The SCORE - Summer 2017 by The SCL in NY

VOLUME XXXII NUMBER TWO SUMMER 2017

I N P E R S P E C T I V E

James DiPasquale: SCL Past, Present And Future

ver the last 34 years, the SCL has evolved into a virtual family of music activists. At this moment of industry turbulence, looking back at what the SCL has been, and what it could become in the future might not only be productive, but encouraging as well. Score: This story is about the SCL past, present and future, and nobody knows more about it than you! Jim: Unfortunately, yes. Score: First of all, how did they find you, how did you get involved, and what was it like when you first came in? Jim: In 1979, for a Hawaii Five-0 at CBS, I had to write 20 minutes of music in six days, and we recorded on a Saturday. I didn’t know it then, but the fee for CBS episodic was a $2,000 “composer’s package” — that is to say, it covered three services: composition, and AFM scale for orchestration and conducting. So after I deducted $1,848 in scale payments from the $2,000 package, what was left was $152 for composing! I called my agent, Al Bart, and said, “What’s the deal? How come I made so little for writing all this music?” He said, “That’s the standard CBS deal, $2,000.” That barely even covered the orchestration and conducting. My music was actually generating the employment for everybody—the musicians, music editors, engineers, dubbing mixers—everybody involved in the show, and I got only 152 bucks for creating that music. When I was doing commercials in New York and Chicago, I got $10,000 for a 60-second national spot. I said to Al, “What should I do?” and he said, “Welcome to Hollywood.” I thought, “That’s not right.” So I went down to the AFM and spoke to the vice president, Vince DiBari. I told him to pull the

contract on the CBS session. It showed that out of 26 musicians and five copyists, I was the lowest paid of everybody. And if I had hired an orchestrator and conductor, they would have gotten the $1,848 scale payment and I would have received only the $152. Max Herman, the union president, came in to DiBari’s office and lectured me. “Listen, young fellow, your predecessors didn’t want to be members of the AFM, so this is what you got now. It’s not your fault, but it’s because your Mancinis and all those guys were short-sighted.” So, I asked for a meeting with the full union Board and the attorneys and I explained my experience at CBS. Some people around the table were sympathetic, but most said it was our own fault because composers in the 1950s didn’t want to be represented by the AFM. That led to my getting involved with the Composers & Lyricists Guild of America, which had been certified as a union in 1955. I never joined it when I came to town in 1973 because my agent, Peter Faith, said, “The CLGA is in a lawsuit against the studios, so why don’t you just wait to see where the dust settles. They’ll take 3% of your gross pay in work dues, so why pay that if you’re just starting out.” So that’s how I became politicized. I joined the CLGA, which became fully active again after the lawsuit against the studios was settled in September 1979, the same month I did the Hawaii Five-0. John Cacavas, the CLGA president, and the Board decided that, after being locked in a lawsuit for seven years, it would be a good idea if the CLGA changed officers so the studios were not dealing with the same faces they’d been fighting with. So everyone resigned and we held an election. Richard Warren was elected president, I was elected vice president, Bruce Broughton was Treasurer, and Elliott Kaplan Secretary. We tried to re-activate the union Continued on Page 16

There’s a saying that “Change is the essence of life.” Well, there’s no more proof of that than the music industry right now.

C O N T E N T S

Speaking The Language Of The Orchestra 5 Tech Talk 7 Sound And Music In The New Virtual Reality Frontier 9 Inside George S. Clinton 12 Musical Shares 23

F R O M T H E E D I T O R ' S D E S K

Music Is Magical By Lori Barth

President ASHLEY IRWIN Vice Presidents ARTHUR HAMILTON CHARLES BERNSTEIN Recording Secretary JONATHAN DAVID NEAL Treasurer/CFO CHRISTOPHER FARRELL

ood music is like fine wine or a gourmet meal, meant to be tasted and savored with every bite, every note. Whether you are into classical music, pop music, jazz, country, whatever, you should be able to close your eyes and sail away if the performance is sturdy. The colors, flavors and sounds that are evoked take us places we might never have been. Truly, music is g magical.

The SCORE LORI BARTH, Senior Editor Advisory Board ALAN BERGMAN MARILYN BERGMAN CHARLES BERNSTEIN BILL CONTI CHARLES FOX JAMES NEWTON HOWARD QUINCY JONES ALAN MENKEN THOMAS NEWMAN LALO SCHIFRIN MARC SHAIMAN HOWARD SHORE ALAN SILVESTRI DIANE WARREN PATRICK WILLIAMS CHRISTOPHER YOUNG HANS ZIMMER In Memoriam Advisory Board Members ELMER BERNSTEIN JOHN CACAVAS JERRY GOLDSMITH MAURICE JARRE PETER MATZ DAVID RAKSIN Directors RAMON BALCAZAR LORI BARTH FLETCHER BEASLEY MICHAEL LEHMANN BODDICKER RUSSELL BROWER DENNIS C. BROWN GEORGE S. CLINTON MIRIAM CUTLER BENOIT GREY IRA HEARSHEN LYNN F. KOWAL Hélène Muddiman GREG PLISKA ELIZABETH ROSE ADRYAN RUSS GARRY SCHYMAN ELIZABETH SELLERS AUSTIN WINTORY Past Presidents JOHN ADDISON RICHARD BELLIS BRUCE BROUGHTON JAY CHATTAWAY RAY COLCORD JAMES DI PASQUALE DAN FOLIART ARTHUR HAMILTON MARK WATTERS ISSN 1066-5447 Society of Composers & Lyricists 8447 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 401 Beverly Hills, CA 90211 Ph (310) 281-2812

Office@thescl.com

DIAMOND MEMBERS Kristen Anderson-Lopez Lori Barth Alan & Marilyn Bergman Dennis C. Brown Carter Burwell Ray Charles George Clinton

Bill Conti Jim DiPasquale Clint Eastwood Dan Foliart Charles Fox Elliot Goldenthal Arthur Hamilton

James Howard Mark Isham Robert Lopez Johnny Mandel Randy Newman Mike Post J. Peter Robinson

Lalo Schifrin Richard Sherman David Shire Alan Silvestri Mark Snow Dennis Spiegel Mike Stoller

Matthew Strachan Patrick Williams John Williams Maury Yeston

DIAMOND SPONSOR / SPECIAL FRIENDS William Brewster

Jay Cooper

PLATINUM MEMBERS Mark Adler Jack Allocco John Beal Marco Beltrami Amin Bhatia Nicholas Britell

Anthony Chue Alf Clausen Joseph Conlan Mychael Danna Alexandre Desplat Derek Machann

Bear McCreary Peter Melnick Garth Neustadter Thomas Newman Joey Newman Atli Orvarsson

Damir Price Gary Rottger Howard Shore Carlo Siliotto Edward Trybek Kubilay Uner

Michael Wandmacher Angela Rose White Austin Wintory

PLATINUM SPONSOR / SPECIAL FRIENDS Tira Harpaz

Beth Krakower

Cato Sara Andon Neil Argo Alexander Arntzen Sebastian Arocha Morton Spring Aspers Charles-Henri Avelange Melissa Axel Ramon Balcazar Steve Barden Nathan Barr Joe Barrera Jr. Jeff Beal Joel Beckerman Brian BecVar Charles Bernstein Peter Boyer Richard Bronskill Russell Brower Dan Brown Jr Benedikt Brydern Kenneth Burgomaster Dennis Burke Christopher Cano Jeff Cardoni Kristopher Carter Sacha Chaban Jay Chattaway Dongliang Chen Shawn Clement Elia Cmiral Jerry Cohen Jim Cox Imre Czomba Dina D’Alessandro Chanda Dancy Jana Davidoff Tim Davies Alberto de la Rocha

John Debney John DeFaria Arhynn Descy John Dickson James DiPasquale Scott Doherty Lisa Dondlinger Joel Douek Dennis Dreith Bruce Dukov Robert Duncan Laura Dunn Laura Engel Evan Evans Joel Evans Sharon Farber Jack Faulkner Arlene Fishbach Shelley Fisher Pablo Flores Attila Fodor Andy Forsberg Alexandre Fortuit Jonas Friedman William Goldstein Joel Goodman Mark Graham Lorna Guess Eric Hachikian Christine Hals Crispin Hands Wayne Hankin Bruce Healey Reinhold Heil Shari Hoffman Lee Holdridge Scott Holtzman Trevor Howard Russ Howard III

Wei-San Hsu Asuka Ito Joel Iwataki Corey Jackson Ken Jacobsen Brandon Jarrett anik Jean Garrett Johnson Quincy Jones Federico Jusid Seth Kaplan Taisuke Kimura Dave Kinnoin Grant Kirkhope Kevin Kliesch Christopher Knight Lynn F. Kowal Stephanie Kowal Michael A. Lang Didier Lean Rachou Michael Lehmann Boddicker Edie Lehmann Boddicker Christopher Lennertz Tori Letzler Michael Levine Noah Lifschey Charley Londono Zoe Lustri David Majzlin Tracey Marino Gerard Marino Vance Marino Billy Martin Benjamin Mason John Massari Arlene Matza-Jackson Michael McCuistion Joel McNeely Jeffrey Michael

Amy Andersson Barend Bendorf Todd Brabec Les Brockmann Jonathan Broxton Jon Burlingame Andrew Cohen

Ray Costa Shannon ‘Doe’ Ewing Scott Freiman Susan Friedman Ken Helmer Sabrina Hutchinson Lynda Jacobs

Juan Rodriguez

GOLD MEMBERS Bryan Miller Bruce Miller Tricia Minty Brian Moe Sandro Morales Jeff Morrow Helene Muddiman David Murillo R, Jonathan Neal Abby North Matt Novack Liam O’Brien Greg O’Connor Cindy O’Connor Bijan Olia Anele Onyekwere Julia Pajot Hannah Parrott Benj Pasek Justin Paul Nate Pennington Art Phillips Stu Phillips John Piscitello Kim Planert Chandler Poling Judi Pulver Mac Quayle J. Ralph Ron Ramin Trent Reznor Allan Rich Michael (Chris) Ridenhour Lolita Ritmanis Carlos Rivera Atticus Ross Adryan Russ Jeff Russo Steven Saltzman

