SHORE OF THE SEASON

To relax tonight, and to listen to some Halloween music (this time of year I like to listen to darker, more moody, spookier music), I’ve been listening to the soundtrack of Howard Shore’s soundtrack for The Hobbit.

To be honest, although a few tracks are weak, overall it’s nearly as good as Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the Man of Steel. I don’t think Shore is yet as good a composer as Zimmer, but in his own way he’s quite fine.

And some of this music is very atmospheric indeed and perfect for Halloween and this season of the year.

THE MAN OF BRONZE AND THE MAN OF STEEL

Today, when my wife and I went out I got a new Doc Savage novel (Phantom Lagoon) and the Doc Savage Man of Bronze film (which I had seen before, but still…)

So, BOO-YAH!!!

“A wise man once observed that trouble has walked around in skirts since the beginning of things.
This particular wise man did not proclaim such a thing in so many words, but every man knows it to be true…”

Phantom Lagoon

When a novel opens that way you know it’s going to be good.

Also, I got the soundtrack to Man of Steel. My Wife and I both agree that soundtrack is some of Hans Zimmer’s very best wok, and he has done some excellent work. If you ask me composers for film are some of the very best composers working in the world right now.

I’m not absolutely sure why that is (I mean aside from the obvious, it is an excellent and profitable music market), but I’m beginning to think that’s it because the music being composed is associated so directly with powerful visual images (in this case derived from film). That seems to me a very logical conclusion.

One normally thinks of music and the composition of music as a more or less strictly auditory (or perhaps even mental experience), but suppose modern film composers are so good because they are intentionally (or perhaps even subconsciously) directly associating powerful visual images with the musical ideas they are composing and expressing? (This technique could be both self-limiting and self-liberating depending upon how it is employed.)

That might very well alter the underlying compositional patterns and techniques these composers are employing. It is a logical chain of reasoning but I’m not sure how many are considering that it could be very well greatly altering their innate composing habits.

Anyway, thinking on these matters and having deduced a probable cause I’m going to try some experiments of my own in attempting to compose music “visually,” rather than auditorially, or to fit word and phrasing patterns (lyrical composition or song composing), or as a purely mental exercise.

See where that leads me. I’ll let you know what my experiments yield.