I saw Hitchock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much yesterday, it’s been a couple of years since I saw this one last, and I try to see every movie Bernard Herrmann has scored once or more, as this man was a genius at scoring film music. Now, to be fair, he didn’t score all the music in this music, not even the thing I will talk about next, the use of Arthur Benjamin’s Cantata which he just re-orchestrated.

Anyway, in the last one fifth of the movie there’s this famous scene where a states person is about to be murdered during a concert in Albert Hall, where Herrmann is actually the conductor.

I don’t want to write any spoilers for anyone who has not seen this movie (if not, you should really watch it, just the movie scoring is amazing). Anyway, the cymbals play an important role. The whole scenario of music leading up to this point, with the leading actress Doris Day having an angst if she will tell about what will happen or not, with the music pushing her emotions up one level after another, is one of those magical movie scenarios worth watching. There’s actually no dialog for many minutes, just music, Doris Day with her emotions, and the scenes leading up to the murder attempt.

Herrmann then did the most famous film violin music done ever, the murder part in Psycho, and did the scores for what some say the most influential movie ever, Citizen Kane, but that’s another story.

Ok, I was watching this youtube movie set from Taxi about how easy it is to make music for TV and films (and make lots of money). I don’t know, don’t like to directly criticize someone directly, but I do think it’s good to have a uniqueness when making film or TV music, instead of just doing like anyone else.

So, as Taxi promised to make a 40 second snippet in 30 minutes, I did this in 20 minutes, composing/mixing/mastering, with me brushing my teeth during the same time, too. Here’s Taxi of the Third (right mouse on the Mac to download). Feel free to use it for any film/TV projects you have out there. It should loop fine, too.

Note I might go in and fix and make it longer, or maybe not, I’m drowning in half-made material just now…

For those who like details, this is a 16-bar song with three themes, 80 bpm, done in Logic (hence why it was so fast to put together). The Pad is an ES2 patch, the drums done with various Ultrabeat sounds, with the intention to hit the oddest syncopes you could do in a minute or two. The bass is from a Zebra 2 patch, and there are some other odd sounds from a Zebra patch, and an EXS24 effect pad. All mixed within a minute using Ozone 3. On we go.

This is something that I found a couple of months ago, and wish I knew about it long time ago. The nice thing with looping in Logic is that you just drag in the upper right corner of the MIDI track to extend a region so it loops multiple times. The bad thing is that you usually want to turn the loop into a real midi track segment at some point, as you want to edit individual MIDI notes to make things more variated.

Well, Logic always had the menu option in the Region-Parameters called Turn Loops into Real Copies. And the default command shortcut is comand-option-control-L. So now it’s a breeze for me to just let it loop, and when I want to go in and start making a different kind of MIDI segment, use this to get me a copy of real MIDI notes. Bye-bye copy/paste of midi segments. Duh.

I’m not a member of Taxi, but I’ve been on their mailing list for a very long time, as the postings are very good, they talk about the music publishing business, and so on.

Anyway, some days ago I got a special deal for a free review of a track by a Taxi reviewer. So I scanned through material and found something, and sent it off today.

The problem I’ve had with Taxi, as I assume, is that film material sent in should fall into certain specific styles, if possibly mimic:ing existing artists and styles. And I just don’t have time to do that — the few hours each day I have for studio work is reserved for private and personal music, not sounding like let’s say Nine Inch Nails.

I’ve had some correspondence with companies licensing music to film/tv/commercials. On one specific case they asked me to sound like a contemporary drum&bass band, but I just balked, of the same reason. If I do music, it better be something unique and different.

Anyway, I could be wrong. So I scanned through my list of tracks that have not been released — they have piled up recently — and picked out one that was electronica, but could maybe be used for film or tv productions. I also sent in a letter explaining the current dilemma with us electronica producers, our music is fresh in the world, but not in USA, so we always have a harder time bubbling up.

Anyway, if I get any results back, and interesting feedback, I will share it. Meanwhile, if nothing else, subscribe to the taxi newsletters. They are free, and have interesting insights into how to sell music.

