Monthly Archives: October 2012

Analysis Of A Film Score

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Recently, Gary Mairs, a filmmaker and faculty member at CalArts, asked me to create a score for a screening of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark silent film, Kurutta Ippēji  (aka, Page of Madness” aka “A Page out of order”) in his Film History Class.

Accompanying silent films was a gig I had for several years at the school and enjoyed it so much that I started doing live scoring in other venues as well.  Gary’s class gave me the opportunity to create scores (with artists such as Carmina Escobar and the Rough Hewn Trio’s Craig Bunch and Chris Lavender) for many films including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Broken Blossoms, The Smiling Madame Beaudet, Faust and Phantom of The Opera.  

The experience with Carmina Escobar was so successful that when the opportunity arose to create a live score as part of the Cha’ak’ab Paaxil Festival in Mérida, Mexico ( and present a workshop on “Structured Improvisation in Film Accompaniment” at the Edificio de Artes Visuales – Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán) I took it immediately.

Of all the films I’ve accompanied though,  Page of Madness holds a special place in my heart.  The initial score that Carmina and I improvised for Gary’s class was a moment that resonated strongly with everyone in the room and I knew immediately that it was something that I wanted to add to my live repertoire.  When I moved to NY, I knew I wouldn’t be able to accompany Gary’s class live anymore but having the opportunity to do this was a way for me to create some kind of document of that time so I gladly took it on.

The process I used to improvise for film (and how I teach other people to do improvise in that manner) is too long to go into here so for now I’ll discuss some technical and non-technical aspects of how I approached the film.

The Film

Originally released in 1926, Page of Madness was assumed lost for decades until the director found in a rice tin in 1971.  He added a score (that I liked a great deal by the way) and cut about 1/3 of the original film and any known prints are based around the 1971 version.  In terms of the cuts effect on the story, I don’t know if the original cut’s pacing was more linear, but I suspect it wasn’t.

As the acting in early silent films was rooted in theatrical acting (with actors making large gesticulations and exaggerated characterizations to play to the people in the back of the room), many silent films haven’t aged particularly well. In that regard, one remarkable thing to me about this film is how well it has held up over time.  The entire action of the film takes place in and around a mental institution and the energy all the actors put into the characterizations works exceptionally well.

Avante-garde doesn’t even begin to describe this film which (like Murnau’s The last Laugh) uses no title cards and takes place solely in and on the grounds of an institution.  In addition to some jarring visual superimpositions, Page also features a story line that uses a series of flash backs and non-linear narratives that complicate the story. The end result is a film that is nostalgic on one hand and surprisingly contemporary on the other.

For those of you who are interested, I’ve uploaded about 30 minutes of the Quicktime film and the score to discuss what, why and how I did what I did.

Technical Notes:

I used Logic for this project.  Here’s a screenshot of the session.

You might notice a distinct lack of midi in the score.  The majority of work I did was created with audio and samples rather than midi and I’ll try to explain differences in the video breakdown.

Here’s the film:

 

(If the link isn’t showing above in your browser – you can also see it here.)

 

Decisions, Decisions

Right off the bat, let me say I approached this completely differently than I would have approached scoring a traditional film.

If I got a gig creating cues for a video or a theatrical release, I would tailor the sounds and experience to audio locked into a film print.  As this score would be used to accompany a silent film in a film history class, my goal was to create a score that would simulate a live experience of someone accompanying the film but I also wanted to add foley and FX to create a depth of experience outside of merely adding music.

Working with Limitations

My original scoring idea was to accompany the film with a multitracked session of my recorded voice using extended techniques like overtone singing.  While I think it would have been really effective the lack of an isolated recording environment to record that cleanly nixed that idea ultimately.

After I had put a series of sound effects in, I remembered that I had a source recording of Carmina and I accompanying the same film at another venue and I realized that this might be the best way to tie in the loose live performance feel I was going for with the more orchestrated foley I employed.  The source audio of the live recording was fairly clean overall except for some places where the bass frequencies were distorting.  If you look at the track labelled “duodenum”, you’ll see some edits I made to either create space or deal with the frequency issue (I basically moved the offending audio to another track and processed it into something useable).

