwanted hum or noises and two Accessit reverb boxes give extra depth as well.
When composing, I like to use a theme on a single, easily identifiable instrument sound that haunts you. Francis Lai is particularly good at this. Ridley Scott (writer of the Martini ad) also did this well, using a flute in the film 'The Duellist'. I avoid the early Max Steiner 'continuous film soundtrack' style. John Williams in 'Close Encounters' also has an expert way of finding the right frequencies to put the music around the mass of spaceship sounds in the film. I write most of the music on the piano or guitar using the cassette machine as a note pad. As yet, drums have not played a prominent part in the scoring.
After the music has been composed on tape, I then take it to the production company in a 15 IPS mono/stereo 1/2-track format. The sound editor will check out the music and effects and put them down in the right sequence. There is very little time for putting right any mistakes — it has to be okay when you take it in. At the transfer bay, the sound is put on to sprocketed magnetic film so that it can be run alongside the frame pictures. When we've laid all the tracks and cut them in, it's then taken for the 'dub' a few hours later (a day later for commercials/documentaries).
In the dubbing theatre, all the recorded tracks, about 10 for a documentary and up to 20 for a feature film are prepared for mixdown in the usual way, except that they come from individual magnetic film machines. The editor, mixing engineer and myself then decide whether to add more reverb or delay effects to give extra depth to the sound. It's a good idea for me to keep my master tapes fairly 'dry'. Often, by the time dialogue and effects (e g. street noises or products in action) are laid down, the music becomes almost 'atmos' (background atmosphere). At this point my efforts at getting the sound frequencies right will show. A drawback is that top and bass can be reduced on the final film, although noise reduction is added to clean up the signal.
To complete the music for a film might require me to compose many more extracts than I'll eventually use, but I don't offer these as alternatives. Even though the company concerned may know exactly what they want, it is dangerous to give the options at the deadline stage. I have to convince the producers that I have the ideal music for their film!
My work involves films for many countries and several music examples are given on E&MM Cassette No 5. Payment for film music varies quite a lot — commercials will give a lump sum, although I have to bargain for a good fee and make sure that I estimate the amount of time required carefully. A large amount of television music is now electronic and the economic situation has probably fostered this because of the huge costs of hiring an orchestra to do the job and so on. Certainly, because music is often the last part of film production (when every pound counts), electronic music is now a very viable alternative.
Writing electronic music for films is both challenging and rewarding, with the future offering the prospects of microprocessor control and computer music in small studios. My inspiration comes totally from the visual image of the film and each day brings the challenge to make a fusion of so many different things become an amazing great vista!
From an interview with Mike Beecher.
Rockschool - BBC launches major rock tutor series |
Camera Shy - TV Sound |
So You Want To Be A... - Movie Director |
Ostenders |
Down the Tube |
Picture Music |
Working With Video - The Video Studio (Part 1) |
So You Want To Be A... - Film Score Writer |
The HEX Guide To Multimedia |
Stripes & Stars - Todd AO Studios |
![]() Music & Pictures - An Introduction to the Art Form (Part 1) |
Doing the Video (Part 1) |
Browse by Topic:
No Javascript: Audio player is disabled
Side B Tracklisting:
20:28 Richard Mitchell's electronic music for film. 20:47 - Dept. of Energy [1] 22:02 - Dept. of Energy [2] 23:05 - Alba Watches 23:53 - Dawes HiFi 24:30 - Windsurfing 26:27 - Mr Harris theme 27:36 - Sensodyne 28:21 - Windows Safari Park
E&MM Cassette #5 provided by Pete Shales, digitised by Mike Gorman.
Feature by Richard Mitchell, Mike Beecher
mu:zines is the result of thousands of hours of effort, and will require many thousands more going forward to reach our goals of getting all this content online.
If you value this resource, you can support this project - it really helps!
New issues that have been donated or scanned for us this month.
All donations and support are gratefully appreciated - thank you.
Do you have any of these magazine issues?
If so, and you can donate, lend or scan them to help complete our archive, please get in touch via the Contribute page - thanks!