Getting Started on Ableton Live

I discovered Ableton Live in some UK DJ magazine this summer, it's an impressive piece of music software and it's got some real buzz among musicians.

Ableton Live is like a next-gen sequencer vs. the old standbys of Cubase, Logic, and Digital Performer. Like its name implies, it's performance-oriented - you can collect and organize lots of musical elements into a palette, then start triggering and layering them in real-time. It has features which can script these triggers and even randomize them a bit.

Smart time-shifting software handles beat matching in real time - so of course it's popular among DJs (I heard one DJ say that using Ableton is "like cheating").

Traditional sequencer features are here as well - an arrangement window and lots of included virtual instruments, VST support, etc., all ably implemented.

Ableton has loads of cool features, this is clearly designed by someone really into electronic music and knows what musicians need. I'll still use Digital Performer as my main sequencer, but I'm going to spend February working in Ableton for my RPM challenge project.

I decided to get started a bit more quickly by taking a class - a little synth shop called Robotspeak on Haight Street in San Francisco does Ableton classes - I just took it from a composer named Chachi Jones. It's $200 for 4 2-hour sessions, so you're paying $25 an hour (actually a good price for this kind of thing).

The class was a good investment - it saved me a lot of time noodling trying to figure Ableton out. Seeing the features in action and hearing how they work, all that.

Chachi's a good guy and his music is real good. All done in Ableton - check it out - also he does video shows as well, he's got one track on Google Video in particular which will let you hear something a bit more ambient:



More of Chachi's videos here...

Metallica Hearts Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone is a film composer who has has scored over 400 films, some of the more famouser ones are "The Mission" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

"The Mission" is the first film score I ever listened to. I was introduced to it by a researcher at MIT. He worked on computer generated music in a dungeon beneath the MIT Media Lab, outfitted with Unix workstations and a pair of Bosendorfer grand pianos.

One day he played the score from "The Mission", asking what I thought of it, and wondering how he might replicate a full orchestral sound on the computer (technology has come a long way since then, nowadays they can fake an orchestra about as well as they can fake sugar).

Anyway, hearing Morricone's music that day turned me on to film scoring for the first time.

Now there's a new tribute album called "We All Love Ennio Morricone", which the NY Times article covers. Metallica is contributing a cover of "The Ecstasy of Gold" from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". Metallica has used the original version of the track to open their concerts for over 20 years. Which leads us to this priceless quote:

“To me his music is just absolutely inspirational, corny as that may sound,” said James Hetfield, Metallica’s singer and guitarist. “He has taken so many risks, and his music is not polished whatsoever. It’s very rude and blatant. All of a sudden a Mexican horn will come blasting through and just take over the melody. It’s just so raw, really raw, and it feels real, unpolished. You hear mistakes in it, and that’s just great — if they are mistakes. Who knows? There’s so much character in it, and I appreciate that in such a polished world of soundtracks.”

That is some seriously high praise. And a reminder that it's not always good to be overly polished.

Google TV's Got Heroes...or a Hoax?

A video is going around the Internet by a Mark Erikson, who claims on his vlog "Infinite Solutions" that you can get a double-secret Google TV beta account.

Google TV supposedly will let you log into Gmail and watch any primetime show from Fox, CBS, and NBC for free (ABC and the CW are inexplicably not in on the deal...)

This has the hallmarks of a virtuoso Internet prank, complete with laughably complicated instructions to obtain your secret access via logging in and out of GMail a dozen times.

But it's produced "just so" that it puts a twinge of doubt in the viewer..

...ok, this is definitely a hoax...

...but there have been reports that media companies are talking with Google...

...maybe this is Google's clever way of generating buzz....

...stranger things have happened....

...remember how Google launched Gmail on April Fools' Day???...

...and how did this guy get rights to include a clip from "Heroes" in his vlog, anyway?...

But enough of the conspiracy theories. Mostly I got a good laugh from Eric's videos. I love the idea people out there are logging in and out of Gmail.

And if I want to watch Heroes, I can always check it out 9pm on Mondays on NBC. Or on YouTube, of course! ;-)

After the jump, the embedded videos, including Heroes...(via TechCrunch)...