I used a Quicktime film in Logic to score to and exported the audio.  I sent Gary AIF, mp3 files and the Quicktime film so he could see how I imagined the synchronization, but I needed to leave the score open enough that even if the synch fell off that the score would still make sense.  Again, for a theatrical release I would have used Midi and SMPTE  to have everything synch perfectly but given that this is going to be an audio file that plays through the sound system while an actual film is screening through a film projector I decided to try to synch up a few things and leave the rest of it open.

Before I added any music, I spent a LOT of time on foley.  I pulled a number of samples from Free Sound dot org, and then spent countless hours cutting things up in Fission (A great 2-track editor from the makers of Audio Hijack Pro) and then further mutating them with endless plug ins in Logic.

Cue Notes:

Okay, here are some notes from the session from the video.

00:00 – 00:42 – Synch points and establishing tone

I synched up some audio of a man counting backwards from 1-10 in Japanese with the pre-roll to help Gary synch the audio for the class.  I decided to use a temple bell sound to help set the mood and synched that to the page turns.

00:46 – 02:09 –  Silence

I wasn’t sure if this would actually be a part of the screening.  In a traditional accompaniment, you’d typically hear some organist pull an old-time radio drama score over any type of credits or title cards.  To me, it’s emotionally not part of the actual film so I left it blank.  It also helps people focus on the story.

02:10 – 03:05 – Title sequence

The bell motive returned here.  I added in some Noh Drama type percussion but used a sparse rhythmic motive. In the background some reverse guitar loops begin.

Again, most of the initial work done was on foley and placement.  Once I added in the music track the score was largely a matter of balancing the mix and placement of what I had already done.  I took out about 25% of the foley work I’d done to make space for the score.

03:07 – 04:02 – Rain

I decided to treat rain almost as a character in this film.  I saw it (and still see it) as the truth and realization that the husband doesn’t want to face through the whole film.  It’s a psychological foreboding of what’s he’s been avoiding and ultimately acceptance of how things are. Multiple rain loops are employed in the beginning of the film but a single rain loop I created runs in the background of the whole film and continues past the last scene before it cuts to the last image when the sound fades to silence.  It’s a subtle detail but one that adds something to the environment.

04:03 – 05:06 – Dream state and Transition.

Detailing the nuances of the actual improvisation process we utilized is something that would be worthy of a much longer discussion but I feel that I should discuss at least one aspect of the structured improvisation Carmina and I utilized.  By structured improvisation, I mean that we worked out cues in the film of things that we were aiming for but what would happen before and after those points were an improvised path to reach an emotional moment at those cues and the actual cue itself might not be specific.  It might be something like, “When we get to the first fight – lets create a dense loop texture.” or it might be a specific melody or rhythmic device.  For this scene we wanted something dreamlike and other worldly so I went with a repeating figure while Carmina sang long tones over it.

Percussion was added to the loop to act as a foreshadowing of the dancing sequence to follow.

05:07 – 05:06 – Reality and Creating the Asylum

The gate door closing was part of a transition to bring the viewer back to our reality and show that this is how the inmate views the world.  There were a number of samples that all run during any of the asylum scenes to help set a claustrophobic tone of the institution. After the introduction, the outdoor scenes were the only time the asylum samples weren’t played.

Minor percussion and storm effects were added to Carmina’s loops to help build tension.

At 06:37, I stopped the percussion to highlight the fact that what this woman heard is outside the rhythm of the institution and is an internal force that she is compelled to interact with.  I think Carmina’s voices do a brilliant job of conveying that idea of multiple voices fighting for attention.

At 07:27 or so, exhaustion gives way to the sounds around the dancer and reality starts to envelop her again.  Carmina sang a variation of the earlier melody as a motif.  In the performance, I still had a loop I faded out on guitar and the low drum sound was created by me hitting a road case in the reverberation of the theater space.