David Schwartz Garry Schyman Tony Scott-Green Roxanne Seeman Elizabeth Sellers Batu Sener Leon Serchuk Rochelle Sharpe Ryan Shore Michael Silversher Helen Simmins-McMillin Gregory Smith Stanley Smith Scott Smith Mark Smythe Curt Sobel Arturo Solar Sally Stevens Karen Tanaka Justin Timberlake Jeremy Tisser Pinar Toprak Jeff Toyne Tyler Traband Genevieve Vincent Jay Wadley Diane Warren Mark Watters Beth Wernick Frederik Wiedmann David Williams Alan Williams Jonathan Wolff Gernot Wolfgang David Wood Catharine Wood Doug Wood Christopher Young

GOLD SPONSORS / SPECIAL FRIENDS Anne Juenger Richard Kraft Patty Macmillan Jason Markey Nick Redman Mark Robertson John Rodd

Michael Ryan Jeffrey Sanderson Bonnie Silver Koyo Sonae Henry Stanny Candace Stewart John Tempereau

Robert Townson John Traunwieser Vasi Vangelos Alexander Vangelos

P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G E

Data Is King

By Ashley Irwin

ecently, I was invited to attend The BIG Summit (Bridging the Information Gaps) in Seattle — a conference hosted by the Digital Data Exchange (DDEX). For those unfamiliar with DDEX, it’s essentially a consortium made up of rights holders (record labels and publishers), music rights collecting societies (PROs, MROs, SoundExchange, etc.), audio and video streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, Amazon, Netflix, Vevo, YouTube, etc.) and other tech entities with vested interests in the digital delivery and tracking of content (AdRev, Apple, Google, Soundmouse, etc.). In all, there were close to 200 people in attendance. Over the past several years, the DDEX consortium has been working towards developing a standardized identification system that could be embedded as metadata in an audio file and in January, introduced the Recording Information Notification (RIN) aimed at capturing the credits as the recording is created. On the surface this all sounds promising — getting the data into the supply chain from the very beginning — but on further scrutiny, some of us on the SCL board identified a potential problem. As we reviewed the parties comprising the DDEX consortium, we noticed a distinct lack of pure music creators’ voices in the discussion, the closest to which were the PROs. So we spoke to the relevant people at ASCAP and BMI (both these PROs are DDEX charter members) in order to ascertain precisely why this was the case. Was the absence of the actual music creators and their representative organizations by oversight or design? The PROs assured us it was the former not the latter and encouraged us to voice our concern to the Secretariat of DDEX, Mark Isherwood. Fortunately, I had previously met Mark at the 2013 World Intellectual Property conference in Washington, D.C. At the time, he was overseeing the development of the ultimately ill-fated Global Repertoire Database (GRD) for Deloitte so it was easy for us to reconnect and a conference call was scheduled. In preparation for the call, we drafted a list of questions to which Mark readily provided answers wherever possible, but the overarching question remained: why no creators? The answer became clear, albeit incongruous.

It had been proposed that the RIN be entered by the recording engineer or producer, a recommendation that seems to have been offered by the Producers and Engineers Wing of The Recording Academy. And while that solution may suffice for recording artists and licensed songs, it is woefully inadequate for A/V music created as underscore. Putting the responsibility on the scoring engineer, someone without a vested interest in ensuring accuracy of the composer information, would be unwise and unsatisfactory. To illustrate my point, I made the analogy to cue sheets because when a cue sheet is created by someone who does not have a direct interest in its accuracy, the potential for error increases and in many cases we, the composers, don’t find out as much till later, when mistakes are often more difficult to correct. Coming from a broadcast background, Mark was sympathetic to my reasoning, understood my concerns and subsequently invited me to The BIG Summit to make my case in front of the larger group. The conference was conducted under Chatham House Rule (participants are free to use the information received but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker[s], nor that of any other participant may be revealed), so I’m unable to elaborate on the parties to the discussion past the fact that the consensus was that incomplete, incorrect and altogether absent data is one of the biggest problems facing our industry today and it will only get worse if left unaddressed.

It’s imperative DAW manufacturers embrace the RIN standard and integrate a mechanism that allows us to embed a unique identifier in the mixes and accompanying stems of every audio file we create.

As yet, no DAW manufacturers have agreed to implement the RIN standard, citing development cycles and other excuses. So the next phase is crucial. It’s imperative DAW manufacturers embrace the RIN standard and integrate a mechanism that allows us to embed a unique identifier in the mixes and accompanying stems of every audio file we create. Suffice to say it was a very worthwhile trip and several of the other attendees have followed up with me since, keen to have The SCL involved as the protocol moves forward while Mark Isherwood has graciously offered to meet with the SCL board in a couple of weeks to illustrate the RIN virtues and strategize with us on how the SCL can best g serve the development process. 3

N O T E S F R O M N E W Y O R K

SCL New York Events Screening: Lost in Florence with Wendy Blackstone

Village East Cinema; Wednesday, February 1st

L-R: Danny Gray, Moderator Elizabeth Rose, Guest Speaker Wendy Blackstone, Chris Hajian

Master Class with Improvisatory Minds

NYU Steinhardt; Wednesday, February 8th

Seminar: A Composer’s Guide to KONTAKT

Ripley-Grier Studios; Wednesday, April 12th Guest speaker: David Das Software sponsors: Umlaut Audio, SoundIron, ProjectSAM, Big Fish Audio, Cinematic Strings

SCL NY/The New School: RUFF CUTS — An Evening of Short Films and Networking

The New School, Arnholdt Hall, Friday, April 14th

At the TriBeCa Film Festival, L-R: Ronit Kirchman, Amie Doherty, JoAnne Harris, Heather Macintosh

A Reception to Celebrate the Composers of the 2017 TriBeCa Film Festival

Presented by the SCL NY, The Alliance for Women Film Composers, and White Bear PR Soundcat Productions; Saturday, April 23rd

L-R: Mark Suozzo, Elizabeth Rose, Moderator Greg Pliska, Michael Patterson, Dennis Dreith, Ed Neumeister, Mark Roos SCL NY / Women in Music present: “Inside The Track”: Production Tips & Techniques

BMI; Thursday, February 23rd Guest panelists: Ann Mincieli, Corey Gibson, Suzi Analogue, VÉRITÉ; Moderator: JoAnne Harris; Featured songwriters: Adrianna Mateo, Laura Rizzotto, Kiirstin Marilyn Seminar: Composing for Children’s Programming

Ripley-Grier Studios; Wednesday, March 8th

L-R: Paul Henning, Danny Gray, Adonis Tsilimparis, Christopher North, Eric Hachikian The SCL NY Spring 2017 Mentor Program

Current Mentees: Jonathan Russell, Kent Kercher, Pru Montin, Jeff Schiller, Summerlin Simpson, Ryan Redebaugh, Davide Tammaro, Anthony Mark Benis, Sena Park, Jeff McQuilken

SCL NY Spring 2017 Mentees in a tech workshop with guest presenter Anthony D’Erasmo L-R: Panelists D.D. Jackson, Pat Irwin, Allison Leyton-Brown with moderator Chris Hajian and workshop attendees 4

T A K I N G T H E P O D I U M

Speaking The Language Of The Orchestra By Amy Andersson

t is no surprise, that as a composer, you would want to conduct your own compositions, whether with a small ensemble or even a full orchestra. After all, who knows the music more intimately than you? Because you have endured sleepless nights, deadlines, and plenty of sweat and tears, it makes sense that you would look forward to wrapping your arms around the orchestra from the podium. After all, it’s your baby they are playing. Composers come to conducting with varying degrees of familiarity with an orchestra. Some have played in ensembles in their training, and many have spent a great deal of time around orchestra musicians. Others come from a keyboard or vocal background, or from other genres of the music industry with less exposure to the world of orchestras. Consequently, different composers experience their time on the podium in different ways. Some feel comfortable on the podium, having taken some conducting lessons or been self-taught, while others tell me they dread stepping up to conduct and prefer to stay in the sound booth. Others say the experience is nerve-racking, but they endure it. Some say it feels liberating and enjoyable, but admit they are not quite sure if they are giving the orchestras everything they need to showcase their piece. If you are conducting your own compositions, and would like to delve deeper into cultivating your podium abilities, the best advice I could give you is to be aware of the language that the orchestra speaks. What does this mean? Which language are we talking about? Orchestra musicians are trained from their earliest development to become masters of a non-verbal language. It is this silent and beautiful form of communication which uses the head, the eyes, the shoulders, the body and the breath to express music. Whether it was the experience of playing in an octet, trio, quartet or chamber ensemble, they learned to lead, follow, breathe, move, and intuitively “read” each other. They most likely played under a conductor which furthered their powerful, interpretive visual skills. Legend has it that orchestras, with their highly developed visual sensitivity, can already “read” a conductor as soon as she walks toward the podium. So, you might ask, how can this infor-

mation be helpful to a composer who is either conducting with or without a click? Can’t I just follow the click, and why is that not enough? Why would I need to learn a new language? What if I told you that it is possible to conduct rehearsals and sessions without almost ever stopping to make corrections for dynamics, articulations, phrasing or character, except of course, for wrong notes, sound booth and technical feedback? What if I told you it is possible to show the orchestra almost everything with your hands through a developed, expressive, and visual language? What would it feel like to do a 2.5-hour orchestra rehearsal and practically not need to speak? I once developed a fierce and relentless case of laryngitis in the dead of winter while guest conducting in Skopje, Macedonia. Despite a 102-degree fever, I rehearsed the orchestra for six hours without ever painfully croaking out more than “Bar 26, please.” I literally had to show everything with my gestures, and because I could, I was able to beautifully prepare and navigate a difficult program with ease and confidence for that evening’s live national television broadcast. My non-verbal language skills saved the day. It is also possible for you to develop the skills to keep the orchestra fully engaged, motivated and mentally alert during long sessions. It is important to note that session musicians will always try their best, and be the consummate professionals that they are. But also be aware that rehearsing or performing with a click reduces the orchestra musician’s involvement to that of a rote activity, as it virtually eliminates innate flexibility, spontaneity and breath: in short, those things which define the deepest pleasures of musicmaking. A long day of sessions often involves playing the same passages many times over, with the unintended consequences of boredom, fatigue and sometimes loss of concentration. Well, tough luck, you might think. The orchestra is getting paid to do what they were hired to do. Yes, there is business truth to that, but the reality is many professional session players don’t need a conductor when they are playing with a click. It is purely a mechanical exercise. I believe one could turn the click on, walk away from the podium and the orchestra would be fine. Of course, that

Because playing with a click reduces musicmaking to largely a mechanical experience, conductors need to proactively take the responsibility of overcoming this tendency by developing a rich palate of gestures.

