There has been a change

I have now moved to Tumblr

The url is http://abolla.tumblr.com/

Enjoy.

Instrumentation and Orchestration Lecture 2

Instrumentation and Orchestration: Lecture 2

One must take into account that when one is working with an orchestra you are also working with a concert hall to house it. Other things to take into account are tings like ‘how far are the players away from each other?’ Back in the really old days, in terms of composition, orchestration would come at the post-production phase and not be considered as important compared to the other factors of composition such as harmony. Berlioz, as we have already discussed, was one of the first to really think about tone colour and orchestration as a means of composition. Berlioz wanted to blend the orchestra into one instrument giving it a whole new range of possibilities. Who says that the violins have to have to tune the whole time eh? Mozart? Thus as we move on through the 19th Century, the music sounds persistently different. Today’s film music goes with the forms made in the 19th Century mostly, it’s annoying in that film music should broaden its horizons a bit more to be like the stuff that was composed in the 20th Century, or even better, the 21st Century. The best composers of the 20th Century, when considering orchestration are Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Vaughn Williams.

Mahler’s 9th Symphony: For the first half minute the music pieces itself together from fragments just like the orchestration. It doesn’t blend together, but instead it comes in at different times like the Italians would have done back in the Classic Era. The instruments are all following different pathways rather than just blending into one. Because Mahler has taken a different path to get this point, he’s also deemed it possible to have solo instruments play instead of having the entire orchestra play. This creates a chamber music feel, but then as the rest of the orchestra comes in, the musical feel goes back to that of an full orchestra. This was fist done by the magnificent Berlioz.

Stravinsky’s Les Noces: As Stravinsky composed the “Rite of Spring” with a very high bassoon solo to start off with; many people would not be able to distinguish it as a bassoon at the time. “Les Noces” by Stravinsky is a ballet about an ancient Russian wedding Ceremony. It sounds archaic, but the orchestration isn’t. There are sixteen percussionists and four pianos playing at the same time. Why? One; to give the piano a new sound, that is a much larger range than it could achieve with just one player. Second; the percussion lends it self as another means to change the piano’s sound. The percussion is the old part, and the piano is the new part. It all ties in very nicely with the composition as the old part comes from the subject matter, whilst the new comes from the composer and the new techniques involved. Stravinsky thus successfully changes the timbre of the piece to something new and unheard of before. This begs the question as to what the modern orchestra can sound like, why are there no Saxophones in the orchestra anyway? Apparently, the first mission when composing for orchestra is to make it sound traditional. Igor Stravinsky wanted a new and defined sound for his piece to distinguish it from al other pieces so the listener would be able to identify it within one second of hearing it. It’s no surprise that Stravinsky pulls out some cool combinations from the orchestra that you have never heard before.

Agon: is also a ballet, but about nothing.
Schoenberg: puts forward the idea that orchestration could be the only form of composition. His five pieces in op. 16 composed in 1909 are a great example. No. 3 is about the sun hitting the ocean water and creating sparkles and reflections that we all know.

Webern: at the same time as Schoenberg composed six pieces in his op. 6. They’re all very short because Webern wanted to see what would happen when you compressed a piece down into a very short time. In the second piece, the whole orchestra is used in conjunction with the first, which just uses a small selection of instruments. There are a lot of ideas being compressed into a small space of time. In No. 3 of this set of pieces Webern tries to colour every note differently, see previous lecture notes for full details. One can draw similarities with Mondrian’s work where the spaces inside the black frames are coloured in. Schoenberg was a painter for two years of his life and he actually put composition on hold to pursue his painting skills. Lots of composers tried to make paintings into pieces of music.

Edgard Varese: looked at cityscapes instead of paintings for his inspiration as he found them fascinating to look at having come from Europe to witness massive urban landscapes like the ones of Chicago or New York. This was in the 1920s remembering the age of machines. In Integrales Varese uses the wind in such a way that the melody goes between all of the different instruments, otherwise known as antiphonal exchange. He also gets rid of the strings entirely in this piece to give it more edge and to take the softness out of it.

THE END.

Instrumentation and Orchestration Lecture 1

Instrumentation and Orchestration
1740 – 1900 in quarters
1. Haydn and Mozart.
2. Beethoven and Schubert.
3. Wagner and Brahms (Loads of them).
4. Xenakis and Stockhausen.

