MUSICOL 346: Section 9 - Technological Advances and the Eclectic Score / Cyber Punk
Scoring Practices 80s + 90s
- Return of the Classical Hollywood-style underscore - Responding to new equipment and techniques - Cross-marketing with popular song industry ("synergy")
Synthesizers and Electronic Music: Rise of electronic composition
•Advances in sound synthesis and digital sampling technology •Digital audio workstation software •Synthesizers •Sampling
Hybridity
A cross-cultural mix of musical markers (styles, timbres, etc.) - Usually Western + Asian/Eurasian (Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Arabic, etc.).
The Digital Era
Advantages of digital sound: - increased dynamic and frequency range - eliminated noise and signal degradation - increased the speed of work - allowed for non-linear editing - new tools for sound manipulation (plug-ins, filters)
Ambient Music and Sound
Ambient Sound: Background noise that helps to define setting, mood, and location. Ambient Music: Gentle, largely electronic music with no persistent beat; often used to create or enhance mood or atmosphere.
Convergence
As media is increasingly digital, differences between media types (television, film, video games, etc.) become more a property of the device or screen at the site of consumption than the medium itself. Aesthetics typically associated with one medium or another are now shared across media as a whole.
Synthesizers and Electronic Music: Benefits
DAWs: - More control over individual mic recordings (over the mix) Synthesizers: - Increased quality and quantity of sound options - Drawing on popular music aesthetic Sampling: - Fuller orchestrations (doubling the live orchestra) - Foregrounding synthesized acoustic instruments (again drawing on popular music aesthetic)
Music Department Technology
Digital sound editing (through DAWs) means the final step is no longer the recording session—composers submit stems (submix for use by rerecording engineers at final mix session). Technological advances have lead to: - more personnel at music production houses (Remote Control Productions) - more work finished, quicker/reliable - providing demo scores for approval Virtual Instruments Demo Scores
Batman (1989)
Dir. Tim Burton Underscore: Danny Elfman - Classical Hollywood-inspired; Gothic; foregrounded Pop Score: Prince - Inspired by film; used diegetically Musical logic sometimes overrides narrative logic - "Party Man" sequence First film to release two soundtracks: score and pop - Scout Single: "Batdance"
Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott Composer: Vangelis (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou) Loosely based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick) Set in Los Angeles, 2019
Noir
Film Noir: Stylish Hollywood crime dramas, cynical and often sexualized (a period in Hollywood that lasted between the 1920s and 1950s). - Stylistic characteristics include low-key lighting, black-and-white film, dark mood, the centrality of a detective or policeman, flawed and alienated heroes, convoluted story lines, conspiracies, urban setting, moral ambiguity. - Musically, tends to employ slow jazz (sign of the urban) and crooner music (like Sinatra).
Mixing Genres
Genre: a category of artistic composition, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter. - Genre mixture is very common. Blade Runner famously mixed noir characteristics with science fiction. Horror and science fiction are also often paired. - Music often plays a role in this, borrowing devices from another genre to invoke that genre either locally or globally in a film.
Cross-Marketing and Franchises
In 1990s and 2000s: - Reduced cross marketing of soundtrack albums (digital streaming) - New vertical integration - Franchising - Cross-media exploitation
Music Department Personnel
Music Supervisor (responsible for pre-existing music; legal needs) Composer (original music; increasingly managerial) - Responsible for final recorded score Orchestrator (expanded role: last-minute composing adjustments; supervising the recording session from recording booth) Music Editor (prepares film for recording session; facilitates recording) Recording Engineers New roles: - Sampler - Midi Orchestrators - Synth Programmers - Music Preparation Teams (due to rise of engraving software like Finale and Sibelius, no longer "copyists") - Click-track operator
Nostalgia
Nostalgia: A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past (based on recollection, not reality)
Digital Formats
Standardization of 5.1 surround sound: - 5 channels + 1 low frequency - left, center, right, 2 surround Formats: - Cinema Digital Sound (1990; instead of optical soundtrack) - Dolby Digital (Batman Returns, 1992; between sprocket holes) - Digital Theater System (Jurassic Park, 1992; sync with CD) - Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (Last Action Hero, 1993; blue area to left)
Musical Symbolism
The use of music to depict some extra-musical meaning. This could be a broad idea, a specific character in a film, a visual or narrative motive that recurs through a film, etc. Examples: Harp to signify the divine; piano to signify domesticity; hymn to signify the religious; trumpet signal to signify an announcement
Digital Sound and Musical Aesthetics
Volume range increases Frequency range increases Variety of orchestration options - Large orchestra, synthesizers and virtual instruments, unusual or exotic instruments, compilation scores and compilation/original scores Rock rhythms introduced for drive (especially in action sequences) - Rhythmic string ostinatos; foregrounded percussion Eroding the boundaries of popular music - Used both diegetically and non-diegetically; moving back and forth between the two; more like traditional underscore Action movies: Moving away from traditional leitmotivic approach to scoring for mood and affect - Underarticulated themes and driving rock-rhythm ostinatos
The Dark Knight (2008)
Warner Bros. Dir.: Christopher Nolan Comp.: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor: Richard King Highly positive reception - Oscar for Best Sound Editing; Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack
The Information Age
We now live in a world where information is not concrete. - Information can be manipulated. - Information empowers us and leaves us powerless. - The single truth is less real than the illusions and subjective points of view with which we view the world. This leads to debates about postmodernity, embodiment, identity, and the nature of truth itself.
Eclecticism
Wide variety of options for scoring a film; chosen according to what a film needs - Indiana Jones films: traditional symphonic scores that blend action and mood music, music that sets the scene, and musical clichés - The Terminator (1984): soundtrack suggests the future by ambiguating the underscoring and sound effects (sounds that seem to come from cyborgs, but can also be interpreted as part of a modernist, percussive underscore) - Back to the Future (1985): symphonic scoring (action and mood music) with a pop score both diegetic and non-diegetic (helps to identify time and place) "What's good is what works." - Stephen Holden
Cyberpunk
a sub-genre of science fiction that blends high tech and low culture Responding to: - the information explosion - punk culture and hacker culture - growing city densities and urban sprawl - the removal of power from the disenfranchised population - theories about and realization of genetic engineering Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner and William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer were influential in defining this sub-genre
Orientalism
the imitation of aspects of the global East within art or literature. (Edward Said) - "Imitation" is key in this definition—this is a Western depiction of the East, which is patronizing and essentializing.
Some Cyberpunk Films
•Blade Runner (1982) •Tron (1982) (Disney+) •RoboCop (1987) (Hulu) •Hackers (1995) (free on YouTube and Vudu) •Johnny Mnemonic (1995) (rent on Amazon Prime) •The Fifth Element (1997) (rent on Amazon Prime) •The Matrix (1999) (rent on Amazon Prime) •A Scanner Darkly (2006)(free on Vudu) •Blade Runner 2049 (2007) (rent on Amazon Prime)
