Joel McNeely

Blogs are more and more proving to be a thing of great value to me. I LOVE Michael Ruhlman's blog on the food world. And Alex Ross' music blog is a must. So I was delighted to see a fascinating discussion blossom on our beloved Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra blog, that above all others, proves to me what a real and useful medium this is becoming.

The discussion is started by esteemed composer Kevin Puts, who relays a comment uber-esteemed composer John Adams made at a lecture. The comment is almost less significant than the discussion it sparks, which to me is really interesting. It concerns many things about being a concert composer in today's climate, but begins with a debate about the dilemma a composer faces, in whether to write in a calculated way to please today's audiences. The discussion is a little spread out over many different headings, so to make it easier to navigate I'll put links to it here in order.

Excellent comments abound from some really interesting thinkers, including music director Jeffrey Kahane. I am having my students at USC read and discuss this and Kevin mentions he is doing the same at Peabody. Check it out!

1. A Climate of Fear
2. Re: A Climate of Fear, A response from Jeffrey Kahane
3. On Audience Perceptions of 'modern and contemporary'
4. A Life Changing Epiphany
5. Continuing Discussion on John Adams

Posted by Joel McNeely at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, the straws have been counted and the results are in. Mind you, I did a very rough counting, and I'll only list multiple votes, mainly to reveal trends in what would be most popular.

It goes something like this:

Rozsa was the big winner with:

Quo Vadis 14
Sinbad 12
Jungle Book 8
Thief of Baghdad 4
Double Life 2

Herrmann in second with:

On Dangerous Ground 7
Beneath the 12 Mile Reef 4
Obsession 4
Man Who Knew Too Much 3
Bride Wore Black 3
Devil and Daniel Webster 3
Journey to the Center of the Earth 2
Hangover Square 2

Walter Schumann:

Night of the Hunter 7

Gold:

Exodus 4

Waxman:

Tarus Bulba 8

Newman:

Wuthering Heights 3

Williams:

Black Sunday 2
Family Plot 2

So, there it is. Rozsa seems to be what you all want most. I was really surprised not to see more requests for North or Jerry Goldsmith. Why do you think that is? And now I have to learn the Schumann score to Night of the Hunter, because I do not know it and so many of you voted for it.

THANK YOU all for taking the time to vote here, and as well for supporting classic film music. Your input was informative and valuable.

Happy New Year!

Joel

Posted by Joel McNeely at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

All right you guys. Time to engage. I'm going to take a little informal poll here. I thought about posting this on one of the highly trafficked message boards, but that can get a little overwhelming. I figure the folks who show up here have good taste, good looks and plenty of discretion. (blogger brown-nose alert)

So, here it is; I'm trying to decide what score to tackle next in our series of rerecordings. What film scores would absolutely make your year to have rerecorded? Let's limit your choices to 5 each.

Leave off Spartacus. Unless some fan wants to finance the project, it simply isn't financially doable, due to the gigantically massive orchestral forces needed.

Now don't misunderstand, the decision is ultimately not up to me. Bob Townson is the producer and he makes the calls (which I'd say he's done a pretty phenomenal job of, don't you agree? 2001 North...hello?) But I thought it would be interesting to take a straw poll, to take the pulse of those of you who buy and collect scores, to see what you are longing for.

And who knows, if we get a strong consensus for something, we'll see what can be done.

Now let's hear from you. Don't be shy.

Cheers,

Joel

Posted by Joel McNeely at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (72)

Okay, today some levity. First off, a spoof that is so great, so completely dead on. And the music is all North By Northwest. When we were in Bratislava, Bob Townson got a call to provide the sheet music for the on-screen musicians to fake to. He didn't know what they were going to do with it, but he provided it.(It is after all Scorsese) I just love this, right down to the chubby conductor, looking confused most of the time. (I'm sure this is just what I must look like to my orchestras!)

And then, a jewel. Dudley Moore, whose technique rivaled most concertizing pianists. This just makes me smile so much.

Enjoy!

Posted by Joel McNeely at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today, Varese Sarabande announced our recording of Bernard Herrmann's brilliant and classic score for the film North By Northwest. I've been sitting on this since July. Couldn't breath a word of it. Happy to be released from the bonds of prerelease silence!

I'm really excited about this recording. We went to Bratislava to work with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. (Until currency exchange rates simmer down, our days in Glasgow with the RSNO will remain a memory.) An enormous amount of work went into this recording. Christopher Husted painstakingly reconstructed many cues and recopied ALL of the parts (a Herculean task.) Robert Townson set up the recordings to be right after my Lyon concert and before he had to go to Ubeda for the festival there. We had TWO days to record the whole thing, over 65 minutes! I spent a huge amount of time immersed in the original recording and while it is simply impossible to reproduce over an hour of music perfectly from a tempi standpoint, that was at least the goal.

This is a fantastic, fun, rollicking and unconventional score. A Spanish fandango written in 3/8 is the basis for most of the action sequences. In this (and most) cases, a bar of 3/8 is conducted as one beat, so imagine trying to keep your place as the bars one beat long are literally FLYING by. Not for the faint of heart. Herrmann was a gutsy guy, no question. Jonathan Allen from Abbey Road did a wonderful job recording the orchestra and I remixed the record here at my studio with help from my colleague and friend Rich Breen.

