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Steve ParsonsArticle from Music Technology, April 1987 |
As film music becomes a more popular means for composers to earn a living, Tim Goodyer talks to soundtrack expert Steve Parsons about his work on the new British film, 'Empire State'.
More and more composers are writing music for films. But it's harder to get into than many think, and incredibly demanding once you're in. Soundtrack veteran Steve Parsons spills the beans about his work on the new British film 'Empire State'.
"When I first saw the picture I was able to record several pieces very quickly, and get an immediate reaction from the producer."
His initiation over, his audio-visual portfolio assembled. Parsons' list of credits expanded to include everything from radio jingles for Pampers disposable nappies, through television and cinema ads for the Daily Mail and Fat Frog ice lollies, to Grab Bag, an Australian TV computer show. But how about the big time — feature films? Again, it's a case of starting small and moving up. And for Steve Parsons, small meant Howling II and Recruits, both secured through the company whose tea we're now drinking: Filmtrax.
"Musically I'm very pleased with Howling. It's a little bit different from normal horror film music, a bit more pagan. I had the idea, discussed it with the director and he said 'go ahead and do it' — I had very little discussion with him after that. Consequently I think I did too much, I filled every corner of it in my enthusiasm. Fortunately we cut out quite a bit of it, and that left the stuff that worked best."
And it was good enough to get Parsons first refusal on Empire State. The chance was too good to miss.
"Good projects are very rare so I was happy to be involved from the start. The film's very intelligent, very hard — there are no likeable characters in it at all. It's rough but it's good.
"My mind started to generate ideas from day one when I read the script. The script is the initial source of interest for me: if the script's good then I'm off. I got the feel of it as we went along and developed my relationship with the producer and director at the same time."
But Parsons isn't the only one with fingers in the musical pie of Empire State...
"The Communards were originally going to do quite a lot of the music and I was going to do the bits and pieces. That was before their recent success; things have happened in such a big way for them since then that their input's been cut right back. As it is I've done most of the music, but we're still hoping that the Communards will provide the closing title piece, and that will then be released as a single.
"I avoid writing music out. There's no point presenting a sheet of manuscript paper to someone who can't read, but everyone's got a pair of ears..."
"I find I replace a lot of things as the score develops: I'll bring in real drummers, bass patterns become lead passages, and so on. Every sound has its own idiosyncracies: a pattern you've set up for bass will sound quite different with a tom sample, for instance.
"I suppose syncopation is a very important part of my writing, having worked under Ginger Baker. Every piece is like clockwork in that it only works in relation to all the other pieces. My rhythm parts often don't work without the guitar or keyboard part, for instance. Not a lot of pop music is done that way.
"Some things I record wild with no synchronisation — because as long as it's tight to picture it's OK. Another trick I like is controlled improvisation with the sequencer running. We do an improvisatory piece rather than a structured piece, and then I edit it later on. It gives a fresh feeling, whereas a lot of synthesiser music I hear has a sort of pedantic 'it took me ages to work this out' feel. TV music, especially, sounds like that. Perhaps I'm being unkind because the budgetary considerations are very poor and the time scale is tight, but that's how it seems.
"For the same reasons, I try to avoid writing music out as much as possible. There's no point in presenting a sheet of manuscript to someone who can't read, but everyone's got a pair of ears, so however untutored they are they can understand it."
Which makes perfect sense for all applications except, perhaps, those where orchestral arrangements are brought into play. Here, a further talent is called upon.
"I've got a big brass piece on this. I put all the parts on to tape and sent them to an arranger. He scores it out for me and suddenly it sounds like Alex North or John Williams. They don't score everything out themselves either - John Williams didn't score all the parts for Star Wars, he just played them out as piano themes to suggest melodies and counter-melodies to his arranger (who probably works with him all the time for an enormous fee) and he sorts out all the orchestrations. Not that John Williams couldn't do them, but time is precious and you need as much of it as possible for composing and thinking about the project, rather than performing manual tasks."
