1. Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Chapter 1 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

This chapter deals in detail with the sci-fi / fantasy genre and analyses the music for a number of films where music plays an integral role in articulating the story and the underlying context and narrative.

Films and music analysed include A Perfect Sense (Max Richter) Contagion (Cliff Martinez) K-Pax (Edward Shearmur) Limitless (Paul Leonard-Morgan) The Mothman Prophecies (Tomandandy) Shore) The 13 th Floor (Harald Klosser) Pleasantville (Randy Newman) Signs (James Newton Howard) The Adjustment Bureau (Thomas Newman) The Core (Christopher Young) The Village (James Newton Howard) Volcano (Alan Silvestri) The Event (Scott Starrett) Super 8 (Michael Giacchano)

A PERFECT SENSE Max Richter

A Perfect Sense is a story about two people who fall in love just as an epidemic begins to gradually rob the world’s population of their senses, one by one. The epidemic sweeps the globe, gradually rendering the public unable to function. First, people start crying for no reason. After drying up their tears, they notice they have lost their ability to smell; this is followed eventually by a loss of taste, hearing and finally, sight.

The epidemic itself is not given a major part in the movie. The film focuses instead on the two lovers and the rest of the people dealing with the situation. This in part explains the functionality of the music, which is meant to underpin the emotional context of the movie, rather than the science fiction. The main protagonists are a scientist (Susan) and a chef (Michael). Susan is part of a scientific team trying to understand the epidemic.

The movie is helped by Susan’s regular voice-overs which provide a running narrative and context behind the on-screen chaos. Described as a ‘post-apocalyptic reality check’, the movie provides moral and ethical questions, the most poignant of which appears to be, do we make the most of our existence? Do we appreciate life? Stephen Holden of the New York Times defined the film as ‘a solemn sci-fi parable set in present-day Glasgow, whose deepening sense of foreboding is sustained by the enigmatic, pseudo-biblical reflections of an unseen narrator.’ The music chosen to accompany the film is composed by Max Richter.

Blending classical, electronic, and rock influences into a style he calls ‘post-classical,’ composer/programmer Max Richter’s music is an inspired choice for this movie. Richter has a habit of ignoring traditional boundaries. Born in Germany but brought up in Britain, he was listening to the canon of classical music, as well as modern composers including Philip Glass, whose sound was a major influence on Richter. The first track to examine is called ‘Luminous’, which essentially bookends the film. People described this track variously as ‘beautiful’, ‘enchanting’ but also ‘monotonous’. This underpins the important point that sometimes words take on a different meaning when used to describe the emotional impact of music. Monotonous is not normally a word which one would want describing one’s own music, but in context of music that is not neccasarily designed to entertain or be consumed in the traditional music industry sense, but instead provides emotion, expression and depth, ‘monotony’ sometimes works well, creating a trance-like mesmerising feel.

Fig.1 Movie - 00.04.40 / 01.19.47 Audio – ‘Luminous’

One of the most important characteristics of ‘Luminous’ is it’s occasional hazy feeling of harmonic vagueness and opacity. Although it is arguably difficult to conceive of something which is harmonically ambiguous having a discernable sense of identity, sometimes the this is true; indistinct and hazy harmony is sufficiently different from the norm to create its own colour. Into the realm of indistinctness comes a disproportionately higher level of inclusion and engagement from the listener. Every time we listen to music to varying degrees we subconsciously work to categorise and classify the harmonic flavour of what we’re listening to. We do this by comparing it to other music we’ve listened to. These experiences gradually conspire to create what could loosely be termed as ‘listening abilities’. With music that is less defined and doesn’t fit as easily into our preconceptions we are forced to work harder than normal to distinguish and distil its characteristics.

I don’t mean to suggest that ‘Luminous’ is full of baffling dissonance, more that there are tiny, subtle harmonic oddities which, when listening to it, can account for the slightly hazy feeling we get. I mention this because when we experience music which seems ‘hazy’ invariably we usually assume this is down to texture and production.

Fig.2

Bar four of fig.1 (notated separately in fig.2 – left) is interesting in that although the chord on the lower strings is clearly a C#m, there are tiny splashes of colour which imply a different chord. The descending quavers on the top line feature G#, E, A and E. Over and above the slight clash between the top G# and the lower A (highlighted with arrow), the horizontal harmony created by the first four quavers suggest an Amaj7/E. Add to this the F# on the third stave down, which functions as an add4. This is more than an idle, geeky theoretical point; although non-musicians would not understand the theory behind the point, they hear it happening and are beneficiaries of its effect.

Fig.3

Similarly in bar twenty of fig.1, and highlighted separately in fig.3 (right), rd there is a B chord (maj 3 D# on violin) playing at the same time as the descending piano line which contains to

add4s (Es) which serve to

make the chord a little

muddy and vague.

The textures and production of the instrumentation does play an important part; there is a deliberately grainy textural quality to the production which occasionally comes across of distortion but which in reality is an interesting and effective part of the sound.

The second track to analyse is ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, which comes twice in the film. The first time we hear it is during a scene which shows a bus pulling up abruptly; passengers disembark abruptly and the camera moves to show the bus driver crying uncontrollably, accompanied by off-screen narration from ‘Susan’. As the scene develops we see other random people in the street breaking down in tears for no reason. These scenes are powerful and are made more effective by Richter’s music, which has a captivating mesmerising monotony, created by the regularity of the piano movement and the gently descending chords. There is, however, a subtle strangeness to the piece which makes it penetrate: the phrases are interrupted; the ‘4/4 followed by 3/4’ sequence is repeated four times during the first time round the repeated section. The second time bar features 7/8 bars, which, again, manage to punctuate the sense of monotony, ensuring it penetrates the scene.

Fig.4 Movie - 00.13.00 / 01.23.55 Audio – ‘A Lover’s Complaint’

CONTAGION Cliff Martinez

Contagion is a medical thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh. The story documents the gradual spread of a virus and the attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease. The film portrays the inevitable panic and loss of social order but ends with the introduction of a vaccine to halt the spread of the virus. Soderbergh makes use of a ‘hyperlink narrative’ (where we follow several interacting plotlines), a style used in several of Soderbergh’s other films. Soderbergh’s research was extensive; to devise an accurate picture of a pandemic they consulted with representatives of the World Health Organization as well as other medical experts.

The film was well received by critics, who praised the narratives and the performances of various actors. It was also well received by scientists, who praised the realism and accuracy. The music is composed by Cliff Martinez, who has been Steven Soderbergh’ main composer ever since the director started out and has scored Traffic and Solaris . Contagion features an astute blending of tones, textures and harmonies that create a world of fear, apprehension and suspense. Martinez’ approach delivers music that evokes a feeling of technology and science, which makes it work well in the film. The score suggests ‘science fiction’ and ‘thriller’ and the dark, brooding, menacing and ominous music works extremely well with both the pictures and the underlying narrative of abject fear. The score creates a distinct and unique voice for the film and creates a musical and textural world for the story to be told in. This is an extremely atmospheric score, filled not so much with tunes or tradition but with modern textures and evocative harmonies which are brilliantly sculptured.

As ever our analysis poses the question ‘what is the music doing’? What is its function, emotionally? The gloomy and ominous tone of much of the film is at least partly down to the tone the music sets, which isn’t dark in an overt way but nevertheless conveys a deeply disturbing feel. Looking at a track entitled ‘the birds are doing that’ (below, fig.5) we can see that it has, like many pieces we’ve looked at, a sparse delivery style, thanks to a minimal arpegiated line; the harmony is ‘spread’ horizontally rather than vertically in the shape of chords. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

This means the harmonic flavours and colours the music suggests are delivered gradually, cumulatively, not at once. The marimba / vibraphone sound has a soft, muffled quality thanks largely to the specific EQ. The point here is that, as I said earlier, the music in itself is not overtly dark but the combined effect of the slightly frantic arpegiated quaver movement, with the muffled quality of the textures, combined with the narrative of the film overall, is dark.

Fig.5 Movie – 00.21.57 & 01.09.00 Audio – ‘The birds are doing that’

/ /

Marimba Samples

Brass

/ /

Marimba Samples

Music is rarely about one chord; it’s about the relationship between chords. This is what we respond to as listeners; the sonority between two different chords. With this in mind, the Bb (minor 3 rd ) from the Gm chord (bar four) bleeds over and ‘becomes’ (in the mind of the listener) for the briefest of moments, the b5 (#4) of the subsequent Em chord (bar five). This is what creates the strange ‘out of key centre’ feel in the sequence and adds to the unnerving affect the music has.

This piece also does something interesting in that it juxtaposes the use of brass over an otherwise modern / minimalist ‘production’ sound. This happens at bar twenty-five. The brass chords alone are not particularly dark or menacing but put alongside the other textures and lines the strangeness of the combination leaks over into the music. The same thing happens in John Powell’s United 93 in a track called ‘2 nd plane crash'.

Fig.6 Movie - 00.41.50 Audio – ‘2 nd Plane Crash’

These are important points because they prove that music which often sometimes foreboding or portentous or menacing often contains sounds or textures which traditionally are not heard together. Although there is a tendency to always assume that there needs be a specific harmonic blueprint for creating these types of emotions in music, often we find that the harmony itself is quite ‘normal’, as are the individual textures; it is the combination that is unnerving.

Another thing worth mentioning in ‘the birds are doing that’ (fig.5) is the extent to which the harmonic colours presented in the brass movement are actually a result of the odd, chromatic shift between chords. In the top stave of bars twenty-one to twenty-four (of fig.5) there are root-based tied semibreve voicings of the Gm chord. From bar twenty-five this becomes an Em chord. Normally if one were voicing these two chords, which lie outside each other’s key centres, we would re-voice, altering the movement to make the transition from one chord to the next more smooth. However, in this piece the movement is made starker because the voicings are parallel, which heightens the sense of ‘abrupt key shift’ in the sequence.