The original "Google TV" video by "Infinite Solutions"...


The update, responding to accusations of a prank:


All over the world, people are waking up with strange, new powers....

Composer Brian Eno & Ambient Music on Youtube

I wrote recently about Brian Eno's composing work on the upcoming video game Spore, and linked to a talk in San Francisco of Wil Wright & Brian Eno talking about developing the algorithmically-generated musical score for the game.

Well since then I bought some of his albums and was surprised by a couple of things.

One, the music appears to have been hugely influential - listen to any number of scores from films in thriller and horror genres, and you hear sounds resembling stuff on "Ambient 4 On Land", which Eno composed 1978-1982.

Two, think of the era where he came up with the stuff. Jimmy Carter is president. There's no Internet or CDs. Hardly anyone gets cable. Record shops and radio stations have Blondie's "Rapture" and The Clash's "Combat Rock".

Along comes Brian Eno with this slooow, spooky, new age music composed mostly of gongs, gurgling, electronic fuzz and the occasional frog. And he gets a record contract. I'm kind of curious who the A&R guy was who discovered him and what the story was there....

It's awesome stuff. Not exactly dance floor music. and you wouldn't want to blast it out of your car. I've heard Brian Eno say once that he created ambient music partially is because he wanted something to listen to while working that wouldn't break his concentration.

(Of course, Stephen King listens to Metallica while he works, so I guess YMMV...)

Here are a couple of YouTubes...

The first talks about his "Music For Airports" project, where he came up with music to be played at O'Hare airport, and what kind of music you might want to hear when getting on and off planes:


And another called "77 Million Paintings",which is related to the algorithmic music stuff that is going into Spore. Enjoy!

The Most Famous 6-Second Drum Break in History

Well, would be the "Amen Break" from the 1969 song "Amen, Brother" by the Winstons. It's so famous it has its own wiki entry.

Yes, you've heard it, thousands of times. Many composers have borrowed it in many genres. It's a 6-second drum solo which got sampled and became very popular in hip hop in the late 80s, and then in the UK jungle and D&B scene in the 90s.

A fellow named Nate Harrison created a video about it which is now on YouTube, showing the history of the sample, with a number of very interesting musical examples, including NWA's "Straight Outta Compton", leading up to increasingly crazy recut versions of the beat in various jungle tunes.

After 11 minutes or so the video goes into meditations on copyright and ownership, etc, which is still mildly interesting, but the musical examples are all before the 12th minute of the video:

NAMM show in Nammaheim, CA

The annual NAMM show is the get-together of all the musical gear makers and their retailers. Lots of guitars, amps, synths, and software. The show is big - nearly 85,000 registrants this year

The Retro Thing blog has some coverage of new synths from the show. MatrixSynth also pointed out that at NAMM, hardware synths seem to be making a bit of a comeback.

While the world has definitely gone host-based - you can get some incredible virtual instruments these days - there are still great synths to be had (for a price). Virtual instruments are way cheaper and easier to use.

However eventually your computer *will* run out of power, and then what will you do?

For some good-natured general coverage, check this LA Times article.

Santaolalla, Newman, Glass, Navarrete, Desplat nominated for Oscars for Best Score

FYI - here is the full list of Oscar nominations...

OS Version 2 Available For Virus TI Synthesizer

What? You haven't downloaded it yet? Like, get on it man!

If you want to see an electronic musician drool, just tell him or her to read this from FutureMusic:

The Graintable oscillators applies techniques as those used in granular sampling and pitch-shifting algorithms to synthesizer Wavetables. It opens up a whole world of new possibilities. Imagine bending any Wavetable far beyond what is sonically possible with common Wavetable synthesizers. It all happens in realtime and of course all parameters can be modulated in realtime as well.

The formant-based oscillators work in a similar fashion, only with one crucial difference: the formants remain fixed as you play. This effectively turns the oscillator into a filterbank on steroids comprising up to 256 resonant bandpass filter poles, whereby the cutoff of each virtual pole is determined by the harmonics in the current Wavetable index.

