Your Film Music Origin Story
- This topic has 78 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 2 weeks, 2 days 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 friends’ 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 the classical music that my dad constantly played (especially opera!), 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.
I always think it’s funny that so many film music fans of a certain age taped music off of the TV. I can understand it, as it was often the only way to get that music at the time. But I never did this myself.
What a great thread!
Music has always been in my life, as I was drumming on cardboard boxes and improvising melodies before I could talk. Using the full size drum kit my parents were loving enough (or stupid enough, depending on who you ask) to get me as a Christmas present when I was five, combined with my parents’ piano, my sister’s Casio synthesizer and my voice, I created hundreds of lo-fi cassette tapes with questionable material.
The music I listened to as a kid was pretty diverse – my dad (kind of a music geek) was playing a lot of Frank Zappa, which I today regard as a genius composer. I got really into Genesis, both their 70s prog rock days and their 80s pop-flavoured periods. I still enjoy all those albums more than ever, and know them word for word, note for note. But in the early 90s I also liked some of the harder kinds of rock that was emerging, like Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine.
My way into film music was probably through gaming, as I was not really interested in movies as a kid. I remember also watching a lot of TV series and noticing the name Mike Post appearing in almost every one of them – funny that I’m not alone in this! But around the time I turned 10 (early 90s), I got really into PC games, and in particular, those wonderful point-and-click adventure games from LucasArts and Sierra. I am still in awe of all those great LucasArts soundtracks by the likes of Michael Z. Land and Peter McConnell, especially. The music of SAM & MAX HIT THE ROAD (1993) might have some small part in making jazz my primary music interest from this point and throughout my teenage years, which was very much appreciated by my dad, but totally frowned upon by every other 10 year old in my class, obviously. After a while, I discovered that LucasArts (or Lucasfilm Games as it was originally called) was a daughter company of Lucasfilm, and that there was this thing called STAR WARS…
I rented and watched the STAR WARS Original Trilogy on VHS, and was hooked for life. Later, in 1997 when the Special Editions were released, I bought all the double disc releases, listened to them all while reading the liner notes with great care… Suddenly I understood that all these themes I’ve heard countless times (and not just the main theme and the Imperial March) actually MEANT something, that nothing was random. Every rendition of every theme had a distinct meaning, and John Williams was indeed a genius. Something clicked in my head, and I knew that somehow, I had to be a film composer. I was now 15.
I don’t really know how to tell the rest of the story. While going to a music-oriented high school and later studying music at University in the early 2000s, I played in a lot of different bands as drummer, keyboard player and singer, but still had this solo thing going on where I created instrumental music which was more geared towards film music, even though I still did not listen to a lot of film music actively, other than John Williams. After a while I started taking notice that I also really loved Danny Elfman’s music, especially his more mature work like BIG FISH (2003). John Williams’ music of the STAR WARS prequels also still stand for me as some of his most interesting work, in addition to many of his more experimental 2000s scores like A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (maybe my single biggest favourite of his to this day).
I’ve now been a composer for theatre, film and TV since 2006. I’ve also listened to more film scores than I did as a kid. In addition to Williams and Elfman, I also really enjoy some scores by Mancini, Zimmer, Menken, Silvestri, and I also like some works by Desplat and Giacchino, though I can’t say I know their portfolio that much. I am hardly a film music encyclopedia like many of you guys are! These days, I probably listen the most to classical music – Grieg, Dvořák, Ravel, Fauré and Bach in particular. But also Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns and others. I know that many of these have been inspirations to many of our greatest film composers, and getting more into their music, it’s not hard to understand why. Grieg’s PEER GYNT (1876!) is a complete 90 minute-ish epic theatre score, with some of the most wonderful themes imaginable, and not that far from a film score at all. For anyone curious, just let me know if you want to know which recordings to start with, as that kind of thing makes a BIG difference in classical music. It quickly becomes an obsession to find the performance and the recording that you find the most “right”…
As for my own music, I will try to let you know about new releases, hopefully without spamming too much.
Always great to see that I am not the only one still loving those classic LucasArts soundtracks 😉
Film music has been an important part of the music that interests me for as long as I can think back, though I only started to seek out film music on album in my early teens. Not sure my “origin” story is particularly interesting… since I’ve always noticed the music, even in the TV shows when I was a kid. I remember actively starting to tape music of the TV as early as elementary school, and, well, yes, that was the only way to get that kind of music. I didn’t even know one could actually get film music on albums until I was in my early teens.
There was always music in our household, though my parents weren’t actual musicians. But we had a piano at home, and I heard a lot of classical music as a kid just naturally growing up. I also fondly remember an excellent music teacher I had when I was in second grade, who taught us well how and what to listen for in music, and inspired us elementary school kids to check out Bartók! How cool was that in retrospect.