Also in ‘the birds are doing that’ we have the concept known informally as ‘a bar for nothing’. This is when composers insert an extra bar (or bars) in a sequence which lets the end of the phrase ‘sit’ for longer than usual, deliberately extending the sequence to accommodate extra time. Between bars twenty-five and thirty-one there are six bars. The brass play for the usual four bars but then there is a two-bar ‘tag’ on the end which simply features the arpegiated synth line. This acts almost as a pause between sections which mitigates the otherwise relentless flow of information and allows listeners to better rationalise and enjoy.

Finally on ‘the birds are doing that’ there are two more ‘moments’ which we will look at; one gives the piece a beautiful sense of resolution and completion: at bar thirty-nine the piece moves from Fm to a straight and serene-sounding C chord but one which has the added colour of the 7 th , not in the chord itself but in the accompanying arpegiated bass line underneath’ subtle colour. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

At 01.10.07 in the movie we see one of the main characters entering the garage of a neighbour’s house; this is the point at which we hear the Fm chord but at 01.10.13 the sequence resolves to the C chord. This might seem unremarkable but the beautifully resolved C chord actually comes at the point where the character finds and picks up a rifle; the point being that there is a really clever juxtaposition between the onscreen content and the implied emotion of the accompanying music. This heightens the sense of strangeness in the scene. Although there are no strong melodic figures the music completely colours and heightens our perception of the narrative throughout this film.

Moving onto another piece in the same movie, called ‘Merry Christmas’ it is interesting to observe how a simple sequence of semibreves can create a real sense of drama if they are well chosen and well placed. At 00.59.43 we see one of the main characters in the film – a female doctor who was trying to find the antidote to the virus – lying ill in a makeshift hospital bed. A character next to her wants a blanket but the hospital has none left; the doctor silently attempts to pass the man her own blanket. This scene is accompanied by what is quite a profound and dramatic chord change, delivered slowly and deliberately on semibreves using brass; this gives the piece an ominous, portentous and fairly ‘final’ sound. Again the overt music doesn’t seem to fit the relative ordinariness of the scene. The point of the scene might have been missed but for the dramatic music. Another later key scene features another female doctor who, after talking with her boss over the phone, injects herself with what could be the antidote. The same piece is used for this scene, which heightens the tension greatly. In both cases visually the scenes are quite simple but the dramatic chord changes in the music enhance the meaning which better distils the narrative.

Fig.7 Movie – 00.59.43 and 01.12.33 Audio – ‘Merry Christmas’

Another characteristic of the piece above, which greatly enhances its effectiveness, is the silence which separates the phrasing. Two identical phrases which include dramatic chord shifts within them are sometimes better served with space in between to heighten the effect. In this context harmonic silence is not really silence at all; it is space, into which comes anxiety, unease and fear. On top of this there is, as in many of the piece we’ve looked at, the ‘crunchy’ voicing approach used on the G and A chords (by virtue of the rather low 3 rd ) which accords the chords a slightly sonically ‘lumpy’ character. Also, and finally in this piece, we have the effectiveness of the chord sequence itself; the B to G chords both have a 3 rd on top: 3rds are particularly emotive intervals which shine through a chord. When we hit the second chord in the sequence, we still remember the D# (3 rd ) of the original B chord. The ‘ghost’ of the D# bleeds over and, for a split second, becomes the #5 of the G chord, causing slight dissonance. This is often referred to as the ‘Goldfinger chord change’; John Barry’s ‘Goldfinger’ title track had an F – Db manouvre which had a real sense of drama and weirdness to its listeners. Although much is made of the brash 60s orchestration which delivered the chords, the A of the F chord leaks over into our experience of the subsequent Db chord. The two opening chords in ‘Goldfinger’ and in this track are outside each other’s key centre. When writing them together, to avoid too much drama we would voice them sympathetically; unless, of course, drama is what you want, which is the case in both examples, albeit for different reasons.

Audio – ‘Goldfinger’ (John Barry/Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley)

K-PAX Edward Shearmur

K-Pax is an extremely interesting and evocative movie. Actor Kevin Spacy (‘Prot’) appears from nowhere in a crowded New York railway station. Because of his bizarre and unorthodox behaviour he is taken in by the Police and eventually ends up with Jeff Bridges, who plays psychiatrist Dr Powell. Prot claims to be an alien. The question for Powell is, is Prot really an alien or is he a mentally disturbed man who just thinks he is an alien? As the film unfolds and more evidence is uncovered, both theories become credible. His ability to map from memory the area of the galaxy where his home planet is located indicates a knowledge that no human could possibly possess. His ability to see ultraviolet light also supports the theory that Prot might actually be an alien. Powell conducts hypnosis sessions which lead us to a very real person (Robert Porter) whose family had been murdered, Porter having gone missing after witnessing the killings. Could these devastating events cause a personality aberration so great that Porter suffered a mental breakdown which made him reappear thinking he’s an alien? What so annoys some viewers and reviewers is that the ending doesn’t seem to give a conclusive answer; it is ambiguous enough to make you wonder if you really know the truth. Some think Prot was an alien and was merely using Robert’s body as a vehicle. The other theory is that Prot is Robert, post nervous breakdown.

On a deep level it is a challenging film that makes the viewer form an opinion. Do you revert to what you think is the case or do you dare to think the unthinkable? Perhaps it makes us think beyond our own existence and perhaps it even shines a brief light on issues such as how people judge mental illness.

As with some other films we have analysed, people referred to the music as ‘ethereal’, mesmerising and otherworldly. One very quick answer to the ‘otherworldly’ characteristics would be the #4s, which are everywhere (highlighted with arrows). However, another perhaps less obvious characteristic is one we found in the last film – namely the horizontal harmony. A chord featuring a #4 interval is one thing, but spreading the harmony horizontally can often offer a less cluttered, more subtle rendition.

#4 Fig.8 Movie - 00.00.35 Audio – ‘Grand Central’

* * * *

* *

* * * * * *

The top stave synth line offers some nice context and accompaniment to the quaver line; initially fluctuating between the B and C#, the top line offers different, brief and sporadic vertical intervals (highlighted) between the top line and the quaver line. The main point really is that the piece makes a virtue out of the use of incomplete, partial harmony and the idea of harmony being spread thinly; horizontally. The #4 acts as a harmonic signifier, being associated (in this textural context and in this narrative surrounding) with wonderment and ‘things not of this world’. Another interesting piece comes early in the film when Prot is taken on a journey in the back of a taxi. The music here is particularly effective; it complements the wonderful photography and, with the sound design pulled down, is instrumental in articulating Prot’s character and heightening the emotion of the scene.

Fig.9 Movie – 00.33.40 Audio – ‘Taxi Ride’

This is a wonderfully ethereal piece which makes good use of some dreamy textures and effective harmonies. Key to the chords’ effectiveness lies in the way they are voiced. In this analysis we’re going to concentrate on the harmonies and voicing. Below we have transcribed a larger version of the accompanying chords

The chords are what we call ‘combination chords’; they contain not one but two extensions. On top of that the extensions are embedded in the chord rather than towards the top; this means their effect is more subtle. Because the extensions are buried within the more ‘usual’ intervals, this leads to a handful of clusters, which tends to concentrate the colour more vividly within the chords. In the first chord there are two sets of major 2 nd intervals, directly on top of each other. The chord in bar two features three lots of major 2 nd intervals. Although these are not all next to each other, the fact that there are three cannot help but make the chord dense. In all these chords there are no semi-tonal clashes; another reason how and why these chords can be dense and cluttered without being traditionally dissonant.

11 th th th th 9 th 4th 7 6 Three sets of 6 Three sets of Two sets of maj 2nds maj 2nds Fig.10 maj 2nds

9th 7th The point is that as well as containing two extensions, each chord also contains two or three examples of major 2nd intervals; it is this unusual combination of factors and events which offer such vivid colours. The third chord is particularly complex because in effect it constitutes polyharmony. In one reality it is an Emaj9 chord over an F# bass and in the other reality it is a B with an added 4 th and 6 th , over an F# bass. We have called the chord an F#11 with an added 6 simply because this is probably the most rational visual explanation, but none of this alters the fact that this is clearly polyharmonic.

LIMITLESS Paul Leonard-Morgan

Eddie Morra is an author suffering from writer’s block; he meets his ex-brother-in-law Vernon, who offers him a nootropic drug, NZT-48. After taking the pill, Eddie finds himself incredibly mentally endowed, able to think and learn faster. He finishes writing ninety pages of a book he’d previously been unable to complete. Inevitably the effects of the drug wear off but when Vernon is killed Eddie takes the entire supply of NZT. After borrowing money he makes millions on the stock exchange. His life goes from strength to strength but inevitably it all goes wrong as Eddie has to face the consequences of the side effects of the drug. Seen by many as a simple and rather obvious anti-drugs message inside the body of a science fiction film, Limitless deals with various issues in an interesting and original way. The anti-drugs message is doubtful since long term Eddie benefits greatly from his use of drugs. Some see it as a warning about the abuse of technology and class in society; according to the futurist Ray Kurzweil in the near future we may all need to get ‘brain upgrades’ or implants just to be able to keep up with the rapidly changing world; the point being that this technology will cost money and in the current world we live in won’t be available to all, only those who can afford it. The film was modern and raw, and the gritty soundtrack worked well with this narrative.

