All Due Respect to The Maestro

I don’t know John, and he doesn’t know me. Which is good… I don’t want him to.

Build Your Own Temp

Do you ever wonder “why” a piece of music works in a scene? Does it just bug the ever-loving crap out you, like it does me, when you play your hard work for your director only to have him or her look at you blankly and utter the words “That just doesn’t work for me”? I hate hearing those words come out of my director’s mouth. I want him or her to be pleased on first listen. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way and it is our job as the composer to find out why it doesn’t work that way. Music is so subjective and so personal that I often wonder privately things…

Houston Haynes: Studio Workflow and Lateral Thinking

Being a film composer often means having a process “locked down”. We must be able to work quickly, and make the transition from inspiration-to-perspiration-to-production in the blink of an eye. Composers like to think of themselves as “lateral thinkers”, but because of the time pressures involved we each can be as dogmatic as any specialist. It may start out as a new approach to solving a problem, but once we’ve found a unique way of getting things done, the tendency is to “box it in” and not budge from that successful path. Honestly, I find that tendency to be a bit unsettling. I’m always concerned about becoming too set in my ways, mainly because it…

Gateway Scores: Alien

I don’t know if this is a true story. Richard Burton was playing the lead in a comedy on Broadway. Before making his entrance he told the stage manager, “Tonight, I’m gonna make ‘em cry”. He went on and, as promised, he brought the audience to tears when they should have been laughing. With the greatest respect to the ghost of Richard Burton, film music can also evoke tears, tension, fright and every other conceivable emotion. Speaking of ghosts, I’ve sat many times on an empty Fox scoring stage wondering how Joseph Mankiewicz reacted the first time he heard Bernard Hermann’s main title of “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir”. Did Mankiewicz break down in tears?…