IDEAS FORMULATED AND agreed and arrangements scored, the next move is into the recording studio.
"The first thing that happens in the studio is all the timecodes go down — SMPTE, the code from the sequencer, the code from the RX - so that all the machines will talk to each other. The Fostex acts as the master and everything else follows it. Then I start replacing things, so there might not be any of the original sequencing left at the end, but you're left with an elegant but totally different feel. You can have something that feels very loose, yet will fit all the cues perfectly.
"I don't put ideas to tape until the last minute — then, when it does come out, I like to work very quickly. All the music I've done for this was prepared in two weeks and recorded in one, except for a couple of pieces that had to be shot to. It sounds punishing, and it is, but I prefer to really burn and get more stuff onto tape than I need — then I've got stuff to fall back on if I need it.
"Almost half of this film takes place in a club, so it's wall-to-wall music. The first idea was to try it with source music, tracks from well-known groups, funk stuff, hi-energy stuff and so on. At that point the purpose of the music was to provide the atmosphere you'd have in a club. The trouble is that if you use popular stuff, it's, all old hat when the film comes out because of the delay.
"We tried all sorts of things that'd work for 30 seconds and then not - the vocals would get in the way where people were talking, or the feel would change. In the end we decided not to use much source music at all, and started to construct the music in another way. It serves two purposes now: to be the music in the club, and to underscore the moods and actions that are going on. It has narrative qualities as well as being music played in a club.
"Once it's mixed down, it's transferred to mag tape and then run in on the dub. We'll mix it two ways: some as a normal quarter-inch, two-track stereo mix, and the others on four-track, where there's one track for timecode, you might have the rhythm section on one, some of the melodies on another and discrete dubs on the last. You do that where there's a lot of dialogue, because if you've mixed it on two-track, all you can do is pull the track down. We've tried to do something a bit special with the club scenes, where we can pull something conflicting down but keep the drums going, or pull the drums down and keep the rest at the same level. But you only pull it down at the section where people talk, then push it back up.
"There's a scene in the lower bar where we did an Ellington-style piece with a cocktail piano solo. Now, with some neat editing on the sequencer, the piano solo isn't playing when anybody's talking - so he's the hippest cocktail pianist you're ever likely to hear. Who's going to notice that in the picture? Nobody, but the overall effect is perfect. If everybody does their business, you should feel you're inside the club. And we'll construct the Dolby stereo so that the music comes on the outside and the dialogue in the middle, because that's the way it is in a club. The club sets were full sets too, not one side off, so that we got that atmosphere when we were filming. These are all technicalities peculiar to this film though — not the sort of thing that normally happens."
Once it's in the can, Parsons' material has to be sifted through to select the final pieces for each cue. Here, an already tricky situation is further complicated by the fact that scenes are continually dropped and altered, which means updating the music to fit.
The final stage in the musical process is the dub. From the chaos of music, dialogue and sound effects, the team must build a coherent soundtrack.
"Every piece of tape is marked with an 'M' number", says Parsons. "So reel one, cue three is '1M3'. On the dub they'll have loads of cans of my stuff, plus people walking, windows breaking and so on. It's orchestrated by a dubbing editor who has to balance everything out. I'll be there screaming for the music to be loudest, and the sound-effects man will be saying: 'no, no, no, we must hear the guy buttoning his jacket'... Then the director will step in and prevent us physically coming to blows.
"There are stories of composers bursting into tears on the dubbing room floor. And there's a story that Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock's composer, once walked out on a dub. Obviously you realise that some things will have to be sacrificed for the film to work, and if you don't firmly believe that, then it's very difficult to come to terms with. Again, that's an aspect of the job that you have to be aware of if you're contemplating getting involved in it. Sometimes you have to give up because you know you're not going to win, and there's another battle to be fought tomorrow. It's like a war zone, really."
Which sounds vaguely reminiscent of the climax of Empire State. On soon, at a cinema near you...
Interview by Tim Goodyer
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