Key to the success of the music is how Paul Leonard Morgan distils the narrative of this movie through a combination of raw and edgy production but also via the use and manipulation of harmony. Before we look at the opening music, which so cleverly sets the harmonic and sonic tone for the film, let’s take a minute to reflect on how we, as listeners, engage with music. Most of us are victims of tradition, convention, custom and ritual. Mostly music is delivered in very precise but simple formulaic harmonic packages. We get used to this so our tastes sometimes become narrow and limited. This protects us from what we might think will be unpleasant experiences but it also severely compromises our limitations. We do not listen to music with an open mind. How could we? Music is a social experience; our tastes develop according to our experiences, most of which will be group-based. We listen with expectation, presumption, assumption; prejudice. When we listen our responders and reactions are determined by our knowledge, understanding and memories of other listening experiences. This is how we listen and because this is how people listen, this is also how people usually write music. We don’t generally write music – at least commercially - to challenge people. But film music is still – just - one of the few areas where we are allowed to think the unthinkable and to do the undoable without neccasarily being subject to hostile interpretation. Given the almost limitless amount of harmonic possibilities we can choose from but the relatively simple diet of mediocre and unimaginative choices we make, what’s one harmonic event we would hardly encounter? In other words, what’s the strangest type of chord we can imagine?

Fig.11 Movie – 00.01.00 Audio ‘Opening’ – 00.06

Look closely at bar two and we will see a rare sight; a simultaneous major / minor chord. This can’t be explained away as simply being a flattened 10 th chord, where the higher 3 rd is lowered; this chord has the F# and F clashing directly. But because of the distraction of the raw, electronic sounds, we perhaps assume this is a sonic by-product of the instrumentation. But the harmony is working independently of the sound; the clash creating a difficult and abstract listening experience. Alongside the gritty textures, the chords and lines work extremely well and especially well in context of being the opener to this kind of film.

Fig.12

Later in the same piece (bar twelve onwards, featured separately, left) we see Dmaj and D min consecutively but not simultaneously as before.

Fig.13

Any major chord to a minor version of the same chord can be disorientating, striking and dramatic. Also in the same piece at around 01.28 the top synth line fluctuates wildly between major and minor 3 rd (right, fig.13).

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES Tomandandy

The Mothman Prophecies claims to be a modern fictionalization based on actual events that occurred between November 1966 and December 1967 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Journalist John Klein and his wife Mary are involved in a car accident. A subsequent brain scan shows that Mary has a brain tumour and she subsequently dies. Later, John discovers a series of mysterious drawings she created before her death, depicting a strange black winged creature she saw on the night of the accident. After her death, John begins to investigate the secrets behind the ‘Mothman’. It takes him to a small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where he discovers a connection. Here he meets Police Chief Connie Mills as he continues to unravel the mystery of what the Mothman really is.

The intro to the film features a largely FX/sound design-oriented approach; the music proper plays during the first scene, in which John Klein is seen in the newsroom of the newspaper where he works as a reporter. He has a routine conversation with a colleague and as he walks out of the office the accompanying music (transcribed below) starts. The key thing here is the way the music reads the film; although the music itself does not convey an apprehensive, portentous or ominous emotion (and neither – on a surface level – does the scene), the two together, combined with what, as viewers, we already know about the story, work to offer a subtle resigned, acquiescent air. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

It is not overtly horror-oriented but its subdued and restrained nature works to create a gentle feeling of anxiety. In terms of ‘how it does it’- there are some interesting textural and harmonic factors which together manage to deliver an effortless and subtle sense of foreboding. The bare 5 th interval that separates the top-stave lines is static but the bass line descends over a two-bar sequence, which is then repeated. The top-line textures are simple but soft, gentle and effective. The descending bass guitar offers a slightly rougher and organic texture, but, as we have seen so often, it is the intervals the top notes occupy which offers the piece a sense of direction; of ‘journey’ rather than melody. If a top line moves physically we tend to refer to it as melody, but if, in this case, it simply contains two semibreves a 5 th apart, spanning a four-bar phrase, the term ‘melody’ wouldn’t seem appropriate. However, if we look at the intervals (determined by the overall chord) occupied by the notes (5/1, 6/2, maj7/3), they ascend; they evolve, just as a physical melody might. With the accompanying descending bass line there is an effortless sense of contraction and expansion thanks to the contrary motion between the bass and the intervallic context of the top two notes.

Fig.14 Movie 00.02.15 Audio 00.22 ‘Composed of 12 members’

Dm F Bbmaj7 C maj 7 maj 7 6 3 6 3 5 5 2 2 1 1

By bar five there is a physical ascending line creating a physical contrary motion between it and the bass line

Another track in the film, entitled ‘all at once’ makes a virtue of the same principle. It features an A-note ‘melody’ which moves from representing the min3 rd of the F#m chord to becoming the 5 th of the subsequent Dm/F chord.

Fig.15 Audio - ‘All at once’ 5th

rd m3 rd m3

PLEASANTVILLE Randy Newman

Teenagers David and Jennifer lead different social lives; Jennifer is shallow while David is introverted and spends most of his time watching television. One evening while fighting over the TV (he wants to watch an old black and white show soap opera about a perfect fictitious place called Pleasantville; she wants to watch a concert).They end up breaking the remote and the television set. A mysterious TV repairman shows up and gives David a new remote which transports them into the Pleasantville television show. Fiction has become real. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

Stuck in Pleasantville, David and Jennifer must now assume the roles of the show’s squeaky clean teenage characters Bud and Mary Sue Parker. After ‘Mary’ dates a boy in the town and has sex with him, slowly Pleasantville begins changing from black and white to colour, including flowers and the faces of people who have experienced bursts of emotion. Older fathers in the village resolve to do something about their increasingly independent wives and rebellious children. As the townsfolk become more colourful, a ban on ‘coloured’ people is initiated in public venues.

“When we’re afraid of certain things in ourselves or we’re afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop”, so said the Director. Robert Beuka says in his book SuburbiaNation , “Pleasantville is a morality tale concerning the values of contemporary suburban America by holding that social landscape up against both the utopian and the dystopian visions of suburbia that emerged in the 1950s” The main message seems to be that there is no inherent ‘perfect life’, no model for how things are ‘supposed to be.’, no template for happiness. The use of colour as a metaphor in black-and-white films certainly has been done elsewhere to great effect; the girl in the red dress who made the Holocaust real for Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List is one good example. In Pleasantville colour represents the transformation from repression to enlightenment. How a composer would score a film that exists on so many conscious and unconscious levels is not an easy question to answer but Randy Newman provided a beautiful score which succeeds on the one hand in italicising the mystical, almost magical undercurrents of the film but also succeeds in acknowledging the bittersweet melancholic undertones of the narrative. The track we will analyse is called ‘Real Rain’ and is referenced a couple of times during the film, perhaps the most poignant of which comes 01.09.17 into the movie, in a touching scene in which one of the main characters who exists inside the TV show sees ‘colour’ on the cheek of the woman he loves after she wipes a tear away. The dialogue is sparse which allows the first few bars of the piece to penetrate the movie and become part of how we rationalise and understand the scene. A more texturally full section comes at bar twelve, where the strings enter; this accompanies a powerful side-shot of both characters looking at one another.

Fig.16 Movie - 01.09.17 Audio – ‘Real Rain’

* * *

Movie - 01.10.22 *

* * * *

Fig.17 Fig.17 (left) shows the chords in the first

three bars; the first four chords sound

exquisite for a number of reasons; first of all the D at the foot of each voicing is recontextualised intervallically which

th rd th makes each D ‘mean’ different things as D = 5 D = 3 D = 4 D = #4 we progress through, evolving from a 5 th A tone A semi A tone A tone to a maj3 rd followed by the 4 th and finally between tone between between the the A between the A and C and D the #4. and B the Bb G and E and a and A and D semitone between the Ab and G How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

The drama contained in the tensions between the tone and semitone intervals creates its own contours with peaks when the chords become particularly colourful (i.e. the second and fourth chord). We go from the relative normality of the first chord to the mild cluster in the second chord, to the denser but harmonically milder cluster in the third chord, to the final polytonal chord. The final chord could be described as it is or as a D7sus4(b5). The fact that there are two different ways to theoretically describe the chord doesn’t just make it purely a theoretical issue; as I have said in previous volumes chord symbols are not just a means of description; they are a description of the way something sounds – the way something is interpreted and ‘feels’. If there are two ways of describing the chord, then there are two ways of hearing the same thing. Logically then, although the vast majority of listeners would not understand the theory, they are still beneficiaries of the affect that polytonality causes. So in a very real sense this goes beyond theory.

Harmonic identifiers

In fig.16 I have highlighted the various harmonic identifiers which affect the colour of the piece. The piece heavily references the #4 (this is denoted with * on the score). It features at the beginning and in the semiquaver piano line. This lends the piece a mystical feel. The second harmonic element which permeates the piece is the ‘add2’ chord ( ) which shows up all over the place. As we have discussed before the ‘add2’ adds a warm, romantic air to harmony. In both cases the #4 and the add2 elements appear traditionally embedded vertically in chords but perhaps the best use is in the semiquaver piano line where they are scattered horizontally.

SIGNS James Newton Howard

Signs was director M. Night Shyamalan’s third major feature film. A common theme in his movies is that they frequently feature a subtext about the regaining of ‘faith’. Though some sections of his films are scary and even violent there’s frequently an underlying family theme to Shyamalan’s films. The Sixth Sense had a major twist at the end which many who watched hadn’t seen coming. Some then pondered whether a second viewing would be pointless? Producer Frank Marshall said, “In the case of The Sixth Sense , at first you’re watching a movie about ghosts, but then, the second time you see it - knowing what you know - it becomes clear that really, it’s a love story. The same is true with Signs - yes, it’s a science fiction film, but it’s also a serious drama about faith and spirituality. It’s really about human emotions that are set in motion by a supernatural event.”

When discussing Signs Shyamalan seems to feel that the film’s title has two very different meanings. “One is the crop signs that they find in their yard and the signs that are happening around the world. But it is also about faith and the existence of signs from above,” explains Shyamalan. Marshall adds, “You can look at the title as a sign to open your eyes. The character of Graham is shut down in the beginning of the film and he is not really able to deal with reality. His family is not doing so well. And so, part of the message of the film, I think, is to open your eyes to what is around you and you will see the answers.”

