Month: April 2021

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DEATH IN VENICE// film score series

“Death in Venice”(1971) is based on the short story by Thomas Mann. It follows the inner turmoil of the ageing novelist Gustav von Aschenbach, who becomes infatuated by a boy he sees on the beach in Venice. Unable to confess his love, he dies as the city is ravaged by plague.

Full of atmosphere and intense soundscapes, the simple yet subtle motives pull the opera together with great sureness of touch. Leading melody that creates nostalgic atmosphere is “Adagio from 5th Symphony” composed by Gustav Mahler. I truly love this piece as it always manages to put me in the state of piece and calmness. Used in this movie gives depth to the plot, at the same time not disrupting the story itself.

“Love” is the main motif in the movie and it’s as well precisely marked by the sound. For this role Gustav Mahler chose “Fur Elise” by Ludwig van Beethoven. When Gustav, main character, meets his future wife or young boy, Tadzio, we can hear this melody played . Beethoven’s composition states in this case “leitmotif” that is meant to indicate moments whenever love appears, whenever main character sees his object of adoration.

“Now there is no reason why you cannot go to your grave with your music. You have achieved perfect balance. The man and the artist are one. They have touched bottom together.”

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Global Sonic Cultures// A Cultural Theory of Sound Design

How sound can have a powerful effect on your state of mind?

It’s not a secret that sound can produce one of the most intense reactions in the listener. In my piece of writing I would like to focus on psychological affect sound has on us. I would like to divide my essay into parts that will focus on different areas of examined by me topic such as: healing sounds of nature, how singing affects us emotionally and how sound changes our mind-set. Wheater agitated emotions are positive or negative, sound has always an impact on us, loud abrupt noise that will stop us in our track or sound of dogs playing around bringing happiness. „…Sound is a series of vibrations that travel into the ear and get converted into electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the vestibulocochlear nerve…When used in the right way sound has the ability to shift our perception of the world and ourselves.”(Dean Griffiths, psychreg.org)

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Creative Sound Projects: Audio Visual Composition

During our lecture with Gareth on week 23 we have been working on task, that was meant to focus on:

Examining use of sound in range of films e.g. atmosphere, the diegetic, relationships between sound and image

Improvising individual scores to film extracts on a large screen using Korg Volcas, voice and foley objects.

Improvising in small groups to film extracts on a large screen using Korg Volcas, voice and foley objects.

Working on Korg Volcas( I got Korg Volca bass) we were supposed to improvise sound to exact part of chosen, by Gareth, movie. The most memorable for me was opening scene from movie “PERSONA”(1966). I liked how mysterious and worrisome in some way this movie is. I was fascinated with abrupt changes in lightening (from blank, white screen to very chaotic light game), as well as disorganized changes in scenes (from very calm to fast and intense). Creating sound for this movie’s opening scene was definitely new and fascinating experience for me. I found it very interesting as designing film scores, is the destination, in music production, that I would like to pursue.

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PSYCHO//film score series

„Psycho”(1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock is an excellent movie not only for its plot and arrangement but, in my case of studies, is as well a great material for studying film score. Watching this movie after over 60 years, I could notice a lot of elements that, from our time perspective, are basic „musical treatments”. What’s fascinating is that it’s completely different way around. As an example of that I want to mention sound of screeching strings. They have appeared and still appears a lot, especially in scary movies, to indicate that something bad, scary is going to happen. This exact sound appeared in movie for the very first time in „Psycho” and not only this fact itself is fascinating but as well its reference to main character’s hobby, which is stuffing dead birds. As Peter Rothbart captivated in his book „The Synergy of Film and Music”(2013): 

       Yet even here, we can aurally interpret the strings as the screams of the dying bird of flight and the aggressive screams of the bird of prey as Norman attacks, a musical sound effect reflecting the knife as it penetrates the skin, or just Marion’s screams as she is assaulted.

        Another element that is showed really well in this film is usage of leitmotif. We can highlight precisely four of them: „bird of flight” theme, „bird of pray” theme, „transformation ” theme and „psycho” theme. All of them reveals the personas as they exist in that moment for Marion and Norman.

 „Bird of flight” theme: 

“….conveys a sense of urgency and franticness, as would be expected from a bird or person fleeing a dangerous situation.”(Rothbart, 2013)

„Transformation/ metamorphosis” theme:

“It is a gently lilting theme consisting of a series of ascending and descending block chords, meant to give us a feeling of alighting or landing.”(Rothbart, 2013)

„Bird of prey” theme:

“…conveys the real imagery of a bird of prey—the stalking, plotting, and planning before the attack.”(Rothbart, 2013) 

Lastly „Psycho/Madness” theme:

” …whenever Hitchcock and Herrmann wish to indicate to us the notion of crazy behavior.”(Rothbart, 2013)

Rothbart, P.(2013). The synergy of the Film and Music. Toronto: The Scarecrow Press

Based on film score from “Psycho”(1960) composed by Bernard Herrmann

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BASIC INSTINCT//film score series

I have recently watched movie called “Basic Instinct”(1992) directed by Paul Verhoeven. It’s a neo-noir erotic thriller film.

