Eddie Karam on Williams

[Skelly 273]

Hi! Some of you may know that Eddie Karam was Williams's trusty orchestrator for a long time. Karam gave a talk in 2013 for The Academy of Scoring Arts where he discussed his life in music, his work with various composers (Williams, Mandel, Horner, etc.), and gave some very funny anecdotes. I don't think a thread about this video has been made before, so here are the comments he made regarding Williams.

 

Meeting John Williams:

 

Spoiler

John Williams called me up and said -- this is very strange, because I'd never even met him, and this was like 12 or 13 years ago. And he said, "I have a project that I think you might be interested in." And I said, "Oh, uh, sure. Do you want me to help to you?" So we met. I'm sitting in his office and he starts -- he's playing a television version that was edited, I think, in Boston. And then it's a tribute to Busby Berkeley. If you don't know who Busby Berkeley is, he was a producer in the '30s who adored women, so he would put at least a hundred women in every picture he did. What his method was having a hundred girls in it or women is beyond me, but it was always very glamorous. "So we're doing a tribute to this man... there is no music, because all of that music has been destroyed; they usually burn the music right after they do a picture in the '30s, because there's no place to keep it. They don't want to store it somewhere... Also, the Nicholas brothers, two brothers that were sensational tap dancers, I'm going to do a tribute to them too." So I said, "You got two projects?" And he said yes. I said, "Now, I have to lift everything?" He said, "Yes, and I need it for the Boston Pops." "Okay, I'll try and see how it works out." He said, "If you need help, get help." So I said, "I might have to!"

 

I tried laying the whole score up for the main one which was the longest... it was 500 and some bars. Some of the editing was terrible, so I had to write three-two bars, or three-four bars, or sometimes I couldn't figure it out, so I said, John will work it out. Mind you, he didn't know what the hell I was going to turn in, but he said, "You've got 10 days to do it." So I said, "Ten days to do both?" And he said, "Yes, if you can." So I said, 'I'll take a shot at it." So I sat, the first day I sat up all night and got into it, at least got started with the opening number... And I got to one spot where the picture was a hundred women in a straight line, in a wiggly straight line all sitting at pianos dressed in white gowns, black hair -- they're all matched. And there was a hundred women... A hundred pianos. But they're all false; they're just the the body of the piano, not the inside. So they're carrying on; there are three girls singing all in the soprano range, and I said, God, this is awful, but I've gotta write it. So I wrote it and the piano part was, like, a monster piano part. And I called a friend of mine, and I said, "I want you to do me a favor." And I think he was the one who recommended me for the project. And I said, "Do me a favor; you lift the piano part for me, and, you know, send it to me." And he said, "You do it; it's about time you learned!" And I said, "But I've been writing your parts forever!"

 

I got all of it done. Just to shorten this thing, got it all done... He called from Boston and I said, "Yes, how did it go?" He said, "Well, it was okay. We got through it okay." And I went, "What?!" And he said, "No, I'm only kidding! It was absolutely phenomenal." And my wife was standing there ready to pick me up. And following that, he said, "You know, by the way, while I have you on the phone, I just got signed to do three 'Harry Potters', and I'd like you to come and join me to help me with with those." And I said, Yes, I would be pleased to.

 

And, meantime, I've been an admirer of his since I was a kid, since I was like 16 or so. I heard something he had written for a jazz band, which just knocked me out. It was a 12/8 thing, and I asked him about it; he couldn't even remember it. Anyway, I said, yes, I'd be very happy to work with you, even though he didn't know I had already ghosted on a couple of pictures with other orchestrators. So that was the beginning of my career with John. One disadvantage was that I stopped doing my own writing, because I was very involved with him. I was writing a lot of extra stuff for him on the side. He wanted me to take something that he had written for 100 pieces and condense it down to 13. And I said, Well, I can edit, but boy, that takes an editing job. And I would do that, and he'd give me some arrangements to do, or things that he didn't want to spend the time doing because he was working on a major piece to open the Disney hall. It was a grand opening and he was conducting it. I think I wrote something for that -- I can't remember all of it. Anyway, it was an interesting proposition, and we got together and we worked up to a point where I couldn't write anymore because he had ruined my hand.

