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The quote I’m about to post makes my eyes roll. But then again I recall this critic (Michael Phillips) looking annoyed when Roeper mentioned Elfman’s score in SOP on an episode of Ebert & Roeper.
Here’s what Philips thought of Elfman’s score for The Unknown Known…
“Yet as with an earlier Morris doc, the Abu Ghraib prison account “Standard Operating Procedure,” there are flourishes we could do without. Danny Elfman’s music, heavy on the menacing “Nightmare Before Christmas”-y choral arrangements and Philip Glass-influenced whirligig dread, feels heavy-handed.”
Smh!
Yeah I’ve been noticing Elfman’s been using additional composers for quite a few films lately. Even the little bit of score used for American Hustle had additional music. This probably has a lot to do with the short deadlines composers are given these days.
And even though deadlines play a major part but I think Zimmer chooses to work with additional composers.
Yeah I’m planning on ordering it next month, but I’m worried with the amount of copies being 1500 that it’ll sell out before then.
Wow!
But like someone mentioned above Ross likes to micromanage the music/score to his films. So this shouldn’t really surprise me, but to hear that Elfman was “fired”. Just…wow. Going by Burnett’s description of the score he and Elfman were trying to create sounded promising and a game changer for Elfman. I would love to have heard that score. It seems like it was an actual collaborative process between Elfman and T Bone. I still have yet to see the first film so I have no idea of what Newton Howard’s score is like, but I doubt if it’s as inspiring as what Elfman and Burnett were trying to compose.
Wow it seems like the concert was “MINDBLOWING” going off of boingomusic’s review . I only wish I was able to go to one, but can’t unfortunately. For those who are going please shake Elfman’s hand for me and for those who are unable to come. I really hope this gets a CD release I would love to hear the new arrangments Elfman made.
Oh wow! Now I’m definitely curious about this score. I hope Morris is right about it’s oscar chances.
I know. And though I’m not interested in a song album release. There hasn’t been any announcements regarding that either. I wonder what’s the up? Hopefully this won’t be another case of a digital only release.
Wow. Glad to finally hear Raimi’s side to this finally. I’m also glad that they both moved on and put aside their differences to work together again.
It’s nice to see Elfman happy and motivated to work with Raimi again. It gets me even more excited to hear this score. I always believed those two made a great collaboration/duo.
No surprise!!! Though I’ve only heard 3 of the 6 2012 scores by Elfman an oscar nod or win wouldn’t change how much I enjoyed ’em. Just like he’s already proven that an oscar win won’t change how much I enjoy his music in general. He’s still an excellent composer without one.
Monsterhead Wrote:
> Anyone else get the Score Album yet? It’s my third
> time through now and it’s quite a lovely
> soundtrack from Elfman – something new and
> different. I cannot wait to see the movie.
>
> Goof Track is a nice treat…Which ticks me off even more that this is an mp3 only.
bookbinder3 Wrote:
> Nice. Wasn’t really holding out for that. Is it
> mp3 only? I do hate not having a physical album.
> Oh well, that seems to be how things are going.Looks like it’s an mp3 only. The score album is barely over 20 minutes long. Probably why the label decided to release it as an mp3 only. Why didn’t they just put this on the song album ? Excluding the two Elfman tracks the song album is a little over 41 minutes long. Add the score album It would’ve been a little over 61 minutes long. Plenty of disc space. Both mainsteam and score fans (mainly us Elfman fans) would be happy.
I know one thing there isn’t any hope of me buying this for two Elfman tracks. Though I am interested in what Elfman came up with for this.
From an FSM interview with Steve Bartek back in December of 1995.
Lukas Kendall: How do you work with Danny?
