Music and mysteries Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Composer update….I’m still trying to get the right sound (more tea please). Based on my discussions with Adam, the music needs to be playful, witty, intriguing but also warm and inviting. Tricky… It is great that he has provided these key words though, because they are very helpful but also give me some freedom. If you ever want to hear a reassuring voice on the phone, call up Adam at Binary Fable and he will provide you with some excellent words that will help you on your quest for creative excellence.

There are various ways that composers and filmmakers can work together. Sometimes filmmakers give me existing pieces of music that they think might work, and they want me to write something similar. This is usually because for copyright reasons the music they give me cannot be used, but also it’s good to have original music written for a project because it makes it special. This can be a difficult situation because directors can get attached to the music they are using as a temp track (temporary music); then as a composer you have to work hard to make your music even better. It can also be useful, however, because it’s very hard to describe music in words. By playing me a piece of music that they like, the director can make the point quickly. 

On The Lost Book, Adam and the team have chosen to talk to me about what they want rather than give me bits of existing music, and I quite like the fresh start that this can create. I don’t have another piece of music battling for attention – it’s quite refreshing. 

It’s a weird process, writing music for a narrative film – like so many creative activities it is difficult to ignore the hundreds (thousands?) of things rattling around inside one’s head. This is a mystery story, and an animation, and my memory seems to be full of old TV programmes and movies which might be similar in some way (at random – Poirot – my favourite mystery programme when I was a kid – Rugrats (!), Morse, Family Guy, Toy Story…..and also things that I have worked on). As a musician, the music for all these films usually comes to mind as well, and it would be dishonest to say that I don’t mentally scan all of these pieces for things that worked or didn’t work, even if they are almost completely different from this project. It’s probably the same for the animators, writers and editors: it’s a bit of a balancing act between wanting to be original but also knowing that being original is virtually impossible and certainly wouldn’t be right for the project…so you have to draw on a kind of shared cultural library of stuff in a big memory warehouse in your head……hmmmmm. 

Should I make more tea?