The Classic Period 1740 – 1815
First stages of the orchestra as we know it. Haydn and Mozart were the first to write symphonies as composers. A great orchestra that greatly influenced everyone else was the Mannheim orchestra. Carl Stamitz was part of Mannheim school that house many composers. He wrote fifty Symphonies and many concertos, not to mention the quantity of chamber works his has done.

In this era, there were heavy emphasis on the woodwind, which was at the tim; oboes and bassoons. 1750 gave birth to the Clarinet, fathered by a man called Johanne Demmen (not sure about his name). Before this, the instrument was called a Shalamo (I think that’s how it is spelt). It was a long time before people started taking the clarinet seriously. Mozart was the first to use the instrument in his works and promptly made a concerto for it. At this time, the Piccolo and the Cor Anglais were used very rarely.

Horn – Before this time, a primitive hunting horn was used without any valves, just a long windy thing that made a screech, like a sound effect. The French made the horn French by shoving their hands up the bell to change the sound it made. This becomes the norm in later years closer to the present. In 1760, slides were invented for the Trombone. Other brass instruments came and went. Trombones were seen as an exotic instrument, so they were rarely used until time accepted them into Opera. The Cornetti were phased out as this point as they were deemed pointless. A couple of hangovers from the medieval era were the Serpent, and the Ophicleide. They were there because the Tuba hadn’t been invented yet.
Timps – Were tuned so they were used purely for a sound effect or whenever the time came that they could be used in harmony with the other instruments. The Theorbo and the Lute were still used at this point.


The basso continuo had been vanquished by this point.
Strings – The wind was always being used to double the strings at this point in history and there was no soloist stuff at all except for the man Mozart. Haydn’s “Symphony No. 6” was the sound of the 1760s. Before hand, orchestras were always just string quartet score blown out into bigger proportion. By 1780, things had changed; the viola had more identity, it’s own voice finally. Divisi was happening more and more often now. The cello up until now was just locked with the double bass in the continuo part. Pizz and muting were also being used. In the 1777 Mozart goes to Mannheim. Mannheim was literally the centre of everything new and current. People would get together to share their thoughts and teach each other new things about music. Symphonies that were important at the time were the Prague, Paris and Jupiter Symphonies that were composed in the 70s. Crescendos were also being invented, what the hell was it like before hand? In the “Paris Symphony” by Mozart we can hear dynamic markings, five part writing, diminuendos, foreground and background play. Recapitulation is coming back, rather than the simple et effective but boring copy and paste method.
Haydn’s “Oxford” – Horns are now more than just glue between strings and woodwind. No percussion except for timps was used during this era with exception to Haydn’s Military Symphony. “Idomenio” 1781 by Mozart was something that was pushing boundaries with no limit (well with a bit). Haydn wrote in the 1780s “The Seasons and The Creation”. At this time, Piccolo was considered exotic and not to be used in much apart from the Arias.
So in order of most common orchestras, we have at the top
• Strings alone.
• Woodwind.
• Strings with Woodwind.
• Woodwind with Horns.
• Strings with Horns.
• Strings with Percussion.
Key Players:
• Mozart.
• Haydn.
• Everyone else in Mannheim.
Next big period – 1800 to 1900. Everything happened here.
All wind instruments become chromatic by the end of the century.
• Theobard Bohm 1847 he modernised the flute. He was a key figure in this era through modernising instruments and making them better.