Actually, the description is very tech-heavy, but it's hot - the bottom line is "...it's like turning a nice ambient patch into a dark, gritty sonic monster by only changing one continuously variable parameter."

(I would have by now, but my brand-spankin'-new Virus Polar is in the shop getting a brain replacement...)

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Music

World of Warcraft's expansion pack shipped this week. You can play up to level 70 now. And there is new music, a lot of it.

The composer for previous World of Warcraft editions was Jason Hayes, but he left Blizzard, so the expansion pack was scored by Russell Brower, Derek Duke and Matt Uelmen (according to here).

All 3 are experienced - Matt U. did the music for Diablo II (very hard to find unless you resort to allofmp3 before it gets shut down). Dark, twisted ambient horror music, great stuff (Derek Duke also has some sound design credits on Diablo II).

Russell Brower wrote an article about the sound development process for Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, and was sound director for Typhoon Rising. Some clips from both are on the Novalogic site. Typhoon rising's main clips are a little more contemporary, basically extremely heavy techno grooves with Indonesian gamelan instruments. Brower has an interview talking about the music and sound - scan about half way down the page here for info about the music for the game.

You apparently won't be able to purchase the soundtrack for Burning Crusade until the WOW Collector's edition comes out.

But in the meantime you can check out a couple of Jason Hayes' WoW tracks free - very dramatic, very action movie.

So how did Jason Hayes get such a great gig? WoW is basically the biggest thing ever.

Well he didn't know anyone at Blizzard, he just had a great demo reel. From an WoW Source interview:

I sent out a couple introductory letters to game companies via e-mail from my apartment in Lafayette, Louisiana (a southern state in the U.S., near the city of New Orleans). About two or three weeks later, someone from the corporate offices at Sierra On-Line in Seattle, WA wrote me back, saying they had forwarded my inquiry to the Oakhurst, CA division (right outside of Yosemite Valley), because they thought that team was looking for a composer. I couldn’t believe it! Soon after that, I got another e-mail from Human Resources in Oakhurst saying they had received my letter from their corporate headquarters and would like me to send in a demo. I was thrilled, and promptly sent in a CD of music representing a variety of styles.

Another 3 weeks went by, and I was starting to wonder if I’d ever hear from them again. Then all of a sudden came one more e-mail from HR, asking if I could send in another demo, this time focusing on orchestral music. I replied enthusiastically, assuring the representative that it would be in the mail right away. I then proceeded to panic because I didn’t have any more demo material to send in!

To make a long story short, I worked around the clock on a new demo, sent it in, and eventually was flown to Oakhurst to interview with Sierra On-Line. I was hired about a month later. I’m very grateful to them for giving me my start in the game industry!

How cool is that?

John Piscatello: Official Blog

If you typed John "Piscatello" and found this page, the person you are looking for is John Piscitello, (Piscatello is a common misspelling of my last name).

Welcome to my blog, and enjoy!

-John "Piscatello"

Alexandre Desplat wins Best Score at Golden Globes

Winners are listed here.

Alexandre Desplat won for "The Painted Veil", the score features Lang Lang playing piano.

And Prince won best song for "The Song of the Heart" in "Happy Feet". Very old school, it's Prince being Prince while playing it very safe...check out this dancing penguin music video using footage from the movie.

Brian Eno & Will Wright Talk the Score for "Spore"

Spore is a highly anticipated video game from Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, The Sims, and other Sim-games. Brian Eno is creating the score for the game.

Spore will let players create microbes which evolve into interplanetary civilizations (check out the Flash intro at the official Spore site or the Google Video of a demo by Will Wright...it's cool).

Eno's score for Spore will reflect the algorithmic nature of Sim worlds, where simple rules give rise to complex, elegant systems. Eno is using software to generate ambient clips which plan to never repeat during your lifetime (much less during gameplay).

There's a Brian Eno / Rob Wright podcast talking about all this at recent a Long Now Foundation seminar (down street here in San Francisco). Start 4 minutes 50 seconds in, where they start speaking.

Eno talks about the experience of "generating" the music from the bottom up, using simple rule-based models to explore ideas rather accidentally. "It's making seeds rather than forests", says Eno. He cites wind chimes as perhaps the simplest example of such a "generative" musical system.