As I said, I always notice music when it is playing. Even when I watch a movie, and there is dialog, sound, and music, my ears’ attention tends to focus on the music. It did that even before I started to listen to film music on its own. So there were movies (and TV shows) I had audio taped off the TV set (fortunately, I could connect my radio tape recorder with the TV with a cable, not via mic, so that I could get the TV sound without any “room noise”), stuff like HIGH NOON, THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE BIG COUNTRY, LAWMAN… I played those audio tapes and was fascinated by the music of these movies. I thought it would be great to really get this music apart form the dialog and sound effects…
First thing I told my dad when I had seen STAR WARS for the first time and he picked us up at the theater, asking how it was: “Wow, you’d have loved the music! The music was great!”. So I was a kid who just saw STAR WARS for the first time, and the first thing I could think about when I came out of the theater weren’t the special effects, the light-sabers, the story, but the music. (My father was a movie and (classical) music buff himself (his favorite film composer was Dimitri Tiomkin).)
When I see a movie, I often tend to follow the music more than the images or the dialogue. Sound trumps image for me.One day, a friend lend me two soundtrack albums: John Williams STAR WARS and Jerry Goldsmith STAR TREK – THE MOTION PICTURE; I audio taped them and must have listened to them up and down. That was a pivotal time, no question, because from then on, I was hooked, and soon, I had some Williams, Goldsmith, Barry, and Morricone albums of my own. Never stopped to this day. In school, I had lots of friend with various interests in music, and we learned from each other. No one (in my friend circle) thought interest in film music, in classical music, in jazz, in rock/pop/prog-rock, etc. was “odd”, we really liked to exchange “our special interest music” with others.
I have always been a more “composer” oriented listener though, so once I am interested in a particular composer, I seek out more of his (or of course her) work. (Instead of buying film music based on movie or movie genre…)
That’s why in my CD shelf, film scores are grouped by composer, not by film title.One side note of interest: looking back, I remember the first “John Williams” music I really loved was not STAR WARS, or SUPERMAN, it was much earlier, it was his theme for the movie THE COWBOYS, which I knew from an old short lived TV series (based on the movie) I watched when I was still in elementary school. Of course, back then I didn’t know or remember the name “John Williams”. Many years later, when Varèse Sarabande released John Williams’ music for the movie THE COWBOYS, it put a smile on my face to finally hear that great old “cowboy theme” again, because I have never seen any snippet from the TV show again… it’s pretty much forgotten.
Nice stories, Eirik and Nick!
It’s fascinating how we’re all interested in (roughly) the same thing, yet our pathways into it are rather different.
I thought about doing a seperate “nostalgia” thread, as we talked about in another thread, but I felt it could just as well fit in here.
Let’s share some stories and experiences of how our life was like before the advent of the internet, or at least before the internet became what it is today. Our formative period differs — 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even 00’s. But anything goes. Could be music store hunting, for example. Or how you managed to talk with other people about it. Etc. I have LOTS to share here, but trying to restrain myself a bit until I let loose.
No, no…let’s keep it as is for now. I still want potential new members to give us their origin story.
But it’s a great platform from which to wax nostalgic.
Some nostalgic musings:
Early 90s: When I lived at home, in a relatively small town down south, there weren’t a lot of options. There was a local record store (which doubled as a café!) where I got some, but most of the CDs were acquired via mail order. Especially Compacthuset (based out of Haugesund in the west), with its phone book-sized inventory, but also Ginza from Sweden.
But things changed when I moved to the capital in 1996. For many years thereafter, I had a Saturday ritual — walking from record store to record store (both chains and secondhand), both downtown and in the neighbouring districts, always in the quest for that hidden gem, and the good deal. Perhaps stopping for a kebab along the way. The names of these stores will have no meaning to anyone not from Norway, but they included Akers Mic. (amazing selection!), Hysj! Hysj!, Platekompaniet, RÃ¥kk og rÃ¥lls, Free Record Shop, Lucky Eddie and several more that I have forgotten. Many of them are long since gone. I became a master ‘CD scroller’ as I checked out the soundtrack aisle, as well as my favourite pop artists.
While internet DID exist throughout much of this period, I didn’t use it for CD purchasing. That only began in the very late 90s, when I got some e-mail contacts, and platforms like eBay had taken hold. So there was a very mechanical, tangible aspect to the whole CD hunting thing. It was doubly physical, really — the act itself was physical, and the product was physical. I really miss it!
As far as film score collecting goes, two things were particularly different in the era “before Internet”.
1. You did not know whether what you sought even existed. There were some film scores I wanted and would have bought that just did not have an album release, like Jerry Fielding’s LAWMAN or James Horner’s WOLFEN. Some “quests” were futile and doomed from the start.
