An HOUR on the film music of The Hobbit! :)

February 6, 2016, 9:04 AM · In December 2013, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was released in theatres, and I remember getting very excited to go and see it, especially how much I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings that year. This morning, I was just looking for some random cinematic videos to watch, and this documentary popped up - 5 hours just on the production of different aspects of the film! I watched about half an hour on the production of Smaug, and if you skip to the 4-hour mark of the video, there's a whole HOUR just on Shore's score and recording with the New Zealand Symphony! They first go into the various themes of the score - about 19 or so new ones for this film. After analyzing the score and showing the collaboration between the composer, the orchestrators, and the new conductor, Conrad Pope, they delve into the scoring sessions themselves. The New Zealand Symphony recorded close to half an hour of music for The Fellowship of the Ring so that a section of that film could be released for a 2001 Cinema Festival, and then the sessions were taken over by the London Symphony. It was cool, then, seeing where the New Zealand Symphony could take this new score, recording in a town hall. It was also cool in watching the video seeing the process through Peter Jackson watching and then how they could make and print off new parts very quickly. To play in a film orchestra, it requires a lot of concentration, probably varying amounts depending on the film, but with a huge score as The Hobbit, this was essential. The orchestra even used some various unconventional techniques to bring to mind different emotions; for example for Smaug, the violins first played the theme normally, and then Peter Jackson wanted it to be more edgy. Pope decided to have them all play slightly out of tune - "Like you're auditioning for something you DON'T want to get in" - and so created this really edgy effect. Another influence to Smaug's character were the Indonesian gamelan instruments used for when Bilbo is walking through his gold room. Mixing that with the traditional orchestra created a very cool sound. One other really cool thing they did was actually begun by Penderecki, where the Polish composer would take a chunk of music and the musician would take his part and rearrange it literally however he wants - take out some notes, rearrange it, change the rhythm, etc. - to create a completely random effect. With everyone doing it, especially with the violin example they used here, it created a really cool sound that sounded very cinematic. Perhaps I can start taking my violin and experimenting with some of these sounds and overlaying them, and see what kind of more minimalist and contemporary sounds I can get.

So yeah, all of this was stuff I had never seen before, and even though I haven't really listened to film music in-depth since Star Wars, this video really more just got me excited about how music and technology really could merge together to help shape such a massive film. All six of these films are really going to stand the test of time, just like Star Wars for that matter, and the scores of both composers (Williams and Shore) are very different and equally treasured. It was fun to return to the world of Middle-Earth again today, and I'm thinking of bringing my Doug Adams book on the music for the original trilogy (Shore's first adventure) to look at over lunch.

The documentary. //Here is the video if you want to see all this I just described. It's so cool they had time to make such a large documentary on the film, and to devote so much time just about its music, as it's helpful to know to learn about just the creation of film music in general.

On a completely different topic, I have been getting back into composition lately. (For orchestra, we have our Brahms/Elgar/Bartók concert next weekend I believe, and then it'll be spring break, so perhaps I'll get back into looking for my new violin, but for now I haven't really had time to even think about the violin much apart from at rehearsals!) I'm writing a piece for oboe and violin that has a very Japanese flair to it, using both the major and minor pentatonic scales and trying to blend my growing French style with it. I've been working a lot with the process of creating the work - sketching out my themes, then sketching out a structure and developing those themes - and now I'm going to begin actually writing out the score into the computer. It's not going to be one of my best works, but it'll be played for a recital in the spring, and if I end up liking it a lot, perhaps I can play it myself for my senior recital.

Finally, one more quick thing, last night I found a documentary called "Ravel's Brain", which is VERY emotional to me and goes into detail about Ravel being able to conceive of new music inside his head, but not being able to write any of it down. Watching it really only made me want to not only study his existing music more, since I have my Ravel piano book and a Ravel violin binder with most of his chamber music in it, but it also really inspires me to want to continue composing and blending his style into my growing one. Additionally, it really continues to get his person into me, and capture who the man really was, so that when I'm playing or listening to his music, I'm also thinking of the personality behind the notes.

Click here!

So yeah! Hope you enjoy some of these musical videos I've been using to relax lately and keep me engaged with music in general. I'm looking forward to a fantastic musical day today of practicing and preparing parts for a new composition we are playing next term by my teacher and composing. Continue to embrace your musical side! Till next time.

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An HOUR on the film music of The Hobbit! :)

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