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

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.

I wish this resource filled with over 28,000 public domain scores had existed back in my piano playing days, but I still find it helpful for a number of reasons.

If you are a student of composition, I recommend you go to the IMSLP and download some of the full orchestral scores hosted on the site, and study them while listening to an mp3 of the actual piece. This has been helpful to me in the past because the sheet music shows you exactly which orchestral actions create which results. “Ah… so that’s how Tchaikovsky got the woodwinds to sound that way….”