Mel Gibson stars as Father Graham Hess, a lapsed Priest whose personal beliefs were shattered a year ago by the death of his wife in a car accident. Overnight crop circles appear. Hess initially rationalizes that it must be local teenagers but with other strange events happening locally, nationally and globally (delivered into the film well via TV news broadcasts) he realises the planet has been visited by aliens. Instead of special effects or CGI, Shyamalan creates his world out of everyday ordinary objects such as a baby monitor that picks up inexplicable sounds.

The first piece I want to look at is the title card / intro section, which is quite long but definitely worth looking at to understand how James Newton Howard works, what elements and conventions he uses and how the colour of orchestration delivers the sound of music. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

Fig.18 Movie intro Audio – Main Titles

The functionality and artistry of orchestration

The harmonies and lines contained in the orchestration really do deliver the sound of the music; in the ‘main title’ cue (fig.18) we can see and hear many characteristics, features and personalities which help the piece communicate a quite specific emotions.

Firstly, in orchestration, as in music itself, few things appear just once and most are there for a reason; they serve a purpose. We can call this purpose the ‘functionality’ of the orchestration; how it generates the colour and the character to deliver the message of the music. During the movie Newton Howard uses a motif which goes from root to fifth and then the augmented fifth (see fig.19). A good example of it is below, in a track entitled Fig.19 ‘first crop circles’ which we will discuss later.

This basic idea of root-to-fifth, followed by another interval/extension appears numerous times in the film and if we look at the isolated section of the intro we can see the germination of the idea. This time it appears as root, 5th and compound min2 and is articulated by the strings. This opening piece, which accompanies the credit roll at the beginning of the film, acts as an overture for some musical elements of the rest of the film. It acclimatises listeners, aurally, to ideas which will come later and thus establishes a musical relationship between various parts of the movie where similar ideas are used to generate memories and emotions in listeners. Fig.20

Atonal clusters

When you’re providing atonal cluster chords to shock and distort and using texturally brash instrumentation and performance, beyond a certain point, harmonically, listeners hear only sound, not music. One could therefore be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to atonal clusters we could write what we want as long as it sounds weird. But this obviously isn’t true. In context of film music and the desire to impart detailed emotion, dissonance is just as forensically shaped and sculptured as ‘normal’ harmony. What’s important for a composer is to understand that the sound is music because it needs creating with notes and sounds. With this kind of thing you need to get the texture right and the location / architecture (in terms of where, how and when you do it) right. In the example below there are isolated pockets of relative normality, e.g. the chord from the Horns in bar two, which, unilaterally, forms what could be either part of a Bmaj7 or part of a G#m .add2

Fig.20

D# B A# Cb Bb A

In bar four of the transcription the trombones are added, playing what at first glance seems to simply be a cluster of semitones. But looked at chordally it is a G#m addm2/add2 . So even within the densest dissonance there is a semblance of consonance at the heart of it. We have another section (below, fig.21) taken from the ‘main title’. Fig.21

Listening to this section in context of the rest of the piece we hear the rough, brash textures of the Horns and the rhythm of the phrase more than we notice any distinguishing harmony. But once again, if we scrutinise the Horns we can see deliberation and method in the harmony. We can see what JNH meant.

The Horns move from G and B (contextualised by the E in trombones as 3 rd / 5 th ) to Bb and D; this means that for a second we ‘hear’ an Em seem to bleed over into a Gm

The transcription below, again taken from the ‘main title’ track, highlights a particularly exciting section where the Horns seem to appear like dissonant bullets out of a gun. In fact the ‘melody’ stated by the Horns has a discernible harmonic context in that it is part Phrygian and part harmonic-minor. Once again, this is not just using convenient theory to interpret three notes; this explains the specific and conflicting harmonic flavours of the line which combine to make it so scary. Another thing in this section which works well is in bar five (fig.22) where a low E bass motif gives way to the tremolo Horns playing an Eb and G, constituting the root and major 3rd of an Eb chord. Fig.22

E F D#

‘FX scoring’ is where the audience do not hear ‘music’ – they hear an effect caused by music they cannot possibly interpret musically but benefit from nevertheless.

Movie – 00.12.56 Audio ‘Roof Intruder’ Fig.23

The very first moment of ‘roof intruder’ (left,

fig.23) is an interesting one to observe. In the movie it comes just after a tender moment when Graham Hess is talking to his young daughter about her mother (Hess’ wife) who died tragically some time ago. At one moment Hess glances out the window and sees the briefest of glimpses of what appear to be a human-like figure on top of an adjoining building.

Looking at the transcription (fig.23) it seems like a blur of notes which listeners would be hard- pushed to deduce emotion or meaning from. And yet they can. This moment is amongst the scariest in the entire movie, not least because of the music.

Fig.24

Perhaps we need to look at a more condensed, ‘simplified’ version (right, fig.24) to see it for what it is; what scares listeners (apart from, obviously, the scene itself) is the brief

textural splash of but mostly the aurally incomprehensible

nature of the harmony. There is no chance for people to rationalise what is, in effect, a chromatically dissonant

chord featuring, from the bottom upwards, B, C, Db and D .

An established working practice between composer James Newton Howard and director M. Night Shayamalan has been that the composer often begins work before a shot is even filmed. Newton Howard will sometimes respond to the storyboards and/or to the director’s vision rather than the finished product. This questions the whole romanticized notion of ‘writing to picture’ but can be a good way of working because you’re writing to an idea; a concept, rather than a moving picture. In this way, arguably, musical conceptualisation may be freer to play a bigger part. Together they are responsible for films such as Sixth Sense , Signs and The Village . Shayamalan is a critic of the way in which music is used in film, i.e. its function; one cannot in honesty be a critic of music per se because so much is opinion and personal judgment, but he is critical, for example, of the amount of music in a film, saying, “Music is used way too much in film and is used too much as a ‘band aid’ to cover up poor story-telling”. The way Shayamalan uses music in the film Signs (as in Sixth Sense and The Village ) highlights the issue of the function of the music. Certainly the music, with the exception of the introduction titles (fig.18) does not always function as atypical horror music in the film. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

It works on a much deeper, engrained level, addressing the frailty of the human condition in the face of adversity. Whether the music Newton Howard wrote would have been more ‘sucked in’ towards horror music if he’d written it to picture is worth thinking about.

The scene five minutes into the film where Mel Gibson’s character, Graham Hess, surveys a flattened cornfield is interesting. We covered this in volume 1 but it is worth revisiting it here in context of what has been a much broader look at the film’s music than was contained in volume 1. The communicating factor here is the schism between the 5 th and the #5 th . This dissonance is brief and is dressed up in orchestration which prevents it from jarring. But still, it is subtly unsettling, which is exactly what it’s supposed to be .

Fig.25 Movie 00.04.50Audio – ‘First Crop Circles’ 01.26

Strings

The same way films like The Ring had an identifiable harmonic brand, so does Signs . The rhythmic identifiers are the two semiquavers-to-quaver. On many of the cues, as I said before, there is fluctuation and interplay between the 5 th and #5 th . The cue below begins the first time Graham Hess sees the unmistakable form of the alien. He shines a torch in the darkness and sees the fleeting image of the alien’s leg disappearing into the cornfield. Terrified, Hess runs back to the house. He enters the house to a scene of calm with his brother sat reading a book and his children doing housework. Gradually they notice his unease. There is no dialogue; the music tells the story, not with classic sci-fi music but with subtle delicate and restrained harmonies and instrumentation.

Movie 00.36.40 Audio - First Crop Circles Fig.26

What is notable in this cue, as discussed briefly in the chapter Music Theory in Action in vol.1, is the chord maneuver between Cm and B (bars eight and nine) with the min3 rd of the Cm (the Eb) becoming the maj 3rd of the B (the D#). We see this trick hundreds of times in modern film music. As we allude to elsewhere in this series of books, the success of the chord shift is that it offers a note common to both chords which function as minor and major 3rds (the Eb becoming the D#). Listeners hear what a note represents changing whilst the physical note itself remains intact. The listener hears the slightly abstract reality of something changing but not changing . What actually changes is nothing as obvious as the note itself, but something wholly more subtle: what the note means; what it represents. This is what we respond to. We respond to the context of the note. Our understanding of context is everything; it is how we make sense of the world around us. What also makes this particular maneuver so effective is that the key interval is the 3 rd – an interval we have described in previous volumes as descriptive. It is a warm, romantic interval whose unique unifying characteristics radiate through a chord. So when we mess with it, the affect is all the more overt.

If we look at the original scored version of this piece (the section below is of bar thirteen of fig.26) we can see how the orchestrator embeds the augmented 5 th (in this example written as a minor 6 th ) from the piano part (the Eb over the G chord) in the arrangement by virtue of having it stated lightly by clarinets and strings.

Eb note Fig.27

One of the most interesting and exciting sections of the movie is towards the end during the final climactic scene in which an alien in Hess’s home is confronted. ‘The Hand of Fate – part 2’comes as the family move outside the house, having killed the alien creature, but now having to deal with the son, who has ingested dangerous gases from the alien. Musically this piece, along with its predecessor – The Hand of Fate – part 1’ brilliantly articulates the charged and varying emotions of the scene. We will analyse how the music contextualises the pictures and the emotion in the scene, adding its own layer of colour and feeling via the manipulation of textures and harmony.

Fig.28 Movie - 01.34.20 Audio ‘The Hand of Fate’

(#11) add2

In order to examine the harmony we need first to figure out the emotions it evokes, the feelings it conveys and the character it communicates. Dealing first with words we might use to describe the emotions we ‘hear’, we think of hope, optimism, courage and faith – sentiments which describe not just the scene but the culmination of the narrative arc of the story. The music is both positive and affirming in places but also with a splash of wistfulness and melancholy. The music is exciting but also thoughtful and contemplative.