2. You never knew that to expect or come across when visiting a new record store.
I have still vivid memories of coming across albums that just stunned me, because that moment I saw them on a shelf and had them in my hand was literally the very same moment I found out they existed. So browsing record stores was a splendid pastime I enjoyed, whereas nowadays, it’s basically a waste of time.Yeah, good points. Reminds me of another thing:
In the very early 90s, there were no news outlet where I could get information on who composed a new film’s music (I only started subscribing to FSM in 1995). So in many instances, I had to rely on the small posters in newspapers, under the ‘now playing in cinema’ section, and with a magnifying glass reading the fine print to find ‘composer’ there.
There was also an additional source: I got access to the (very much OFF-line) database system used by the local video store, via some secret connections. While it wasn’t possible to keep up-to-date other than to put in the information yourself, it was a great way to discover the names of composers for older films, as most film functions were filled in there. Of course, IMDB made all of that obsolete from the mid 90s onwards, but it was a great resource for a couple of years there.
Yeah, I remember that, I remember looking at movie posters and ad sections just to see who composed the score for the movie.
Some nostalgia additions to my earlier post: End the 80s I was already a TV theme fan specifially but I didn’t knew what is available already. I can say that I learned this in 1988. At that time a private TV broadcaster over here released some LP compilations with tv themes which I became aware via tv advertising naturally (we only had a few programms back then). It contained partly original ones and partly more or less convincing re-recordings:
https://www.discogs.com/de/release/2121464-Various-SAT1-Presents-TVs-Greatest-HitsIt was produced by Edel Company here in Hamburg. Back then they were small, now Edel is a big player: https://www.edel.com/. You may have heard of the Optimal pressing plant for CDs and vinyl that belongs to them.
The back of that LP contained a small note that you could order a film and television music catalogue which certainly caught my attention. That was a mailorder section called “Cinema Soundtrack Club” the Germans here may still remember. Their catalogue was a thick long envelope form black and white catalogue with tiny font listing a paradise of releases I never knew existed that was send every month or so I think. This was my news source for years. Since I was still in school my actual deep dive into scores started more properly beginning of the 90s.
Later that section became an independent mailorder shop. I bought most of all scores from them that you couldn’t get in normal CD shops until it suddenly closed its doors about ten years ago. Via the catalogue I became later in the 90s became aware of the “Soundtrack!” magazine which I bought via them as well. Somehow I never really had FSM and have only two printed issues.
.
Mid/End 90s was probably the height of my film score fandom and I wrote even wrote handful of articles mainly concert reviews for a German fanzine The Limited Edition.In the early 90s I learned that Hamburg actually had a soundtrack only record shop. That of course was the original Tarantula. Another paradise and not good for the budget (as they were also more expensive than the mailorder) 😉
Additionally I discovered that our public library actually had a specific separate location with a special film library on the other side of the city and that featured a great soundtrack section. That still exists as part of the main library location but the soundtrack section is sadly a pale shadow now only. Anyway, you know where I visited often since then.
Around that time I also started to look at 2nd hand shops every few weeks, those “raids” scanning shelf after shelf were fun and got even more regular when studying included a ticket for public transport of the whole city anyway.
Just a remark about TV themes. When I started listening to movie music at the beginning of the 80s listening to the score was a way to revisit the movie. Becausethere was no other way, While listening to it the movie played in my head. That is why I didn’t like the way John Williams sometimes plugged tracks together from very different parts of the movie. I wanted it the way it appeared in the movie.
Anyway, it never crossed my mind to listen to TV themes because you could hear it every week when your favourite shows aired.I like how these posts remind me of other things typical of the era we’re talking about.
I’ll save any musings on TV watching and themes for the TV theme thread, but two cents on magazine subscriptions:
As I said earlier, I started subscribing to the FSM magazine in 1995, after having seen an ad on the then pretty bare-bones filmmusic.com. Very old-school, there was no Paypal then. I went to the bank, took out 20 dollars from my puny teenage account, and sent them in a letter to Lukas. A couple of years later, I bought ALL preceding issues from an early subscriber, back to the one-page, xeroxed newsletter Lukas sent out in 1990. So I have a complete set of FSM magazines, from 1990 to 2005 (the first part of my own Danny Elfman Buyer’s Guide was in the very last issue, as it happens, the second part in the inaugural online issue).
But in the big box of FSM magazines sent to me from the US (I can only imagine what this would have cost to send today!) were also a number of other film score magazines — Legend, Cinemascore, Music from the Movies, Soundtrack!, Reel Music, The Film Music Notebook, The Cue Sheet and several others. I remember pouring over these that summer (could have been in 1999 or 2000 or something). I have ALL of them still, filling up a cupboard!
This was a great gateway to information before the complete information unload on the internet shortly thereafter, and corresponded neatly with the building of a music collection as well. It really was an explosion of discovery in those years.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.