 

Orchestrating Williams's music:
 

Spoiler

[One thing I have to do is] finish his themes when he's forgotten. Sometimes he's, you know, as you're writing a sketch, you go so far to the end of the page, Then you turn the page over. And then you have other details you've got to do. Sometimes he'd forget to finish his theme, so I finished the theme and crossed my fingers, hoping that he meant that. But there's just no way he would go so far into the theme and stop. So it was obvious I had to do that, and he told me in the very beginning, he said, "You know, you're doing more than just copying my stuff. You have to understand more. You have to go beyond that; you have to think through with me what my plan was." And it was very easy to do that because the way he writes, it's very clear, it's very clean, it's very controlled, and he wants it just to be like that. So all I'm doing is aping everything he's done.

 

Does he give you the picture to look at too?

 

No.

 

Dividing work between himself and Conrad Pope:

 

Spoiler

I'm curious how you've worked with John Williams and Conrad Pope. How do you guys decide on distributing?

 

John does.

 

Is there any particular reason...?

 

John will get two things written and send one to here [points right arm], and one out to here [points left arm]. And then next week it goes like this [flips directions]. It depends on how involved it is. If it gets really involved, he'd sent it to Conrad.

 

For any stylistic reasons at all, or just...?

 

I guess he's sharing the workload. Because sometimes when he sends something to Conrad, it's thick, and monstrously thick. And I'm so happy that I didn't get it! Then I might get something that's reasonably light, but still something you really have to think with that. And I've had it come the other way around... The end credits sometimes were blithering, and they weren't just pieces put together. They were a score laid out, but it just went on and on and on and on forever. I think they were 14 minutes long. Now John had to do that, which, I give him the credit for it.

 

"Crystal Skull" story

 

Spoiler

I ruined my hand doing one picture with him. I did the whole picture by myself. I was surprised that I was all by myself. I was expecting Conrad, but Conrad went to Europe to do a picture, so he gave me the shot at it. So he didn't tell me; he just said, you know, "There's three coming next Monday."

 

Three? Usually it's just one. "So there are three cues that I have for you, and they're all long and busy." The picture was "Crystal Skull". Indiana Jones. There's an ending cue near the end, and it was all ants. In fact the cue was titled "Ants!", and they're monster-sized ants who eat people. So they were all scurrying around -- well, you can imagine scurrying around, what that would be from John... His opening page, it was four bars, and I spent the whole day just on those four bars, because the woodwinds were doing this, and the trumpets were doing this, and the trombones were doing this; everything was doing something different, so it was, like, maniacal. And it took me the whole day just to do that one page.

 

I had to finish that and get it all done, because Spielberg wanted to hear it before he left in New York. And it was on a Saturday that he had the full orchestra come in to perform it. But I got it on Tuesday, and I had to get it in to copyists so that they can, you know, stick it in their computers and make copies. And I got to the last day, and I'm right near the end, and I said, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going, and my hand is freezing up! And I locked -- my hand locked, and it was all... I couldn't feel it when I put my hand down in the pad, and I just... "I'm gonna finish this even if I die!"

 

Spielberg listened to it. They went through it once; he hired the whole orchestra to be in on Saturday, which is above scale, just to hear it so he could get to the airport and fly to New York. And I said, "Take my hand with you!"

 

[Jay 41,264]

Wow! These are great stories! 

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

7 hours ago, Skelly said:

"You know, by the way, while I have you on the phone, I just got signed to do three 'Harry Potters', and I'd like you to come and join me to help me with with those."

 

I didn't know he signed for three pictures at once. I guess that made it easier to "get rid of him" for the fourth installment.

 

[Manakin Skywalker 5,573]

I always thought of Eddie Karam as a bit of an enigma. I could never really find much information about him online, and not even a single photo of him!

 

Some pretty cool insights into how JW scores go about being orchestrated here!

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

7 hours ago, Skelly said:

we worked up to a point where I couldn't write anymore because he had ruined my hand.

 

Then he got fired and wasn't able to work ever again?

[Skelly 273]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I didn't know he signed for three pictures at once. I guess that made it easier to "get rid of him" for the fourth installment.

 

I didn't take that part literally; I thought Karam was just emphasizing how suddenly he earned Williams's trust on big projects. But you could be right; JW might have been attached to all three from the start.

 

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Then he got fired and wasn't able to work ever again?

