Ryan Leach : Music for Animation

This is part of a regular series of “Weekly Links” postings. On most Fridays I post links to stories and articles that I find interesting. Though I try to keep them mostly animation, music, or entertainment industry related I will also share the occasional link that I find useful or helpful in other ways. I hope you enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment about any of the links you’ve checked out.

Gather ’round for another small set of interesting or entertaining links for the week of September 25th.

• I discovered an interesting article from Film Music Magazine titled “The New Editors: When Composers Stop Composing”. Personally I have a tough time avoiding the “looping” rut, it’s just so easy and convenient to drop down drum loops or even to just hit L and repeat music you’ve already written. The result tends to be stiff and tiresome. I intend to figure out how exactly to break out of that “looping” rut and write a tutorial for Audiotuts with the results. The New Editors: When Composers Stop Composing
• This preview from Kentaro Sato for an orchestration book he may or may not write is fantastic. Hands down the best guide on how to orchestrate I’ve ever read. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I have always looked for but never found. I was extremely disapointed with all of my instrumentation and orchestration classes in college. I feel like I learned the range of the flute 15 times but never actually learned anything about when or why to use it. If you write music, you MUST read this. Orchestration by Kentaro Sato
• They Might Be Giants have come out with yet another kids album. I used to be offended when I said I liked TMBG and people asked “Aren’t they a kids band?”. Now, they actually are. And I am sad. Here Comes Science

The soundtrack for Up features a short video interview with composer Michael Giacchino. Up is Giacchino’s third feature film collaboration with Pixar, the first two being The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

The subject of the video is “Composing for Characters”, though the discussion by the filmmakers and composer seems to be more generally about themes and not necessarily why a certain theme goes with a certain character.

The highlights of the video are the shots of the orchestra recording the score. Giacchino is Hollywood’s brave knight in the fight for live musicians and has been very successful in getting live groups of amazing players together to perform his scores. A lot of people take for granted that a score sounds great because the of the composer’s writing, forgetting that half of the reason it sounds so good is because of the players that turn that writing into music.

Opening today in LA, New York and San Francisco is “The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story”. The film is a documentary about the legendary songwriting team that wrote many amazing classic Disney songs for movies like Mary Poppins, the Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Sword in the Stone, and so many more!

I have not yet seen the film but will be back with a review after I do.

Cartoon Brew shared this very cool video by Jack Lykins of an Interactive Approach to Animation.

“All the video and audio playback in the film is controlled by turntable, and zooms and rotations are manipulated through a MIDI interface.”

Sounds like there’s some amazing potential for live performance with this, and especially as an opportunity for animators and musicians to collaborate. They already touched on the idea of DJs or jazz musicians using it, but I think a lot of musical theater shows and plays could have a field day with it as well!