Friday, July 2nd, 2010
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Horrorthon Posts
If you kids are done syllable-counting, I want to mention that I uploaded clips of some of the aforementioned great bass-coming-in moments I posted about early this morning. Click here to watch clips from Silent Hill, The Queen and Miracle Mile. Boost your speakers and get ready for goosebumps!
http://www.jordanorlando.com/ns/bass
50PageMcgee UPDATE: sorry to keep bumping these two posts all over the place. i’m moving them back to the top only because i took a big whack at trying to reply to Jordan’s posts in as great a level of detail as possible without breaking my own brain. if you have no interest in this topic whatsoever, disregard. but if you’re curious about the inner workings of music, i tried to present some nerdy stuff about it, and i’ve tried to do so in a way that’s not too hard to digest. there’s *a lot* here (and some of it is nestled amidst Jordan and HandsomeStan beating the crap out of each other over 2010), so i won’t be offended if it gets skipped, or if people don’t comment.
but if you are interested, please, read on.
PS – an additional word of caution, now that i’ve reread what i wrote: my idea of “digestible” might differ from yours to some degree.
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
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Horrorthon Posts
I mention 50 because, until Octopunk’s Tron Legacy post a week ago, I had no idea that anyone on Horrorthon geeked out on movie music even more than me (since I’ve been known to get into discussing flattened fifths myself). (I’ve made a few special modifications myself. But, we’re a little rushed…) Anyway, off the top of my head and in no particular order (with absolutely no assurance that anybody knows or cares what I’m talking about), 5 Great Cinematic Moments of the Bass Coming In:
1) Silent Hill (2006) During her frenzied first hour in “ash world,” Rose follows the elusive, distant running girl to a cement staircase that leads down into a basement, and starts down the stairs. For the first time in the movie, the sky starts to darken…and, far in the distance, the air raid siren (that presages each transition to “the darkness”) begins to blow. It’s a slow, mournful two-note glissando—a major fifth, tonic to dominant—that repeats twice, as the sky darkens to black and rose ignites her (badass) Zippo lighter. And, on the third repetition, the cellos come in, deep and low, a minor triad on the dominant, and you get this uneasy chill.
2) The Queen (2008) Almost exactly the same move. Nearly at the end of the movie, Helen Mirren is standing outside her Scottish castle, facing the crowd for the first time in the movie, and she steps forward to speak to a young girl, who’s holding a bouquet of flowers. The soundtrack has hushed down and the score has reduced to a two-note figure on the violins (a monophonic inverted third). (Somebody can correct me if I’m not referring to these intervals correctly.) On the third repeat (as the touching exchange between Queen and little girl concludes and the girl hands over her flowers), the cellos come in, with a loud major triad. Incredibly moving and fulfilling.
3) Twin Peaks (1990) Somewhere towards the beginning of Season 2, James Hurley busts out his acoustic/electric guitar, turns the reverb to eleven (this being an Angelo Badalamenti score) and sings a little song called “Just You,” accompanied by Donna Hayward and Maddie Ferguson on vocal backup. They sing the first verse of the song, just like that (call-and-response vocals, guitar arpeggio) and then, as they turn into the second verse, out of nowhere, an electric bass guitar comes in, introducing a pleasant walking bass line. Not nearly as dramatic as the above two examples but very nice and very Twin Peaks.
4) Miracle Mile (1988) This one’s extremely simple, but wow, is it effective. The movie’s been going for about eighteen minutes, and, the entire time, Tangerine Dream has been doing their (unobtrusive, atmospheric, rhythmic) thing, just like they do in the opening scenes of Risky Business. Then it’s nighttime and Anthony Edwards is at the garishly-lit diner where he just missed Mare Winningham, and all the music goes away (replaced by clanking dishes, etc.). He tries Winningham on the pay phone outside the diner, leaves a message, hangs up; the phone rings immediately, and he grabs it, thinking it’s her…but it’s not. I won’t tell you what the phone call is, but, slowly, a very low, very loud single bass note fades in. (I think it’s a single note; it’s been a while.) Given that this is the 1980s, it’s pretty obviously a synthesizer note, but it’s got a rich, fat sound like a cello section; it’s filled with power and dread, and you understand that the nightmare is beginning.
5) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Not an isolated note or chord like the preceding examples, but I think I can include it just because György Ligeti is so weird. The piece in question is called “Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra”—it repeats four times in the movie (including the overture, where it’s excerpted) (Why don’t movies have overtures any more, damn it? Now all we get is fucking Coke ads), each instance corresponding to another appearance of the monolith. It’s a strange, atonal (I think…help me out, 50) piece of modern music, with lots of eerie choral effects and extremely sparse orchestration. And, at a minute and 16 seconds, as the apes start touching the monolith, the cellos come in. Like I said, a slightly less obvious example, but I have to include it because it’s the earliest such example I can remember. I still vividly recall being in the theater as a kid and (having played the phonograph record) anticipating that moment, without really even understanding that it involved the bass clef or anything like that, but feeling the excitement of, well, the (mythical) instant of human evolution that Kubrick conveys in that scene.
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
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Horrorthon Posts
Pretty much every time I bring up Star Trek The Next Generation I’m saying something bad about it (unless you catch me on those rare occasions when I’m referring to the super-binge-marathon where I watched all seven seasons, back in 2006 or thereabouts, and came to really appreciate and admire the whole project). Just a couple weeks ago (in a post that didn’t get that much attention) I wrote that TNG “was a big bucket of liquid nerd cheese that got poured over Star Trek, rendering it unpalatable to nearly everyone on earth except super-geek-nerds.”
But then I finished the sentence by observing that “J. J. Abrams somehow sucked all that nerd-cheese out of Trek and returned it to its true form.” I think I’d have to change “true form” to “preferred form” or “optimal form,” which, of course, involves some serious compromises, but the compromises are sensible. Star Trek is many things (it’s much more malleable and chameleonlike than Tolkien or Star Wars; you’d have to look at the DC-comics universe to find a comparable degree of elasticity and adaptability to the mores of the time), and, now that the J. J. Abrams movie has triumphed, I’m finding that I can go back and watch TNG and really enjoy it, because the pressure is off; I know Star Trek is in good hands and what I consider to be its essential ideas (including the crucial requirement of mass appeal) are on the front burner, so I can now be a Trek connoisseur and really enjoy TNG, which is way at the other end of the Trek spectrum.
In other words, back when TNG (and its spin-offs and movies) were all Trek was, I was just so irritated at being forced in that specific direction (and so worried that the whole franchise was going to fade into oblivion) that I resented what they were doing and constantly pined (no pun intended) for a return to what I considered to be the “essence” of the show. But now, everything I wished for has come true beyond my wildest dreams (at least as far as Star Trek is concerned) and I can finally groove on the total, complete, intellectual, hard-sci-fi immersion in the “deep end of the pool” that is The Next Generation. It’s really great stuff (as I have acknowledged before) and, now that it doesn’t have to carry the full burden of the Trek legend into the future, I can totally enjoy it.
If you kids are done syllable-counting, I want to mention that I uploaded clips of some of the aforementioned great bass-coming-in moments I posted about early this morning. Click here to watch clips from Silent Hill, The Queen and Miracle Mile. Boost your speakers and get ready for goosebumps!