 

Karam's last movie with Williams was in 2011; he was 82 at the time. He was no doubt ready to retire then! Since then, Williams has just sent his sketches straight to the copyists.

I know he sounds sardonic up in the OP, but Karam made it clear in other parts that despite the crazy expectations and demands, working with the best in Hollywood has been a great experience.

[blondheim 1,221]

I'd love to hear his Horner comments. These are great.

[Skelly 273]

42 minutes ago, blondheim said:

I'd love to hear his Horner comments. These are great.

 

Spoiler

I noticed in your credits, wedged between all the John Williams films, you worked for James Horner as well. I just wondered how his work process might differ from John's.

 

His scores were blank. He wanted me to fill them in. So I would get --

 

[laughing] They were what?

 

Is that news? That...? I would get the notes, and a copy of the tape, and I would look at it, and then just sit down and write it.

 

Did he differentiate with you in terms of theme and, like, texture? Or at least give you like an idea of what he wants?

 

No, because he would do it individually. Like, I wasn't the only one. There was an emergency case to do one picture that he wanted to do it in a week. So there was a lot of writing to do in one week, so there were four of us. I don't think what he was doing was trying to plot thematic material, but in my case, he didn't plot anything. He just told me, You got the notes you got the picture, you start here, and you quit here. Okay. And so he went -- oh! He told me one thing. He said, 'This right here, in one spot, it's building up to something and I want to start with brass; with, like, trumpets and French horns alternating, but do it individually so that it sounds like it's all overlapping and it sounds like it's coming from different parts of the battlefield. So they do that. We can do it by the way we mic it.' And there was one picture in specific that he said, 'If you play it like [humming] and then just have that keep repeating but in different keys. So I said, "I'm not sure what you mean, because overlapping like that -- having it all separate keys, you don't change the harmony. Leave it the same and just let me dot and dash with the trumpets and the french horns alternating." We had eight French horns, so it was great; I could use them in couples with the trumpets. I think there were four or five, I'm not sure, I can't remember -- oh no, they were eight! I'm sorry. Eight trumpets and eight French horns. I couldn't figure out which picture that was on... that came together and it worked fine, but he wanted -- insisted on changing harmony.

 

Eddie, so at that point, it really becomes more ghost writing than orchestrating.

 

Yes.

 

From a business standpoint, how to you deal with that?

 

We were told that they were going to pay us double.

 

But you wouldn't ask for an additional 'Music by...' credit or something in a situation like that?

 

Well, we were hoping we might get that, but we were called orchestrators.

 

Yeah. You could call a cat a dog; it's still a cat.

 

I did that -- there were a couple of times with him I had to do that. And I did it because John released me to do it, because I turned it down. I said, you know, it's not fair. And I thought everybody that was involved should have been paid a fee and should have gotten some kind of credit other than, you know, a side credit. But he doesn't like sharing credit. Most people don't. Most composers don't. John never did -- John Mandel. And he is a brilliant writer by himself. But it's something that you have to, when you're dealing with a producer, you want to make sure that he doesn't get the idea that you're hiring somebody who's going to shuttle it off with other people.

 

Now you didn't do a mini version to get approved; they just handed it to you and you just did it?

 

He didn't know what he was going to get until he gave the downbeat. Takes a lot of guts.

 

(If anyone would like to hear the whole video, he can send me a Pm.)

[Edmilson 9,804]

Wait, so Horner didn't actually scored the movies, he'd just write a few themes and then his orchestrators would do all the work of actually putting music to score scenes of the movie?

 

Geez, it's so sad to know that. It's like discovering your favorite super-hero faked all his battles. It's truly depressing to know that all that wonderful score that elevated the movie wasn't actually done by Horner, but rather by some guy who doesn't even have photos on the internet.

 

It sounds like the easiest job in the world, just giving blank pages and a few notes to the orchestrators and then let them do all the work. "Well, it's a sad scene so I want some sad piano and strings and maybe a dark performance of the hero's theme. Now, if you need me I'm gonna be in my bedroom relaxing and smoking some weed."

[Datameister 2,384]

Man, I didn't realize there was that level of ghostwriting in some of Horner's projects. I'm guessing he still did a fair amount of his own writing over the years; the scores he's credited for certainly have a distinct sound.

 

Regardless...yeah, it's always an interesting feeling when you find out that something was ghostwritten.