The result is a record made with an enormous amount of care and energy, made with the respectful intention of preserving and promoting this great composer's work. Robert Townson deserves a world of credit in his devotion to the great masters of film music and creating recordings that will well represent the music for generations to come. And hopefully this recording is one worthy of the music and one you will all enjoy!

Posted by Joel McNeely at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

A funny thing happened today. Just one of those great coincidental confluences that set you to wondering if there are in fact any such things as coincidences. Maybe it's all part of the grand design. Like running into a friend you haven't seen in years sitting next to you in an airport lounge. Well, whatever, this isn't the time nor the place to get metaphysical.

Okay, so I was mountain biking up in a nature preserve near here. It was a long slog mostly up hill but at the end, the reward is to come barreling down these huge beautiful hills into a meadow with thick prairie grasses. I had been listening to the soundtrack to Hook by JW, which is something of a masterwork (the score, not the film) for the whole ride. Just as I crested the rise of the last hill and came flying over (think The Sound of Music) the cue where Pan realizes he can fly swelled and exploded in fanfares and emotional soaring melodies precisely as I came flying down the hill. A perfect cinematic scoring moment, one that couldn't have been edited to be any tighter. I threw my hands in the air and cheered. Then I almost crashed, so I got back to business. It was great.

I'm teaching now at USC in the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program. I've been enjoying it so far. There are 20 students in the program. This term I'm only teaching master classes, the last one about writing for brass and woodwinds. Next semester I'll be teaching a regular class on composing for film, plus a few private lessons. It's a funny thing to try and teach someone what you've done your whole life. It makes one really bore down and think about the process, think about what you believe, think about how you do what you do, rather than just doing it. It's quite interesting.

Posted by Joel McNeely at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's been a while since the last blog. Been busy. I took a trip to northern Michigan last week that is worth mentioning. The Interlochen Arts Academy is a four-year boarding high school for the arts, where I went to school many years ago. Many. It's always been a very special place for me, a place that helped launch this musical adventure I've been on. Interlochen is one of those magical spots, set on a lake, ringed by pine and birch trees and just plain drop dead beautiful. I've been on the Board of Trustees at the school for some time, which keeps me connected with the place.

Several years ago, Interlochen Center for the Arts (more than just a high school, a huge summer camp, a radio station, an arts festival, and arts adult education,) was blessed with a new president, Jeffrey Kimpton, who is a man with bold ideas and a lack of fear in implementing them. Just the right guy at the right time. Jeffrey decided that a motion picture arts program would be a perfect fit for the school and has made it happen in a blindingly short period of time. There now sits a gorgeous new film school building with a sound stage, Final Cut Pro editing suites and a projection theater and great gear, etc. 22 high school filmmaking majors inhabit it. ( the above picture is of the new Deroy Motion Picture Arts building.) Cool.

So in the context of all this, Andrew Davis, a fine director that I was lucky enough to work with on Holes agreed to come up and work with the kids for a day. I went with him and we showed Holes and then talked about it for a while. The kids asked probing and interesting questions. Andy showed his first film the next day, which was really interesting for the kids, so they could see he didn't start out making $100m movies.

This week I went to Edmonton, Alberta. Seeing how far north on the map it was, I pictured mountains or at least foothills, dense with trees and wildlife and unspoiled Canadian glory. Wrong, dumb American. As I flew in, I thought we had taken a wrong turn and were landing in Kansas. It was flat (and I mean flat as in see all the way to the horizon without a bump, flat) farmland. Parceled furrow fields stretching out into infinity. Consequently, with nothing to stop it, the wind is never-ending. The city is lovely as was the nearly 100-year-old hotel that overlooks the river.

I was there to meet up with Loreena McKennitt, a singer and songwriter who I am working with on The Tinkerbell Movie. She was mid-tour making her way across Canada before heading south to the states next month. I caught up with Loreena and her amazing band at their sound check. She has some extraordinary players in her group. Almost all of them play at least 3 instruments. There was a fantastic hurdy-gurdy player, a Greek lyra player (tiny violin) a brilliant cellist and violinist, great ouds, balalaikas, etc. And Loreena is the world's most expressive and in-tune singer ever. For those who have worked with singers, (sorry) you know that it can be a major struggle sometimes to get a performance in tune. Software repairs now make everyone a perfect singer these days, but when you hear someone do it for real, it's a little freaky. Anyway, thank you to Loreena and to all of the band for letting me step into your tour bubble and bask in your wonderful music.

Finally home yesterday, sitting on the porch of my studio having a coffee and happy to be home in this quiet normal setting. And then a woman came trotting by on horseback, (my yard is ringed with horse trails) leading another horse, all while cradling her cell-phone on her shoulder yakking away as she took her ride. She must have ridden back and forth 4-5 times only a few feet away from me, and never acknowledged my presence. A beautiful day, a bucolic setting, a neighbor to wave hello to, all obscured by 'the devil's walkie-talkie'. Only in LA. Normal, schmormal.

