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Re: [microsound] sci-fi cinema and music



> In 1954, MGM began a magnificent project, destined to
> set a new standard for science-fiction and fantasy
> films. ... 

> This score actually launched the era of electronic
> music on film. Today it remains as lushly surprising,
> as fresh and inventive as when it burst upon the
> screen [five!] decades ago....

The story is often repeated that Harry Partch was contacted before the
Barrons and supposedly he felt very insulted that the producers equated
him with the subject matter.

Finally connecting Partch and the Cantina band John Zorn's label Tzadik
has released 2 albums by the Syzygys, a japanese band with a one of its
lead players playing a Partch tuned organ (the other plays violin
intoned as it is in Cairo), and they do a lounge sort of thing with
hints of new wave.

> > Hey, sorry. I really should organize my thoughts before I keep emailng you
> > over and over again :)
> > Anyway, I just thought of the idea of actual synthesizers appearing in films
> > in the '70s.  They were obviously current technology at the time but to the
> > audience they probably looked futuristic.  Two examples are the Arp modular
> > in Close Encounters that was used to communicate with the aliens (and played
> > by the founder of Arp I believe) and the T.O.N.T.O. modular that was
> > featured in Phantom of the Paradise.  In both cases the synths themselves
> > were mainly prop pieces and were used in unrealistic ways in the film.  So
> > in a sense people were imagining beyond the actual capabilities of the
> > machines to future applications.  For example in Phantom of the Paradise the
> > synth turns the Phantom's damaged garbled voice into slick pop singing which
> > could be seen as a precursor to Autotune!  OK, I'll leave you alone now.

re: Autotune, -yes though of course in that context its not being used
as the old much implied fantasy of a machine that fixes a lack of actual
talent, a la a Brady Bunch episode as I recall where studio trickery
elevated the children singers so far from their actual talents that they
felt guilty.

I do want to point out that both T.O.N.T.O. and the CE3K Arp were for
the most part props. I even when new found it strange that only the
first couple notes in CE3K seemed to be synths and the bulk of it
clearly standard orchestral sounds, maybe the ETs felt it was good
manners to adjust their tone of voice to something humans felt
comfortable with, though they still wound up breaking the plate glass window.

BTW you don't hear any sounds from T.O.N.T.O. anywhere on "Phantom of
the Paradise" though in '79 there are some T.O.N.T.O. sounds mixed into
the first Star Trek the Motion Picture, which I think is pretty suiting
because I imediately noticed T.O.N.T.O. and the Enterprise Bridge have
the same layout though I guess T.O.N.T.O. lacks a turbo lift. FWIW
T.O.N.T.O. was designed in the early 70s (post Star Trek the 60s series)
with the countours and styling being done by a pupil of Buckminster Fuller.

Along these lines the first major synth in movies appearance I know of
was in "Performance" with Mick Jagger (1970, dir. Donald Cammell &
Nicolas Roeg). Theres that infamous 70s porn film where a large modular
served the function of an interesting location I guess, though I don't
have the details. 

Finally on topic for this list don't forget "Electric Dreams" (1984)
where I guess nerdy guy winds up with a home computer who wants to woo
his quite-a-catch neighbor via accuiring Fairlight-like capabilities
plus using said nerdy guy as a front.

> Did anyone mention Tron?
> 
> Isn't it W. Carlos Williams?  Not at all John Williams!  The 'solar sail'
> transport that rides on the beams of light section was always a personal
> favorite... :)

Wendy Carlos of course. Might be a witty pun but of course the famous
poet almost by that name has no connection to the topic. That score was
of course contreversial because one would expect all-synthesizer though
it was not practical because that amount of multitracking could not be
done within a commercial feature film time frame. You had "Clockwork
Orange" which was only a partial score based on mostly classical
arrangements, one existing original track and the rest material from
existing non-synth records. Carlos there made a valiant effort to
convince Kubrick to except a full score but that never panned out... as
did the Moog with orchestra mostly rejected score to Kubricks "Shining"
- so the makeup of that soundtrack seems like Tron, only Tron used both
digital synths (Crumar General Development System) and Moog with
orchestra. Supposedly the shining score was far more avant garde but the
material retained did not use the orchestra and the main title was an
arrangement itself based on a 19thCent Berlioz arrangement.

I've been discussing on other lists a sort of embarassing or amusing
slip-up over the recent lengthening of "Appocalypse Now Redux".
Apparently in the 70s Coppola wanted Isao Tomita to realize the score
which was intended to be some themes the director created with further
themes and arrangements by his father Carmine. Anyway Tomita could not
turn around that quantity of synth work within a realistic time frame
and did not take the commission. Carmine Coppola did write a sort of
"style of" Gustav Holst's "Mars" (which btw was one of Tomita's best
known synth realizations plus he did the "Ride of the Valkiries" on
synths which was probably the most remembered piece of music in the film
where -- which in its original orchestral form was source music played
from a tape in a key sequence ). According to info in Keyboard Magazine,
the composer handling extending the music for the lengthened Appocalypse
now assumed given the idea to hire Tomita and hearing a Holst's "Mars"
sound-alike that the prerogative was to emulate Tomita. So the result
was the extended music sounds far more like a Tomita emulation than the
released film did (Patrick Gleeson was actually for some time a
contemporary and "rival" to Tomita in the doing classical music on
synths genre)

I must also add after meeting and looking into what Tomita has been up
to, his current situation is not what most people assume. For at least
40 years he's been a very in demand composer of acoustic orchestral
soundtracks. He was for all intents never a session synthesist. He said
he was very turned off by the avant garde electronic music of the 60s
but in general is enthralled by outer space and electronic sorts of
timbres. In 1970 he finally heard "Switched on Bach" which to him really
was career turning. The Japanese market was completely unenthusiastic to
"Switched on Bach" and the Moog music he was inspried to make. So whats
little known that all but one of the classical synth albums came from a
deal he struck with RCA in New York and their enthusiasm. So in Japan
he's sort of a name but not a legend regarding synthesis but he's much
revered as a traditional film composer. So for him, Europeans and
Americans always wonder why he doesn't just make more of those synth
albums that take a good part of a year to track (unlike the trend to
improvise direct to hard disc) while he is actually very much in demand
in the Japanese TV industry for big orchestral scores. The fact for
better or worse is those film scores are serious commissions and his
synth stuff is not being seriously commissioned (He did slip in a 12
minute original synthesized piece for the new Disney park in Tokyo a
couple years ago and adds synths to orchestral work like most Hollywood
composers do). 

Anyway back to Tron, it was an interesting tact to have both real life
and the computer world being represented by a blending of both
electronic sound and orchestral sound in both instances. One would
expect a contrast between the real and the computer but maybe that's the
intended anachronism. 

In sort of a twisted hommage, my last feature score was mostly sampled
orchestral sounds for the "proper" score but when a character popped a
classical album into a CD player on camera, she heard music only made by
virtual analog synths, essentially one of those synths playing classical
music albums.

nicholas d. kent
http://artskool.tripod.com/special/2_27_03_show.html

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