[Skelly 273]

Woah, slow down, guys! Are people still quick to call Horner a hack after all these decades? The movie Karam was probably talking about is "Troy", which Horner had only a few weeks to do from start to finish (Karam got orchestration credit). That's a very good reason to hire ghostwriters.

 

What Karam seems to be miffed about is that this wasn't a crappy movie-of-the-week he was ghosting on, but a real Hollywood picture with an A-list composer. On a project of that caliber he probably would have liked some real cue sheet credit.

[Muad'Dib 1,895]

Look, Hollywood schedules can be crazy and they only have gotten crazier since the mid 90's. At the end of the day, it's a gig, and you gotta do what you gotta do to reach that deadline, with all the rewrites, meetings and such...

 

Morricone and Williams have, since a certain point in their carreer, been able to work as they pleased on the projects they pleased. The schedules on the SW sequel trilogy, as crazy and hectic as they were, were quite luxurious. I don't think any other current composer would have been able to get a deal like that and would have definetly have had to resort to some level of ghost-writing. 

 

Besides, this Horner info isn't anything new. We've known for years that he employed ghost-writers! I thought it was quite a well-known fact that Don Davis ghost wrote some material for We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. (he also ghost-wrote, apparently, some material for Newman's Toy Story 3).

I think Horner sometimes handed cues he didn't care about to his orchestrators, because he didn't feel like it or to focus in the material he considered more substantial. 

 

From a moral standpoint, sure, the proper people should have credit. Wheter you consider it for better or worse, you gotta thank Zimmer for getting the "additional music by" credit on the screen to the people who worked on the gig. Until he started doing it, it was practically unheard of. 

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

8 hours ago, Skelly said:

Karam's last movie with Williams was in 2011; he was 82 at the time. He was no doubt ready to retire then! Since then, Williams has just sent his sketches straight to the copyists.

 

Oh, I thought he was a young person when he mentioned working for JW getting in the way for his own career.

 

8 hours ago, Skelly said:

Since then, Williams has just sent his sketches straight to the copyists.

 

Pope is still available, isn't he?

[Skelly 273]

5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Pope is still available, isn't he?

 

Yeah; these days he works a lot with Alexandre Desplat -- and Junkie XL, of all people. But Williams's orchestrations have gotten so lean in the past decade that he doesn't really need to send it to a middleman before the copyists get it.

[Edmilson 9,804]

Which movies Karam has done with Horner? I want to know which Horner scores I'm going to delete from my collection.

[Remco 692]

8 hours ago, Skelly said:

 

Yeah; these days he works a lot with Alexandre Desplat -- and Junkie XL, of all people. But Williams's orchestrations have gotten so lean in the past decade that he doesn't really need to send it to a middleman before the copyists get it.

It’s a matter of the technology being improved since then, nothing to do with Williams’ orchestrations themselves.

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

1 minute ago, Remco said:

It’s a matter of the technology being improved since then, nothing to do with Williams’ orchestrations themselves.

 

Better pencils?

[Remco 692]

As I understood it, Finale is easier to use for full scores nowadays compared to earlier versions.

Btw, does someone know when, at jkms for instance, they moved from handwritten parts to using music notation software? Somewhere in the 90s?

[Datameister 2,384]

I get the impression Williams was just cutting out the middleman. That's not at all to diminish the swift and beautiful work of his orchestrators over the years; it's just that he had built up enough trust with Mark Graham and his team at JKMS to let them take on that piece, too. (Mark said in an interview for Finale's website that he'd been at all JW's sessions since 1998.) Before the switch, Williams had already been tending toward an even greater level of detail in his sketches than in previous decades, further reducing the amount of actual orchestration necessary.

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

1 hour ago, Remco said:

As I understood it, Finale is easier to use for full scores nowadays compared to earlier versions.

 

They should have used Sibelius then.

[BrotherSound 2,479]

1 hour ago, Remco said:

Btw, does someone know when, at jkms for instance, they moved from handwritten parts to using music notation software? Somewhere in the 90s?

I’m not sure exactly when the shift occurred, but Home Alone had handwritten individual parts (the original parts are actually reused for the LTP) and The Phantom Menace had parts (but not full scores, with the sole exception of Anakin’s Theme) done on computers.

[TownerFan 5,554]

On 17/10/2021 at 7:40 AM, Jurassic Shark said:

Pope is still available, isn't he?