WWMNA wrote about the event:

(Eno) went on to demonstrate a simple software called "The Shuffler" which he uses to create fragments for the soundtrack of Spore and which even with a simple combination of samples possibly would never create the same composition twice within a lifetime.

All rather opposite from traditional top-down method of having an idea in your head and sculpting it in the studio. I found it an interesting discussion for composers, they're brilliant guys to listen to.

(Also you can check out some of Eno's ambient albums here...)

Hat tip: Eno to generate Spore soundtrack - Joystiq

24, composer Sean Callery, and the Synclavier

24 is about to start its new season... the best blog post I've seen is from Ken Levine, who made up a hypothetical 24 spec script rejection letter. Read it, it's funny.

24 gets its big hybrid orchestral / synthesized sound from Sean Callery. I was surprised when I learned the show does not use a real orchestra, but just Sean working in his home studio. The soundtrack album is lovely stuff, you can hear a little from the album in this 24 parody on YouTube.

It turns out Sean Callery got his start at New England Digital, the makers of the Synclavier, the $250,000 digital recording solution that was the high-end machine to use in the 80s. Sean was a product specialist, and got involved with hands-on productions and sound design early on.

I met another Synclavier vet this past week, at an excellent 2-day seminar on Logic Audio led by Bruce Nazarian, who has a digital media consulting practice in Las Vegas. Bruce has a number of sound editing credits on IMDb, many done on the Synclavier. As Bruce was training us on Logic, he often noted how easy things are today vs. the Synclavier back in the day.

The Synclavier is a classic, check it out the here and here. (I assume you all know where to find 24...)

Win the Turner Classic Movies "Young" Film Composers Competition, Get Your Score on Basic Cable

You don't have to be all that young to enter this...just 18-35. If you win, you get the "opportunity" to produce a score for the silent movie "Beau Brummel" and TCM will put it on the air. Congratulations, you'll have your first IMDb entry! ;-)

Here's what you need to do according to the rules (they're a little long but here's the rough version):

• Go write yourself a 60-second score to one of 4 Beau Brummel clips on TCM's site.
  
• Upload your score here by March 31st.
  
• Judges will choose 10 semi-finalists in April.
  
• The semi-finalists find lawyers among friends and family to review legal releases to keep TCM's legal department happy. (Also they will have to send in written scores of their 60-second demos).
  
• The judges cull the group down to 5 finalists.
  
• In May, finalists receive a new 90-second clip to score by June.
  
• Finally, in August, judges pick a winner.
  

The champion composer gets a 4GB dual CPU Intel Mac, an extra copy of Logic Pro, and an "opportunity" to complete a score to "Beau Brummel", which, if not blown, will result in the composer inviting friends over to watch it on TCM.

In past years it says Hans Zimmer has served to "mentor the winner, shepherding them through the composing process and sharing his enormous experience with the lucky individual." It's not crystal clear from the Web site that it will happen this year, but even if it's just over email, that's pretty cool.

Apple Macworld Keynote Wrap-up

See below for the liveblogging. This was all done on a Blackberry, the Blackberry which will go on eBay as soon as I get my hands on a Smartphone...

• Best line of the day: John Mayer saying "Apple makes your life better....it's like the complete opposite of terrorism..."
• Best guest star: Al Gore, for his voicemail message on Steve Jobs' iPhone which slyly mentioned his global warming presentation.
• Worst guest star: Stan Sigman, CEO of Cingular, for dryly reading a prepared speech from notecards, and totally losing the interest of the audience. Better to speak off the top of your head and keep it short.
• Smartest guy in the room: The guy next to me, who bought 5000 shares of Apple stock when he saw the iPhone. The stock promptly went up 6 points, earning him $30,000.
• Least smart guy in the room: That would have to be me, who spent time liveblogging on a Blackberry instead of buying and selling Apple shares on Etrade, which would have been far more profitable.
  
• Best new feature: A real Safari web browser, so you don't have to look at crippled web pages on your portable device anymore.
  
