NY Times Article: "How to Write Music for Rolling Boulders"

[ConorPower 148]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/07/opinion/indiana-jones-movie-john-williams-music.html

 

Wonderful article just published in the NY Times, and written by @Falstaft! Check it out!

[Tydirium 1,167]

Paywall. 

[Falstaft 2,132]

10 minutes ago, Tydirium said:

Paywall. 

 

Try it this way

[Tydirium 1,167]

7 minutes ago, Falstaft said:

 

Try it this way

 

Thank you! Wonderful article; congrats!

[michael_grig 472]

My sincere appreciation to the website layouter and, of course, to the author. What an interactive article!

[Datameister 2,044]

I discovered this during my morning NYT read. Great article, @Falstaft! Tough to describe this stuff in a way that's both detailed and accessible. Love the way you've threaded the needle. I hope it opens some people's eyes and ears!

 

 

[Andy 4,141]

That was absolutely brilliant in every way.  I really enjoyed the experience.  That must've taken a lot of work.

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

1 hour ago, Falstaft said:

 

Try it this way

 

Excellent article. And a great way to include example clips. The way you lined up the Berlin Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra with the film scene is particularly impressive.

[Martinland 360]

Just marvellous ... made me smile multiple times ... and happy.

 

Thank you very much!

[igger6 894]

Unbelievable, @Falstaft! This is a dream-come-true article presented in a dream-come-true format and, in a better world, would found a genre unto itself. You’ve found your true medium. I hope this leads to more opportunities like this for you, and I’m proud, in my mediated, anonymous, digital way, to know you. 

[Falstaft 2,132]

Thanks everyone. I actually wrote this well before Dial came out, but was glad I was able to sneak in a last minute edit about "The Battle of Syracuse." My secret hope is that some Disney exec sees this article and realizes a score-only presentation of Indy 5 would be a good idea!

[Smeltington 1,441]

Wonderful article! Beautifully written. And great selections of music to illustrate your points. It was fun and illuminating to examine all these moments under the microscope, with your insights to accompany them.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

Thanks for this great article

[JTN 2,036]

8 hours ago, Falstaft said:

 

Try it this way

Nice article, Frank and it being interactive for average readers to actually being able to listen to the cues you’re talking about was a great idea. 

[karelm 2,914]

9 hours ago, Falstaft said:

 

Try it this way

That was an excellent article!  Way to go, Frank!

[Loert 2,515]

Fantastic article! What I particularly love about it is how you draw the lens towards underscore/action music specifically. Usually when Williams is mentioned in articles, it's almost always in reference to his pretty themes, his use of leitmotif etc...but not much on the actual underscore per se. But for me, the underscore can be just as rewarding to listen to, if not more. So it's great to see this "subgenre" getting some love, no less in a newspaper as high profile as the NYT.

[igger6 894]

I'm actually curious how this piece came together, @Falstaft.  Did you cold-email the Times with a proposal?  Did they come to you as a relevant expert, wanting something to pin to the release of the film?  Was it always going to be a multimedia project?  Did you have to give them specific timestamps for the music and video embeds?

 

Let's hear the DVD extras on this!

[Dr. Know 326]

Outstanding article!

[GerateWohl 4,371]

That's really a brillant article.

I am just afraid it comes about 20 to 30 years too late as John Williams is the last of the dinosaurs who still write filmmusic at that complexity and who can stand the comparison with Strawinsky etc. and he declared some time ago Dial of Destiny his last score. If now a movie goer reads this and thinks, interesting, next time I go to a movie I will pay more attention to the music, he or she might be disappointed experiencing the music just as another kind of sound effect.

 

So, maybe just one sentence missing in this otherwise great article. "This is how they used to do it but don't anymore."

[Falstaft 2,132]

10 hours ago, igger6 said:

I'm actually curious how this piece came together, @Falstaft.  Did you cold-email the Times with a proposal?  Did they come to you as a relevant expert, wanting something to pin to the release of the film?  Was it always going to be a multimedia project?  Did you have to give them specific timestamps for the music and video embeds?

 

It was a long and complicated process, though it started very simply with me pitching the idea with a cold-email back in early May. The thrust of what I wrote initially was more academic in tone, and I had a few more examples in mind: the theme from Slalom on Mt. Humol; the key changes from Bug Tunnel/Death Trap; the rhythms of Ants!; that brass canon Belly of the Steel Beast; and even a mention of Falcon Flight from TROS (as proof that JW "still got it" when it comes to action scoring). But during editing, everything was, quite logically, focused down onto more to a few key examples.

 

The biggest editorial note I received was to make it all more autobiographical and assertive in its opinion, which was a tone I was not used to writing in. But I think it worked out -- the personal touch in particular (anyone else have that Kid Stuff album?; it really was formative to me!). Once everything got going -- after Dial came out, primarily -- the editing process was really supportive and pleasant. 

 

As far as the multimedia element, I can only point to the incredible design team at the Times. I just specified the timestamps and they worked their magic behind the scenes. I was super lucky that they had access to that high quality, recent video of JW conducting the Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra with Berlin, that was a real coup.

[BobaMike 17]

This is a wonderful article!  I expected another run of the mill Williams article that we always get when he has a new movie, but the look at the less known aspects of his scores was a surprise!  Excellent use of video/sound to prove your points, which is almost demanded when writing about music in this way.  You should be proud of this article!

[ThePenitentMan1 744]

I've been afraid to bring this up since I first noticed it but...