Bar eleven is perhaps the first time we hear a definite whiff of positivity, especially with the piccolo added, but this leads to a slightly more wistful and reflective air by bars thirteen and fourteen; this is when we hear the sus2 chord (‘sus’ 2 rather than ‘add’ 2, which means the 2 replaces the 3 rd , which slightly blurs the identity) coupled together with the high #11. This is an interesting point because the add2 and #11 combined create more than a whiff of an A chord, which creates almost the drama of the A/G slash chord and a feeling of mild polytonality. It is these discreet touches of colour through orchestration which create subtle harmonic nuances that slightly colour the chord (below, fig.29) Fig.29 (#11) add2

Why does the manouvre between bars fifteen and eighteen sound quite uplifting? The G chord to Bm creates a palpable and mildly exhilarating feeling but the defining moment in this section is the link between the A chord and the C chord. These two chords lay outside each other’s key centres; the chord goes upward to C, the top string note remains physically static but intervallically goes from the 5 th (of the A chord) down to the rich and communicative maj 3 rd (of the C chord). We therefore have a kind of contrary motion between the chord and the interval of the top strings. Fig.30

Note static on E 5th Interval of the E note C 3rd

Chord A

We don’t normally get a 4 th and a maj3 rd in the same chord. The two intervals do inherently different jobs; they create different colours in music and they don’t complement each other. But when we have the varied textures of the orchestra at our disposal and when we’re trying to inject subtle abstractions into harmony, these are precisely the tricks we can use to do the job (fig.31). Fig.31

Below (fig.32) we see the same trick at work (bar forty-none). Fig.32 (omit3) Also in this excerpt there are two more subtleties at work; firstly in bar fifty-two / fifty-three there is a semitone clash between the top B note on the bass clef stave and the low C on the stave above, but this is italicised by the lack of the maj 3 rd in the chord, which makes the chord less ‘sweet’ sounding and more stark.

Secondly there is some ‘lumpy’ harmony at the bottom of the chord in bar fifty-four, which succeeds in creating a slightly sonic ambiguity, vagueness and opacity.

THE VILLAGE James Newton Howard

The Village is directed by M. Night Shayamalan. Like many of his films it benefits from slow pacing and heavy reliance on symbolism to tell its story. The Village is about a group of people who all suffered a violent and criminal loss of a loved one. They all chose to voluntarily start new lives and families together as an isolated community. The film purports to be set in a rural Pennsylvanian community of 1897 but it is revealed, in a true Shayamalan twist at the end, that the time is now, not 1897. The community had built new lives in a vast rural community owned by one of them and off-limits to anyone else. Even aeroplanes are banned from overflying the area. The village is self-contained and cut off. Children born and raised there have no idea of how the community came to exist. Surrounding the village is a forest, full, according to the elders, with ‘beasts’. These occasionally glimpsed beings are referred to by the village folk simply as ‘Those We Don't Speak Of’, and their threat instils a paranoiac fear into the heart of the town which prevents the children from ever straying beyond.

Films often reflect the issues of the day through the prism of science fiction or horror. We can perhaps draw parallels between The Village and our own eras of home-grown and foreign anxiety (post WW1, post WW2, post Oklahoma bombing, 9/11, etc). The horror genre has progressed from fear and containment from outside - to fear/containment from within.

Colouring this film is a vast colourful landscape of music, beautifully painted by the delicate textures of the orchestra and the distinctive harmonies Newton Howard uses. Dominating the music are the violin solos from virtuoso Hilary Hahn, which speak of the pastoral, earthly, back story to this film. The music takes you on a musical journey into the film’s setting and time period. The violin of Hahn almost becomes its own character within the film, such is its power.

The female protagonist Ivy Walker’s innocence is underscored by the subtleties and emotions generated by JNW’s writing. Apparently Newton Howard selected Hahn for her youthful nature and similarities to Ivy in the film. Director M. Night Shyamalan acknowledged the music’s strong impact on the film’s narrative, lending it an emotional value, taking it in a different direction than originally intended. What began as a suspense/emotional thriller soon became just as much a love story.

The majority of the music consists of violin solo against a background of strings, winds, and piano. The Village symbolizes purity, innocence, unconditional love, and the will to live that resides within each of us. This is aided by the intoxicating textural and harmonic elegance embodied in the solo violin and the orchestra. Many of the musical aspects which make this score so compelling and create an authentic period character and subtle suspense, are tied up in the orchestration, and this is an area we will look at. Hahn’s violin and the accompanying piano of Randy Kerber float effortlessly but restlessly in the background to enhance the authenticity of the location but also the sense of displacement.

The following cue (entitled ‘Main Title’ on the score and ‘What Are You Asking Me’ on the soundtrack album, is typical of the music for the film in terms of the sense of time, place and emotion that it generates. It comes several times in the movie.

Fig.33 Movie 00.56.55 - Audio ‘What Are You Asking Me? ’

The most interesting and endearing aspect of this piece is the sense of displacement carefully crafted into the piece via the use of ‘the beat for nothing’. A ‘beat for nothing’ is sometimes a name we give to an empty space within a piece; a small section deliberately left silent to illicit an emotional effect. The first beat of the piece is silent, so when listeners attempt to subconsciously rationalise and classify, which they do, their sense of placement is slightly ‘out’. In short, we assume the first two semiquavers and quaver are on the first beat and we probably assume it’s in 4/4. Because they’re actually on the second beat, this means that the piece doesn’t quite ‘add up’; it has a feeling of falling in and out of time. In fact the first beat of the bar is left unstated on bars one, four and six. Contrary motion features subtly in this piece (highlighted) which lends the piano a sense of tradition and structure. Another interesting aspect is a type of contrary motion that exists between the direction of the chords in terms of the physical voicing (bar six, piano and violin, upwards) and the actual chords they create (Fm to Db, downward). This juxtaposition between the individual notes and what they state collectively, ‘chordally’ is often what lends music its sense of structural integrity, harmonic variation and almost effortless feeling of movement.

For the next sequence in the film the sound design is pulled down in the mix to allow the silent pictures and the music to contextualise the narrative and deliver the story. Bar eight of the sequence is the uplifting chord change from Fm to Ab; it comes at the moment one of the characters in the film sees a red flower in the ground; supposedly a harbinger of danger. By the end of the cue the characters have pulled up the red flower and buried it out of sight. This is a pivotal moment of the film and one which is served brilliantly by the music. We covered this piece in a previous volume of ‘How Film & TV Music Communicate’ but it seems a shame to omit it from a wider discussion about the film’s music.

Fig.34 Movie 00.03.55 – Audio ‘Rituals’ (entitled ‘Village Violin’ on the score)

5 9 8 11 11 5 C 9 9 C 7 3 7 5 8 5 1 5

7 Ab Bb 9 Fm maj 7 9 9 9

The moment when the two characters see the red flower

The two characters bury the red flower out of sight

This is one of those moments when music speaks louder than words in relaying the story and the context of the scene. Music ‘speaks’ and yet as we have established it talks in less emphatic terms than words or pictures; this is its great strength. The emotional impact is less direct and more subtle, delicate and understated. From a structural perspective the piece is bookended by the same phrase (bar two & three and bar thirteen & fourteen). The first three notes of each of those phrases are bare, stark characterless intervals (5,8,5) whereas the next three are colourful descriptive intervals (7 th , 3 rd , 7 th ). With the supporting harmony underneath stating an ‘omit3’ chord, the melodic line above takes the piece from a bare chord to not just a minor chord, but a minor 7 th chord, one with lots of colour. We go from stark nothingness to full colour, as a result of a melody line which transmits harmony horizontally, with intervals radiating out. It’s notable that the supporting Fomit3 chord is voiced over the inverted C, weighting the chord slightly in favour of the same note that the initial melodic line begins on.

The melodic line which exists inside the aforementioned bookended phrase (e.g. from bar five to bar twelve) itself has many colourful intervals in the form of a few 9ths and 11ths, followed by maj7ths and 9ths. The melody from bars five to eight is nearly identical to the line from bars nine to twelve but from bar nine we have a new chord underneath, which of course changes the intervallic context of the melody. This cue has been described as sounding mesmerising and mildly hypnotic. The reasons for this description are not personal or specific to one person or subjective or abstract or metaphysical and nor are they solely to do with the dreamy textures of the heavily reverbed solo violin; they are at least partly due to the emotional ‘lift’ we feel when we hear what appears to be the same line but different. How can something be the same but different? The same melody line can assume a different character and meaning when the surrounding context changes (e.g. a different chord underneath). This is similar, for example, to the different meanings of the words ‘there’ and ‘their’; they sound the same but the context changes everything. The ‘duality of perception’ the listener experiences – the repetitive melodic line with evolving harmonic context underneath – is such an important factor. Whilst intervals may seem an automatic by-product of the notes we choose to write music, the interval defines how a note will function. The other nice thing about the passage from bar nine is the interplay between the major 7 th on the lead violin and the 6 th interval as part of the chord that supports it. The distance of a 9 th between those two notes separates them sufficiently for their individual and different colours to shine.

If we go looking for the structural secrets behind a piece of music we will learn much from investigating not just the melodic line but the intervallic contour of a melodic line. Don’t forget the note delivers the sound but the interval delivers the context of the note; literally the music. What a note represents is inextricably tied up in what a note is.

This next cue is, again, typical of the soft, subtle harmonic brushstrokes which colour Newton Howard’s writing.