 

Conrad orchestrated for JW until 2011 (I think Tintin was the very last he did for him). War Horse was all Eddie, and starting with Lincoln, JW turned sketches directly to Mark Graham and his team, as others said above. I think JW got Bill Ross on board to help out on the Disney Star Wars films, though.

[publicist 4,647]

19 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Which movies Karam has done with Horner? I want to know which Horner scores I'm going to delete from my collection.

 

The score in question most likely was 'A Far Off Place', a score known to be heavily ghostwritten and featuring surprisingly sophisticated scoring for what basically is a kid's adventure movie. Ironically it's much more interesting due to different ghostwriters working on it than many scores Horner orchestrated on his own (starting with Braveheart). 

 

Rule of thumb: emotional pieces and affecting tunes Horner did himself, suspense, action and tissue stuff he farmed out, because he was more interested in lifting the emotion. So you can keep all the sweet stuff from AFOP. 

 

 

[Edmilson 9,804]

Don Davis probably ghostwrote a few cues for Horner as well. There's a cue in Balto where you can hear something similar to Buzz Lightyear's theme, and the first Toy Story, which Davis also orchestrated, would come out a few months later.

[karelm 3,159]

17 hours ago, Remco said:

As I understood it, Finale is easier to use for full scores nowadays compared to earlier versions.

Btw, does someone know when, at jkms for instance, they moved from handwritten parts to using music notation software? Somewhere in the 90s?

 

In the 1990's, you didn't have embedded parts.  So you had to create a full score that the conductor, composer, and engineers would use and a score for parts only that would be used to create the parts.  Now the full score used by the conductor can be used to extract the parts, you still have to do some manipulation but you don't need multiple versions which can get out of sync due to late edits...a real disaster in scoring sessions.  Imagine a player playing something in bar 41 but the conductor's score has that removed or given at a different spot, those types of errors are extremely costly and embarrassing as the music prep has to determine which is the right one and maybe look through versions to determine.  Additionally, old versions of Finale had a fatal flaw that they did not export to other versions which meant you had to get a new version each time they released a new version (yearly).  Otherwise Finale 2006 wouldn't be able to load or save Finale 2004 so you had to have both.  Over the years, this became a real mess and it was mind boggling why they did that other than they had little competition and could force an upgrade on their customers.  The benefit of Finale in the pro music prep shops came in keyboard shortcuts that could be tied into complex macros.  They would produce shareable shortcuts that everyone on the team would have access to such as page formatting, the amount of white space around a staff, fixing collisions with words and notes, etc.  All these things were painstaking and still time consuming but now are much faster to do.  The other huge time saver comes with editability.  If you produce a score on paper, it's impossible to "insert a measure" in the middle.  And sometimes you get these requests - very common in the composition phase but always happen late in complex scores too.  Now, there is more competition with Sibelius and Dorico that are faster and easier but don't have the richness of keystroke commands that Finale has.  

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

Sibelius has keyboard shortcuts for practically everything.

[publicist 4,647]

58 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Don Davis probably ghostwrote a few cues for Horner as well. 

 

 

[Drew 594]

5 hours ago, karelm said:

 

In the 1990's, you didn't have embedded parts.  So you had to create a full score that the conductor, composer, and engineers would use and a score for parts only that would be used to create the parts.  Now the full score used by the conductor can be used to extract the parts, you still have to do some manipulation but you don't need multiple versions which can get out of sync due to late edits...a real disaster in scoring sessions.  Imagine a player playing something in bar 41 but the conductor's score has that removed or given at a different spot, those types of errors are extremely costly and embarrassing as the music prep has to determine which is the right one and maybe look through versions to determine.  Additionally, old versions of Finale had a fatal flaw that they did not export to other versions which meant you had to get a new version each time they released a new version (yearly).  Otherwise Finale 2006 wouldn't be able to load or save Finale 2004 so you had to have both.  Over the years, this became a real mess and it was mind boggling why they did that other than they had little competition and could force an upgrade on their customers.  The benefit of Finale in the pro music prep shops came in keyboard shortcuts that could be tied into complex macros.  They would produce shareable shortcuts that everyone on the team would have access to such as page formatting, the amount of white space around a staff, fixing collisions with words and notes, etc.  All these things were painstaking and still time consuming but now are much faster to do.  The other huge time saver comes with editability.  If you produce a score on paper, it's impossible to "insert a measure" in the middle.  And sometimes you get these requests - very common in the composition phase but always happen late in complex scores too.  Now, there is more competition with Sibelius and Dorico that are faster and easier but don't have the richness of keystroke commands that Finale has.  