• Ivan Mulluer 1843 he modernised the clarinet. Loads of different clarinets were created after this guy tampered with the instrument; Bass clarinet, sub-bass, etc, the list goes on and on.
• Almenrader modernised the bassoon. Tenoroons were created but they were never needed so they quickly died out. It was basically a small bassoon .
Anyway, everything becomes modernised and mechanised. But nothing has been totally perfected yet. Now there were two valves, piston and rotary. No more shitty natural horns anymore, well, actually they get phased out completely much later.
There is a massive division between the French and the Germans over what style of music and what instruments to play were.
Meyerbeer, a composer trail-blazed and experimented with instrumentation and orchestration. He was the first composer to specify that he wanted valve trumpets instead of natural ones. Donsetti, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and loads of others got the valve trumpets stuck in the system. There was however, a lot of wrestling between the natural and the valve trumpets for good reason as it was apparent at first why they should make the switch. The natural trumpet sounded pretty good and the valve was something new that didn’t initially need to happen. But, as things got chromatic etc, it was a necessity to make the switch. Almost like standard definition and HD.
Beethoven 1770 – 1830 for Beethoven was the time when he used the natural trumpets. Beyond that, he used valve trumpets in his pieces. The Cornet arrived in French Opera. But more importantly than that, the Tuba was finally invented. Saxhorns, keyed Bugal were invented with valves, but there was again no need for them so they instantly died out. Bass Trumpets , Saxotrombas, the Sarrusophone and the Wagner Tuba . These were not foreign instruments, they were spin offs of their predecessors. The harp also comes into play now . It remains diatonic until 1810 . Erard, who was French, modernises it with the pedals.
First Quarter of the 20th Century
• Beethoven.
• Schubert.
• Weber – Notable for extending virtuosity.
• Rossini.
• Caribini.
The standard lineup was
• 2 Flutes. – Piccolo
• 2 Oboes. – Cor Anglais
• Bassoons. – Contra Bassoon
• Clarinets. – Bass Clarinet
• 2 Horns.
• 2 Trumpets. – Pre valve technology
• Rare to see Trombones. – Only in Opera
• Timps. – These are the regular percussive instruments
• Bass drum, snare drum, cymbal, triangle.
Text books also start to appear on instrumentation and orchestration, the major one being written by Berlioz “Treaty” in 1858. So it all starts to formulise. Now doubling other instruments is phased out due to the fact that it is rather boring for the composer just to copy and paste stuff elsewhere. The cello is now fully liberated and says goodbye to its old pal the double bass. It is now considered as much of a melodic instrument as the violin. 7th and 8th position for the violin become quite normal causing the range of the orchestra to drastically increase. Tremelo was very usual now as well. There are now more notes on the page for people to play as well. The sound of the Horn stays the same as it sounded in Mozart’s day; nothing has really changed there. There was also no change to the trumpets either. Three Trombones are now standard in the orchestra as people start to appreciate their ability. The Trombone is now used pianissimo as people start to appreciate the sound it makes when it is that quiet, before hand, it was just belting out sound. This also happens to the Timps as well. For the first time, harp harmonics appear in the Opera La Dame Blanche in 1825. Crescendos and Diminuendos were being written as hairpins in Mannheim. Triple Fs and Ps were appearing as composers demanded more expression and more extreme dynamics. Weber was the pioneer of these newly found techniques as his main interest was colour when it came down to music. In 1821 he composed “Der Freischutz Operetta”, this piece is all about variety, virtuosity and colour. Agility is also something that is greatly considered aqui.

