Composition: Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor by J.S. Bach
Orchestral Arrangement: Leopold Stokowski

It’s a legitimate question–’why can’t we’? …Or maybe the question is ‘why don’t we’? We’ve got unparalleled access to vast quantities of music and possess instrumental tools that Bach and his contemporaries would have traded their wigs for (wigs were a big deal back then).

Hearing this music just makes me wonder what sorts of musical achievements Bach would have accomplished (on top of all his other unparalleled musical achievements) if the modern symphonic orchestra (that Stokowski helped develop) had existed during his day. Then I wonder a step further: if Bach had access to the musical tools of today, not to mention the virtually unlimited access to sheet music and recordings of basically every piece of music written in the last 400 years that we have access to (including the 260 years of music written after Bach’s death he never was going to hear), what more might he have accomplished with that knowledge?? Yeah, it’s kind of a humbling thought.

Let’s not waste these precious advantages–nay, privileges–that we’ve inherited, and let’s not be lazy. Maybe we can apply a Bach-ian level of industry to our craft and, standing on the shoulders of such great men, progress beyond even their accomplishments, for as J.S. himself said:

“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed . . . equally well.”

Hollywood Strings Sketches by BenBotkin

EastWest’s Hollywood Strings is, in my opinion, the best string library out there for someone serious about string writing. It is more cumbersome and resource heavy than the other best-string-lib-contenders out there (largely because it is so expansive and in-depth), but if you are willing to work around these realities, it does yield the best sound of anything out there right now.

The audio file above is a medley of some string sketches I wrote up with HS in a very short amount of time–about 15-45 minutes each.

Pastorale Strings by BenBotkin

A quick sketch I did with East West’s excellent library Hollywood Strings. All strings are playing Con Sordino (with mutes) in this clip. Photo: Audri Botkin.

Ace Wonder Sketches by BenBotkin

Every musical project requires a certain amount of preliminary experimentation and ground work before you can begin on the final thing. For Ace Wonder, I spent a long time working up an assortment of little musical ideas and sketches based on the adjectives and vision the director (John Moore) articulated for me. (At this point in the process, I had also read the script and was getting little clips of the film to wet my musical appetite, but did not have an edit of the film.)

I immediately started versing myself in the pieces of music that possessed the flavor and feeling that John particularly liked– I also had a number of ideas of what existing pieces of music would capture the essence of his verbal descriptions. Wading through a lot of existing music first can really help the composer understand the musical tastes of the director. This is crucial. John’s understanding of what “Crazy- madcap-science-steampunk- action-adventure-detective-noir-mystery-music ” sounds like may differ greatly from my own, or may not be fully formed yet.

The pool of inspirational material we dove through was pretty wide and ran quite deep. John Williams, John Powell, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Michael Kamen and more– all these composers and their scores were frequently referenced in our dialogue as we tried to mold and define that Ace Wonder “sound.” If someone asked me what my main source of inspiration for this project was, I would have to hand them half of my music library.

At least that’s what it felt like.

I wrote of dozens of these short, rough musical sketches, experimenting with everything from instrumentation to rhythm, melody, and meter. It took anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours to sketch one of these up, so every couple days I would send John a new batch of samples for him to peruse and pass judgment on–every piece of feedback I received told me a little bit more about the way John’s mind ticks in regard to music.

After a while of this, we ended up having a pretty good sense of the feel and flavor for the music and had worked through melodic ideas and the use of themes throughout the film. I was ready to begin scoring to picture, which at that point was nearing the “locked edit” stage.

In the field of film scoring, as in all fields, raw talent or ability is entirely worthless if it is unaccompanied by professional integrity.

Too often I see talented and skilled students of composition who sabotage their own efforts and success because when the first whiff of difficulty comes, they wimp out. They whine. They lie, slander, throw tantrums and run from responsibility, pulling the rug out from under someone else on their cowardly dash out the door and out of the trust of the professional community. Some display their poor character more obviously than others, but the problem is widespread.

For a director, the ability to work well with and trust your composer is so key that many of the more successful composers I know are not the ones who write the best music or ooze the most raw talent… they’re the ones who are quick to hear, slow to speak, willing to summit to authority, redo a tough cue, who are prepared to do what it takes to give a client happiness, even if it comes at the expense of their own. Inside and outside the film industry I have friends who have been offered high-paying jobs at positions totally outside their fields of expertise based solely on the reputation they had as confidential men of character. In this day and age, integrity is in lesser supply than skill, which is saying something.

For a culture that has rejected Christ’s word as the foundation (i.e. source of definition) for all morality and character, this isn’t really much of a surprise–the absence of God must necessitate the absence of anything godly, which the attributes of professionalism most certainly are. The pathetic result is a generation of men unable to reliably reason, commit, honor a contract, persevere, guard a trust, serve others, be faithful with the little things, rejoice in trial, or love.

To clarify in advance for those who may think I’m belittling talent or skill, I’m assuming that honing and sharpening your chops as a composer is already a given. I mean to address the other half of the coin: the oft-neglected and/or mis-defined role of true professionalism, which is not just a factor for those desiring business success (though it certainly is), but is a factor necessary for the Lord to be pleased with us and our work. I don’t really make much of a distinction between the word “professional” and “righteousness”, which is basically just doing what is right in regards to God, man and duty all the time. Why is there a difference perceived between the two? Why should there be a difference?

It’s time to re-evaluate our assumptions of what determines professional conduct. This has been on my mind a lot over the last few months as I’ve noticed a number of genuinely unprofessional attitudes and habits in myself that I’m working to eliminate. I will be starting a series of posts on this topic, varying from general concepts to ones specifically applicable to the craft and business of film scoring.

What things do my readers see as key points to address?