Continued on Next Page

Speaking The Language Of The Orchestra Continued from Page 5

is a bit of over simplification, but to a great extent, it aligns with reality. The click starts, and the musicians fix their gaze down on their music and won’t glance up at the conductor, unless the conductor is offering expressive and detailed gestures that offer more insight into the piece. What can you offer as a conducting composer that is more than just time beating? How do you accomplish that? The great news is that there are a multitude of gestures you can offer an orchestra, and it can all be learned. Because playing with a click reduces music-making to largely a mechanical experience, conductors need to proactively take the responsibility of overcoming this tendency by developing a rich palate of gestures. Musicians’ brains are trained to “see” the music and interpret visual clues. They long to have you show phrasing, articulations, harmonic arrival points, bar and phrase structure, tension, release, and dynamics in detail. Even without a click, they would like to see expression and character in your face, hear you breathe with them and feel that you are reaching out and inviting them into your musical body of gestures. They want to experience a visual language that resonates with their bodies and instruments, because when they do see and feel that, they will respond in a changed way. That, I promise. They will not only play and sound differently, and stay fully engaged, but they will become very receptive to your gestures and keep their eyes more focused on you. It is in this moment that you have the orchestra in the palm of your hands, so to speak, and as a result you will have opened a world of endless musical possibilities. Professional musicians will grasp the emotional essence of your music more and play with more passion if you and they are speaking the same language. You will have more productive rehearsal time, sessions will seem less tedious, and the players will be even more enthusiastic to play with you. You will earn respect both as composer and conductor. What’s not to love? It is a win-win situation. In 6

the end, you will cultivate and receive more respect from orchestra musicians if you take the time to speak their nonverbal, visual language. And you, in turn, will learn to respect even more of their wonderful, tireless efforts. But how do conductors develop expressive gestures and hands that work independently and creatively? How can one develop this language and who has the time, for goodness sakes? Actually, everyday activities can promote hand independence. Use your non-dominant hand to unlock doors, brush your hair and teeth, lift your coffee cup, open your wallet, swipe your credit card, write your name and open your iPhone. Just using your non-dominant hand for one hour a day will increase your awareness of muscular movement, stimulate both hemispheres of the brain and promote neuroplasticity. You can literally develop the connections between your hands and your brain by exercising those pathways as you go about your daily activities. You can also practice conducting while using your hands independently, such as using the right hand to beat time and the left hand to show musical phrases. If the click is in four, why conduct in four? The orchestra already has the beat! Try conducting it in two and use the space in between the beats to express character and dynamics. If the click is in three and fast enough, try conducting in one and become more circular and expressive. Try practice conducting in front of the mirror to the click track to get an idea of what the musicians see. Maybe practice conducting without the click. You might suddenly be aware that you are moving your hands differently. That’s because it is no longer just mechanics, so make sure you fill up the beats with musical content. How about taking conducting lessons from a conductor you admire? Good teachers will give you exercises to practice a few minutes each day. You can even practice them in the shower if you are creative, so it does not need to cost you any time. Your body is your energetic vessel as well as your instrument, and musicians can even sense if you are not breathing, are holding tension, or are apprehensive. Once you develop a keener sense of mind-body awareness, your hands and body will begin to speak a new

language which will help develop confidence, expressiveness and relaxa-tion on the podium. It is the same as learning a foreign language. Once you develop a proficiency, you open up a new world of possibilities. The conduc-ting vocabulary of silent gestures is nothing mystical or secret. Once you develop this awareness, there will be a shift in the relationship between you and the orchestra. Composers are stepping in front of orchestras with increasing frequency for video game, television series and film score tours, as well as live theater. After conducting a few concerts and basically just beating time with or without the click, trust me, you will want to find a way to keep it fresh for your creative mind and for the orchestra. Develop a vibrant, energizing personal style and sign language. Breathe and keep the click in the background, while in the foreground communicate character, energy, and detailed musical expression. Speak to the orchestra through your hands, fingers, face and baton, and listen as the orchestra instantly responds to your clear musical intentions. For every action there is a reaction, so maximize it and communicate through the same language. As a team everyone involved will be inspired, elevated and working to their g highest potential. Amy Andersson is an orchestra, opera, and video game conductor and teaches conducting students in New York City and via Skype.

Goldsmith Honored With Star

Oscar-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith was honored posthumously with a star on the Walk of Fame on Tuesday, May 9th

T E C H T A L K

Simplifying And Streamlining By Fletcher Beasley

ike most composers, I have a lot of virtual instruments, sample libraries and effects plugins. I have barely explored many of these plugins and I sometimes feel a pang of guilt, fearing that I am overlooking some amazing gem. Even with ones with which I am familiar, I often feel I’m not making the most of them because I haven’t had the time to get to know the interface and controls as well as I would like. And in the midst of a pressing deadline, the process of searching through presets for the right sound can pull me out of the creative flow of writing music. I recently took a little time between projects to address these issues in my studio. I identified my main sources of frustration as feeling overwhelmed with options and a nagging sense that I could be making better use of the tools at my disposal. With that in mind, I decided to identify which instruments and effects I use regularly and take note of how I use them. This thought process helped me to identify how I use my tools so that I could use them more effectively and streamline my system in the process. I like to customize sounds to make them my own, but I rarely program sounds from scratch, preferring to tweak presets that are in the general realm of the sound I am going for. And I rarely have the luxury to spend long amounts of time fiddling with a sound to make it perfect, so a well laid out user interface with quick access to the most commonly used parameters is important. That said, there are some libraries and plugins that I don’t tweak much at all because the presets work well without the need for much alteration. Sample libraries of real instruments such as orchestral strings fall into this category. Synth and electronic sounds, on the other hand, are ones I often manipulate a great deal. Effects plugins fall into similar camps for me. With EQs and compressors I rarely start with a preset, preferring to let the context determine my settings, but with reverbs I usually find a preset I like and only make minor tweaks as needed. After quantifying my priorities I began to look at my instruments and plugins in a different light. I divided them into three basic categories — ones that I like the sound of but don’t change much, ones that I tweak a lot because I like the interface and those that I rarely use. In the last category, I divided these

into those I want to explore more when time allows and those that I wouldn’t lose sleep over if they somehow disappeared from my hard drive. Some virtual instruments sound fantastic but have an interface that is complex to program. U-he’s Zebra falls into this category for me. It sounds amazing and is very powerful but can be time consuming to figure out where to make simple tweaks and I find myself forgetting how to do basic things if I haven’t opened the interface in a while. I put this type of instrument into the category of one that I will use for presets and basic modifications but not for serious programming. Other instruments sound great and have an intuitive interface that is easy to program. Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere is in this camp. All the parameters are clearly laid out so if I need to get under the hood and seriously change a sound it’s quick for me to do it. It also has many features that make it fast to customize sounds. SoundToys plugins also fall into this category. Their interface makes intuitive sense, the parameters are well labeled and accessible and I’ve rarely needed to crack the manual to figure how it works. Plugins and instruments like this go into my category of ones I enjoy tweaking. I use my sample libraries slightly differently. Most are in Kontakt format and I don’t like programming Kontakt, as I find the interface unintuitive. I’m not likely to do any deep programming but if the library itself has a good interface I’m happy to do basic modification of the sounds. Organization of my Kontakt libraries is important, however, since I own a lot. I organized my orchestral libraries into first chair libraries, which are the first ones I go to, and second chair libraries, which I use for specific presets and to fill out the sound of the first chair libraries. For nonorchestral libraries, I made special note of my favorites in different categories. I then moved my most used Kontakt libraries to display at the top of the libraries tab. After this, I went through my remaining instruments and effects, making mental note as to their utility. I decided to ignore a vast swath of them because they are either too hard to remember how to navigate the interface, don’t sound as good as others I use or I simply haven’t bothered to explore deeply.

By identifying the strengths in the plugins I like and determining the best way of using them, I now spend more time on music and less time searching for the right sound.

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Tech Talk Continued from Page 7

Of the latter, I made a note of the ones I want to explore in more depth at a later time. When assessing a plugin, I took a hard look at its usability. A lot of plugins are so cluttered with options that they become difficult to use in a practical matter. Many guitar amp simulators have this issue. Plugins like Guitar Rig and Amplitube have amp/speaker/ microphone combinations designed to emulate real equipment, but I don’t actually care much about emulating a specific guitar sound. I prefer to start with a good basic clean or distorted sound, then move the knobs to dial in a tone that is appropriate for the track. I found I was getting bogged down with these plugins scrolling through presets to find the right sound and losing focus on the music I was working on. After some research, I found a plugin called Scuffham S-series which better fit my needs. It features basic amp models and effects, great speaker emulations and excellent sounding presets with a high degree of tone shaping. I can get

all the sounds I want without getting distracted trying to determine if a Fender Twin would be better than a Fender Super Deluxe on my track. I now spend more time getting the right part because it is so much faster for me to get the right sound. After going through my plugins, I created a favorites section in my DAW’s plugin browser. This can be done in Logic by going to the plugin manager preference, creating a favorites folder and dragging plugins into it from the plugin manager screen. I created subfolders for different categories in order to find them quickly. I also saved plugin combinations as channel strips presets so that I can quickly bring up ones I use a lot. The last place to look at was how I was using the faders on my MIDI controller. I like to use continuous controllers to change parameters, like volume and modulation, in real time. I had assigned the faders on my controller to various MIDI CCs but I found I wasn’t using many of them most of the time. Rather than poring through manuals to discover which MIDI CCs were used by which plugins, I decid-

ed that it makes more sense to use the MIDI learn function to assign a fader to a plugin parameter I want to manipulate. I reassigned the majority of the faders on my controller to MIDI CCs that are rarely used with the intention of assigning them on the fly as needed. If I need to modulate the filter on a synth, for example, I just use the MIDI learn function to assign a fader to filter cutoff. It doesn’t matter if I remember it or not because it is specific to the session I am working on, rather than a global setting. After going through this thought experiment and organizational process, I found it had served a dual purpose. First, I was much clearer about what libraries, virtual instruments and effects worked for me, and second, I was clearer about the way in which I work with the tools I have. My nagging sense of missing out on something great largely disappeared and my setup and workflow was streamlined. By identifying the strengths in the plugins I like and determining the best way of using them, I now spend more time on music and less time searching for the right g sound.

