Your Film Music Origin Story
- This topic has 15 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 4 days, 20 hours ago by
.
-
Posts
-
We’ve all probably related this in other forums throughout the years, but it’s always interesting to chart our histories.
Do you remember how you first got into film music? What’s your story?
My thumb is going to be worn down doing this from my smartphone. Will write something when I am at a keyboard.
He, he. I’ll do my own story later too, but I always save these kinds of posts for the weekends, after having opened a beer or poured a glass of wine. Makes the posts delightfully mushy.
I will never be able to remember the specifics of this thing, like so many other people do with apparent ease.
But I’ve come to terms with a theory that goes thusly:
When I “graduated” from kiddie records to proper music listening in the mid 80s, it was influenced by my dad’s music, and whatever cassettes he donated to me. Things he had taped off of his friend’s LPs, for example. 50’s rock’n’roll, 60s pop music, 70s prog rock/art rock etc.. That became my first real passion. I hated classical music, and was only sporadically interested in whatever was current at the time.
In the late 80s, I started to discover things on my own. Electronic music via (primarily) Jean Michel Jarre, orchestral music via (primarily) those “London Symphony Orchestra Plays Classic Rock” albums.
Then came TWIN PEAKS, ca. 1990. Adored the show, wrote a mini-novel inspired by it and made a cassette copy off of a friend’s CD, with my own, hand-drawn cover. My first instrumental soundtrack, I think. A mild soundtrack curiousity was trigged. Around the same time, I saw THE ABYSS on VHS, and remember lying on the floor as the brilliant end credit music rolled, wondering if soundtracks had the same kind of “concept album” feel I loved in electronic music and prog rock. The film music awareness was properly born. Then with JURASSIC PARK in ’93, the interest was cemented once and for all. So TWIN PEAKS, THE ABYSS, JURASSIC PARK…those are the three scores I credit with my film music interest.
Interestingly, my soundtrack album interest ran parallell to my film interest, but they didn’t have much to do with each other. I wanted soundtrack albums because they were concept albums, whereas film-music-in-context was part of a wider interest in filmatic tools. Hence why I’ve never had any interest in C&C releases.
I think that’s about it, truncated to be as short as possible, like an OST release. 😉
Here’s my edited history:
First off, my experience with music for film and television is a very personal – perhaps some would say solitary – experience. I had no influences growing up from family or friends with me getting into listening to scores. And, even today, I very much keep my score-listening experience pretty much to myself: always on headphones, or when I have the house to myself. I’ve had too much ridicule over the years to want to share it with anyone (other than like-minded people online).
Probably, my earliest experience of scores was as part of my television watching. TV theme tunes were what first attracted me. And sometimes, when music teachers at high school had a lesson to fill, there would be TV theme tune competitions where the class had to identify the themes played. Those were great lessons! These quizzes tended to be from compilation tapes of Geoff Love and his Orchestra albums. And, these LPs were a great introduction to TV themes and later film scores.
TV was really my first exposure to film scores as well. Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one film score that sticks in my mind as one of the examples where I would tape the score off the television (we’ve all done that!). I didn’t do that too often as most films had too much dialogue. Taping things off the TV tended to be themes.
The original Star Trek and old Laurel and Hardy short films are other early examples of music that I grew very familiar with (because of the endless repeats on TV).
Probably my earliest film score purchase was John Williams’ STAR WARS, and it was that that got me into film music soundtracks. I can’t remember which came first the film or the soundtrack (bought because of the hype surrounding the film, and the clips that would be shown to promote the film – the TIE fighter scene was always being shown on TV and it had a great piece of music associated with it). Probably between the late 1970s and mid-80s I would buy soundtrack albums from films whose music I liked when I was watching the film. And this period probably represents film music that I am most familiar with: a combination of a limited number of albums in my collection, and constantly watching the films (on video) to see how the music fitted meant that I got to know the music on these albums really well.
Unlike a lot of people who enjoy film music, I have no real interest in the craft of film-making. My listening experience of film (and TV) music has never been tied to any great extent with the films (except for the early part I mentioned before). So, my experience with film and television music became more and more about whether or not I enjoyed the music as I heard it on the albums. Were there themes that I liked? Was there lovely romantic music? Was the action music exciting? The genre of film and television music gave composers a way of writing lots of music across a wide range of styles and genres. And I was interested in hearing all there was to see if I liked any of it. I wasn’t really bothered about how it fitted to the film. Except in a few, rare examples. Hearing Elliot Goldenthal’s music for TITUS is a good example of where I heard the music and just had to see the film to understand (at least partly) what on earth inspired him to write the music I had heard.