At 08:01 or so – I began to add in a series of samples of heavily affected backwards speaking to represent the voices the wife hears.  I use this sound as the general sound of insanity in the asylum, so it comes to the foreground when the wife is on screen but stays back most of the time as another part of the environment.

08:15 – The Husband Enters.
All of the characters had a theme except for the husband.  I wanted to have the husband be a character that is adrift in this world around him.  I thought it would create a silence to contrast all of the other sounds against.

I tried to remain very aware of the spaces in the film.  Even though there aren’t any spaces of complete silence (until the end) I wanted to have sparse moments to contrast the rest of the film against.

11:49 – Flashback

We sidestep the asylum briefly to see how the wife got to where she is today.  Musically, I kept things open except for the mob scenes.  I began to build a loop texture on guitar.  The melodies and counterpoint are based around some Hirajoshi-inspired ideas.  I wanted to make sure that the percussion and melodic material I was providing has small hints of music inspired by traditional Japanese music while applying those ideas in a very western way.  The end result is something sonically that’s difficult to put your finger on.

19:31 – The build up

There are two fight sequences that Carmina and I knew that we wanted to make big sonically.  In the scenes leading up to this, I slowly began to make the loops more active and dense to show the tension underneath the surface of the Doctor’s routine walkthrough.  At 19:31 the textures start evolving in a different direction and slowly moving to the disturbance at 24:59 that leads to the full on freak out at 27:30 or so.  After that we bring it down and create another plateau to build from again later in the film.

Ending notes:

The process was really pretty simple.  It involved creating an environment and then removing absolutely everything that didn’t have to be there.  I should also mention that had Carmina and I tried to play really tight specific cues to the original film that flying in a full performance never would have worked.  The conversation that the two of us had during the film was something that would have been impossible to replicate completely and aesthetically, I really liked the idea of the music just being a part of a stream that flows along with the film.

Have a plan B

One last thing I should mention is that the process of actually creating the stereo file and synched video was no picnic.

For some reason, the Audio bounce in logic failed every time I tried it.  It would run for 7-8 hours and I’d have to force quit the file.

What I decided to do instead was use the aforementioned Audio Hijack Pro, to record the playback output of the logic file.  Once I had a stereo file.  I edited it in fusion to start at the 3 count lead in and imported the audio and video in iMovie and synched the hits there and output the Quicktime film.  I would have been REALLY stuck without Audio Hijack Pro, so I’m grateful that (3 days and 4 real time bounce attempts later) that I came up with that workaround.

All in, there’s about 40-50 hours of work in it.

There’s a few different things going on sonically in the second half, but this post explains a lot of the reasons behind what I did what I did, and perhaps that’s helpful, insightful or just interesting to some of you.

If people are interested, I’ll post the second half at some point and offer some more observations on what was done and why.

Until next time.  From the earlobe of Hurricane Sandy – stay dry (and thanks for reading)!

-SC

p.s. For the tech oriented amongst you.  Guitar sounds were FnH UltraSonic–> Digitech Space Station–>Apogee Duet–>macbook Pro->AuLab–>Pod farm–> Sooperlooper (Both controlled by a Line 6 Mark II pedal board) –>Atomic Reactor amp.

Notes From A Lecture

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“What’s with all these words and where’s the shred stuff?”

I know I’ve been veering away form strictly guitar stuff lately on this blog.  (Don’t worry though, the pure guitar thing is never too far away. A number of new (strictly guitar related) posts have made their way to Guitar-Muse and there’s some new material that will be released either in Kindle or e-book format.)  A large part of the shift in content here is due to a move from focusing on working through the how (how do you play modes on guitar) and shifting the focus more to the why (i.e. my philosophy).  I’ve talked about this before but without a strong sense of why you do what you do, progressing and improving in the long term will fall apart as you face the numerous challenges and obstacles that you’ll be faced with on the long haul.