Fig.35 Movie 00.13.42 - Audio ‘Ivy’s song’

The way this piece evolves from the relative ambiguity of an incomplete chord on bar one, to the full character of an expansively voiced Gm chord (leading into bar five) through to the mild and enchanting dissonance of the final chord (bar seven) typifies not just Newton Howard’s approach to harmony but his approach to architecture and placement too; when, and in what order you place chords ultimately is the final arbiter of their success. If we take the various characteristics of each chord we find they create a kind of emotional arc, starting with the nondescript, bare and square ‘omit3’, moving to the complete colour of the Gm and progressing to the final chord, the dead-ringer Newton Howard chord. Why is this final chord so colourful, so anxious and yet so serene? The clash between the top Bb and the A (a b9 th lower) is the main reason for the tension, but in order to understand the specific nature of the tension we have to look at the intervals the two notes represent. Without the Bb the chord is an open-voiced but richly resonating Dm/F (with a 6 th interval separating the low F and the D above it, a 5 th interval separating the D and the A above it and a 4 th interval separating the A and the D above it).

The Bb on the top is itself a min6 above the D below, but it is the interval the Bb itself represents in the chord which defines why it creates such a distinctive dissonance. It represents the m6, which gently clashes with the 5th an octave lower but of we look just at the top two notes we hear the Bb as the min3 rd and the D below as the 5th of a Gm, or we hear the Bb as the octave and the D as a maj3 rd of a Bb chord. Either way explains the strangeness created by hearing two chords being suggested at once.

A 5 th right next door to the minor 6 th is a much more overt clash, but when a the gap of a b9 separates the Bb and the lower A, the kind of dissonance achieved works so much more subtly, especially when the weighing of the chord is further dramatised by the inverted 3 rd (F). Like any other chord, the spaces which separate the notes in this chord define its character, but this chord has more space than many; the chord spans two and a half octaves from top to bottom but contains just five notes, which means, unlike chords which are more tightly and densely packed, each note is heard. Five-part voicing over two and a half octaves is always going to be thin, and with the thinness each note penetrates which means the chord is vivid and colourful. The cue is quite difficult to place in relative musical time. It starts on the 2 nd beat and features different time signatures which prevent listeners from acclimatising to it, which keeps it fresh.

The following cue comes several times in the movie and accompanies scenes in need of some musically created anxiety, disquiet or fear. This is created cleverly by Newton Howard through a combination, once again, of specific harmonies and forensically voiced chords and by specific textures. One such scene sees one of the film’s main characters stare towards a section of the room; the camera follows his gaze and settles on a box, which, we will see later in the film, contains documents and information which will be crucial to the underlying context of the scene. Without the music this is simply the camera focussing on a box but with music it becomes significant; it becomes relevant. Once again music tells the story by offering a voice which italicises something that otherwise might have gone unnoticed .

Fig.36 Movie – 00.15.33 Audio ‘The Box’

The anxiety, disquiet and fear exuded by this cue are derived are very cleverly appropriated from the instruments due to the unique textures but also the specific way each section is voiced. The A chord in the woodwind and brass in bar one of fig.36 are scored distinctly over the low E, whereas the strings are scored over the low C#. Therefore there is real sonic density to the collective voicing but this is mitigated by a different inversion applying to woodwind/brass than to the strings. The ‘lumpy’ voicing is collective, spread over the entire instrumentation, not localised in one section, where it would be more troublesome. The woodwinds / brass manage to penetrate partially due to the specific nature of their inversion, as do the strings. That said, there is still tension unilaterally within each voicing. The woodwind and trombone voicings are a little close; the gap from the low E to the A above is a 4 th but it is still a little ‘raspy’. The C# above (3 rd ) adds warmth and makes the sound a little smoother. The strings are voiced farer apart although there is still tension in the 6 th interval between the low C# and the A above. When people refer to cues such as this as sounding foreboding, sinister and menacing, we often need to look vertically from top to bottom of the chords, rather than at melody. Often it is specific inversions and how these are voiced for orchestral textures that make the difference and offer a real sense of colour. In addition and literally on top of these voicings we have the distinct sound of a compound m2 interval between the E and F notes on violins; because this is a constant feature which runs throughout this section, the dissonance inherent in the interval functions is audibly indecipherable and functions almost as sonic interference.

The cue ‘race to resting rock’ comes eighteen minutes into the film and exudes feelings of simplicity, hope and happiness, tinged with tiny tensions and splashes of harmonic colour. Looking firstly at the accompanying violas (2 nd stave up), we can see and hear the colours created by the fluctuating harmonies: between the indistinct, hazy opaqueness of 2 nd /4 th intervals to the certainty of the 1 st & 3 rd and 3 rd /5 th intervals (bars one and three). The same set of notes creates much more striking intervals of #4/6 and (and once again the certainty of the 3/5 on bars two and four. The piece seems to subtly float in and out of harmonic focus .

Fig.37 Movie – 00.18.16 ‘Audio - Race to resting rock’

6 6 6 6 6 6 4 5 5 5 5 4 4 5 5 5 5 4 3 3 #4 #4 3 3 3 #4 #4 #4 3 #4 3 3 3 3 3 2 1 2 1 3 3 1 2 1 2 1

Lucius into the woods page 63 – film 00.24.19 01.04.02

In bar five the melody appears, in which colourful extensions again play a prominent part, played by flutes and ocarinas. What could loosely be described as the ‘love theme’ from the movie is to be found in the track ‘those we don’t speak of’, which features some technically precise solo performances on violin from Hilary Hahn.

Although this piece is used to play the film out, it also comes earlier, emphasising a rescue scene which reverts to slow-motion just as Joaquin Phoenix’s character saves Ivy from what they assume are creatures attacking the town’s homes. The frantic semiquaver triplet violin motif is texturally and harmonically prominent. The line is so fast we can’t possibly hear or listen to the individual notes, so instead we gravitate to top note of each group of twelve quaver triplets. We hear the rest of the notes as horizontal harmony, with the notes providing arpegiated versions of the underlying chords. Fig.38 Movie - 32.30 and 01.37.26 (end titles) Audio ‘Those we don’t speak of’ 2.36

Solo violin

1st violins / synth

2nd violins

Violas

Cellos

Basses

Harp / Piano

Solo violin

1st violins / synth

2nd violins

Violas

Cellos

Basses

Harp / Piano

Solo violin

1st violins / synth

2nd violins

Violas

Cellos

Basses

Harp / Piano

Again, as with many cues from this film, the vivid colours created by harmonic tensions (which enable the piece to communicate so well) are to be found in the internal orchestration. Below we have a version of the same cue minus the visually distracting semiquaver triplet solo violin line (and the harp).

For starters we can see the prominence of extra colourful extensions, not on the top of the chord but in the middle of the voicings and in the internal lines. We can also see consistencies; for example the reoccurring 2 nd and 4 th intervals in the harmony and counterpoint. There are also some beautifully slightly sonically muddy lower harmonies, particularly on bars nine-twelve, where the basses and cellos follow their own narrative. The bass movement from the root of the Cm chord in bar eight to the F note (inverted 5 th ) of the Bb chord in bar nine is interesting because, as we have seen many times in film music, it ensures the chordal movements aren’t always parallel and creates drama in the movement. The bass movement in bars nine-twelve includes the line moving from F (inverted 5 th ) through Eb (4 th ) and D (3 rd ), creating some nice dramatic moments; perhaps the most dramatic of these is the D bass in bar twelve, which, being the inverted 2 nd , creates a palpable sense of tension. Fig.39

5th (C) becomes ……...the 4 th

add2 (inner voices)

add2

th st 4 1 violins / synth

add2

2nd violins

Violas

Cellos

Basses

* The drama of the inversion and the slash chord

th THE 13 FLOOR Harald Klosser

A group of scientists have created a simulated world inside a computer. The inhabitants of the simulated world have a life of their own but people can ‘plug in’ to take over a character and live their life. None of the characters in the world are aware it isn’t real and life goes on for them even when there is no human intervention. One of the scientists makes a shocking discovery which questions what is real and what is a simulation. The following cue could be described as the ‘romantic theme’ because of where it appears in the movie and the context of its use, but it also acts on a much broader level; the emotion of the piece is melancholy and reflective. It exudes a sadness that addresses not just the romantic element of the movie but the wider sombre, forlorn and sorrowful narrative of the movie as a whole.

Fig.40 Movie – 01.10.15 & 01.28.30 Audio – ‘Hall is Dead’ #11 - #4

Contrary motion

The tension and release of the sus chord resolving

#11 9

In addition to its use in this film, for which it was originally written, this cue is a widely used sci-fi piece which has been used in numerous film and television contexts, as well as trailers. It is an extremely evocative piece of writing which makes great use of distinctive textures and equally distinct chords and voicing. Why? Firstly, how many pieces do we know which begin on such a transitory chord? Expect the unexpected with film music; when a specific moment in a piece of music move you, it is probably not what it did but what it didn’t. In this case it began with a chord which is more used to being placed elsewhere in a piece, during a transition from one chord to another. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

Pieces that start on a dominant 7 th chord are quite rare and ones which begin on a 7 th with b9 chord are rarer still. The 7 th b9 chord has a romantic, almost tragic air when used softly and with deliberation. If it used more directly and overtly, using brash instrumentation, it can sound theatrical and dated, but when used with soft slow and languid strings the affect is noticeably subtler. Add to this recipe, as I said earlier, the fact that what is normally a transitory chord comes from nowhere, unannounced, at the beginning, following a long and low octave bass note which does not in any way prepare you for the chord on bar four.

When we examine distinctive extensions such as the flattened 9 th we naturally tend to rationalise them according to their relationship with the root. In this case we are drawn toward the tension between the b9 (Ab) and the root (G). But when we ignore the root we find that the notes that are left almost create a diminished chord. In many ways a 7 th b9 chord is only one step away from a diminished chord; it is in many ways a subtler version. And when we look at the b9 itself (the Ab, bar four) and look at its relationship with the note below it in the voicing on bar four (the B) we find that it is the distinctive maj 6 th interval (‘My Way’, ‘Music of the Night’ ‘Angel’ ‘My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean’). Also the Ab and lower B both resolve in opposite directions, creating an internal contrary motion.

