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Doug Adams

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Everything posted by Doug Adams

  1. Doug Adams
    There was a lot of movie in those movies.
  2. Doug Adams
    It's still better than this laughably awful screed: https://www.splicetoday.com/music/the-australo-hungarian-empire-strikes-back It's a masterpiece of how not to write about music. Or anything.
  3. Doug Adams
    My midwestern guilt makes me feel like I'm being meaner than I probably am. At least I hope that's the case. I once attended an orchestra's first rehearsal where they decided to start with the Shire music. About 5 seconds after their first note, I started hollering: "Stop, stop, stop! Basses are supposed to be half pizz. half arco, not all arco!" The conductor (not Ludwig) responded, "I checked the recording and didn't hear that." I told him to go check again. Somebody dubbed me the Niles Crane of film music for the remainder of that week. I don't think they meant it flatteringly. PS: The basses changed.
  4. Doug Adams
    It's not that they don't know of the use of that term, but many aren't familiar with the Rings scores per se, so they have to guess at what's being called for. Fortunately, as performances circulate more and more, these scores are becoming part of the modern repertoire, and so percussionists are better prepared. Size is left to the performers. It's not specified. But I've never seen drums larger than 16 inches being used, I don't think.
  5. Doug Adams
    The passage you're referring to has four side drums* and timpani. No taiko. *The term "side drum" can direct percussions toward a number of different instruments. It's a sort of fuzzy term that requires a knowledge of a composer's intentions. Shore's concept is of a deep drum -- a field drum -- with no snares. That last bit throws a lot of orchestras off. I've seen Howard ask percussionists to please the snares off, I've seen Ludwig Wicki ask it, and I've asked it. Howard and Ludwig tend to be nicer about it than I am. But I'm usually the most jet-lagged of the three of us.
  6. Doug Adams
    That's the last time I get my insider news from Harry Potter fan sites!
  7. Doug Adams
    Private message me
  8. Doug Adams
    Smaug the Magnificent and Smaug the Terrible begin as near-retrogrades of one another.* But major record labels don't love if if you use the word "retrograde" in mass-marketed commercial products. Can't imagine why ... *Speaking here of pitch content. Probably obviously.
  9. Doug Adams
    Most of these instruments (dizzy, shakuhachi, hecklephone (bass oboe), and tamboura) tend to double the melodic line in Smaug's two principal themes ... so they're a little tough to point out individually in a recording ... especially in the film mix. The finger cymbals (which are meant to evoke a sort of Chinese parade procession -- or Indonesian ceng ceng cymbals -- and, of course, Smaug's golden coins) are a bit easier to spot. I'll have to think on the waterphone. I believe it's easiest to find not in the score, per se, but in some wild takes that are used to evoke the trippiness of Mirkwood.
  10. Doug Adams
    We start at the beginning, and make a few references to sync points throughout. But really, I don't think we line up anything all that tightly anyway. It should work fine as long as you're close. Thanks for the kind comments, everyone. Part two this coming week. D
  11. Doug Adams
    I would think so. The One Ring people tend to archive everything. Unless there’s a copyright issue with the film audio. I still haven’t been told how we’re handling that. ... Also not sure if this is video or audio. I haven’t had a haircut since February, so I’m slightly concerned!
  12. Doug Adams
    I'm not planning to read the book out loud. (The book is too long, and my voice is too annoying!) Rather, I'm hoping to set the stage for why such a book would be interesting to people. Back on LOTR, I had time to run a blog to help with such things. These days, I have far less free time. Stupid adulthood! Regardless, I'll try to drop in plenty that people don't already know.
  13. Doug Adams
    Poor cymbal player gets no credit at all.
  14. Doug Adams
    "Lament for Gandalf" is used (briefly) in Guardians of the Three.
  15. Doug Adams
    Lack of progress is not due to lack of preparation.
  16. Doug Adams
    My guess -- and this is only a guess, having not seen the contracts -- is that Howe would be able to do a Rarities album, but only WaterTower would be able to do expanded editions.
  17. Doug Adams
    It would certainly help the lawyers stay afloat.
  18. Doug Adams
    A friend and I met Randy Newman at a party years and years ago. My friend told Newman that he was his mother's favorite singer. "Oh yeah?" he responded. "How old is she?" My friend answered, then added she'd be older the next week -- her birthday was coming up. "It is?" Newman said. "Give me your phone." He did. He called her, sang Happy Birthday, said, "here's your son," and tossed the phone back to my friend.
  19. Doug Adams
    The dinosaur stampede was scored and recorded. I believe it was the only island sequence that had enough footage ready at the time ... and even then, it was a significantly different effort. Still, it exists!
  20. Doug Adams
    Sometimes these things don’t involve fault or blame. The term “creative differences” has sort of become a parody of itself, but it’s not always inaccurate. Sometimes creative parties begin on one path, then divert to others. It happens ... I mean, that’s kind of the ephemeral nature of creativity. And there are times when those creative diversions make it impossible to continue things as planned. And something has to give. I know that’s lamentably anticlimactic. It’s easier to process these things where there’s some cataclysmic event to pin everything on. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself when I was 24 hours away from hopping a flight to New Zealand to attend the recording sessions, and everything fell apart. (I didn’t have any trip insurance.) You’d be out a million quid. The principal themes — which were sort of cantilenas set for 12 cellos and soprano — were, in my opinion, some of the best lyrical work Shore has ever done.
  21. Doug Adams
    The first third of the film was scored and recorded. The final third of the score was composed but unrecorded (save for mock-ups). The effects-driven middle third of the film -- most of the island stuff -- was unfinished and (largely) unscored. There were also discussions about an end credits song that would have featured a rather well-known band collaborating with Shore. But that never got past he discussion stage. Jackson signs off on theme demos before scoring sessions begin, but due to his editing and effects schedules, individual cues aren't generally locked until they're on the stage. Hence the score proper is not really as pre-approved as one might think. Even the final third of the score, while mocked up, was largely based on script and animatics.
  22. Doug Adams
    Sorry, I meant '15.
  23. Doug Adams
    Yeah, that was my thought too. I worked like a madman to write my first draft of Hobbit between January and early May 2015. But alas, it was not to be.
  24. Doug Adams
    This is the double-edged sword of contracts: 1) hooray you have a contract!, but 2) you're completely at their mercy. I'm not making any noise on social media (does this count?), but I have an Impossible Silence meeting coming up later this week. Hobbit, I'll be honest, haven't heard anything for a while. I get the feeling that everyone is eyeing Amazon and waiting to see where the IP goes and what energy it produces. I'm trying to set up a couple of lectures -- one in the States and one in the UK -- in 2020, so at the very least I could present some of the Hobbit material there. Both would be in the second half of the year ... if they happen. EDIT: I should also point out that my professional life took a sort of drastic left turn four or five years ago, which left me with a little less time to nudge these projects along. So I can't place all the blame on publishers, etc. However, I had some medical stuff going on over the holidays, which allowed me a little more time with the computer. I guess I should be careful what I ask for!
  25. Doug Adams
    Ironically, 2 is the only one that's already finished! *Sigh*
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