My favourite composers are also down to their styles of music writing rather than being anything about how they approach writing music to picture. Composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Howard Shore, Jerry Goldsmith write music that tends to speak to me. But I will always be grateful to John Williams and his score for STAR WARS that gave me a way into this rewarding music experience I’ve had. And continue to have.
Great story, Alan.
I do remember a discussion we had in one of the Zoom chats, about how you were more into television in your formative years, than films. GET CARTER, for example, which would be right there in that period, but which never played any particular role in your life. When you talk about solitary existences and television, that kinda makes sense, because cinema-going is a very social activity. So whereas I automatically thought a film like GET CARTER (or its great Roy Budd score) would be a cornerstone of your early years, it really wasn’t. Please correct me if I’m misremembering here.
You remember correctly Thor, mostly. I think that the emphasis was more on television because the TV was always on in the house. Cinema-going was a much more infrequent experience for me growing up: maybe I would go to the cinema (“the pictures”) once every one or two weeks, depending on if there was anything I wanted to see (usually the most recent blockbusters).
Although GET CARTER (1971) would be bit of a adult movie for a 7-year-old, when I was old enough it’s not a genre of film that I would be interested in. Any British “gangland” movie from the seventies – or any era – had/has little interest for me.
And Roy Budd was a composer who was never really on my radar – too many other composers! I did have a copy of the 2xLP set “The Fantasy Album” with Budd conducting the LSO playing selections from movies from the likes of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, SUPERMAN, SUPERGIRL, ALIEN, as well as suites from STAR WARS, and STAR TREK (the “staples”). As Budd was conducting there was also a track with music from his SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER. The album was released in 1984 and that was the extend of my experience with Budd. I later acquired much more of his music when I tried some of his filmography, but I have never really warmed to his music.
I’m a fan of one Budd score, which I wrote a review of for this site. I can’t find it now, so it’s possible I didn’t finish it. I haven’t discovered any other score of his that I really like, but there’s many I haven’t sampled yet.
I had to go search for your aborted review now, Sigjørn, and yes, found it — THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA! Didn’t quite do it for me, but it had some highlight tracks.
In addition to GET CARTER, I’m a fan of SOLDIER BLUE, FEAR IS THE KEY, MAN AT THE TOP and MAMA DRACULA.
Yes, Phantom it is! It’s very different from Budd’s other scores that I’ve heard, or perhaps you guys could point me towards a similarly sounding score of his.
So here is my origin story that Thor already knows in a shorter version I believe:
My parents liked music but were not really huge music lovers. But my father actually was a great deal indirectly responsible that I became a film score fan. As a child we watched a lot of those monumental and western movies on weekends, especially westerns we still loved and managed to watch a lot again and a lot unknown lesser known ones the last few years before he passed away.
My father was a fan of the movie „Once Upon A Time In The West“ and loved „Jill’s Theme“. This and Tangerine Dream’s „Thief“ were later the first two scores ever I had on CD! I will have that tune play at his funeral, a tear dropper for sure!
So watching these movie burnt my love for Morricone, Tiomkin, Rosza, Korngold and others into my mind literally. Also childhood encounters were Ron Goodwin’s Miss Marple themes and John Barry’s various Bonds. My father bought me a Bond compilation LP that I still have.
Since I never was a charts music listener I always preferred instrumental music and sometime in the 80s I discovered electronic music and especially Tangerine Dream. Axel F was one of my favorite 80s tracks back then (I still have the original vinyl singe of it).
And I watched a lot of TV series and loved the themes. Love the 70s funky crime music. And huge Mike Post/Peter Carpenter fan since thenI I was even one of those who recorded lots of TV themes off the TV. (Twin Peaks is also a favorite of mine from the 90s.)
My all time favorites Goldsmith and Williams I interesstingly discovered quite some time later. Don’t remember excatly what my first Goldsmith was – might be First Blood or something – but I am sure my first Williams was a compilation on the Philips label with Star Wars, Superman, ET and Close Encounters.
Yes, Phantom it is! It’s very different from Budd’s other scores that I’ve heard, or perhaps you guys could point me towards a similarly sounding score of his.
He rarely is that purely orchestral. The Phantom main theme always reminds me of something else but I forgot what… KIDNAPPED or FIELD OF HONOR also are rather orchestral as is SINDBAD and I think the two WILD GEESE ones.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.