Hello from the sound booth brothers.
Now I know what you’re thinking:
- What kind of consummate professional is writing a blog while he’s meant to be recording?
- How bad are this guy’s priorities if he’s writing a blog when he’s meant to be working?
- He’s in a recording booth?
The answer to all of these questions follow
the same theme, I am a very hardworking lazy person whose priorities are
entirely contextual.
As it happens though, I’m sitting and
waiting for the musicians to come back from lunch, which is entirely doughy and
sugary food, and therefore likely to make the music sound worse and the
musicians will get tired and sleepy. All-in-all, I’m both glad that I ate salad
today, and that I’m sitting in this murky, musty, blazing hot room, and not out
in the bright, cool, spacious recording room.
But the reason I talk about this now is
because both King Kong from 2005, and the score that I composed that is now
being recorded play nicely together. For the score, I was requested that it be
based around a soft French horn, with strings and piano backing. Relatively
easy orchestration, and I think it goes well with the actual film. But one of
the composers they mentioned for it to sound like is Howard Shore, or James Newton
Howard. As it happens, Howard Shore was going to compose the score to King
Kong, and apparently had already recorded a bunch of it, but ended up being
replaced about ten minutes before the film came out. His replacement: James
Newton Howard.
And now the easy segue into my thoughts on
King Kong. R. A., like you I haven’t seen the original King Kong, but I’ve
heard pretty similar things about it, clearly we’ve read the same Wikipedia
page on the subject. It looks kinda old and dated, though I’m pretty sure I’d
appreciate it more if I saw it. But as for the new one, I have actually seen it
pretty recently. It’s very good. I am not quite as up on my film terminology and
practices as you Dan, so I don’t think I can get into quite so much detail, but
it was really, really good. I’d even call it one of my favorite monster movies
of all time, though I guess I haven’t seen all that many. It feels a bit like
Lord Of The Rings in how it looks and sounds, and the overall atmosphere of the
movie, though unfortunately it’s not quite as good. I agree with you Dan that
it has a couple moments of… questionable filmmaking, but on the whole it’s a
really fantastic movie.
Also, thanks Dan for listening and
responding to the song. I initially wasn’t actually going to do it, but when it
was late on Wednesday, the tune just sort of came up, and within an hour I had
the lyrics written and was recording it. I know I’m not that great a singer
(I’ve been described as being painfully out of tune) so I pretty much had to
rely on it being funny and catchy. But I now think I can definitely get more songs
done, partly because it was actually quite fun. I’m open to song suggestions
though, because they can be pretty hard to come up with.
Also, like you said a few weeks ago R. A.,
the first blog took me hours to write and the second one even longer, but since
then it’s become much quicker. It’s almost like through regular practice the
commitment to something, you can get better at it. And on that note, I am
starting to teach myself the piano. Now I can hear the sounds of musicians returning
which means I should probably get back to work.
R. A. , I’ll read from you on Tuesday, Dan,
till Wednesday.
Andrew Lyons.
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