BMI Composers Capture Audiences at SXSW Film Festival Pictured at the screening of Bill Frisell: A Portrait are, L-R: filmmaker Emma Franz, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross, musician/composer Bill Frisell and BMI’s Anne Cecere

L-R: BMI’s Anne Cecere and Doreen Ringer-Ross proudly pose with Small Town Crime composer Chris Westlake L-R: BMI’s Anne Cecere with Inheritance composer Rafael Leloup L-R: BMI’s Anne Cecere, composer and SXSW panelist Heather McIntosh, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross and composer and SXSW panelist Walter Werzowa pose for a photo during the 2017 Film Festival

L-R: Singer-songwriter Maiah Wynne, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross and composer Scott Salinas

N E W M A R K E T S

Sound And Music In The New Virtual Reality Frontier

By Joel Douek

hat’s the fascination with Virtual Reality? Until you’ve tried it for yourself, it’s hard to appreciate why strapping a phone to your face has anything to offer beyond gimmickry. Yet it’s what happens to both body and mind when you’re ‘inside’ the VR world that defies expectations. We encounter all the physiological and emotional reactions that we do in the real world. Perched on the edge of a virtual cliff, you’re seized by fear no matter how much you tell yourself “this is not real!” Simply put, VR is the first wholly new form of media to emerge since 1910. Where film and television are both fundamentally time-driven art forms, VR is about space and our place in it. Before it we’d seen only enhancements to existing forms of moving image and sound. That elusive nirvana of every creative conversation — how to create “immersive” experience — is suddenly obsolete. Because in VR you are immersed, like it or not. The gap is gone. VR is also a completely new medium for telling stories, for giving experiences, and for social interaction. It is different from film because all of a sudden we are in the movie (we have presence), and we are free to look and move around inside it the way we choose (we have free agency). A whole new language is being written for the creators of VR and for its users, and a key part of this vocabulary is sound. Many of the new VR production companies emerging are offshoots of visual effects outfits, for whom expanding imagery from a forward placed screen to a 360º field is a relatively accessible process. Because their skillsets are primarily visual, sound was getting left behind. But ask any VR developer, from JauntVR to Industrial Light and Magic, and they will tell you: sound is far more important in VR than it ever was in film or TV. In the vast majority of VR experiences, we are using only two of our senses: sight and hearing. So, sound is 50% of the experience to be had, yet it conveys almost all the emotion. In the VR experience just as in life, it can convey feelings or drive a story without even needing to look at it, because sound is by nature 360 and immersive, and our ears never blink. In this way, sound has found an important role in the VR world: to lead

the user’s attention towards something you want them to see that may be out of view (the human visual system sees only a 180º field of view, and just 114º of that in 3D). Indeed, one could argue that music and sound are the mother of augmented reality —we’ve been using them to qualify and augment our experiences for as long as there have been humans. Imagine a wedding without a wedding march. Imagine an ambulance without sound. A church without ringing bells or a choir, a tough gym workout without the motivation of music. It’s dry, emotionless, lifeless. We’ve built acoustic spaces, cathedrals to champion and transcend the human experience through sound and music. According to cutting-edge neuroscience, when you move to music in synchrony with another person, your brain starts to blur its sense of self. Throughout our lives it is a social glue that binds and bonds us more closely, bringing meaning and reinforcing memories. What does all this mean for VR? It means we’ve only scratched the surface of sonic in these newly imagined spaces. Great advances in the simulated positioning of sound (spatialization) allow us to place sounds anywhere in the 360 space, even when listening on regular headphones. In the VR experience, this spatialized soundscape can now track head movement correctly so the sound remains in place, just as in real life. We can go further, creating an “inner experience” for the user, an internal dialogue or song, by making it sound “head-locked” and distinct from the sounds that are “out there.” The head-locked channel is where we might put a music score, for example, so it is heard in the traditional non-diegetic sense. The spreading realization of this ”power of sound” among VR producers means that, unlike in film or TV — where music and sound is somewhat of an afterthought — in VR we are starting to be invited to the table from the very earliest moments of project conception. Not only is sound solving emotional needs of the storytelling arc as it does in film, it can solve spatial and directional problems. Say a director wants to subtly draw the user’s attention to action that is happening behind you, outside of your visual field, we can use spatially placed sound to move your gaze towards it. Also, where VR can be an isolating

A whole new language is being written for the creators of VR and for its users, and a key part of this vocabulary is sound.

Continued on Page 21 9

N E W G E A R

Keyscape By Jack D. Elliot

pectrasonics is known for some of the best plugins that a composer or sound designer can buy. You will hear and see them used in just about every studio, film, television series, or video game. Years are put into making Spectrasonics’ plugins top notch, and the new Keyscape is another grand slam on their list. Outstanding, once again. Keyscape comes with 36 sought-after multisampled keyboards, and 500 presets. It is available as a download directly from the Spectrasonics site, or as a boxed edition, with the content supplied on two USB drives totaling 77 GB. The price for Keyscape is $399. Included they give you the choice to install a lite version, which is about 30 GB as opposed to the full package, but you will miss out on some of the fun keyboards. I would definitely recommend having a large enough drive for the full version, as it is absolutely worth it. Not only does Keyscape sound amazing, it also feels amazing. While some other libraries sound good, they can be difficult to play, and the sounds can become a little lackluster unless you take up a lot of valuable time editing the performance. But with Keyscape, this is not necessary. You can adjust the velocity curve to your liking. The keyboards presets include up to 32 levels of velocity switching, and individual key sampling with multiple modes of round-robin articulation. Extreme detail was put into adding mechanical noise options for both the attack and release of notes, and release samples, as well as vintage effects, modern effects and amp models to tweak the sounds. Keyscape comes with a variety of keyboards, including the Yamaha C7, Rhodes Classic Suitcase, Hohner Clavinet C, Wurlitzer, and CP70. There are also many toy, eccentric, fun keyboards. Each keyboard comes in its original form, along with loads of options for variations, including effects, compression, and EQ choices. If you already own Omnisphere (which I feel is a must in everyone’s studio), you can load the Keyscape presets in Omnisphere 2. This allows you to take advantage of Omnisphere’s engine and features to tweak the sounds quite a bit more than the Keyscape version allows. Also, if you own Omnisphere 2 you get for free the “Keyscape Creative” library. It is a cuttingedge collection of over 1,200 Omnisphere patches specially designed for users who

also have Keyscape. The vast new library was produced by Eric Persing, and features a tremendous variety of patches created by their amazing Sound Development team, showcasing the power of combining Keyscape and Omnisphere 2. You can immediately tell that a good deal of time and thought have been put into making the Keyscape library, which actually took 10 years to make. Spectrasonics rocked it with their sound engine. You will benefit from an SSD drive for fast preset loading. But even more important is streaming “big” instruments (like the piano) from disk as you play. SSD install is a must for that. One is able to load other presets on older computers. This allows you to load a lot of sounds without bringing your computer to its knees. The GUI looks great, and is similar to Omnisphere and Trilian. I love seeing the pictures of the instruments, which creates ease when you need something specific, or are mixing. I still wish Spectrasonics would offer the choice to enlarge the plugin. Many companies are doing this now, and it really helps with eye strain when working on 4k monitors. Conclusion: Amazing detail in the sounds. Easy to play. Omnisphere integration is awesome. Priced well for everything that you get. No cons to report. I give Keyscape a 10/10.

You can immediately tell that a good deal of time and thought have been put into making the Keyscape library, which actually took 10 years to make.

What’sHappening

CL Board member Christopher Farrell attended the LA premier of Fair Haven on March 3rd in Santa Monica.

By Lori Barth

Pictured at the Columbia Film Scoring Workshop “Day One “ L-R: Alex Steyermark, Rachel Perkins, Shawn LeMone, Martin Crane, Callum Smith, Dennis Dreith, Alex Venguer g g g

L-R: UCLA Extension Music Program representative Erin Kaufman, BMI/Jerry Goldsmith Film Scoring Scholarship recipient Tomasz Golka, BMI Vice President, Film/TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross and UCLA Extension Program Director Pascale Cohen-Olivar

L-R: BMI’s Anne Cecere, the film’s director Kerstin Karlhuber and composer Christopher Farrell g g g

g g g

L-R: Chris Walden and John Williams

Pictured at the Kennedy Center are Sundance Film Composers Program Director and BMI composer Peter Golub, BMI composer Terence Blanchard and BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross at the performance of Blanchard’s Jazz Opera Champions

Chris Walden conducted “Mancini Delivered” (a musical tribute to Henry and Ginny Mancini) co-hosted by Julie Andrews at the Wallis Annenberg Theatre in Beverly Hills on April 1, 2017.

L-R: Quincy Jones, Stephane Lerouge, Jon Burlingame

SCL member Pam Gates hosted a special dinner to honor Stephane Lerouge and Quincy Jones. Stephane recently recorded a six CD compilation set of Quincy’s music for cinema; it is now available online, released on Universal, France.

g g g

L-R: Chris Walden, Quincy Jones, Monica Mancini and Dave Koz g g g

L-R: Ramin Djawadi with BMI’s Ray Yee

BMI Composer Ramin Djawadi brings the Game of Thrones Live Concert Tour to Los Angeles at The Forum.

The Golden State Pops Orchestra celebrated 15 years with a 15th Anniversary Concert: Skyfall, Titanic and Other Hit Songs from Film at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, CA, on April 22nd. Happy Anniversary!

