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Gamelan in Jaws?


Andrewsuth

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In the first shark attack, Chrissie's last scene, there is a moment when she is hugging on to the bell tower buoy. The music changes at this point and there is a brief utterance of tuned percussion which to me sounds like a Gamelan. Does anyone know if this is what Williams used? If not, what was it?

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I'm so delighted to finally find this out but equally disappointed that I can't use it as an example in my journal article! Thanks so much for letting me know!

 

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7 minutes ago, Andrewsuth said:

I'm so delighted to finally find this out but equally disappointed that I can't use it as an example in my journal article! Thanks so much for letting me know!

 

What's your journal on? There are many instances of a Gamelan featured in a film score, even if Jaws isn't one of them. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; Flightplan; The Golden Compass; Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Desolation of Smaug; and a number of Thomas Newman and Michael Danna scores.

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The developing timbre palette of film music: The emergence of world instruments for non-ethnographic association

It's a work in progress. I've mentioned most of the scores you have mentioned. I was hoping JW was going to be an early contributor to the oeuvre.

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3 minutes ago, Andrewsuth said:

The developing timbre palette of film music: The emergence of world instruments for non-ethnographic association

 

 

It's a work in progress. I've mentioned most of the scores you have mentioned. I was hoping JW was going to be an early contributor to the oeuvre.

 

I suggest taking a look at Williams's score for the Robert Altman psychological drama Images. Williams hired the Japanese multi-instrumentalist Stomu Yashmata (who'd previously worked on Peter Maxwell Davies's The Devils, another important score). Along with the sonic sculptures constructed by the Baschet brothers (of which the cristal Baschet is the most famous) he got Stomu to perform vocalisations (guttural noises, screams, heavy breathing), play the shakuhatchi, quena/quenacho, whistls, steel drums and various kabuki percussion instruments.

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Maybe you already know, but there is shakuhachi in Jurassic Park, already in the very first cue of the score. Another nice contribution by John Williams, definitely not for ethnographic association.

 

Also, I don't know if the pan flute qualifies as well as a world instrument, but Morricone uses it in "Cockeye's Song", from the score of "Once upon a time in America".

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