As someone who plays and teaches, I’m often asked, “How long does it take to learn to play guitar?” It’s a surprisingly easy question to answer.  It depends on what you want to do on the instrument.  If you want to learn to play a few chords to serenade someone on a tune you can get some basic chord forms and strum patterns down in as little as a few weeks.

If you want to really say something unique to you on the instrument, it will take years or decades of hard work and those before you who have already been on the path for decades will tell you that they’re still working on defining and articulating what they say on the instrument. This leads directly into my first point.

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The heretic’s statement

While I love the guitar dearly, it’s just a tool of expression.

Guitar playing is only a reflection of who I am at the time I’m playing.  It’s a sonic documentary.  It’s a voice that I control with my fingers.

I need a pen to write ideas down on a piece of paper, but ultimately the ideas behind the writing are a lot more important than some scribbles on a page.

It’s a symbiotic relationship.  As I play guitar, I develop as a person as well.  As a person I take a number of influences that inspire me (like literature, film and other people’s music) and use those as spring boards for expression.

While I work at being a better guitarist, I’m also working at being a better person and vice-versa.

To me – it’s all guitar playing.

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The How and Albert Ellis

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Albert Ellis is not some brilliant up and coming underground shredder that will show you how to stuff 15 notes in a 5 note bag.  Mr. Ellis was a particularly brilliant psychologist who had taken some cues from Stoicism, and Levi-Strauss and created a new form of therapy known as REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). I had first discovered Ellis’ work in college and while I found his books to be somewhat bizarre in their tone (the writing style seemed to be mired in the 1950’s with references to things like “Pollyannaish thinking”) his approach of using rational thought to break people out of emotional traps they had fallen into was particularly insightful to me and spoke to my own approach to removing emotions from problems and tackling them for what they are.

In the 1990’s I saw that an Adult Education division was going to bring Albert Ellis to speak at the lecture.  To say that Ellis was a brusque man is stating it mildly.  Throughout the lecture he swore like a sailor, called b-s on any number of things and took anonymous audience questions about problems they were having on stage and then talked through how to approach the problem.

When the lecture was over.  People were congregating around to talk to him and he yelled “Excuse me” and “Get out of my way” as he bolted out the door and went to his car.  I believe his logic was, he was paid to speak for two hours, people could ask him whatever they wanted during that time and he wasn’t going to hang out for another hour or two afterwards.  The audience hated this but I saw it as a man who practiced what he preached.  (If you read below, you’ll see that this wasn’t solely about the money – The Ellis Institutecontinues to offer the Friday Night public workshop that Ellis discusses below for the inflation adjusted price of $15 per person.  It’s about not getting entangled in things you don’t wish to).

I made a number of notes at the lecture and I’ve posted them below.  In terms of content, its a little rough and tumble and should act as little more than a “Cliff notes” version of his approach – but you might find it to be an interesting overview in how to remove emotions from problems and attack them in a systematic process.

If you find feelings of anger, depression or inadequacy acting as obstacles in your practicing, playing or goals, you might find Ellis’ approach helpful. I’ll include any new notes in brackets [ ].

Notes on an Albert Ellis lecture in Boston.  December 8, 1994.

Albert Ellis, Ph.D. is the head of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). [Ellis used the terms RET and REBT in the lecture interchangeably] He conducts interviews every Friday night at the Institute for $5.

Ellis’ methodology is borne out of a philosophical tradition rather than a psychological one. Of primary influence to his methodology were the Greeks and their focus on the analytical.

You are a talented screwball.

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The RET observations:

1.  All people want to be loved and accepted.

2. People meet conflicts with this goal.  The experience rejection/frustration /disappointment.

3.  People refuse to change

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Three causes for Neurosis

1. EGO – I am the center fo the universe

2.  Anger / Rage

3. A perception that there has to be environmental control.

#2 and #3 –> refusal to accept (rationalize)

The two words that cure all neurosis?:  Tough shit.

Past events are not the causes for present conditions.

Humans are born with two tendencies

1.  Posessing goals, values, desires, etc and demanding what you want.  Ellis seems to view people generally as babies where immediate needs are the primary focus.  That egocentricity makes people very upsettable.