L-R: Lori Barth, Stephane Lerouge, Jim DiGiovanni and Jon Burlingame 11

Inside George S. Clinton INTERVIEWED BY

LORI BARTH

Award-winning composer George S. Clinton has scored over 100 films, most notably Austin Powers International Man of Mystery and its blockbuster sequels; Disney’s hit Santa Clause and sequels; Mortal Kombat 1 and 2; Wild Things, Red Shoe Diaries, John Water’s A Dirty Shame and the Emmy Award-winning Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. The Score caught up with George to ask him a few questions about his career. Score: Tell us a little bit about your background, the bands you were in. You were a pop songwriter but did you go to school to learn about film music? George: I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where my mother was the organist in the Southern Baptist Church. That’s sort of where I got into music. I remember listening to her play a hymn while the preacher was trying to get people to come down and confess their sins. People would start to cry and even at that point (I was about eight years old) I realized the power of music. It would not have been the same moment had my mother not been playing the organ. I was in the high school marching band; I played tuba and sang in the choir. I was playing piano in a rock band called The Velveteens, and that still is my main instrument. I was the typical kind of high school music nerd. I was also in drama club and doing acting. I was already starting to write songs, so I went to college at Middle Tennessee State University since it was so close to Nashville. I literally took this notebook of lyrics that I had written in high school and thumbed my way to Nashville and sat down on the steps of Tree Music; this was when it was a little Victorian house on Music Row. It wasn’t open yet. I was tired and fell asleep on the steps. I felt this foot kicking at me and I opened my eyes and there is this guy sayin’, “What the hell are you doin’?” I said, “Well, I’m here to see Buddy Killen” (who was the guy to see if you wanted to be a songwriter). And he said, “Oh god”; it was Buddy Killen. So, he gave me a job as a staff writer when I was still in college, but what it really was was minimum wage to help them organize this incredibly disorganized room full of tapes and cassettes. Then Continued on Next Page

they would allow me to use the demo studio. I got a couple of songs recorded there, not very many because I’m not really a country songwriter. But I did end up doing some session work, and when I graduated from MTSU, I had a degree in music and drama. I did the same thing there; I was in bands, and by then arranging for the bands. Then I decided to move to Los Angeles. At the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1969, which was the one just before Woodstock, a lot of the same bands were at this festival that wound up being at Woodstock. I went down there and everybody was having a very good psychedelic kind of time. I came to the realization that if I didn’t want to be drafted, that I needed to get myself to LA and be part of the music scene. Score: At what point did you make the left turn into film composing? What was the experience that brought you around to that? Did you have eyes to do that before you came to LA? George: No. I came here like everybody else to be a rock star. I was still writing songs. For the first ten years I was out here I did four albums with various bands I organized as a recording artist. Warner Bros. Music heard some of the songs I had written for the first album and offered me a job as a staff writer. It was great; there were only about four or five of us. I was writing a lot of R&B then. Once a month they’d gather the writers and the A&R guys would have gone out and gotten the information from producers as to who was coming up and what kind of songs they were looking for. We would either pitch songs to our A&R guys that we already had, or go home and write something in that style. If they liked it they would give you the chance to demo it. I was lucky; I got some songs recorded by Michael Jackson, Joe Cocker, Three Dog Night. The last band I had was playing in a club, and I think Cheech and Chong were in the audience. They came back stage and said, “Hey, you wanna do some music for our movie?” And I said, “Sure,” so I got my chance to do my first score which was called Still Smokin’. I figured I had never scored a film before but it was a Cheech and Chong movie so we were all going to have a lot of fun regardless of how it sounded. I decided there was a lot I

needed to know that I didn’t know. It was not going to be a huge orchestra but I knew how to write for orchestra because I had the degree in music. So I took extension courses at UCLA. Don Ray was teaching there and he became a mentor. So that’s how I made that left turn. Score: You went on to do several Cheech and Chong movies, correct? George: I think I did two and maybe a special. They called me the next summer; they had rented us a chateau outside Paris and said, “Hey Clinton, you wanna come over?” It was a nobrainer. They were doing this crazy movie called The Corsican Brothers. They were directing it themselves and all the extras had to dress in French Revolutionary outfits and stand around while they tried to figure out which scenes they wanted to do next. From what I can remember, that summer was a great experience. Score: Did it seem easy once you jumped into film composing and did you feel it was something you could do successfully? George: Yes, once I got into it, I realized, okay this is what I need to be doing. The only thing I missed about the recording artist thing was live performance, and I still miss that to some degree. The closest you come to that is conducting. It’s live, it’s kind of a performance and at least you are there with the band creating something together. Score: What were the next films you did? Fill in the blanks before Austin Powers? George: I thought there was going to be a path beat to my door because I had done the Cheech and Chong movies, and that was not the case. Suddenly I realized, I’m going to have to let people know I do this and I have done this. I became aware of how important networking was. I scored movies for free for The American Film Institute, I started working for Cannon Films as a composer doing these really low-budget American Ninja movies, and I got some Showtime movies of the Zalman King erotica series he did called Red Shoes Diaries. Little by little I started doing more things — some movies-of-

the-week, which were a cool thing back then. There was always one going for the next week at NBC and all the other networks…and then I started doing mini-series and began to make a con-scious decision to not do anymore television because back then, if you did TV, they didn’t consider you a serious enough composer to do films. So, I didn’t work for about year when I tried to make that transition. It was my agent at the time that helped me make that step over. And then after that happened, I started getting bigger films. I got in with New Line and did Mortal Kombat, which was my first “hit” and they were the people that did Austin Powers, so I already had an in at that film company. Score: You had to do a big John Barryinspired score for Austin Powers. Tell us about that. What was your thinking behind it, your approach? George: First of all, working with Mike Myers, Jay Roach, the director, and John Houlihan, the music supervisor, like me, were huge fans of that genre. They’re younger than me but I remember when those movies came out in the theatre. It was in my DNA. I loved those 007 scores, and I loved those movies. The same with The Pink Panther, In Like Flint, and so we all agreed what we really wanted to do was an homage to them, not just a send up, but to lovingly approach. My goal was to try to make the John Barry sounding part of it sound like a John Barry score to a James Bond film that somebody had just found, that hadn’t existed before. There was that, and one of the approaches I took, which I think really helped personalize it for me, was I tried to write the kind of music for Dr. Evil that I thought Dr. Evil would like to hear when he was being evil. The kind of music he would approve of. And the same thing with Austin Powers. I tried to get in his head and write the kind of music that he’d like to hear for himself. I guess it was my drama training of trying to get in the head of the characters. It really was helpful in differentiating the types of music that I had to write. Score: Who picked “Soul Bossa Nova?” George: That was Mike Myers. The story goes that it was the theme song to a Canadian game show when he Continued on Next Page 13

Clinton Interview Continued from Page 13

was growing up in Canada. It was originally recorded in 1962 on an album Quincy did called Big Band Bossa Nova. It was one of the cuts and Mike had grown up hearing that, and so what he does when he starts coming up with characters, he tries to think of a piece of music that symbolizes his ideas or feelings about that character, and that was just something that popped right into his head. So, that was a given when I was hired to do the score — that we were going to use that for Austin at various places. Score: Your approach to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was more dramatic. Was that hard to make an about face? George: It is hard to make an about face, and it’s not, because if you get popular doing a movie, whether you’re an actor, director, composer, those are the ones you get offered the most and those are the ones you end up working on the most. You always long for those kinds of movies you don’t get to do that you are not put up for. So, when this director I had worked with before on various dramas, Yves Simoneau, got this gig, he suggested me to HBO. I have to hand it to him and to HBO that they were able to say, “Okay, let’s use the Austin Powers guy for the period piece about the Native American Indians in the 1800s.” I did have music I had written before that showed that I was capable of writing that kind of music. Must be like a prisoner finally being let out of jail and getting to go on a date after not being on a date for four years. That’s the way it felt doing this drama. A love fest for me because I got to write the kind of music I had been longing to write. The director I worked with was very respectful of the Native American story. I knew that it was not going to be unsympathetic in any way. I’ve got a small part Cherokee in my blood, so I’ve always been tuned into that to some degree. Also, having Lakota flute master John Two-Hawks involved brought a beautiful spirit to it. Score: Writing serious drama as opposed to comedy, explain your thoughts and your approach. Let’s hear your whole philosophy on this subject.

George: I don’t think there is such a thing as funny music. I think that there is humorous music, there is fun music, but I think for it to be funny and to make you laugh out loud, you have to see an image or have it be in some context. Having said that, there are certain technical aspects of writing comedy that satisfy that genre. One of the things that I like to do is think of music as the straight man. You know, in Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello, you have the funny guy and you have the guy that’s setting up the funny guy with a serious story so that the punchline is even funnier. Though to me, comedy music works the best when it doesn’t try to amp up the funny. Comedy is hard because you have to find that line of not working too over the top, not working too hard to make it funny if it’s not, and then not being too serious. But for me it works the best, like Carter Burwell’s scores to The Coen Brothers movies. You listen to that music by itself and there is nothing funny about it. If you were to just read the story, a guy shoving another guy into a chipper, there is nothing funny about that, but we laugh because of the genius in the way it is presented. Another technique I use, you know that game that kids play where they have a balloon and they’re in a circle and try to and keep it in the air? You can’t grab it because if you grab it you have to leave the circle, if you let it drop and you leave the circle. For me, writing for comedy dialog is like keeping the balloon in the air. There is the gentle urging of what music must do under comic dialog that sometimes can really be too heavy handed. As for the dramatic score, the great thing about a drama or even a horror movie is usually there is a single tone. The vernacular for the film emotionally is within a realm, as opposed to a comedy which can be all over the place. Any action cue you write for a comedy has to sound like the whole movie has been an action movie. Or any love theme you write for a comedy has to sound like the whole movie has been a romance. One of the great things about a romantic movie, a drama or even a horror film is that you get to explore the similar world. You’re not all over the place trying to support various types of moments. I love that because that really gives you a chance to mine themes, textures and tonality:

It’s like painting, choosing a particular palette of colors to paint with. And I am also a storyteller. One of the things that I tried to express to my students is that we are first and foremost storytellers. And if that’s not what we are, we should get a gig doing something else because a movie is all about telling a story and we are part of a storytelling team. It’s our job as part of that team to help tell our story through our music. When I ask my students, have you ever read a script, most say no. Well, without a script there is no movie, without a movie there is no score, and then you don’t have a gig. You might as well start where it starts and learn the language of the film. It’s so important for composers to be able to speak with the director in dramatic, non-musical terms. Score: Since you came out of bands and played piano in more of an acoustic world, do you prefer working with acoustic instruments or electronics or does the project dictate what you do? George: It’s been 15 years since I did a paper score. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. I used to write everything down; I think I even have some old yellowing score paper and even onion skin. If you made a mistake, start over. So, to answer your question, the project dictates it. I love technology, but technology is just another tool. The upside of being a composer today is having all that amazing technology at our fingertips. The downside is, so does everybody else. A lot of people are coming up with some very convincing sounding songs, productions, film scores or whatever, and don’t have the experience, or the education or depth of resource that they might, to go along with this technical ability. That’s why I think being musically educated, whether through experience or going to school to learn it, is so important. One of the things that helps us express ourselves and distinguishes us as creative artists is the depth of resource that we have at our disposal. The deeper that resource, the more nuanced and original our creations can be. Otherwise, we sound like everybody else. Score: You’ve received the BMI Richard Kirk Award, you were the chair of the film scoring department at Continued on Next Page

Clinton Interview Continued from Page 14

Berklee School of Music, you have been an advisor at Sundance Institute, you are now on the board of The SCL and the AWFC as well as the AMPAS Music Branch Executive Board. Why did you want to become an educator and what have you learned that gives you a different perspective now? George: It started 17 years ago at a BMI Award dinner when Peter Golub asked me if I wanted to be an advisor at the Sundance Institute Composers Lab. (Doreen Ringer-Ross had strategically placed us at the same table.) I hadn’t realized until I was at the Lab and working with young composers how much I would enjoy doing it. It’s a terrific program and the young composers who come through there are the real deal. In regards to Berklee, four years ago, Alison Plante contacted me and said that the Film Scoring Chair was going to be open because my good friend Dan Carlin was leaving to head up the Screen Scoring program at USC. I talked to my wife about it; our daughter had just graduated from NYU, was living in Brooklyn, and we thought, why not? Keep the house, keep the studio, come back and work when I need to. We’ll rent a place there, leave our cars here, take public transportation, and it will be great. It was really great. The three-year contract was just enough — I loved everything about it. One thing working with young composers reminds me over and over again is to be open, stay curious and find the joy in the process. The longer we do this professionally, the easier it is to lose sight of that. Another thing that I feel I have learned is there is no one right way to do anything. I sometimes get students or the fellows at Sundance to score a scene I had already scored. To have these young people with these fresh minds come up with ideas I had not even considered or would have never thought of, is great. It is a very humbling experience. It makes me realize — the guy who got the gig, that’s the score we know, but there are plenty of valid alternatives to solving that same problem creatively. Score: Great observation. Thank you g for this wonderful interview!