The point is that this five-part voicing of the b9 chord contains many different and contributory colours and tensions. When these are delivered slow and deliberately we capitalise on these factors. An almost identical thing happens in the movie Apollo 13 in a sequence where the stricken spacecraft heads behind the dark side of the moon to join a free return trajectory journey back to Earth. Again there is a subtle build-up, followed by the ghostly 7 th /b9 chord.

Fig.41 Apollo 13 Movie 01.07.30 Audio - The Dark Side of the Moon 01.00

Returning to The 13 th Floor and consulting the melody section below, if we analyse the distinctive solo voice melody and the way it interacts with the supporting harmonies we can see some important harmonic events which add colour and distinction to the phrase. Firstly, if we view the D and Bb melody notes in bar three of fig.42 (bar seventeen of fig.40) as 10 th and 8 th of a Bb chord (rather than as #11 and 9 th ) we can together see they almost create the feel of a Bb chord over the filmic Ab/C chord underneath. This gives the piece a very spacious, airy polyharmonic feel. Add to this the change between the Cm (second half of bar to, below) to the Ab/C (bar three) which is created by the physical movement of just one note.

Fig.42

Eb = m3 rd th Eb = 5 C = root C = maj3 rd

The filmic inversion

th F note (6 ) and D note (b5) create a mini Bb dynamic which blurs lightly with the Ab chord

Add to all this the subtle ‘quasi Bb’ poly-feel of the D and F notes in bar seven, above, and also the beautiful cello line which in bar four hits the Bb underneath the Ab/C chord which has the solo voice melody note sitting on the Bb above; the Bb (9 th of the Ab/C chord) is bookended vertically at either end of the voicing. On top of this we have the B note (maj 7 th of the Cm chord, bar five) merging with the F (cello, bottom stave, bar six) to create a quasi G7 chord within the existing chord. What all this shows is that the piece is awash with colour, with the different extensions and harmonic context being distributed subtly to create a texturally and harmonically ghost-like feel.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU Thomas Newman

In The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon’s character discovers that life on earth is manipulated by a clandestine group of agents following a plan of their ‘executive chief’. Seem by some as a story about God and angels and by others about the programmers of a simulated world, The Adjustment Bureau is full of subtext. Some have ventured to suggest that the narrative addresses the vested interests of the global corporate world that influences government, manipulates oil prices and provoke wars. The important point here is how does Newman’s music represent the film’s story and overall premise?

On a surface level the film deals with life and the series of coincidences that seem to guide us to some predetermined destiny. Through an interesting science-fiction thriller with romance at its core, the film uncovers the fact that coincidence isn’t real and that most of the important things are planned beforehand. The movie is based on a Philip K Dick story about a legion of ‘adjusters’ who move and change events to be sure everything proceeds according to ‘the plan’. The adjusters are essentially agents for the ‘higher power’. The basis for the romantic angle of the film is when two characters who, according to the plan, are not supposed to be together, meet and fall in love. The film plots the ‘adjusters’ trying to prevent the relationship from progressing. The movie is a cross between science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romantic drama. This presents issues in terms of what the musical ‘voice’ of the film is going to be. Newman wrote an enchanting and intelligent score which succeeds in portraying a blurred reality; parts of the score are intensely beautiful whilst sometimes retaining a faint, distant, indistinct far-away feel. In particular the music which bookends the film at the opening and at 01.41.23 is entrancing, absorbing and hypnotic.

Fig.43 Movie opener & 01.41.23 Audio – ‘Four Elections’ Splashes of colour Em7

Unilaterally the Unilaterally the piano implies Unilaterally the piano implies piano implies a D a G chord an Am chord chord

Em7 Am6/9

The piece enjoys the consistency and uniformity of a repeating idea (the piano motif) but also experiences brief, almost imperceptible splashes of colour, such as the m6 created by the C note high in the strings on bar five. Also what adds to the slightly dreamy sound, apart from the reverb and the instrument textures obviously, are the different unilateral harmonic colours created by different instrument lines and note groupings. The piano line creates a definite ‘G’ feel but with the strings added the piano notes are part of an Em context. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

To a degree you could say the same thing about most music; if you isolate specific parts they generate an independent unilateral harmonic context. The difference with this is that the two chords (G and Eomit3) are stated by different textured instruments, so they retain a sense of their own individuality. When you hear the opening few bars, although the chord that works is Em7, you do really feel like you’re listening to two contexts (a G and an Eomit3 combined). Few people would know the names of the chords or understand these factors but everybody benefits. So when people sometimes refer to music sounding dreamy, it pays to look beyond the textures. If you factor in the D implied chord in bar nine and the implied Am chord in bars five and fourteen, this reverbed interplay between G, Em, D and Am becomes a little blurred; polyharmony is part of what creates the dreamy feel.

The next piece to be analysed is a track entitled ‘None of them are you’ – another beautifully haunting piece

Fig.44 Audio – ‘None of them are you’

Cor Anglais 11 4 8 8 2 3 3 7 7

1 1 1 5 5

Key centre established… …then our c expectations are confounded

The effortless shift from 4/4 to 3/4 momentarily wrong-foots us

This is an interesting piece, not least because of how it creates such a wonderfully sublime feel. The piece begins with the textbook Thomas Newman synth/sample line on the middle stave (the ambiguity of the single E note followed by an E and F# together, eventually resolving to the ‘nearly’ minor chord), together with the haunting reverbed Cor Anglais. The main point here is that the key centre of Em gradually becomes established, only to be confounded when the piece arrives at bar five with the bass note of A appearing. The middle stave grouping on bar four – E(root), G(min3) and A(4 th ) bleeds over into bar five but ‘becomes’ (thanks the intervallic recontextualisation of the chord by the A bass) the 5 th , 7 th and 8 th . On bar six the D note is added, representing the 11 th . Composers often garner reactions in listeners by virtue of expectations being raised only to be confounded. This is a popular compositional device in music generally and especially in film. A similar thing happens again during the transition from bars nine/ten and eleven onwards. The effortless shift from 4/4 to 3/4 is so subtle that we hardly feel it in the kind of conventional, obvious and overt way we normally would. Normally time changes cause a more direct response from listeners because they are deliberate and form part of the process of the piece. This one wrong-foots us precisely because it only becomes apparent gradually and is not perceived and ‘felt’ until a few bars after bar eleven. This is partly because beat one of bar eleven is not stated by the string/sample chords. When we hear the chord we assume it is stating beat 2/3 of a 4/4 bar, so it is actually the transition from bar eleven to twelve where things seem ever-so-slightly strange. The crotchet triplets just prior to bar eleven also cause slightly rhythmic confusion. All these factors combine and conspire to make the piece seem a little out-of-focus. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

THE CORE Christopher Young

A series of disturbances caused by instability in the Earth’s electromagnetic field lead scientists to discover that the Earth’s core has stopped rotating; within a year the Earth’s electromagnetic field will collapse, which, naturally, will destroy all life on earth. Scientists develop a plan with the United States government to bore into the Earth’s core with a top-secret machine and plant a series of nuclear charges at precise points to restart the core’s motion and restore the field. The score is by Christopher Young, who delivered a score that was both intimate and, at times, bombastic. The director told Young he didn’t want the score “to have that excessive pomposity that some of these disaster movies have.” Young stated that he was consequently worried about overwriting and would ask himself, “Am I going to squash this movie?” Certainly Young didn’t squash the movie or overwrite but the orchestra was huge, numbering a hundred before the choral overdubs. That said, the writing remains emotional and at time sensitive. The first section we’re going to have a look at comes early in the movie during a visually stunning sequence which shows the Space Shuttle preparing for re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Fig.45 Movie – 00.11.05 Audio ‘Project Destiny’ 00.30

Choir / strings

As ever the questions we pose are what is the function of the music? Also, what does it do that pictures / words alone do not, why is it there, why does it work and how does it work. There is an angelic innocence, almost a mystical quality, created by the choral line. The Bb and Ebm string chords are so rapid that they effectively almost function as one; the Gb note in the Ebm chord thus ‘becomes’ the #5 of the Bb chord and equally the D note within the Bb chord ‘sounds’ like the maj7 of the Ebm chord. This harmonic blurredness, which throws the #5 into a major chord and the maj7 into a minor chord, helps foster the ‘dreamy’ feel within the movie (see fig.46, below). Also the #5 interval is an interval which is well-known for fostering a feeling of strangeness; this, after all, is the interval on which some parts of the main theme from Signs depended.

D note Fig.46 Gb note The first D note in bar one we hear as the 3 rd of the Bb chord but subsequent ones can be almost rationalised and ‘felt’ as maj7s of an Ebm chord. The first and subsequent Gb notes we hear in bar two can almost be ‘felt’ as #5s of a bb chord How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

We can also spot the #5 interval in less obvious places; not subtly implied with chords but also within chord sequences. The figure below is taken from bars three and four of the original cue. The move from the Bb chord (which comes every down-beat of bar one) to the F#m chord (which begins every down-beat in bar two of the figure below) is itself a #5.

Fig.47 Once again I feel obliged to point out that this these observations are not made to make a purely theoretical point; the #5 interval, whether it is stated in a chord, employed in a melody or, as in this case, is the interval between two successive chords, is something that is palpable; something which is heard and felt and sensed by listeners and something which helps create and define the music and how we interpret it.