Posted by Joel McNeely at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My rule about reviews is that you can't allow the bad ones to get you down. Therefore, you mustn't listen to the good ones either. It's all about the work. I always try my very hardest and hope that the music reaches someone. But these two reviews seemed to get what I was attempting on my last soundtrack really well, so hey, rules are for breaking right? I'll admit they made me smile.

http://ifmagazine.com/review.asp?article=1948

movie-wave review

I like that they picked up on the role of the piano in this score, which I'll talk a little about. Since it's disappeared from the theaters by now, (SPOILER ALERT) I think it's okay to say that the bad guy is the piano teacher. By way of clues to this effect, every time the killer appears, what you are hearing is some sort of messed up piano. And since the Chopin A minor Waltz is played in the very beginning, I use small quotes of that throughout whenever the baddie is around, a little trail of musical breadcrumbs. The one review mentioned the little jack-in-the-box crank sounds. I was happy he picked up on this because those sounds took forever to make. I took piano tuners' rubber mutes and muted the strings. I then hit them with wooden mallets, which made that little sound. I also took handfuls of little erasers and threw them at the strings with the sustain pedal down. As they bounced around randomly they created a great creepy effect. I knocked on the sound board, I plucked strings, I put dimes in between the strings, I stroked them with a feather, I took a butter knife and scraped up and down the strings, I banged on the low strings with my palms, and on and on. Then I played them through guitar amp modeling software to really mess and distort them up. So, the majority of what sound like bizarre samples and synths are really just my trusty Yamaha grand.

Once again, thanks to Varese Sarabande for putting out my soundtrack!

Posted by Joel McNeely at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (946)

Here is a plug, no, a tip, a really good tip, for those who love jazz, or those who love creative instrumental music, or for that matter, anyone who has come to this blog because they trust me enough to take my recommendation. My dear friend Maria Schneider has a new record out, called Sky Blue, which if you are remotely in any of the above categories, you simply must get.

Maria's ensemble is a fairly standard big band configuration, however I don't think many would hear this music as anything approaching conventional big band music. To my ear it's more orchestral. Anyway, the compositions are long-form, 10-22 minutes in length. Don't go in looking for the standard intro A,A,B,A long improvising sections and then the whole thing over again with a coda tacked on. These are fully developed compositions, which often require slowing down one's expectation mechanism and settling in for a journey.

I won't review piece by piece here, (they're all great) but for me standouts are Rich's Piece, which is like dark, dark bitter chocolate, delicious with a lingering bite and redolent of something distantly melancholy and Cerulean Skies which reminds me of Ravel. Also, for you music heads, try, just try and figure out the meter (meters) on Aires de Lando. Lot's o luck.

The playing is superb. One of the things I love about Maria's writing is that she seems to know her players so deeply and she so often finds a way to feature them in a way that sends them soaring. Rich Perry and Donny McCaslin, the two tenor players, blow my mind. And I love the addition of the accordion. It's an unexpected strange color, which by the end of the record feels integral.

Lastly, if you're smart enough to take me up on this tip and get this record, go for the expanded version. It has two beautiful booklets, one with a diary of the compositional process and thematic sketches, and the other, a photo journal of the recording process. Maria finances her recordings herself, eliminating record company intervention in her creative process, another reason why this project is so extraordinary and deserves support. We need artists like this to keep going, to keep writing and playing, and to keep making our world a more beautiful place.

Posted by Joel McNeely at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Of course the idea that recorded music is in and of itself destructive, is not one I hold to. But one thing that I take away from Stravinsky's amazingly prescient writing is how much the over saturation or availability of recorded music can cheapen music's own value.

I once had a discussion with an (allegedly) educated man, who said that all recorded music should be free because record companies had ripped people off for so long. It was really hard not to hit him. Now obviously, for whatever reason there are a lot of people who feel perfectly fine about stealing music. If you think that it only affects the big labels, think again. Anyone care to look back and see when the last Varese rerecording was? File sharing has hurt everyone.

Because music is everywhere now, in the stores, in the malls, in the elevators, instantly attainable through free or paid means, somehow it's value is lessened. I remember so well, the effort to save for a certain album, and then going to the record store to look through the bins, sometimes even smelling the records. And then finally buying one and not being able to contain myself until I got home to tear off the plastic and put it on. There was something to that. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE the convenience of iTunes. My son, who has grown up with virtually all music ever recorded, available to him at his fingertips all the time, thinks of music as something much less special. The accessibility we have to so much, and so many varied kinds of music is astonishing, but I think we have lost something in the process.

And finally, I think in general, people have lost the connection between recorded music and live performance. There was a time, when as a musician if you couldn't play live what was represented on your record, there was real shame and ridicule. Now that's the norm. I just don't get it. But there ARE bright lights. When Chris Thile and his merry band of virtuosi choose to make a record of the most incredibly complex and difficult music, standing around two microphones, playing live with no editing, my heart soars. Because the music is phenomenal and yes, the fact that they can play it live with no mistakes makes it even more phenomenal to me. Knowing that the notes haven't been tweezed to be perfectly in line or in tune makes that recording that much more special.

Posted by Joel McNeely at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)