A couple months ago I received a phone call out of the blue offering me a position to help out on the musical score for The Vision Forum and Erwin brothers studio’s latest film, The Mysterious Islands. The film is about a group of extraordinary men who travel to the Galapagos Islands to refute the evolutionist theories of Charles Darwin 150 years after his historic visit to the islands.

Needless to say, I was already looking forward to the film’s release with much anticipation, so being asked to be part of the music team was a real honor. I was joining the film’s primary composer, Paul Mills, a professional based out of Franklin TN, and Audri Vernier, a San Antonio-based cellist (and interviewee in Homeschool Dropouts, I might add) who recorded multiple Bach cello solos for the film.

Above is a short scene from the film where the adventurers go beneath the surface of the water for the first time. Underwater music has a rich and glorious heritage; From Saint Saens to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to John Williams, there is a lot of great music here to draw inspiration from (and be judged by), so writing in the style can be an exhilarating and daunting experience. Nevertheless, I had a blast. You can hear the music I composed for the scene and judge for yourselves how well it works.

Over the next couple weeks I will be posting an assortment of different clips and teasers of the score, so be sure to check back regularly. Also, be sure to check out Paul Mills’s myspace page to hear some of his music!

Media used with permission from Vision Forum 2009

The Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences just recently completed the documentary Homeschool Dropouts: Why the second generation is headed for a spiritual wasteland, for which I was privileged to write the music. You can view the trailer above.

Here are some screenshots I took of Cubase 4 in mid-project. The screenshots couldn’t show everything in my project windows, but it will give you an idea of what the software looks like. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

You can also hear a short medley of some assorted musical cues that found their way into the film.

One thing I have noticed is that film and documentary music (though subject to the same fundamental principles of design), can be very different in the ways that they’re applied to their respective categories of visual media.

Homeschool Dropouts is a documentary, so most of the music I wrote for it plays under constant dialogue and keeps a very subdued and submissive role– almost exaggeratedly so, as most of the music is little more than ambient or atmospheric. Though I developed a couple different melodic motifs and musical textures that I could weave throughout the film, there was never really a place for a big, developed symphonic approach to melody or movement–most of the music would be pretty uninteresting or boring if you heard it on its own.

In the style and texture department, we were looking for a sound that could effectively represent the “serious” and almost “crisis” flavor of the film. The documentary was shot in dry, barren locations in Texas and New Mexico, so the music had to match that empty, wasteland feel. In addition to this, I was also looking to find a musical sound that would be quick to write, as I only had about 5 days to write most of the 30 minutes of music that appeared in the final version of the film.

Prominent Musical Elements in Homeschool Dropouts:

Low Drones and ambient rumbles
Ethnic flute phrases
Subdued electric guitar
Thunderclaps/Explosions*
Percussive Piano
Muted string sustains

*My secret weapon on this score was the site www.freesound.org, a user-based audio community which offers a very wide of sound effects for free. The sounds on the site are uploaded by its users, so the quality of the files is kinda hit-and-miss, but it is a great resource nonetheless. I wanted a very distinct audio signature that I could use at points of emphasis throughout the film, so I used www.freesound.org to download an assortment of explosions, thunderclaps, metallic clangs, engine noise (even rattling chains), and other sounds that I thought would add that extra punch and grittiness the music was missing.

First Pacific Media is excited to offer The Return of The Daughters Original Soundtrack for half price for the next two weeks. Since I finished the music and produced the CD two years ago, I have received a lot of encouraging feedback on it.

“This soundtrack is unique, and very, very strong. It is actually significantly better than many of the professional soundtracks I have heard, and I’m being quite honest about that. Any student or lover of original composition needs to have your work in his library of sounds. Thank you for making it available on CD.” - John Moore

“That’s what I love about Pixar. It’s always about the story. That’s where every project begins, with the story — not the marketing.” — Michael Giacchino

I’m generally not that excited about filmscores that come out these days, but I know that every summer I can expect at least one that’s a refreshing break from the monotonous norm. This is because of Pixar. The studio that consistently produces the highest-caliber films today also parents many of the best scores because their emphasis on story over spectacle carries over into the production of the music.

Pete Docter chose Michael Giacchino to compose the score for Up, Pixar’s latest film, because Michael had not only cultivated a good working relationship with Pixar during his work on The Incredibles and Ratatouille, but also because he understands his role as a composer to be in subjection to the film’s story and not independent of it.

“It all starts really with just watching the movie and talking to the directors about the emotional arcs of the movie and the character development in the movie.