 

Thank gosh Finale has been backward compatible since version 2014.

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

I don't understand why people stick with such antiquated software.

[Positivatee 327]

22 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I don't understand why people stick with such antiquated software.

 

Hey, it's not like we're talking about Cakewalk... 

[Muad'Dib 1,895]

6 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Don Davis probably ghostwrote a few cues for Horner as well. There's a cue in Balto where you can hear something similar to Buzz Lightyear's theme, and the first Toy Story, which Davis also orchestrated, would come out a few months later.

 

Am I on your ignore list or what?!

[Datameister 2,384]

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I don't understand why people stick with such antiquated software.

 

For me, Finale still gets the job done quicker and with more flexibility and advanced features than, say, Sibelius. (Haven't really tried Dorico yet, as intriguing as it looks.) Honestly, Finale feels like a PC mindset where Sibelius feels like a Mac. Either one can handle most things you could throw at it, but Finale feels a lot more natural to me (just like PCs do). Another person might be exactly the opposite way. But I wouldn't describe either as antiquated.

[Edmilson 9,804]

4 hours ago, Muad'Dib said:

Am I on your ignore list or what?!

Sorry about that. Much like Dany from GoT, I kinda forgot about your post 

[karelm 3,159]

18 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I don't understand why people stick with such antiquated software.

It's fundamental economics.  Each notation software excels in different areas.  Sibelius is NOT great at complex scores like aleatoric music, compound meters (it still doesn't do it).  It serves the common needs well that serves 95% of what users ask for but it isn't great with advanced notation.   But it's a real struggle to produce a score like the attached.  But that's not needed often, so it's the experts and connoisseurs who need that level of notation control.  But who control's the features?  It's like Microsoft Word probably does 1,000 features but 95% of its users only use a dozen features.  That same sort of economics at play.  Don't get me wrong, the attached image from Penderecki would be difficult to engrave regardless of what tool you use but some are better equipped for this type of advanced notation rare as it might be.  For pro engravers, this is very important even though it's rarely asked for.  It's sort of like how Adobe Photoshop can do anything you need for a photo but you almost never need all of that capability, it becomes the go to tool because anything you might need, it can do.  But Sibelius is easier to use for most work.  I haven't yet used Dorico but I hear it's a great balance between advanced notation and simplicity but the workflow (how you do common things) is unintuitive.  

 

As for me, I think Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico are professional level tools.  Each excel in different ways.  You also need to be proficient in whatever tools your clients use.  

[ocelot 554]

On 16/10/2021 at 3:16 PM, Skelly said:

 

  Hide contents

I noticed in your credits, wedged between all the John Williams films, you worked for James Horner as well. I just wondered how his work process might differ from John's.

 

His scores were blank. He wanted me to fill them in. So I would get --

 

[laughing] They were what?

 

Is that news? That...? I would get the notes, and a copy of the tape, and I would look at it, and then just sit down and write it.

 

Did he differentiate with you in terms of theme and, like, texture? Or at least give you like an idea of what he wants?

 

No, because he would do it individually. Like, I wasn't the only one. There was an emergency case to do one picture that he wanted to do it in a week. So there was a lot of writing to do in one week, so there were four of us. I don't think what he was doing was trying to plot thematic material, but in my case, he didn't plot anything. He just told me, You got the notes you got the picture, you start here, and you quit here. Okay. And so he went -- oh! He told me one thing. He said, 'This right here, in one spot, it's building up to something and I want to start with brass; with, like, trumpets and French horns alternating, but do it individually so that it sounds like it's all overlapping and it sounds like it's coming from different parts of the battlefield. So they do that. We can do it by the way we mic it.' And there was one picture in specific that he said, 'If you play it like [humming] and then just have that keep repeating but in different keys. So I said, "I'm not sure what you mean, because overlapping like that -- having it all separate keys, you don't change the harmony. Leave it the same and just let me dot and dash with the trumpets and the french horns alternating." We had eight French horns, so it was great; I could use them in couples with the trumpets. I think there were four or five, I'm not sure, I can't remember -- oh no, they were eight! I'm sorry. Eight trumpets and eight French horns. I couldn't figure out which picture that was on... that came together and it worked fine, but he wanted -- insisted on changing harmony.

