4 ms·

I realize this is mostly irrelevant, but can anyone confirm/deny the Elfman claim? (It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some o

by MBlume 14y ago

I realize this is mostly irrelevant, but can anyone confirm/deny the Elfman claim? (It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some of, say, the spiderman score. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy invents percussion in his basement.)

planetguy 14y ago
I'd imagine it's an exaggeration of some aspect of his real creative process. I wouldn't be surprised if he does whistle into a tape recorder while watching a rough cut of the film, I'd just be surprised if that's all he does. Actually it seems like a damn good way to write music for a film. First you figure out the basic themes at leitmotifs that you want to use. Then you watch the film a few times and whistle or hum basically how you want the music to go, so that you can match the music to the moment on a second-by-second basis. Hand over the tape to an assistant and let them worry about turning this vague musical shape into the outline of a complete score; once you've got the score you can worry about the details.
- smd80 14y ago
  It's not in the slightest bit true about Danny Elfman -- in fact, it's farther from the truth in his case than any other film composer I can think of. With the amount of synth and guitar that Danny performs himself, he actually has up to half his tracks laid down by the time the cue is getting approved by the director. Not only is he not outsourcing the composing, he's not even outsourcing the performance except where he needs to. And he's certainly not fiddling around with a tape recorder when he has a $100k+ Pro Tools rig in his studio. All film composers have different processes, and it's true that few of them take on the details of notation, and all of them have teams that they work with. But you're absolutely right that that's a good thing, because that's how film music works: Turnover is extremely short (sometimes as little as a couple weeks to write an hour of music), notes on the page are not the product, and specialization allows the process to move forward and the job to get done. This blog post irks me in part because it's an unkind rumor, and in part because it's a completely inept metaphor.
brk 14y ago
Side note: I used to have relatively decent hooks into the music industry. A friend of mine is a well-known producer and while he was coming up in the 90's was working with a lot of then-popular artists. I heard multiple stories about name brand artists calling him up and leaving a message on his voicemail that went like 'Hey Mike! This is [Foo] I had this idea for a melody... It goes do doot doooooot dododooooot toooodoooooo. Or something like that. Can you put that down on an instrumental track? Maybe add a little bit of, you know, like cool drums and a keyboard? k thanks bye' And then he would, and 6 months later you'd be hearing it on the radio or on an album. Of course, in between the phone call, his prototype track and the release would be HOURS (I've been in 15 hour studio sessions) of mixing, remixing, tweaking, etc. So, yeah, I'd guess Danny Elfman might write his 'pseudo-code' into a tape recorder that somebody then makes a first pass at. But that is not what you finally hear as the released song.
shangrila 14y ago
I recall an interview with him in which he said he sang the theme to the 1989 Batman movie into a tape recorder. The reason was, he thought of it during a commercial airline flight and didn't want to forget it. According to the interview, he went into the restroom and sang it into his tape recorder as loud as possible in order to be heard over the plane noise. That story or one like it is probably where the notion comes from.

by MBlume 14y ago

planetguy 14y ago

I'd imagine it's an exaggeration of some aspect of his real creative process. I wouldn't be surprised if he does whistle into a tape recorder while watching a rough cut of the film, I'd just be surprised if that's all he does. Actually it seems like a damn good way to write music for a film. First you figure out the basic themes at leitmotifs that you want to use. Then you watch the film a few times and whistle or hum basically how you want the music to go, so that you can match the music to the moment on a second-by-second basis. Hand over the tape to an assistant and let them worry about turning this vague musical shape into the outline of a complete score; once you've got the score you can worry about the details.

smd80 14y ago
It's not in the slightest bit true about Danny Elfman -- in fact, it's farther from the truth in his case than any other film composer I can think of. With the amount of synth and guitar that Danny performs himself, he actually has up to half his tracks laid down by the time the cue is getting approved by the director. Not only is he not outsourcing the composing, he's not even outsourcing the performance except where he needs to. And he's certainly not fiddling around with a tape recorder when he has a $100k+ Pro Tools rig in his studio. All film composers have different processes, and it's true that few of them take on the details of notation, and all of them have teams that they work with. But you're absolutely right that that's a good thing, because that's how film music works: Turnover is extremely short (sometimes as little as a couple weeks to write an hour of music), notes on the page are not the product, and specialization allows the process to move forward and the job to get done. This blog post irks me in part because it's an unkind rumor, and in part because it's a completely inept metaphor.

brk 14y ago

Side note: I used to have relatively decent hooks into the music industry. A friend of mine is a well-known producer and while he was coming up in the 90's was working with a lot of then-popular artists. I heard multiple stories about name brand artists calling him up and leaving a message on his voicemail that went like 'Hey Mike! This is [Foo] I had this idea for a melody... It goes do doot doooooot dododooooot toooodoooooo. Or something like that. Can you put that down on an instrumental track? Maybe add a little bit of, you know, like cool drums and a keyboard? k thanks bye' And then he would, and 6 months later you'd be hearing it on the radio or on an album. Of course, in between the phone call, his prototype track and the release would be HOURS (I've been in 15 hour studio sessions) of mixing, remixing, tweaking, etc. So, yeah, I'd guess Danny Elfman might write his 'pseudo-code' into a tape recorder that somebody then makes a first pass at. But that is not what you finally hear as the released song.

shangrila 14y ago

I recall an interview with him in which he said he sang the theme to the 1989 Batman movie into a tape recorder. The reason was, he thought of it during a commercial airline flight and didn't want to forget it. According to the interview, he went into the restroom and sang it into his tape recorder as loud as possible in order to be heard over the plane noise. That story or one like it is probably where the notion comes from.