• Worst new feature: The $499 price tag for the 4GB iPhone. Somehow I bet those phone and data plans that come with it from Cingular aren't going to be the best deal going.
• Verdict: I want the iPhone, but getting up early and killing the whole morning at the keynote isn't the best use of time! ;-)
  

john mayer....apple keynote liveblog wrapup

One last bit of news...with the iphone launch, apple is dropping "computer" from its corporate name.

Jobs is thanking his employees and their families, because everyone has been pulling late nights on this, apparently...that's a nice note.

Ok one more bit - john mayer (one of my favorites) is going to play a song...he's singing "gravity", happens to be my favorite from "Continuum"...people loved the guitar solo...its a minimalist performance, quiet, as opposed to noisy..

Mayer says "apple inc makes life more fun...its kind of like the exact opposite of terrorism".

Now he's playing "waiting on the world to change".

Steve is saying thanks...and that's it...we're done!

eric schmidt and jerry yang at macworld keynote...liveblog

My old boss Eric S is speaking...his style is a little different - he is talking about "cloud computers" providing "html, xml, data services" - most notably says "this product is going to be hot" - really just a short little set of comments to show support.

And who comes next? Jerry Yang from Yahoo. His comments are more promoting of yahoo (as opposed to eric schmidt's more techy comments). But they are just as light, and also simply a show of support.

Having both execs on stage shows apple's increasing muscle...and that there is still consumer power in the yahoo brand (as much as they've been maligned in the past year...).

iphone, google maps, apple stock, apple keynote liveblog...

The guy next to me just bought 5000 AAPL shares the second he saw the iphone...

You can load google maps, search for Starbucks, tap the number in the search result, and call.

Jobs just crank-called a Starbucks and ordered 4000 lattes...

Yes, the Google maps satellite images work....yes the crowd oohs ans aahs when they see this, still, even though this can be done on other phones...

It is nice how you can bookmark Google maps locations...also the google earth application appears to have some apple-like enhancements, the way the pushpins "fly in" to their location when you load a page. They say they have been working closely with Google on this..

Ok, here comes Eric Schmidt on stage...

"Its the internet in your pocket."

iphone internet features...liveblog

So the big news is free imap sync for yahoo mail..this appears to be only for iphone users.

When you see a phone number in a mail message, you can touch the number to dial...

The on screen keyboard shows up again in the mail interface...

There is autocomplete for email addresses...

The browser is safari, unfortunately not Firefox...and they make the correct choice to show you the original html version of the web sites, not these crippled mobile web sites you get on phones...

Plus there is a cool zoom-in feature for web pages, by double tapping the screen to zoom in and out of pages...you can do this even when the page is still loading...

Their take on tabs is cool, hard to explain, but basically having tabs is a big win, I hate not having them on the blackberry.

iphoto on the iphone...more apple keynote liveblogging...

The crowd loves the "pinch" gesture...when looking at a photo, just put 2 fingers on the screen, and squeeze them or pinch them to zoom the photo in and out...that got the oohs and aahs...

"We have reinvented the phone".

Really its enough to make you want to work at apple, who else can do such elegant devices?

iphone has the cingular name burned in it...

At the top left, it says "Cingular" on all the menu screens.

So we are now switching to the phone features - the big thing is to use your contacts to dial, so you don't have to reenter them.

The voicemail is random access, use the screen ui to skip to the call you want to hear...

Its quad band and has wifi built in.

The ringtones sound like the music from the mac vs pc commercials.

Al gore is in Steve Jobs' contacts, by the way...

You can have your own picture show up on other peoples' phones, apparently.

They are taking a big advantage of the touchscreen for the ui - you immediately wonder why all the other phones are so shabby in their ui's today...very nice how the screen shows your call waiting choices, and a single button for conferencing....

Neat trick for long phone numbers - they don't scroll, they just get smaller...

Now we are hearing al gore's voice mail...

Sms let's you have multiple conversations at once, just navigating between them. They keyboard shows up on the screen, and has error detection built in for your typing...once the message is sent, it is shown as a conversation a la I'm interfaces...

iphone demo liveblog...

Wow its slick,,,you slide your finger to unlock it...everything zooms and slides around...