It [Up] is essentially a love story about Carl and his wife, so it was just about going there and finding out [what] that means. What I ended up doing was doing this very simple waltz that grows and twists and turns through the whole course of the film. As Carl goes on this adventure, everything just changes, [and] the music changes with him and his character as he develops and he grows.” – Michael Giacchino

Where most composers would have taken one look at Up’s beautiful and exotic scenery and hastily plunged into the composition of fanfares and exiting adventure music, Giacchino’s story-based approach to composition allowed him to step back and see what the film is really about. The visual setting for Up is incredibly lush and beautiful, but Giacchino didn’t let that dictate the direction of the music.

As Giacchino stated earlier, the film is really a love story between Carl and Ellie, so the two primary melodies in Up, Ellie’s Theme and Muntz’s Theme, were portrayed in the film as being representative of Carl’s foremost affections and the real life conflict he experienced between the two. Ellie’s theme depicts the simple joys of married and family life, contrasted with the reckless glorification of adventurism for its own sake that Muntz’s theme signifies. Watch how the two play off each other over the course of the film as Carl is emotionally buffeted, torn between childhood affections and the call of duty.

On a stylistic level, a much smaller instrumental sound was utilized than is common today. Whumpin’, thumpin’ percussion was replaced with small string ensembles and woodwinds. How often do you hear a muted trumpet, piano and solo violin in the same scene today? The uniqueness factor alone made the music striking and evocative.

“It’s a very small ensemble for the most part. Stand-up bass, guitar, violin, clarinet — those are the main pieces. We wanted that intimate kind of feel. There’s a tendency in animation to go huge, this idea that just because it’s an animated film it needs overbearing music to convey any emotion. And I’ve always hated that. If it’s a good story, you just need something simple to make it work.” – Michael Giacchino

The lightness and simplicity of the music really adds to the appeal of the film. The fact that you are not hearing an unrealistically large and exaggerated musical construct actually makes it easier to relate to Carl’s character and his struggles.

“Simple melodies are the best” is a statement you have probably heard time and time again. This is generally true, but what most composers don’t tell you is that they’re also the hardest to write. A good composer can write an appealing, unique and memorable melodic idea with the restriction 5-10 notes in a set key provides and come up with a powerful and emotional end product. A bad one has to find “originality” by rejecting every structural element of traditional composition that could potentially let two waveforms sound alike.

Giacchino’s ability to write a simple, catchy melody with appeal is yet another testament to musical proficiency that leads some to tout him as the next John Williams. Though I wouldn’t go quite that far (at least not yet), his focus on story does remind one of Williams more than any of his colleagues or contemporaries. And it’s this focus that’s looking to solidify the working relationship between Giacchino and Pixar as one the most memorable and successful ones in film history. Here’s a quote by another of Giacchino’s close work associates:

“Michael is not only an exceptional composer, he also has an amazing, acute sense of story. He is someone who I talk through story with, who I show early scenes to, who I will show a script at a very early stage to. He is as valuable as a producer as he is a musician and composer.” –J.J. Abrams

The score for Up is fantastic and the best I have heard in a good while. Though popularity is not necessarily the mark of excellence, this film is a favorite with virtually everyone who sees it, and has accomplished a rare feat in making big bucks at the domestic box office while getting high marks from the critics.

Though the film is excellent on its own, I can’t help but wonder how it would have fared without the score that I anticipate being the strongest of the year.

Three weeks ago I stated that the first person to recognize every element I intentionally included in my spy music re-mix would receive a free download of the Return of The Daughters Original Soundtrack. After a lot of astute observation and deduction in the comment section, every melody and theme in the mix was properly guessed …save for one. It only comes in for a moment, but I intentionally left the orchestration pretty bare so that the “secret” melody, played by flute at 0.59, would be more exposed and therefore easier to hear.

Hint: Chances of your recognizing it without having grown up in 1970s Soviet Russia are slim. I never would have heard this music if it hadn’t been passed to my brother by a Soviet Navy shipbuilder from Vladivostok. It’s from Semnadtsat Mgnovenij Vesny, or in English, The 17 Moments of Spring, a 1973 Russian miniseries about a Soviet spy operating in Nazi Germany under a false identity. The melody I “pulled” from it can be heard in this clip.

Knowing it was a little unfair to require listener familiarity with a melody this obscure, (hey, spying is about keeping secrets, right?) I decided to award the first person to correctly identify the four other melodies (Mission Impossible, James Bond, The Incredibles and Secret Agent Man) intentionally placed in the mix. His name is Warren. Jeremiah Warren.