2.  People have a constructive self-actualizing tendency.  You are born to think.

The net effect of these two statements is that while you can disturb yourself, you can also undisturb yourself.

You balance the rational and the unrational. The Universe is ambivalent.

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Three Insights of RET

1.  No one (or nothing) ever upset you.  You choose to upset yourself.

2.  When it [the depression/anxiety/problematic emotion] started is irrelevant.  It lasts because you believe it.  You can’t change people or situations – only perception.

3.  There is no magic. No one’s going to come down from the sky to save you. There is only work and practice.

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How to change:

Cognitive thinking

1. Dispute the “musts”  “I must be this…I must do this.” Why must you? [Ellis refers to this in some of his writing as ‘musterbation”]

2. Along similar lines…”I can’t bear it (rejection, etc)” or  “I can’t stand it.” The implication is –   “I can’t stand it and be happy at all.”

3.  “When I fail, I am worthless” in reality – “I acted badly – but I screwed up and I am human.”

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There are two solutions to a poor sense of self-worth

1.  I’m okay because I am alive. (I’m okay because I choose to be okay.)

2.  I’m neither good or bad as good implies perfection and bad implies damnable [The terms are all or nothings propositions for Ellis].  I am a human who behaves well and when I agree to reach/perform certain moral ethical deeds, I am behaving well but good deeds do not make me good.  (preferred method). I am not my acts/behaviours.

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Self Esteem is an illness

When I am doing okay, I am okay – otherwise I’m a worm and even when I am okay – I worry about being a worm.

Low self-esteem: Because people don’t love me enough and because I act well I am okay.

High Self-Esteem I’m okay when I’m beautiful.

Self esteem is conditional.  The goal is unconditional self-acceptance.  Unconditional acceptance must be taught.

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Coping methods

Referencing:  When you do something compulsively bad –  you write down all of the disadvantages of the act and review often.

Rational coping self-statement:  Effective view philosophy [Also written – also reviewed often]

“I don’t need – but I would like.”

There is nothing awful – only inconvenient. “Mind you getting slowly tortured to death is inconvenient but it is not a worse case scenario.  You could always be tortured more slowly.”  [What was implied by Ellis is that you can not be faced with the most awful thing or situation.]

Psycho-educational techniques:  Good books, video, etc prosleytize and teach so that you can learn.

Modeling:  find good role models

Role Playing: stop at anxious (or appropriate sensation) moments and analyze.  What am I thinking right now?

Positive thinking is okay but does have it’s limitations.  Its achilles heel is that it can reinforce the “must” syndrome.

If you’re afraid of something. Do it.  repeatedly.  Rewards afterwards and “punish” if you fall through. [Ellis used a couple of examples here but he said to a woman trying to lose weight, “Okay.  You want to loose weight.  And you eat cookies all the time so as one step of this, you’re going to stop eating cookies.  What do you hate to do in the world more than anything? ‘Call my mother-in-law.’ Okay then.  So from now on if you eat a cookie, you’ll have to call your mother-in-law and talk to her.  But you really have to do it!  It only works if you follow through.” In more extreme cases, Ellis recommends people burn money as a punishment.  “After someone burns their second $20 bill, they stop doing what they’re doing pretty quickly”]

You let other people affect you but not disturb you.

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Grief vs depression.

Grief is okay.

Grief:  I’ve lost something and that is bad

Depression: Isn’t it too bad that I’ve lost something?

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Problematic Solutions

When a situation is bad – do not leave when you are upset because you’ll take those emotions with you into every other situation.

1.  Analyze how upset you are

2.  Act rationally.

The approach seems to have several steps.

1.  Problem identification

2.  Statement and picturing of the worst thing that could happen.

3.  Identifying feelings with that scenario.

4.  Changing feelings/perceptions of the worse case scenario used rational coping self statements repeatedly and setting up small reward/punishment systems to work on those statements daily.

This last step implies a lot of time.  There is no quick panacea for your problems.

