Your Film Music Origin Story
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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.
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.
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