SCISSORHANDS SCISSORHANDS

BOND BOND Fig.48 When we hear the section from bar five and six of fig.45 (transcribed separately in fig.48), it sounds both furtive m and slightly mystical, almost like Edward Scissorhands meet James Bond . If we examine the chords and the choral line we can see the direct and indisputable link which confirms that the extension / intervals create specific emotions and feelings. The Edward Scissorhands score featured the maj6 interval over the minor chord regularly within the film; it became almost a sonic identifier; a harmonic indicator. Likewise the classic ‘Bond’ chord features the maj7 over a minor chord .

Turning to the last four bars of the original transcription, transcribed separately below (fig.49), we can see once again how the intervals of the notes play a crucial role; the top chord voicings go down (choir/strings), the chords themselves go up (from Ab to Bb) and the moving parts in the middle stave are nearly identical whilst the intervals the notes represent go down from bar one to two. Technical as theoretical as this may sound, it is precisely these kinds of almost undetectable internal harmonic dynamics (obviously along with many other factors such as instrumentation, texture etc) which give music its flavour and ‘feel’.

Fig.49

Choir / strings Internal lines

Brass / woodwind / strings

The next section of the film we’re going to examine comes during a pivotal scene in which Dr Josh Keyes, whose research has uncovered the problem, explains to a gathering of politicians and military the consequences of the earth’s core stopping spinning. It is in many ways an atypical cliched scene (played out in dozens of action films involving the government and the military) in which the ‘hero’ attempts to explain ‘the bottom line’ to a bunch of uniformed and suited authority figures. What sets this scene apart from dozens like it is the music which ends the scene. Angered by his audience not ‘getting it’, Keyes says “Even if we somehow came up with a brilliant plan to fix the core, we just can’t get there.” This is followed by a cryptic comment by Dr Conrad Zimsky (a scientist in the audience who clearly knows more than he is letting on) who says “Yes, but what if we could.”

Fig. 50 Movie – 00.26.34

“Even if we somehow came up with a brilliant “Yes, but...... what if we could? plan to fix the core, we just can't get there.”

The bit to watch and listen to here is how the music glides from the dissonant, ‘creepy’ high strings in bars one and two, to the final two chords which begin on beat two of bar three; although still dissonant, there is a distinct change in flavour to something more settled, albeit still ‘strange’ sounding. Looking carefully at bar three we can see that the string notes of Db and F state ‘almost’ a Db chord whilst the low and resonantly voiced horns and trombones state a clean E chord. This is classic polyharmony but where elements of both chords harmonically ‘meet in the middle’ (the G# of the E chord on horns/trombones can also double as the missing Ab note in the Db string chord. The reason this polyharmony works so well is because both conflicting chords manage to ‘breath’. This happens again with the last chord in the sequence which ends the scene perfectly; this time we have the root and 3 rd of the Eb chord stated by woodwinds and strings. At the bottom of both of these voicings is a G#. This G# ties the chord to the ‘other chord’ of E which is stated in the low brass. The key point here is that the Eb note (woodwinds/string) has a parafunction in that it also (enharmonically) constitutes the maj7 of the lower E chord. Once again this is exceptionally clever writing, not just because it presents such interesting theoretical conundrums but because the harmonic aspects we’ve discussed are so much a part of why it communicates. It creates polyharmony but does so in a subtle, effortless way which sounds both ‘nice’ and ‘weird’ simultaneously.

We can hear the ‘top chord’ almost unilaterally as an Eb

If we contextualise the G# as being part of the E chord, then we realise what we have is an Eb chord over an E chord

The horns / trombones we hear as E

The scene which ends with the chord above edits into a fast-paced scene with loud sound design which shows a helicopter flying in the desert to meet a man who, it turns out, has created the technology which could be used to allow a ship to travel through the earth to its core.

The maj3 rd sounds squeamishly out of place because of the disorientating melodic context in which it sits.

(4) G b5) Fig.51 Movie - 00.26.48 A note (m6) (maj3)

th (4 ) (maj3) (min3)1 maj2 (m2)

The min 3 rd sounds strange because it is preceded by the min 2 nd .

This cue is interesting, once again because of how it encompasses dissonance, using it effectively in the melody, making the solo trumpet even more piercing that it would normally be. The trumpet begins on the A (min6 th ); thinking about it logically there is nothing remotely ‘weird’ about this interval, except perhaps when it sticks around for an entire semibreve and, above all else, when it’s a surprise. By ‘surprise’ what I mean is that normally the min6th interval would be delivered in context of a greater melodic development. It would invariably be a passing note. The point I make is that, as ever, context is the main arbiter of precise harmonic character within a piece.

The intervals that follow are interesting too. I have placed ‘explosion’ shapes around the ones which ‘stick out’. The trumpet, having begun on the min 6 th moves to the 4 th , 5 th , maj 3 rd and b5 th . The one which is interesting here is the maj3 rd , which ought, in theory at least, to be the least interesting. It now sounds squeamishly out of place, but only because of the disorientating melodic context in which it sits. The seeds of the disorientating maj 3rd lay not in the 3 rd but in the notes which preceded it. Context is everything.

The accompanying rhythmic movement on strings/woodwind/brass flirts between the C# and G#. We don’t know if this is meant to imply a major or minor chord, which means that more attention is drawn to the 3rds as we try to make sense of the piece. Later on, the next phrase which begins on bar seven starts with an F# - the 4 th of the C# (omit3) chord. This time when the maj3rd appears, following the 4 th and maj 2 nd , it doesn’t seem so out of place. That said, the min 3 rd (bar eight) sounds strange because it is preceded by the min 2 nd . Again, context is everything. With harmony few things happen in a vacuum.

THE EVENT Scott Starrett

The Event (typographically stylized THE EV ƎNT) is an American television sci-fi series. The plot centres on a group of human-looking aliens, some of whom have been detained by the United States government for sixty- six years since their ship crashed in Alaska, while others have secretly assimilated among the general populace.

In keeping with quite a few modern American TV series, there is no title music as such; typically an episode will simply begin and after five minutes a very brief title sequence will begin. In the case of The Event , the words ‘the event’ appear, alongside a brief singular chord accompanied by percussion. How Film & TV Music Communicate – Vol. III – text copyright © 2015 Brian Morrell

Fig.52

th Trumpets rd 5 Strings 3 rd st 3 1 st th 1 m 6 th rd 5 3 rd Horns 3 1st Trombones

The notes heard as part of a The notes heard as part of an Gm chord Eb chord

Strings

If you ask yourself how a piece which features only one chord can communicate the sense of drama required for this science fiction thriller, perhaps the answer is that it only seems like it’s one chord. The notes are all stated at once and it doesn’t possess an overt sense of dissonance, and yet there is still something strained about it; something unsettled, anxious and uneasy. The slightly uncomfortable nature of the sound stems from the fact that Eb and Gm chords are playing simultaneously. On the bottom stave we have the Gm chord, voiced for a combination of strings and brass. On the top stave we have an inverted Eb chord, vertically bookended by the G. The obvious clash is the b9 interval which separates the Eb on the top stave and the Ds on the bottom stave. The wider issues is not just the physical clash but the intervallic context of the notes; the D represents the 5 th of the Gm chord whereas we can’t help but hear the Eb in the top stave as the 1 st of the inverted Eb chord. Therefore what we grapple with and what causes the slightly uncomfortable feeling is the physical clash between Eb and D, the b9 interval between those notes and the interval that both notes represent within their own chord. As if that wasn’t enough, we will also hear the Eb as a min6 of the lower Gm chord. This maelstrom of colours and tensions is subtle but clear enough for it to cause anxiety.

SUPER 8 Michael Giacchano

Director J.J.Abrams called Super 8 a coming-of-age sci-fi film; ‘a love letter to Steven Spielberg’. For the movie Michael Giacchino composed a score which, in some ways, harked back to the warm and occasionally bombastic 80s scores of John Williams. The first track on the soundtrack album is heard at the top of the film; it encompasses two distinct, memorable and different themes that are heard throughout the film in different lengths and orchestrations. One theme is brief but full of angst, drama and a deep sense of foreboding, whilst the other, representing the deeper aspects of the film, is melodic, warm and rich in colour and romance. Cues from the movie range from wistful and whimsical, through to bombastic and majestic.

Fig.60 Audio ‘Super 8’

th Maj 6 over a minor chord but without the th 5 th th 9 and maj 7 rd th th withou t the 3 or 5 Maj 6 over an incomplete F chord (without the 3 rd )

If we examine which bits of this cue are dramatic and foreboding we have no further to look than the opening five bars; equally if we’re trying to locate the romantic warmth, it is easily located from bar eight. These are well crafted sections where the emotion is overt and unconcealed. As ever our question is, how does the music create such distinct emotions? The harmony and voicings in the first few bars are important; the first few bars contain fractured and incomplete harmonies. Fractured or incomplete harmony might be described as a kind of harmonic minimalism, depriving listeners of the usual harmonic signifiers which help complete the colour chord. If such chords have extensions this brings disproportionate and slightly different colour to the extensions and how they sound within the chord, because they are not surrounded by all the usual chordal terrain; extensions traditionally rely on the surrounding harmonic landscape for their exact colour.

Also there some dense, ‘crispy’ brass (and string) voicing in the bottom register. The prominent ones are listed below:

• Bar four, beat 1, bottom stave – 4th interval low, brass, C to F • Bar four, beat 2, third stave down - 6th between bottom G and E above and min3 between the E and G • Bar four, beat 2, fourth stave - min3 rd between E and G • Bar four, beat 3, fourth stave – min3 rd between F to Ab

All this is in stark contrast to what comes afterwards from bar eight of fig.60 (transcribed separately, below). Beautiful and enticing harmony and counterpoint fill the first few bars. The voicing is sparse before giving way to a fuller more majestic voicing from bar five (of fig.61) onwards. Another interesting thing about this section is that the change from sparse to full voicing creates a dynamic within the piece – perhaps something we could refer to as the ‘voicing contour arc’.

Fig.61