Dr. Ellis has a hard methodology.  It makes the individual fully responsible for his/her actions, works within a closed system and puts emphasis on the body’s cognitive powers. He is violently opposed to most forms of therapy which he feels puts too much emphasis on past actions and events and not enough on present responsibility.  While he isn’t opposed to all forms of psychotherapy, his motto certainly seems to be, let the buyer beware.

His lecture was filled with cursing.  It seems to be a part of his shtick, but one of the things that it did was keep the audience laughing – and laughter (along with responsibility, work and perception) seems to be a very important part of the RET methodology.

*Those are all the notes I had from the lecture.

I hope you found this interesting, insightful, or helpful in some way and, as always, thanks for reading.

-SC

On Education: Learning And Knowing

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I’ve talked at length about thinking versus knowing,  (Even though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, the difference between the two is that while you can read something and think it, knowing something requires experience with it and implies the ability to utilize it.  Knowing something at a deep level means that you can adapt it and manipulate it to serve you.) but I wanted to expand out from that basic idea in this post.

Having said that, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that knowledge is the summit of education.  As important as knowledge is however, I believe that knowing something is actually far less important than learning and/or discovering something.

Learning something means bridging the chasm between unfamiliar and familiar.  It usually means making mistakes and requires you to make some kind of leap to get to the thing you’re striving for.

“It’s the journey not the destination.”  Right?  You might have read that as a caption to a professionally taken photo right off someone’s cubicle wall so it has to be true.  But plenty of people meander through life and don’t change for the better.  I watched a junkie on the street the other day digging infected scabs from his arm and popping them in his mouth while begging for change.  I doubt that he’s going to tell you that it’s all been about the journey.

I don’t believe that it’s enough to just take a journey,  The  journey taken should be a mindful one.  It’s about paying attention to things on the journey and learning from them and not the journey itself.

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It’s about seeing the world in a different way and becoming a different person than you started off being.

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Guac-a-mole!

Consider this for a moment if you will.  An avocado is a fruit with a large nut in the middle.

As a plant, the primary purpose of the avocado is to eventually become another tree by falling from the tree and releasing the nut to become another tree.

To a person, the avocado nut is inedible,  You pop it out of the center (if you’re eating the whole thing) and savor remaining the fruit.

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If education is an avocado, knowledge is the nut and learning is the fruit.

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Knowledge has a deeper purpose.  It has implications that can go well beyond what you or I can imagine.  It provides sustenance in the long-term and allows you do use things (outside of their original purpose when necessary) to reach a bigger goal.

Learning provides daily sustenance.  It feeds you and gives you energy to both be in the preset and look to the future.

They’re part of the same fruit.  And you can’t have one without the other.

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And now, a big-ticket item about knowledge versus learning.

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Knowledge allows you to succeed but learning allows you to mess up, screw up and (in a best/worse case scenario) to fail.

Being able to fail in a constructive (and safe way) is important.

First off, to fail at something means you tried something.  You took action of some kind.  If you don’t try you never succeed right?

(and if you never fail then you probably aren’t trying too hard.)

To succeed, means you’ll have to try again.

Secondly, you can’t have success unless you have something to measure success against.  To succeed means to successfully accomplish something… to overcome something.  If you succeed at everything you stay at the same mediocre level because you’re never challenged to go further.

Failing implies that something went wrong, and in working to overcome that result – it means you’ll have to learn.

And learning something means you can begin to know something.

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No one wants to “fail” at anything – but I don’t think failing is always a bad thing.  It’s a tried and true path to success and it’s one of the greatest (and most thorough) teachers you’ll ever find.

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In a related note, if you take a moment to reminisce about things you know versus things that you’re learning (or have learned recently), you might notice that you have a different reaction or feeling to what you’re learning (exciting) versus what you know (yawn).

In guitar, you practice what you’re learning but you play what you know.  And that’s a big reason why you want to be learning whenever you can, so you can increase what you really know.

That’s it for now.

As always thanks for reading!

-SC