Scrolling is incredibly cool, just swoop your finger and it scrolls.

The landscape mode during itunes shows the album covers from your library...

Its a very big advancement in the ipod user experience vs the old scrollwheel and simple menus...

The videos have on-screen controls-just touch and they appear as a transparent overlay...

the iphone runs osx! liveblog...

Wow that's a surprise. So its like windows ce/mobile, right? Well according to apple this is not "the crippled stuff" you get on other phones.

Their big tagline: "5 years ahead of any other phone". And will build on top of ipod syncing to get your data on the iphone...

So contacts, bookmarks, calendar will sync over too. I wish the network would do that, but oh well, another wire on the desk...

The screen will have 160 pixels per inch, 11.6 inches thick, a 2 megapixel camera, headset jack, sim card tray, a speaker, microphone, and ipod connector.

Sensors...it knows when you are holding it to your ear to turn off the touchscreen. It knows when you switch from portrait to landscape (old mac monitors knew that trick), and a light sensitive screen...

the iphone...liveblog

"A revolutionary ui, the result of years of r&d...he says the keyboards are a problem with existing smartphones..that controls need to change for each application.

So to solve it, use a pointing device...so the device is just one giant screen...with NO stylus. Guess they learned from the newton...there will be a touchscreen that is more accurate than existing ones and can handle multi-fingered gestures.

They are touting this on par with the mouse. Oh, and fire and the wheel...

apple keynote...the big news??

Now Jobs is turning on the hype...he is looking back at the big products...the mac, the ipod, and promises 3 revolutionary products.

First..a widescreen ipod, second, a phone (crowd likes that) and the 3rd is...um...a communications device.

Ah..the joke is that it's all in one - a single device. The crowd loves this...like a revival meeting...

Now there is a visual joke...a mockup of an ipod with an old fashioned rotary dial glued onto it..

apple keynote liveblog cont...

So the apple tv ships next month and its cheap...the crowd liked the demos but the energy is low...we are waiting for the big news...

more apple keynote blogging....

Ok the itv will be called apple tv...it will hold 50 hours of hi def, use all the common wifi standards, and will autosync with the itunes from one computer. So if you buy it, it will end up on the apple tv automatically.

You can also stream from a laptop, up to 5 of them. You can stream live from apple.com as well...so now we're wacthing a trailer for "the good shepherd"...

And yes the iphoto stuff can stream there too.

liveblogging apple keynote...music on apple tv..

9:36 Ok so they play itunes on the tv...the album cover art on the screen thankfully moves to avoid burn in...they also do the corny slideshows from iphoto...

Apple Keynote Liveblog

9:25 now showing new ipod ads, nothing exciting

9:20 announced paramount will sell movies on itunes...goofed a bit on the press coverage of slowing itunes sales, showed a graph which said it is exploding...they are now selling more music than amazon..

9:18 ok there is a new mac ad making fun of vista...the pc guy is in a hospital gown about to go into major surgery...crowd loves....

apple keynote liveblog...pricing and cingular ceo...

I notice jobs repeats his key themes over and over throughout the keynote..."We are reinventing the phone."

We are now seeing the Bluetooth headset...

Now he is repeating the features he showed during the talk...

People are applauding the 200 patents apple has filed...

"Its like having you life in your pocket."

And the price? My guess is $249...nope! $499 for a 4gig, the cost of a nano and a smartphone today...and its $599 for an 8gig version...and it won't ship until June.

They will be exclusive with Cingular in the US...jobs says close collaboration with the network is needed for features like the visual voicemail.

Here comes the CEO of Cingular...Stan Sigman...who by the way has a real midwest accent. Oh yuck..Cingular is part of at&t...I forgot about that. And he's using notecards for this talk - not extemporaneous like schmidt and yang...the crowd is deflating here a bit, waiting to get through it.

Really this is a missed opportunity for Cingular - shorter, more informal comments would work better here. People are cracking up here and there - they started trying to applaud early to end the talk...

But Steve Jobs is smooth as silk as he retakes the podium and compliments Cingular...

One interesting point: "this is not an mvno". It's a partnership...