Women in Film Music Panel, L-R: Composers Pinar Toprak, Lesley Barber, Carly Paradis and Steph Economou at the 2017 ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo

ASCAP ‘I Create Music’ Expo 2017

SCAP featured many film, TV and songwriters at this year’s “We Create Music” Expo held once again at Loew’s Hotel in Hollywood, CA on April 13, 14 and 15, 2017. The all-star panelists of the ASCAP Expo’s Next Level: Scoring for Video Games panel, L-R: Austin Wintory, Tom Salta, Jack Wall and Gordy Haab

ASCAP composer Jeff Cardoni (R) with songwriter Ashley Gorley during the We Create Music panel at the ASCAP Expo

Right on Cue: What It Takes to Score for TV panel at the ASCAP Expo. L-R: Allison Wright Clark, Paul Brill, Scott Doherty, Jamie Forsyth, Danny Jacob

Composer Michael Abels (R) discusses with Melinda Newman (L) how he transitioned from the classical music world to scoring Get Out at the 2017 ASCAP Expo

James DiPasquale Continued from Page 1

in all sorts of ways: we had a 10k race, and a big dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel honoring Steve Speilberg. We tried to do everything we could to get the CLGA re-established, but the union was broke from fighting the lawsuit. Finally, in June, 1982, we closed the office, and put all the files in storage. And that was the end of the CLGA. Meanwhile, the industry was moving on, the unions were all making deals, videocassettes were selling, studios were paying residuals, and we were nowhere to be seen. So about 30 of us began meeting, mostly in Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s living room. Marilyn was really pushing; she said we need somebody to lead this fight and she suggested me. I accepted the job as Organizing Chairman and Norman Gimbel became the ViceChairman. Sometime before those meetings began, the Bergmans had joined the Writers Guild and they said, “We all need to be members of The Writers Guild.” So in April, 1983, 12 of us — myself, David Braun (attorney for Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan), the Bergmans, David Raksin, Elmer Bernstein, Arthur Hamilton, Lalo Schifrin, John Cacavas, and people like that — appeared before the Writers Guild Board of Directors. I remember that Frank Pierson, the WGA president, and the whole Board were very impressed by the group of distinguished composers and lyricists who filed into the Board room. David Braun presented a proposal to the Board that basically said, “We are the last group of creative people in the industry who are not represented by a union. Your members write words, we write music and words, but we’re writers, the same as you.” The WGA said they’d like to represent us, but they legally couldn’t unless we were certified as a labor union by the NLRB. But they offered to help us organize and pay all the expenses involved. Because I was the Organizing Chairman, they gave me a little cubicle at the Writers Guild that I used as an office for almost two years. The whole idea at that point was for us to go to the NLRB and get certified. Then, as a recognized labor union, the WGA Board and the SCL Board could vote to merge so that all 16

of us would become members of The Writers Guild. I knew virtually nothing about organizing a union, so the WGA general counsel, Doreen Braverman, over a lot of lunches, taught me everything I needed to know. A small group of us contacted every composer and lyricist we could find and had them sign cards authorizing the SCL to represent them as a union. We had almost 100% response, including from people like Stephen Sondheim, whose interest in a union surprised me. Score: When were you first called The Society of Composers & Lyricists? Was it before you appeared before the NLRB Board? Jim: I have the charter and I think it was in the summer of 1983. The first organizing meeting was on February 14, 1984 at the Writers Guild Theater. That was the official debut of the SCL. We had 310 people show up, including most of the major names at that time — John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, David Raksin, Johnny Mandel, Hal David, etc. I needed a major name to do the keynote speech — which I had written — so I called two very respected composers who both turned me down, mostly because they didn’t feel they were credible enough to make a labor speech. They both were at the meeting, however. I then called Quincy Jones who said, “What’s the date?” I told him and he said, “Oh, man, I’m flying to New York that night.” I said, “OK, thanks anyway.” I figured that was the end of that, the third guy to turn me down. But then he said, “I’ll go the next morning. We need this.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, no problem, I’ll be there. Tell me where, what time.” Well, Quincy was 20 minutes late getting to the meeting, but he not only read the speech, he blew choruses on it, he improvised the hell out of it with funny lines that had people rolling on the floor. He turned what was a straight, factual speech into a star turn that lightened the mood for the rest of the meeting. We were warned by the WGA that getting certified was going to be very difficult because Ronald Reagan was in the White House. The first major thing Reagan did as president was to fire 13,000 members of the Air Traffic

Controller’s union. That defined his negative labor policy for the rest of his presidency. Here we were, three years into Reagan’s term and we’re trying to get a new union certified. So we prepared like we were going to war. We interviewed 42 people as potential witnesses to testify at the NLRB— people like Ernest Gold, Pat Williams, James Horner, Alan Bergman, etc. It took several months to get all these people to come in for interviews and to get our case ready for presentation. The NLRB certification hearing was in October 1984 at the Federal Building in Westwood. It lasted seven days and 19 people testified— ten from our side and nine from the studios. The whole question to be decided was: are we independent contractors or employees? Independent contractors cannot legally unionize — only employees can be organized into a union. Several studio music department heads — Harry Lojewski from MGM and Bodie Chandler from Lorimar, for example—testified that, “We consider composers to be employees.” We thought their opinions would go a long way toward convincing the NLRB that we were employees. Didn’t turn out that way. Just before Christmas of ‘84, we got the NLRB decision. It basically said, “We hereby find that you are independent contractors and, as such, cannot be organized as a union.” And that was that. We appealed the ruling, but that was denied as well, so we were really dead in the water at that point. That was the beginning of 1985, so it was now almost two years since we tried to become members of The Writers Guild. The Guild had financed our entire certification effort, which was almost $70,000 and never asked for a penny of reimbursement. It was a big project with a lot of work involved by many people, but we never got to be a union. That was the entire goal, so now what? We received encouragement from Howard Berman, our Congressman, and from Senator Ted Kennedy. Both these guys encouraged us to stick together until a Democratic administration was in the White House, and then to try again for union certification. Though we were disappointed that, after working so hard for two years, we didn’t succeed in establishing a union,

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James DiPasquale Continued from Page 16

there was enough momentum started in the composer/lyricist community that the SCL did stick together. Later in 1985, Arthur Hamilton took over the leadership from me. Arthur was great at getting us noticed everywhere and that helped establish the SCL name. He served from 1985 to 1988, when Bruce Broughton became president. He did a fantastic job for five years at a time when our membership numbers had dropped. Just like Arthur, Bruce, and myself, the presidents who followed — Richard Bellis, Mark Watters, Jay Chattaway, Ray Colcord, and Dan Foliart — all took on the full responsibility of being SCL President in addition to their writing careers. Looking back, it’s amazing what they all accomplished because it’s tough to find a life balance between serving office and writing. Inevitably, our careers have all suffered to some degree because, even with help, there are a ton of details to deal with when the buck stops on your desk. Our current president, Ashley Irwin, has a tougher job than of any of us past presidents ever had. In the last 20 years, every aspect of our business has changed so drastically that it’s barely recognizable. It seems like there’s an attack on some part of the business every week. The influence of the Internet on music, film, and video games, the growth of the publishing industry, the future of the PROs, and the control that major corporations have right now over everything and everyone — it’s head-spinning. Ashley is constantly juggling all these new facets of the business — stuff that none of us earlier presidents ever dreamed of. There’s a saying that “Change is the essence of life.” Well, there’s no more proof of that than the music industry right now. Score: This is where we’re at now. We’ve got all of these new problems with the DOJ, copyrights…. Where do you think we can go now? Jim: The quick answer is we have to go wherever the music industry leads us. Keeping up with the changes and making them work for our group becomes the major job. We have to

know what’s going on at all times and make sure all SCL members understand current issues. But besides adjusting to the changes, we’ve seen that there are still people who want to be a union. The encouragement from Ted Kennedy that I mentioned before was in the form of a letter where he said, “It’s grossly unfair and a miscarriage of justice that you people cannot be a union. The Writers Guild operates very much like you do, and they’ve been a union since the 1930s.” Recently, I’ve become aware that there’s an active group of composers who really want a union. They’re all mostly in their late 30s to early 50s, and they’re meeting regularly. At last year’s Oscar party, one of them came up to me and said, “Hey Jim, I want to talk to you. You know, there’s a group of guys about my age who are mostly doing cable shows. We feel we want to make another run for a union. Can we count on you?” And I said, ”I’ve already done that, I’ve done it to death. I can answer your questions if you need some help, but I don’t really have it in me to do any more politicking at this point.” One of the real problems that I discovered in trying to get us certified is that, going back to the 1950s, composers and lyricists — as well as the studios — have played both sides of the street on the question of whether we’re employees or independent contractors. This situation happened way before my time, but David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein explained it to me over dinner one night. They said that, at certain points in our history, composers and lyricists claimed to be independent contractors because they wanted copyright control of their music. When they realized that wasn’t going to happen, then they claimed to be employees so they could unionize. In the same way, the studios would call us employees because they wanted our publishing rights. Owning the publishing, of course, gave them new income from every piece of music that we wrote. That was found money to them — they didn’t have to do a thing to earn it except to hire a composer or lyricist to write for them. But, there were also times when the studios didn’t want to deal with us as a union, so they would declare us to be independent contractors. So they flip-flopped on