 

Eddie, so at that point, it really becomes more ghost writing than orchestrating.

 

Yes.

 

From a business standpoint, how to you deal with that?

 

We were told that they were going to pay us double.

 

But you wouldn't ask for an additional 'Music by...' credit or something in a situation like that?

 

Well, we were hoping we might get that, but we were called orchestrators.

 

Yeah. You could call a cat a dog; it's still a cat.

 

I did that -- there were a couple of times with him I had to do that. And I did it because John released me to do it, because I turned it down. I said, you know, it's not fair. And I thought everybody that was involved should have been paid a fee and should have gotten some kind of credit other than, you know, a side credit. But he doesn't like sharing credit. Most people don't. Most composers don't. John never did -- John Mandel. And he is a brilliant writer by himself. But it's something that you have to, when you're dealing with a producer, you want to make sure that he doesn't get the idea that you're hiring somebody who's going to shuttle it off with other people.

 

Now you didn't do a mini version to get approved; they just handed it to you and you just did it?

 

He didn't know what he was going to get until he gave the downbeat. Takes a lot of guts.

 

(If anyone would like to hear the whole video, he can send me a Pm.)

That movie was Troy. They had around a week after Gabriel Yared was kicked off to score it and there wasn't any time for him to write all of it. It was mostly written by orchestrators including Conrad. He would just give them cues and he said to Conrad "write Horner".... And when Conrad said do you want to give me a theme or some cues to go by, he just allegedly replied, "No, you know what Horner sounds like" lol

 

[Luke Skywalker 2,068]

Woah, pope should co write the avatar sequels with franglen (who must have been a ghostwriter at the same level too)

[Muad'Dib 1,895]

4 hours ago, ocelot said:

That movie was Troy. They had around a week after Gabriel Yared was kicked off to score it and there wasn't any time for him to write all of it. It was mostly written by orchestrators including Conrad. He would just give them cues and he said to Conrad "write Horner".... And when Conrad said do you want to give me a theme or some cues to go by, he just allegedly replied, "No, you know what Horner sounds like" lol

 

 

Danger motif!

[Edmilson 9,804]

Oh crap, I love the score for Troy, so to know that it was mostly ghost-written is  depressing AF.

 

I should stop entering this thread because every time I do I lose part of my will to live. 

[Tom 5,336]

1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

Oh crap, I love the score for Troy, so to know that it was mostly ghost-written is  depressing AF.

 

I should stop entering this thread because every time I do I lose part of my will to live. 

Paging Milli Vanili.  

 

That being said, you know the music sounds the same whether Horner or ghost-writers wrote it.  

[karelm 3,159]

1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

Oh crap, I love the score for Troy, so to know that it was mostly ghost-written is  depressing AF.

 

I should stop entering this thread because every time I do I lose part of my will to live. 

You shouldn't worry about it too much.  There is no doubt that Horner was a very skilled and talented composer.  There is also the reality of film scoring as a business.  Sometimes these collide.  It's not really that big a deal.  Think of it like any one of his great scores would probably sound different, perhaps even better, if he had no time constraints.  Because composers sometimes have awful deadlines, corners are cut.  It's not ideal, it's the reality of working in a business.  To think otherwise is to over-romanticize the business of film scoring.   

[SyncMan 359]

On 16/10/2021 at 7:12 PM, Edmilson said:

Wait, so Horner didn't actually scored the movies, he'd just write a few themes and then his orchestrators would do all the work of actually putting music to score scenes of the movie?

 

Geez, it's so sad to know that. It's like discovering your favorite super-hero faked all his battles. It's truly depressing to know that all that wonderful score that elevated the movie wasn't actually done by Horner, but rather by some guy who doesn't even have photos on the internet.

 

It sounds like the easiest job in the world, just giving blank pages and a few notes to the orchestrators and then let them do all the work. "Well, it's a sad scene so I want some sad piano and strings and maybe a dark performance of the hero's theme. Now, if you need me I'm gonna be in my bedroom relaxing and smoking some weed."