Macworld Steve Jobs Keynote Delayed....

....It's past 9am and this enormous crowd is still lined up waiting to be led in...rehearsals must be taking too long, someone here is saying...demo problems? We'll have to see...

Dawn Soler in Charge of Scores for New Shows at Touchstone Television

...she was been the co-music supervisor for Ugly Betty, Being John Malkovich, and Notting Hill...via AP /Broadcast Newsroom...here's her IMDb page...

Liveblogging the Steve Jobs Keynote...

Well, since I'm attending a seminar at Macworld to get up to speed on Logic Audio, I decided to drop by for the Steve Jobs keynote tomorrow morning. I'll be heading out real early to get a seat and will bring my laptop and try to liveblog it....

Hitchcock Didn't Want Music in the Psycho Shower Scene???

The New York Times has a piece on Hitchcock and music, based on a new book by Jack Sullivan called, um, "Hitchcock's Music" (Jack Sullivan has edited an encyclopedia on the horror genre, by the way, which is here).

Anyway, his new book covers Hitchcock's personal faith in music as art, and how music plays a big role in the plots of his films. From the NY Times article:

...he examines Hitchcock’s meticulous notes about film scores, pays attention to every casual calliope tune and chronicles the director’s arguments with studios and fallings out with composers.

Sounds interesting if you want to read up on the relationships between directors and their composers:

The composer Bernard Herrmann, for example, who created the scores for “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and some of Hitchcock’s other masterpieces, said there were only “a handful of directors like Hitchcock who really know the score and fully realize the importance of its relationship to a film.”

So the shocker in the article is Hitchcock didn't want music in the Psycho shower scene! Hermann had to convince him to keep it in.

I wonder how that shower stabbing scene would have been without music? Try playing this YouTube clip with the sound off and see:

Composers Commonly Collaborate on Compostitions

Jeff Bond has a nice feature article in the Hollywood Reporter on the increasing number of collaborations in film scores in recent years. It seems that technology is making it easier for composers to pass tracks back and forth on their Macs. Says Andrew Gross, who collaborated with John King (of Dust Brothers fame) for "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny":

When we work together, we both use Apple's Logic Pro. Even though he's in New York and I'm in L.A., it's very simple. We can transfer our files to each other over the Internet and then double click on the session, and we're off and running. I can immediately open his files and start tweaking.

Guess I better switch from Digital Performer to Logic Audio and soon.
However not everyone loves collaborating. Says James Newton Howard, on doing "Batman Begins" with Hans Zimmer:

In most multiple composer situations, you find it because someone got nervous about the music and insisted that somebody else come in and help. 'Batman' could have been a disaster, but the kind of schizophrenic nature of Bruce Wayne and the Batman character lent itself to a wide interpretation musically. And even though we did collaborate on almost every cue, there are areas I worked on more than Hans and areas Hans worked on more than I did. I think we'll repeat it hopefully many times in the future, but overall, I don't know anyone who wouldn't feel hemmed in and restricted by having to compromise with another composer

Well, I love the "Batman Begins" soundtrack, and I don't think it sounds schizophrenic at all.

Anyway, the good news is if every film has 2 composers, there will be twice as much work out there! ;-) Read the whole thing.

Soundtrack Sales up 23% in 2006

Well it's not quite like it's a trend or anything...it's just that Disney's "High School Musical" has been such a big seller this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. From Variety:

Disney's "High School Musical" soundtrack was 2006's top seller at 3.7 million units -- the lowest total for the year's chart-topper in the 15 years SoundScan has been keeping sales figures.
...
"High School Musical" is the first soundtrack to become the No. 1 album since "Titanic" sold 9.3 million copies in 2002, a feat that should have Disney -- an indie in the recorded music field -- smiling. But it should concern the rest of the business that no major label act could beat a TV soundtrack aimed at tweens.

I guess if you want to sell records you should go for the kid market. I guess we should expect more kid-friendly DVD musicals from Disney and Nickelodean this coming year.

Another notable stat is that digital music was 5.5% of all music sales in 2006 (though I'm moving back towards buying CDs, because I don't like not having the backup media available...)