 

I noticed that for the Desert Chase clip, you used the OST/Concord version of Desert Chase instead of the uncut/correct film take DCC version.  Considering that it was supposed to synchronize with the video, I would've gone with the DCC version for that bit, but is there a particular reason you went with the OST/Concord version instead?

[Falstaft 2,132]

4 hours ago, ThePenitentMan1 said:

I noticed that for the Desert Chase clip, you used the OST/Concord version of Desert Chase instead of the uncut/correct film take DCC version.  Considering that it was supposed to synchronize with the video, I would've gone with the DCC version for that bit, but is there a particular reason you went with the OST/Concord version instead?

 

Ha! I was wondering when someone would notice that. It's one of two goofs, the other being the "stretto" music is actually the ~10 seconds that precede the clear stretto in Crystal Skull.

 

The design team picked out and synched all the music clips themselves, and I didn't want to bug them with little corrections, since so few people would notice the issue and they don't make much of a difference to the argument. So both of those slightly suboptimal clips will remain. Oh well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Schilkeman 964]

This was a really terrific article. Thanks so much for taking the time to write and share it. So much music criticism is about the people making the music, not the music itself. It’s always great to see music talked about in an intelligent (but not academic) manner. A layperson could really get something out of this, and, I suspect, so could any number of people who should know better, but have dismissed film music out of hand. 
 

Good job!

[igger6 894]

Thumbs up if you think @Falstaft has the germ of an amazing podcast in this article.  Imagine a primer on musical techniques of film scoring, with examples from Williams and others, illustrating elements of composition for the musically uninitiated. Rather than doing episodes on individual film scores like so many podcasts have, you could explore tools of the trade like stretto, fugue, ostinato, etc. The Underscore podcast feinted in this direction a bit before it fizzled, but your knowledge base could really make it soar. Think it over!

[Falstaft 2,132]

On 12/7/2023 at 1:15 AM, igger6 said:

Thumbs up if you think @Falstaft has the germ of an amazing podcast in this article.  Imagine a primer on musical techniques of film scoring, with examples from Williams and others, illustrating elements of composition for the musically uninitiated. Rather than doing episodes on individual film scores like so many podcasts have, you could explore tools of the trade like stretto, fugue, ostinato, etc. The Underscore podcast feinted in this direction a bit before it fizzled, but your knowledge base could really make it soar. Think it over!

 

That sounds like a podcast I'd love to listen to! Alas, time is finite, and I'm more of a writer than a talker anyway. It's not exactly what you're talking about, but Chrysanthe Tan and Dominic Sewell's respective channels are both at that extremely high musical level you're interested in.

 

Speaking of stretto, the clip is now accurate in my article. Hooray!

[igger6 894]

Brilliant! Thanks!

[ThePenitentMan1 744]

21 hours ago, Falstaft said:

Speaking of stretto, the clip is now accurate in my article. Hooray!

 

Great!

 

(But Desert Chase is still the cut-down version...  ah well...  Can't win 'em all, I suppose.)

[Jay 37,371]

OK, WOW!!!

This article came out while I was away on vacation, and I only just now had the time to actually circle back and read it.  "Read" may be a bit of an understatement, since the inclusion of the terrifically selected audio and video clips make this so much more than "just" an article!

 

I LOVED the way you managed to - somehow - take a bunch of complex musical terms, explain them, showcase them off with clear examples, and do all that without making me feel like I was being forced to learn something - it was all so smooth! The clips make the "reader" to engage directly with the whole article, which makes the whole thing so fulfilling!

 

One thing I took away was the notion that John Williams actually does more mickey-mousing than I had realized, but not in a bad way at all - the way he does it is so graceful, you don't even realize he's doing it. 

 

It is sad that this article stands as a testament to the elegant way John has scored films all his years as that has almost completely fallen out of favor in Hollywood.  If only more of today's directors and producers had articles like this in their formative years, maybe movie music could have gone in a different direction than it is.

 

Regardless, this all makes our Johnny stand out as even more of a legend than we already thought he was.

 

Great work Frank, and great advice your editor gave you about making it more autobiographical.  I was not family with the "Kids Stuff" compilation, but just seeing the tracklist I can imagine the effect it had on you based on your description.  Great work!

[karelm 2,914]

Great interview on NPR too!

 

[Jay 37,371]

Link?

[Falstaft 2,132]

15 hours ago, Jay said:

OK, WOW!!!

This article came out while I was away on vacation, and I only just now had the time to actually circle back and read it.  "Read" may be a bit of an understatement, since the inclusion of the terrifically selected audio and video clips make this so much more than "just" an article!

 

Thanks so much @Jay, that means a lot to me! I do hope this article will, in some small way, make a case for a more respectful treatment of symphonic film scoring. Judging from the comments, I think audiences are eager for a return.

 

The NPR segment I did was with Think! and should be streamable here: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/478859728/think. We cover some of the same ideas from the NYT article but also touch on Williams's career more generally (including Daddy-O!). 

[Jay 37,371]

Fantastic, thanks!

[karelm 2,914]

39 minutes ago, Falstaft said:

 

Thanks so much @Jay, that means a lot to me! I do hope this article will, in some small way, make a case for a more respectful treatment of symphonic film scoring. Judging from the comments, I think audiences are eager for a return.

 

The NPR segment I did was with Think! and should be streamable here: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/478859728/think. We cover some of the same ideas from the NYT article but also touch on Williams's career more generally (including Daddy-O!). 

 

It's a nicely curated traversal.  I heard it on NPR and thought "what the!@?@?!  But that's Falstaft!"  Great job!