We’re only hearing this out of one person. Why not wait until other people in the industry corroborate with Karam’s statement. Knocking a pedestal out of James Horner is hard work for an 80+ year old man to do by himself.

[Remco 692]

10 hours ago, karelm said:

You shouldn't worry about it too much.  There is no doubt that Horner was a very skilled and talented composer.  There is also the reality of film scoring as a business.  Sometimes these collide.  It's not really that big a deal.  Think of it like any one of his great scores would probably sound different, perhaps even better, if he had no time constraints.  Because composers sometimes have awful deadlines, corners are cut.  It's not ideal, it's the reality of working in a business.  To think otherwise is to over-romanticize the business of film scoring.   

Of course you’re totally right but at the same time I value so much that with JW I can be sure that he is solely responsible for everything I hear, well, for about 99%. I suppose he’d just turn down the offer if he couldn’t do it in a week.

[Luke Skywalker 2,068]

11 hours ago, karelm said:

 Because composers sometimes have awful deadlines, Horners are cut.

That's more like it

[Richard P 4,517]

The mostly written by orchestrators suggestion puts Horner's comment on Schweiger's podcast of accepting it to "see how much music I could write" in a somewhat different light. You'd never get the impression from that interview that anyone but him wrote it.

 

Ultimately if I like the music, it's not really relevant who actually wrote it. In fact, if you discover a ghostwriter, it opens up another composer to listen to, and that's only a good thing.

 

I'd assume a similar thing happened with Beltrami on I, Robot as he had a similarly insane deadline.

[Disco Stu 15,507]

My favorite James Newton Howard score (King Kong) has gotta be some very high percentage "ghost written" given the time constraints.  Of course JNH allowed at least Neely and Bacon to have the 'additional music by' credit, which Horner was not willing to do.  I can't help wondering how much more of King Kong was written by the people credited as just orchestrators though (like Conrad Pope)

[Jurassic Shark 14,212]

4 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

My favorite James Newton Howard score (King Kong) has gotta be some very high percentage "ghost written" given the time constraints. 

 

Perhaps that's the reason it's your favourite...

[Jay 41,264]

41 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

My favorite James Newton Howard score (King Kong) has gotta be some very high percentage "ghost written" given the time constraints.  Of course JNH allowed at least Neely and Bacon to have the 'additional music by' credit, which Horner was not willing to do.  I can't help wondering how much more of King Kong was written by the people credited as just orchestrators though (like Conrad Pope)

 

IIRC the sheet music leak has the composer of each individual cue noted on top

[karelm 3,159]

3 hours ago, Remco said:

Of course you’re totally right but at the same time I value so much that with JW I can be sure that he is solely responsible for everything I hear, well, for about 99%. I suppose he’d just turn down the offer if he couldn’t do it in a week.

 

You can also think of it as JW's level of detail is overkill hence, no real need for an orchestrator, you can just send it to the copyist.  He does have the luxury of dictating the schedule and that's just not how everyone works.  You don't see JW doing 7 films in one year like Goldsmith sometimes did or maybe not accepting a two week gig to deliver 3 hours of score.   I don't think anyone who worked with Horner, even as ghostwriter,  thought he couldn't do it, just that the pressures of the situation made it unfeasible.  It is also a slippery slope, especially with teams that have worked together for years and pro level talent like we're talking about here.  Sometimes the orchestrator suggests something beyond what is in the sketch and the composer might like it.  Then another cue, they'll do short hand and ask for "more flushing out".  Sometimes they'll simply get director's notes and have to do it and the composer will review it (eg: make it more intense).  Sometimes you get just a melody and chord symbols and will be told "make this huge".  From there, it's not a stretch to "make a variation of my theme that's more intense" and now you're sort of in the ghostwriting area but it's quite gray.  It's not unheard of for a ghost to hire a ghost too!

[DrTenma 117]

On 17/10/2021 at 1:12 AM, Edmilson said:

Wait, so Horner didn't actually scored the movies, he'd just write a few themes and then his orchestrators would do all the work of actually putting music to score scenes of the movie?

 

And even with that he manages to copy his previous themes! hahaha

 

As far as I know, many composers work like that nowadays. They hire co-composers to do more than separate the music between the different instruments.

[jojoju2000 20]

That just makes JW even more admirable. Like he is truly top of the line.