Welcome back, it's been a minute. I was fortunate enough to go home for the holidays, and it was very refreshing, if not "centering", to go back home and see all my boys again. For the cats I wasn't able to meet up with, my deepest apologies...but I'll be back again. So, let's get back to it.
I'm still doing the same things here, songwriting and film scoring. My film scoring class has gotten slightly more intense, which I think is friggin awesome. One thing, for sure, is this....film scoring is hard. Real hard. I think it's harder than songwriting, at least for me it is. You really have to get very artistic with it, and let your emotions get deeply involved. In fact, a very famous film composer, Hanz Zimmer said "All these intellectual ideas go only so far, then you have to own up to the truth that it better have an emotional content". This basically means, that all the theory and technical shit you know is great and necessary, but you have to care and get in touch with your project. Everything else will eventually fall into place. You also have to decide who's perspective you're writing the music from, meaning which character is your music going to relate to. You need to have a main theme of the movie, but you also have to make sure that it tells the story of the characters. There's also times where your music will actually fill in the holes of the story that are left by the dialogue. Maybe even hint to something underlying the story that the characters haven't discussed yet. Pretty involved stuff.
Now, to the title of this...I believe it was Premier who said, "If the drums ain't tight, the beat ain't right". My God, the truth behind this statement is uncanny. Drums decide everything for you. Yes, melody and chord progression, rhythm, etc, are all very important. But your music is trash if your drums are trash...point blank. Unfortunately, drums are my weakest asset. Seriously, my drums are not tight lol. So, that is something that I'm going to need to work on and study...a lot. Another beef I have with my drums is that they always develop into a hip hop sound, which does NOT work for an R&B track or a pop track. Just isn't gonna work. So, what I need to do is take ALL of the hip hop tracks out of my iPod, and replace them with R&B songs. I need to really listen and analyze these songs, so I can learn how to do this stuff.
Luckily, I'm in the company of some percussion beasts, so for now I'm making instrumentals and letting the drums be done elsewhere. Gotta utilize your sources, and admit when you need the help.
I also need to watch various genre's of movies and study the scores, see what they're doing. So, I guess I will no longer listen to music or watch movies for enjoyment, but for studying purposes. Jessica's going to hate me lol.
Until next time, I leave you with this...
"The manner in which Americans ''consume'' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made."-Frank Zappa.