I was testing my new studio setup, so this was a ten-minute job, but if somone wants to use it for film or whatever…

See the film section.

I didn’t know that there were many good presets for final mixdown setups in Logic, I took one and just used it all across the mix.

Here’s another Telefunk Boys video uploaded to Youtube: Killer Gameboy!

If you are a really old-timer gamer, check out all the references to ancient Atari games. My son Riker learned those when visiting a friend that had an old Atari system. Little did I know that he remembered them all when doing the animations…

OK, here’s one of three videos we did about 10 months ago. We invented this spoof elecronica band called Telefunk Boys, and then my sons did the animation and editing while I put together the music in about 30 minutes or less.

Been a while, busy at work. Anyway, had an hour to spare on Saturday, so back to composition mode. This this Clock Ticking, Local Train Arrives in about 30 minutes.

But the real exercise was to see if I could live with using Logic Pro 7 with no external software synths and plugins or not? The reason is that just now I have a hard time concerning upgrading my studio computer setup, which is a G4 2×867 PowerMac. Each time I’m about to get the next system, Apple hints at new hardware, first it was the dual core PowerPC chips, and how it seems that Apple might release the Intel-based desktop systems far faster than anyone anticipated. Apple HW engineering is doing a good job — which puts me into a dilemma.

I don’t want to spend money on a 2x G5 system just now, as the dual Core Intel chips will have a performance increase of at least 2x, if not more.

However, there’s this iMac that Apple just released. I could maybe live with this system for 6-12 months, and after that purchase an Intel Mac desktop and give the iMac to my over-productive graphics expert son for his experiments.

In that scenario I need software tools that work with Intel chips, and the Logic upgrades in March will provide this suppport. However, again, it will take a while before the third party plugins are updated.

Going back to the first sentence, phew, hence I’m trying to use Logic only for a while to see if this is doable or not. It is absolutely a modus operadi — actually it forces me to think more about composition and editing rather than chasing for that elusive sound that might lurk in a specific plugin somewhere in the universe.

This reminds me why Woody Allen is so productive writing scripts on his sofa with a pen and a block of paper.

Been busy doing non-music work for a while, sorry, need to make money for the family. Anyway, uploaded a short 40 second film music snippet done tonight, The Playful Hitman. Testing out Urs’ Zebra 2 synthesizer, quite a good SW synth!

Don’t ask me how the song names are created, there’s a hint somewhere else in the blog what tools are used when someone is in a hurry.

Ok, just got a confirmation letter, the film music podcast is now part of the iTunes podcast directory, it should show up under Music. Not that there are so many podcasts in that directory, so it’s like a needle in the hay stack, but hopefully someone finds it so they could use music for their indie productions.

My son and I invented Unternet today, it’s like another dimension of Internet. We have half of the animations done, rest should follow tomorrow, meanwhile I uploaded the “Going through the Unternet Tunnel” background music up in the Film Section. Fun with Ableton Live, flangers and backwards loops.

Finally convinced my son to build a couple of flash movies needed. This is The Cosmic Clapper!

At the same time, we found The End of Internet, very spooky, didn’t realize the end was at our web site….

To get latest film music along the way, subscribe to the Film Music Podcast

I have a lot of film music material, just need to export it along the way. I will also export this podcast via iTunes in case the material reaches a bigger audience that might need such material.

See The Film Section for latest film music I’m working on, and uploading to the site. The page has more information about the licensing deals, it’s a good one for any indie film maker, that’s for sure.

If there’s a movie with one of the best movie sound tracks ever, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest with music by Bernard Herrmann should be one of the top five.

It’s not just the music sequences, such as the build-up for the famous chase down the presidental statues in South Dakota, it’s also the taste of not adding any music to the scenes such as the air-plane chase. No music in the sound track makes the farm land feel very isolated and raw.

Hermann also switches between romantic themes, and terror themes, within seconds, quite elegant movie music. For a while I was just listening and not watching the TV (not that I’ve seen this movie many times, including on big screen in Palo Alto, if you have a chance to see North by Northwest on big screen, do it).