Steve Bartek: When Danny works with a director, he sits down and he mocks up all his themes on his computer. His synthesizers and samplers play back the major themes for the director, and they spend weeks sorting through that stuff. When it comes down to starting my involvement, he takes those sequences, of which some are fully fleshed-out orchestrations on the computer and some are merely sketches, and sits down scene by scene and writes it onto paper. He actually takes a pencil writes notes and translates what’s in the computer down to notation and in doing that he finishes writing most of the stuff, by adding things here and there that aren’t in the computer, making sure he hits things on screen, adding dynamics and color. Then he hands them to me. What I get is usually a fairly fleshed-out sketch not all the time, but most of the time. Sometimes it’s too complete; there were some times on Batman he got so many things going that they didn’t work together, and I had to sort through them to make sure that what we had would actually work. But he actually does physically write stuff down on paper! [laughs]
LK: When he mocks it up on computer, is that just from playing it in? He didn’t mention that part of the process.
SB: He didn’t? Oh. Well, yeah. On the first movie, Pee-Wee, he couldn’t. He had one little synthesizer and a keyboard and there wasn’t a lot of sequencers that could handle that kind of stuff. Getting it to lock to picture was even difficult at that time, there was only one little box that you could get a click to lock to the video. But by the second or third film, technology picked up, and Danny’s grasp of it all picked up, too. The beginning of Pee-Wee, he was playing to screen on the piano. By the end of Pee-Wee, he was locking things to click and handing them to me.
LK: But was he notating?
SB: Yeah.
LK: How on Pee-Wee did you set up a system whereby he would write it down, since he hadn’t done that at that time?
SB: It all metamorphosed through the film. Bob Badami, the best music editor in town, led us through all the steps and Danny realized what he had to do to get his point across. He quickly realized that handing me a tape was not going to get him what he wants. The more he started writing things down on paper, the more he could communicate. Before that time, he had a perfectly working knowledge of muiic notation because when I joined the band, he had written a piano concerto, fully handwritten for piano and a small ensemble. He considers notation a problem for him, because the fine points of dynamic markings, where they go exactly – he’s not good at bass clef, but he does everything in treble clef with an octave marking so you know exactly where he wants it to sound. If he’s writing a low line he marks it how many octaves down and is very clear about it. His notation is not strictly normal, but for anybody who knows anything about notation you can look at it and figure out what he’s saying. It’s not personal, he didn’t make it up. It’s all real notation, but he uses it in a slightly different way, because of his own limitations. At the beginmng of Pee-Wee it wasn’t like he didn’t know anything about notation, he perfectly well knew things about notation, he was just scared and reluctant, like we all were, it was the first one. By the end he was writing it on paper and it was all locking to click. In between there, there was some oddball stuff, but that was his first film.
LK: What do you mean, “oddball”?
SB: Well, there vas one scene that was him on tape just playing along, and Bob Badarni and I had to figure out how to work the bar beats and hits and all that stuff. But that was the only time he’s ever done that, Iike the first film – from that point on he realized the importance to get exactly what he wants, and to notate it and communicate to me how to get it.
LK: Now, had you done large-scale orchestration yourself?
SB: Before Pee-Wee? No. [laughs]
LK: So you were coming into this blind as well.
SB:: Oh yeah, he dragged me along with him. I’d gone to college, went to UCLA. studied composition and orchestration and then played in a rock band for ten years. I used any orchestration skills only in our largest ensemble, which was eight pieces. And suddenly we had this Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure with the full orchestra, and it was a challenge. We had help from the conductor, Lennie Niehaus, in the sense that it went from Danny to me to him. Danny gave me sketches, I orchestrated them the way I thought they would be, and then Lennie took them; basically I arranged them and then Lennie, although his agent doesn’t want him to have the credit officially, orchestrated the stuff. It was kind of a funny set-up but he took my stuff and corrected it, made it right, whatever mistakes I was making.
LK: Right, as far as balancing instruments, and sub-dividing sections…?
SB: Yeah, and writing out a full score which I didn’t have a clue exactly how to do. So from that project, watching what Lennie did to what I gave him, set me up for the rest of my career. [laughs] Anything I know from the mechanics of orchestration I owe to Lennie, watching how he set up the page, how to make sure the conductor can read it and all that kind of stuff.
LK: What’s your working process now with Danny?