The film follows San Francisco police detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), who is investigating the brutal murder of a wealthy rock star. During the investigation Curran becomes involved in a torrid and intense relationship with the prime suspect, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), an enigmatic writer.

I wanted to focus on score for this movie, which in my opinion isn’t one of this soundtracks that I would listen to afterwords, however it definitely “gets its job done”. By this term I mean that soundtrack did everything that it was expected from soundtrack to do. First of all it was revealing unseen or impending drama moments. Whenever something was about to happen, sound intensified, got faster. Typical manipulation, in this moments, was use of pizzicato strings and piano played on low tones. Another element, soundtrack has fulfilled, was providing transition or in other words being a “sonic glue”. It helped to smoother transitions between scenes and help viewer to accept sudden geographic displacements as the drama develops. My friend once told me that really good score, is the one you won’t even notice in a movie. Therefore last element that is worthy appreciating, is the fact that music was one with the story line. I had to constantly remind myself to focus on the soundtrack because I kept forgetting to put attention to it, during watching, as the sound was literally blending into movie.

based on soundtrack from movie “Basic Instinct”(1992) composed by Jerry Goldsmith

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Global Sonic Cultures// UK’s Grime

I have an older brother who always had some hiphop in his bedroom. I didn’t really like ones, my brother was listening to, but it definitely stayed with me. When I was 15, I got into American Hip Hop. I absolutely loved how true and aggressive it was. Since then whenever I had bad day I would listen to my favorite rappers. It gave me  energy and made me feel untouchable. Therefore finding an appreciation for Grime wasn’t hard. I listen to artists like: Dizzie Rascal, P Money, Kano. I can’t say I prefer UK’s Grime more than American Hip Hop, because sometimes some Grime’s songs are just too electronic. Recently I am obsessed with Stormzy, who doesn’t create typical Grime.

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PROJECT #3// final thoughts

our album’s front and back cover

Our groups, for this assignment, have been changed and beside one person, I did not know anyone. Therefore I was really worried in terms of how this project will come out and how working process will look like. Fortunately everyone in my new group wanted to be present in creating process and share their ideas, thoughts. Work went really smoothly and lightly as we made sure that everyone knows what to do and agree with overall theme. Moreover I truly loved our topic as it allowed me not only to create piece that I sympathize with but also design sound that shows my personal story of finding my true self during Pandemic in 2020. Futhermore creating whole album as a group has been an amazing experience as it made me feel that from the start to very end we are creating product completely on our own, which is much bigger than just sound composition and that as a group we have created an album that constitute memory of this particular moment.

For our album title we decided to go with “religare” which translated from Latin is considered a stem for the word religion and has the meaning of binding, “to tie something with something”, the human and the divine, “to connect” in some way.

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PROJECT #3// in process 2/2

I decided to divide my work into three parts, which are going to represent three phases of my mind. First one is starting with dark sound, which I wanted to give this feeling of insecurity, that represents my negative thoughts, caused by reality, I found myself in. As the first piece of sound is coming to the end, my vocal recorded in falsetto(mostly) is showing up , taking listener gradually into second part. This moment in my work is mirroring my mind trying to pull me out from my negative state of mind and put me in alternative reality, I’ve created in order to find happiness, enthusiasm to do anything again and to run away from real life I didn’t want to participate in, in that particular moment. Therefore for this part I wanted to use medium that will perfectly show how not confined in space this phase was. And lastly I decided to end my work with piece that it’s supposed to represent this surrealistic and magical world I have designed.

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PROJECT#3// in process 1/2

My first idea of how to approach topic of “reconnecting with myself” was showing what I am doing to achieve that.

Pandemic brought a really hard and dark times to me. I lost completely any enthusiasm. A lot of my plans were completely destroyed and I couldn’t do anything about that. I felt so small and powerless. I didn’t see sense of doing anything productive, so I wasn’t. I shut up in my shell, where there was only me and my thoughts. Covid showed me as well, how cruel and even more scary this world is(than I thought before). Everything is around money and connections. People losing their jobs and their only source of income, because they aren’t important enough. In order to survive this hard time I created my surreal reality I wanted to live in inside my head. I would like my piece to mirror my mind and make it possible for listeners to see how I am reconnecting with myself.

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PROJECT#3// inspiration

Inspiration for my piece was my state of mind. I tried to capture how I was feeling inside my head during Pandemic and allow listeners to understand me. During lockdown I was feeling really lonely. I’ve lost enthusiasm to do anything, because in my opinion it was pointless. My sound piece is full of sad, low tones reflecting my emotions and also high vocals ,overlapping each other creating composed chaos, which for me mirror my head trying to drown out my negative thoughts and create alternative reality, allowing me to live fully even if it’s just inside my head. When I listen to my piece I see image above, which is “Tree of Souls” from “Avatar”. My mind was, for me, like this three for Na’vi people, source of hope and healing energy. My work is basically journey through my mind in 2020.