this question just as composers and lyricists did. In 1983, when we started our organizing, I knew nothing about this twofaced situation between the studios and us. But listening to the testimony of studio execs at the NLRB hearings, I became aware of how some of these guys thought of us. As I said before, several music directors testified that they thought we were employees because they had overall control of our music — i.e., they could edit our music, re-use it, or throw out entire scores whenever they wanted. The yardstick for measuring whether you’re an employee is the amount of control that the employer has over your music — your product. The more control they have, the more you can be classified as an employee by the NLRB. But at the NLRB hearings, the attorneys for the studios testified that we were independent contractors and, as such, had no legal right to unionize. Well, this flip-flop classification definitely complicated our ability to get certified because the NLRB asked the obvious: “Which is it, are you employees or independent contractors?” Because we had claimed both categories in the past, it weakened our argument that we were employees and we were entitled to unionize. That complication was one that my generation had nothing to do with, yet we had to live with our collective history. That issue has to be factored in to any future attempt at unionizing. Plus, our ultimate classification as independent contractors and our loss at the NLRB will also be an obstacle. Getting certified now will be harder than ever, sorry to say. Aside from all that, the question of where it’s all going now is a real puzzle. I sit at SCL meetings these days and I feel like I’ve become David Raksin. He was in his 70s when we were starting the SCL. He had been one of the founders of the CLGA in 1955, so I dragged him to a lot of our Board meetings in the late 80s. He said he had nothing to offer at that point, but I told him, “No, you know the history, you know where we’ve been. You’re our research library.” And he really was, along with Elmer Bernstein. The two of them taught me the labor history of the CLGA. Now I’ve reached the age that David Continued on Page 22 17

Scenes From The SCL Oscar Reception 2017

he SCL Oscar reception was held on February 25, 2017 at The Eveleigh Restaurant on the Sunset Strip. SCL members gathered to celebrate the nominees for the 2017 Academy Awards in the field of music. This is always a favorite SCL event.

L-R, top row: SCL President Ashley Irwin, Dustin O’Halloran, Hauschka, Justin Paul, Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Event Chair Charles Bernstein L-R, bottom row: J. Ralph, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mica Levi and Nicholas Britell

L-R: Rob Messenger, Nicholas Britell, Jon Burlingame, Ray Costa and AFM Local 47 President John Acosta

L-R: ASCAPs Shawn LeMone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Lynn Kowal

L-R: Benj Pasek, Adryan Russ, Justin Paul and ASCAP’s Michael Kerker

L-R: Event Chair Charles Bernstein, J. Ralph and SCL President Ashley Irwin

L-R: Elia Cmiral, Pam Gates and Dennis Spiegel

L-R: Tyler Traband, Adryan Russ, Eric Palmquist, Jonathan David Neal

L-R: Laura Engel, BMI’s Anne Cecere, and Lori Barth 18

L-R: Alan Rich, Greg O’Connor, Les and Terry Brockmann, Jud Friedman

L-R: SESAC’s Erin Collins, SESAC’s James Leach and SESAC’s Ali Guzman

L-R: Hauschka, LinManual Miranda, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

L-R: Edie Lehmann Boddicker and Michael Lehmann Boddicker

L-R: Event Chair Charles Bernstein with Justin Hurwitz

L-R: Joel Beckerman, Gaby Douek, Tracy Beckerman and Joel Douek

L-R: Mark Adler, Liliana Fiorelli, Carlos Siliotto, Joanie Diener

L-R: Mica Levi and SCL President Ashley Irwin

L-R: Jack D. Elliot, Greg O’Connor, Ryan Shore and Elizabeth Russo

L-R: Ramon and Miriam Balcazar 19

N E W A P P S

Auddly, Haawk And qWaqq

ere are three new apps The Score discovered that may be of some interest to our members. In today’s expanding music market, monetizing our catalogs is becoming even more important.

Auddly (www.auddly.com)

Auddly is the world’s first independent song data hub, created to fill the critical gap in the music industry’s data flow and enable music creators to take control of their rights. Founded in 2014 by Swedish songwriter Niclas Molinder, and backed by Max Martin and Björn Ulvaeus, Auddly’s vision is to create a transparent music industry where all creators get fair compensation and recognition for the music they share with the world. Via an iOS app and web platform, Auddly lets creators collect their song data and make it accessible to the business side, in order to secure correct credits and payments for everyone. The system is built on virtual song rooms where music creators can organize files and information, collaborate and clarify splits. In each song room, Auddly collects and stores all information connected to the song – who wrote it, splits, official title, audio files, lyrics, label copy, contact details etc. The data can then be easily shared with publishers and managers, ensuring transparency and accuracy throughout the process. Auddly is free of charge for creators, and costs $85/month for publishers and managers. Haawk (www.HAAWK.com)

HAAWK fingerprints your music, finds every YouTube video containing your music, and then runs Google Adsense ads over the videos. We collect the ad revenue earned on these videos directly from Google, and remit quarterly payments to you. We also monitor usage of their music on Facebook and Vimeo and distribute music to music retailers such as Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play, Pandora, and many more. The HAAWK program is designed to get composers paid for all the YouTube and user generated Facebook videos containing your music without first obtaining a proper license. If the number of videos (and view count of the videos) containing your music is substantial, then it can add up to a pretty nice amount. Every major music rights holder is beginning to take advantage of the growing YouTube cash flow stream. Some production music libraries alone are grossing as much as $500,000 per year from YouTube alone. Haawk takes a percentage of the revenue they get from the Internet. qWaqq (www.qWaqq.com)

qWaqq was created by award-winning songwriter, Jud Friedman. It is a musicstreaming app focusing on songwriters that is now available for iPhone and iPad allowing fans to easily hear more from their favorite hit makers for the first time ever. Featuring a treasure trove of never-before released songs and demos of classic hits, qWaqq reveals the untold stories behind some of the world’s most popular songs and provides access to a wealth of related material provided directly by the songwriters themselves. qWaqq introduces and empowers those behind the music with just a few taps of an iPhone screen. qWaqq’s easy-to-use platform allows songwriters to upload mp3s, written text, pictures, credits, links and other related information, and to share as little or as much as they want. Because qWaqq pays a significantly higher royalty rate than other streaming services and since the content already exists — there is no cost in content creation — copyright holders now have an innovative method to monetize untapped music and archives. g This app is advertising driven and is free to songwriters and composers. 20

Elfman Receives Max Steiner Award

our-time Oscar nominee Danny Elfman (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Good Will Hunting, Milk) received the prestigous Max Steiner Award in the City of Music, Vienna, during the 10th annual Hollywood in Vienna gala on March 9th, 2017. Elfman joins an illustrious group of prior award recipients, such as Alexandre Desplat (2016), James Newton Howard (2015), Randy Newman (2014), and the late James Horner (2013). C D R E V I E W

Color Me Home

Darlene Koldenhoven $9.99 iTunes genre New Age Beautifully produced, lovely arrangements, vocals spotless and full of depth. The music on this CD is very relaxing and could be listened to for hours. The theme of this project feels very natural and bucolic and reminds g one of being out in a lush forest.

SCL Events February 9 – Opportunities In Production Music For Film and TV Composers held at the AFI and the panel was a co-production between the SCL and the PMA (the Production Music Association).

April 8 — Sing Out/Play Out, Madilyn Clark Studios.

L-R: Yoav Goren, President of Immediate Music, PMA Board Member; Benoît Grey, Composer, Chairman of SCL Production Music Committee; Jeff Rona, Composer, Founder of Liquid Cinema; Edwina Travis-Chin, Music Director at APM Music; Derek Jones, Director of Production & Creative Services at Megatrax

L-R: Music Supervisor Cheryl Foliart, SCL SongArts Chair Adryan Russ, Music Supervisor Michael Turner

April 20 — Songwriting for Video Games & Where You Fit, AFI. L-R: Songwriters Elizabeth Zharoff, Josh Boardman, Moderator Kole Hicks, Songwriters Billy Martin and Adam Gubman

February 13— Composing Tunes for Children’s Toons, Landmark Regent Theater. L-R: Moderator Tim Greiving; Composer Jake Monaco; DreamWorks Animation Television Executive of TV Music Alexandra Nickson; Composers Frederik Wiedmann and Tim Davies March 28 — Demystifying Omnisphere, Westlake Pro. L-R: SCL Seminar Chair Fletcher Beasley; Spectrasonics Sound Designer Jonathan Merrill; Spectrasonics Vice President Ignacio Longo; SCL President Ashley Irwin

Virtual Reality Continued from Page 9

experience—our outside vision blocked by a head-mounted display—music and sound can help reconnect the people having the experiences. It can be that social glue, and serve as a bridge from the digital to the real world. And it doesn’t stop there. Often referred to as the “The Empathy Machine,” VR’s ability to convincingly put you in another person’s shoes makes it a powerful tool to create social change, such as in the work of Nonny de la Peña for Planned Parenthood, and a recent Amazon experience for

April 26 — Beyond The Polka: Writing for Accordian, The Village. L-R: SCL Associate Administrator Mark Smythe, Three-Time World Accordion Champion Cory Pesaturo, Copyist/ Arranger and Accordionist Liz Finch

Conservation International “Under the Canopy,” which my team worked on. We are seeing a veritable evolution in entertainment through VR, in performance and composed music possibilities, in training and education, and even in therapeutic healing forms. One of the VR projects we worked on for post-operative patients, currently in use in hospitals in Southern California, is providing patients with a measurable 25% reduction in pain. Another research project using VR to assist paraplegics to control mechanical prosthetics has instead resulted in them regaining movement in their own legs, which no other therapy has achieved to this degree. This all points

to the possibility that VR is helping re-plasticize and rewire our brains, as well as changing our sense of self and the environment around us. It is also ushering in a new era and toolset of mind-computer interaction. The Digital Audio Workstation of the near future may well place you inside your music creation, manipulating your ideas like a musical-MinorityReport. The possibilities are endless and exciting. So go ahead and strap that phone to your face, but don’t forget the g headphones! SCL Board Member Joel Douek is a composer, sound designer and co-founder of Virtual Reality company EccoVR. 21