SB: I go up to his house and we meet, he plays it for me and we talk about it. I make notes on whatever score he gives me, if that happens. Lately he’s been sending his sequences to a computer guy who then prints them out and then we go over the print-out, and he makes notes on the print-out himself.
LK: So you work off the print-out, or a hand-written sketch?
SB: Work off a print-out that he has made notations on top of. The step I told you where he sits and writes it down? He saves himself time by having all the stuff in the computer written down, almost 50% of his writing is right there. As he puts his notes on paper he adds things, changes things on the computet print-out. But that’s just in the last two or three projects. The last two projects he did practically half the score as synth pre-lay anyway, To Die For and Dead Presidents. It was bssically just orchestra sweetening once in a while. We had strings and some French horns on Dead Presidents, and we had a small orchestra on To Die For, but they were basically sweetening synth tracks that had all this percussion. We also went in and put rhythm section on top of some of it. Every project has been a little different. Dolores Claiborne was all strings, so it was much more fun for me because there were all these string lines that l had to sort out and make happen in the orchestra.
LK: Danny said “There’s never been a note in one of my scores that I didn’t write.”
SB: Yeah.
LK: Not even a note?
SB: No. An orchestrator’s job is to take someone’s stuff and make it be what the composer wants it to be. In doing that, you do sometimes “add notes,” but you don’t change melodies, you don’t change harmonic structures, you don’t change the composition. I don’t know what you’re needling at by saying that…
LK: Well, I mean of course you’re not writing the melodies, but I’m just trying-
SB: Right. Well, the problem is that people come to me and give me credit for writing Danny’s music. They hint that well, “We know that you really do that stuff” – that’s why he’s sensitive, that’s why [agent] Richard Kraft is sensitive. Danny’s gotten lots of flak over it. They can’t believe that someone who’s a rock and roll singer in an offbeat Los Angeles band can actually write the music that he writes.
LK: I was just wondering to what extent Danny’s music requires adjustment, without changing the concept, but making it playable…
SB: No. Concepts are never changed. Concepts are never changed except by him. He’s in full control of his creative output. I never assume to go and change things. We’ve had extra orchestrators; at the end of a project when things have to be done, I farm out some of the orchestration, and at certain points we’ve had some orchestrators who have totally changed his stuff, and we’ve had to re-do it. We haven’t worked with those orchestrators again, because that’s kind of what orchestrators see themselves as, frustrated composers most of the time, and like putting their own two cents in somebody else’s music. And it just doesn’t work with Danny. When he writes down a certain voicing, he wants that voicing. He doesn’t want added notes, he doesn’t want this or that, he’s fairly specific about what he writes and what he wants to get out of it.
LK: I understand I ‘m just trying to play Devil’s advocate a little bit…
SB: Yeah, I know – Danny’s kind of given up on it. He was on the Academy committee for film music and they all just treated him like he was a hummer. Because he’s a vocalist in a band, they thought, oh he just sings his parts and somebody else does all the work. That really is not the case. Danny does so much work. He’s a workaholic. He spends so many hours in front of his computer, in front of the screen, working on every film, big or small, and he works hard at making sure that each one is something fairly new, that he approaches it a different way. Which is why he didn’t want to do Batman 3. He just had no interest in doing that kind of thing again.
LK: He said the reason he didn’t do it was, for one, they didn’t ask.
SB: Well, besides that. At the end of Batman 2 he said, “I don’t want to do this kind of thing again. Big adventure films – suck.” Certain scenes he was told, “These are your scenes, go with the music,” and he spent a lot of time on details to make the music happen. And it went into the movie and was buried. He could have gotten the same effect by spending half the time. The music didn’t have to be so detailed, from the way they dubbed it. Overly detailed music played soft sounds really small. He was frustrated at the end of Batman 2, so whether they asked him or not for Batman 3, he had told me that this was really the last one he was going to do. And since then he’s steered away from them.
That ought to clear things up for you on Elfman’s and Bartek’s relationship on film scores. You can read the rest of the interview here:http://www.boingo.org/articles/FSMBartek.html