James DiPasquale Continued from Page 17

was then, and I’m watching everything change dramatically. I feel I did as much as I could to improve our situation over the years, but I have to wonder how things would be if we’d been a union all this time. How much easier would it be for people starting out in this business if they had the protection of a union behind them? The SCL was originally intended to have the power, and to offer the protection of a labor union. That’s also what David Raksin and Leith Stevens were aiming for when they started the CLGA in 1955. When you look at Raksin’s career, I think 50 years from now, he’ll be considered one of the most important names in the business. But as important a composer as he was, I was surprised to find out that there were big patches in his career when he didn’t work. His royalties kept him going during those times and “Laura”, of course, was a big part of that income. He also wrote ballets, a few Broadway shows, and he orchestrated for Stravinsky a few times to keep busy. But he told me that his performance royalties kept him alive when jobs were sparse. Most people starting out in this business don’t realize how important performance royalties are. I certainly didn’t. They’re crucial to a steady lifestyle, especially if you have a family. In fact, our royalties are the lifeblood of our careers. Of all the issues facing us at this point, the most potentially serious is

the question of whether the PROs will continue doing business as they have been. Somehow, industry and government issues are now combining in a way that threatens the whole concept of performance royalties. If royalties disappear, it’ll be a page-one rewrite for everybody. Just consider the blow to your income if you don’t get a royalty check eight times a year. The internet, of course, is a big factor in all of this. We know what it’s done to the record business and how it’s created new ways for consumers to get their music. That’s now forcing the PROs to revise their methods of calculating royalty payments to us. What form those payment methods will finally take is anyone’s guess right now. But that’s where the SCL comes in. We can monitor all these new challenges to our business, keep the membership informed of them, network with other creative groups to fight the big threats, and offer advice to our membership on how to deal with it all. At this moment in time, the SCL is working harder than ever to keep abreast of the potential changes circling overhead. Ashley Irwin has been doing a great job of staying on top of the issues and explaining them to all of us. So right now, my advice to everyone, but especially to people just starting out, is to pay attention to SCL notices of any new issues, make sure you fully understand those issues and how they’ll affect you, and be prepared to fight them in any way that’s feasible. Your professional survival could g depend on it.

SESAC At Grammys On The Hill Awards L-R: SESAC’s Dennis Lord, composer Jonathan Wolff and SESAC chairman and CEO John Josephson at The Recording Academy’s 2017 Grammys on the Hill Awards on April 5 to honor four-time Grammy winner Keith Urban with the Recording Artists’ Coalition Award for his musical achievements and commitment to numerous music education programs. The Grammys on the Hill Awards were sponsored by music rights organization SESAC, and SESAC affiliate Jonathan Wolff performed during the celebration.

SCL Premier Partners SCL members can find out the member discount details and how to contact Partners on our website. ALFRED MUSIC AUDIO PERCEPTION BANDZOOGLE BIG FISH AUDIO BLACK LION AUDIO CINEMATIC STRINGS CINESAMPLES COMMERCIAL SCORING WORKSHOP FOCAL PRESS AND ROUTLEDGE MUSIC GUERRILLA FILM SCORING GRAPHICALLY ENHANCED MANUALS JAN-AL-CASES LUDWIN MUSIC PUBLICATIONS MEGATRAX RECORDING STUDIOS MELROSE MAC MUSIC BUSINESS REGISTRY MY MUSIC MASTERCLASS NOTEFLIGHT PAGU BATONS PC AUDIO LABS PUREMIX THE RICHARD BELLIS MASTER SERIES SAMPLELOGIC SONIC FUEL STUDIOS SONOKINETIC SOUNDIRON SPITFIRE AUDIO TUNECORE UCLA EXTENSION

SCL AMBASSADORS BURT BACHARACH ALAN & MARILYN BERGMAN CARTER BURWELL GEORGE S. CLINTON CHARLES FOX ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL DAVE GRUSIN ARTHUR HAMILTON JAMES NEWTON HOWARD MARK ISHAM ROBERT LOPEZ & KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ JOHNNY MANDEL RANDY NEWMAN THOMAS NEWMAN MIKE POST LALO SCHIFRIN RICHARD SHERMAN DAVID SHIRE

ALAN SILVESTRI MARK SNOW MIKE STOLLER DIANE WARREN PATRICK WILLIAMS PAUL WILLIAMS MAURY YESTON

In Memoriam: VAN ALEXANDER RAY CHARLES HAL DAVID RAY EVANS EARLE HAGEN JACK HAYES JERRY LIEBER VIC MIZZY ROBERT SHERMAN

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD BILL CONTI QUINCY JONES

GINNY MANCINI

HONORARY LIFETIME MEMBERS JAY L. COOPER, ESQ. JIM DiPASQUALE

CLINT EASTWOOD

DENNIS SPIEGEL JOHN WILLIAMS

M U S I C A L S H A R E S

BY CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Film Music: Surprise Me!

urprises come in many packages. Some are pleasant. Some not. But, life is filled with the unexpected. And since our days are filled with surprises, so too are the arts that reflect our days. This includes music. Composers deal in surprise. We might even say that writing music often depends on the unexpected. An “interesting” song or piece of music keeps our interest, engages our curiosity. This involves a sense of unpredictability. If a piece of music entirely lacks the unexpected, then we might perceive it as dull, prosaic, even boring. Of, course there are times when dullness might be just the thing, and musical surprises would be unwanted and unwelcome. No one wants to hear a sudden sforzando in a lullaby, or a random cymbal crash during a peaceful liturgical chant. The most effective surprises in music needn’t be jarring lightning bolts, but rather the more subtle touches that provide a sense of wonder to a melody, freshness to a harmonic progression, or novelty to a texture. Musical surprises change with the times and often have a shelf life. Musically shocking moments that might have raised eyebrows in one era can seem humdrum and commonplace in later years. Certainly, the big accent in Hayden’s famous Surprise Symphony is anything but surprising in our current age. Eighteenth century listeners who were sensitive to novelties from Hayden and Mozart must have been radically unnerved when Beethoven threw them some unexpected moments, like the appearance of a trombone or piccolo in the finale of the 5th Symphony or the sudden intrusion of a 2/4 time signature in a 3/4 movement of his Eroica Symphony. These “shocks” go by unnoted today. Have we simply become inured to musical surprises? Has an aural numbness set in? Indeed, there seems to be very little ammunition left in the shock-andawe arsenal of present day composers. Back in 1913, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ballet famously left the Parisian audience stunned (to say the least). Now it’s considered a comfortable concert hall classic. Even in pop music, it’s hard to imagine that folk legend Bob Dylan had rattled the musical world in 1965 by “going electric” and abandoning his signature acoustic sound. Or that jazz icon Miles Davis had similarly alarmed his listeners back in 1970 by embracing a revolutionary “pop-fusion” sound with

Bitches Brew. Novelty can wear off with time and neither of these musical scandals is even noticeable today. As Cole Porter foresaw, “…now heaven knows, anything goes.” But, as musical surprises have become more difficult to achieve, the need for novelty and aesthetic astonishment has not left us. How do composers in the 21st century confront the dilemma of creating surprise in this jaded musical environment? To begin with, let’s take a closer look at what constitutes a surprising moment musically. We have noted that expectation plays a major role here. The act of listening to music is a complex thing, but we do know that it can involve “anticipation.” A listener can be drawn to anticipate where the music is going, what note will come next, what turn of mood or direction will take place. Surprise has to do with how the composer “satisfies” this anticipation. To a certain extent, anticipation is already a natural part of life… we are programed to look ahead, for curiosity if not for survival; we imagine what lies in wait, envisioning where we are likely to end up. Given our natural inclination to wonder what’s “around the corner,” composers need only to learn how to engage and exploit the power of this human tendency. In film music, surprise can play a role on many levels, and not just the shocking stingers that zap us in horror films. Let’s consider a couple of interesting manifestations of surprise in film scoring from this past year. Both of these scores were Oscar nominees for Best Original Score in 2017, and each exemplifies a different sort of surprise in film music. The first film, Jackie (2016), explores the difficult pivotal moment in Jackie Kennedy’s life following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. We could say that the entire score itself was surprising. The music was daring and controversial, not at all what audiences of Hollywood films are accustomed to. The imaginative Chilean director, Pablo Larraín, brought in a young, avant-garde British performer/composer, Mica Levi, to provide a highly unconventional, contemporary chamber score that concentrated on the deeper psychological states of the main character rather than on more external elements, (such as the political drama or perhaps the pop music of the 60s). The effect was a highly unusual, introspective musical landscape that caught many viewers

Many times the cause of amazement is completely mysterious, and can neither be fabricated nor accounted for.

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by surprise simply by the way it sounded and how boldly the director utilized it. Another current score demonstrates a different facet of surprise in film scoring. Unlike Jackie, the overall style of the score for Moonlight is in no way radical or shocking. In fact, the musical vocabulary of this score is traditional, minimal and sensitively understated. The composer, Nicholas Britell, presents us with a subtle sort of surprise that occurs quietly within the score. The main character’s theme begins with a tonic major chord that eventually moves to a subdominant chord. This is “expected” and hardly surprising at all. In fact, the I–IV chord change may be one of the most common, “anticipated” chord moves in our musical language, the blues is founded on this progression. In Moonlight, however, the subdominant chord turns out to be a minor chord. We would normally expect a major chord here because we start in the major mode. We might also expect this because the movie is about a black man in an urban setting, an environment

that might suggest the musical language of the blues, or of the major IV–I plagal cadence in gospel music. The unexpected minor IV chord is both sad and somehow errant, maybe a bit like the main character himself, who is marginalized by the larger society. Significantly, it is the lowered-sixth degree of the scale that provides the subdominant chord with its essential minor note—a note (like the character) that doesn’t quite “belong” where it is in the major diatonic scheme of things. So, these sorts of musical minisurprises in film scoring can go a long way toward defining the dramatic tone of an entire story. As we see, surprise plays with our expectations and can either encompass a whole score (as with Jackie), or be generated by a single note (as with Moonlight), but creative use of the unexpected remains an enduring factor in making film music feel fresh, relevant and engaging. It turns out that surprise as a creative tool can often arrive unbidden and unplanned, perhaps even surprising the composer. Many times the cause of amazement is completely mysterious, and can neither be fabricated nor ac-

counted for. Sometimes, such moments are just magical and unexplainable. The Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, captured this truth beautifully in her novel, MaddAddam. “Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it’s coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.” Miraculously, an object as familiar as the moon can still take us by surprise and fill us with awe. Fortunately, some things are just plain g astonishing. Period. © Charles Bernstein 2017 www.charlesbernstein.com

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