1800 – 1825
• Beethoven.
• Schubert.
These guys took the orchestra to its perfect entity. Weber punched through that creating a big divide between the composers.
The four main works to look at are:
• Schubert – Symphony 8
• Beethoven – Symphony 9
• Weber – Der Freishutz 1821
• Rossini – William Tell 1829
o Semiramide 1823
In Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 the orchestra was at its most polished.
In this Second Quarter there was also another composer called Meyerbeer (1791 – 1864). He was the trail blazer when it came to orchestration and instrumentation. But the big guy was Hectar Berlioz (1803 – 69). A great composer who did a lot of work on orchestration, remember that I said he had written a book on orchestration?

There were three other composers around this time that did a lot of work on orchestration:
• Glinka.
• Mendolsoln.
• Schumann.
These guys were the bridge between the perfect Classical orchestra and Wagner.
The Italians loved their separate and frilly colours in their music. The Germans, being German, loved to mash things up and make “Brown Sound”. Schumann is the key man here when considering this brown mash up sound. Berlioz was the outsider, iconoclastic to Mendolsoln who was loved and celebrated for his immense works at the time. Berlioz was the one who was cutting edge though, only his music was felt by others at a much later period when people had started to mature.
Instrumentation:

Bohm, Muller and Almenrader. They had perfected the brass and woodwind sections and instruments. Opera was the first to specify whether valve instruments would be used over the natural horns. Here we are getting close to a decent, stand alone brass section. Piccolo and Trombones are integrated more into the orchestra. In French Opera, there are now four bassoons. At this point, composers were playing with the idea that the strings don’t have to play the entire time and were shutting them up for sometimes whole movements. Harmonic texture is changing, that is, instead of just having the notes of a chord splashed together in a chord, composers were separating them out in arpeggios instead. Mahler does this a lot as well as Rimski Korsakov. And now thanks to Weber, the Clarinet is fully integrated with the rest of the orchestra and is no longer an outsider. The French Horn is now a melodic instrument thanks to Schumann and his 1st Symphony and Mendolsoln’s 3rd Symphony. It has become a musical instrument, rather than just a sound effect. The trumpet now gets melodies given to it, but only in Opera at this time. Cornets are also being used as a melodic instrument in French Opera.

There was a large divide between the French and the Germans over the Trombones; the Germans thought that it should be split into three tears, the French thought that there should not be tears, just three identical Trombones. This is where the French Horn gets its name from.

Berlioz now sees orchestration as the primary means of composition, rather than just sitting at a piano and then blowing the score into an the size of an orchestra.

Weber starts to set divisi in the basses. Auxiliary woodwind like the Piccolo get larger sections dedicated to them. Double basses are now being used as melody instruments sometimes (!!). Grippin and Stockhausen start to use offstage brass bands, two harps, then proceeding to become even more extreme. There are new ideas, like special positioning of instruments to make a special effect (once performed by Andy Sherwood when he put an oboe up high for some reason). There was also more interaction with the players, in that; the composer would specify what string to play on. All of this comes back to Berlioz. Solo Cor Anglais, solo Contra Bassoon, the freak of nature just wouldn’t fit into the jigsaw of music.
1840 – Grand Funeral and Triumphant Symphony of Berlioz.

When people were writing concertos though, they still kept to the old fassioned Classic Orchestra of Beethoven and Schubert. A perfect example is Schumann.

Third Quarter
The biggest name that comes to mind is Wagner. But only in his later years was he totally radical and different to the others. Other names that come to mind are:
• Liszt.
• Smeliar.
• Gouno.
• Bizet. – Harks back to the old French style. All about purity and segregation of colours.
All this was preparing the ground for Debussy (the man).
All of these guys just ignore Berlioz totally, but the valve trumpet the now become totally normal.
You would have though that with all of this immensity and bounding forward to “The Serpent” would have been extinct by now right? No! Not until finally the Tuba was invented. Harps are now also frequently added. This is all near close to the optimal standard of the orchestra. Wagner takes the baton from Belioz’s dying fingers. Wagner now employs about 8 horns, some Contrabass Tubas, and about six Harps. All he is doing is blowing it up massively. To be honest, I would have wanted to get away form this personally. He just makes everything bigger to match his totally humungous ego. The strings were just getting higher and higher, the range was expanding like nobody’s business. Cello becomes even more liberated, now a super singing instrument. The brass is now totally locked off, with Wagner though, the brass is split up into smaller groups called choirs. Orchestras within orchestras now exist, my God! Dynamic counterpoint starts happening, an example would be Prokfiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the beginning with the silent strings versus the immense brass. Octave stacks become quite normal making the sound even more immense than it was. Liszt ws similar to Wagner, but didn’t go all the way in being massive, he put more emphasis on being virtuosic. He was progressive in his orchestral writings, clearly visible in his Andante Symphonies (1849 – 1859).

As we progress further through time, we find that gigantic orchestras are really accountable only for Wagner. No one else can be arsed with them their so heavy. Now the key composers are
• Brahms.
• Franc (k).
• Risovski.
• Saints Saens.
• De Lib.
• Bruch.
• Puccini.
The instruments that were now being used were:
• Celloni.
• Violot.
• Bass flutes.
• Finally Saxophones appear.
• Tuba.
• Celesta.
• Xylophone.
• Guitar.
• Banjo.
• Piano.
• Wind Machines (?).
• Double Bass bows are modernised and thus improved.
The first three instruments didn’t stay for long. There were pretty much useless.
Now there are tons of orchestra and instrumentation text-books on the shelves.
Brahms, in all his immensity, bypasses Wagner’s influence and just goes straight back to the genius and perfection of Beethoven. He gets Schumann’s shitty orchestrations and makes them into masterpieces. But other composers were now using a huge orchestra; 9-10 cellos strong and god knows how many violins.

Bruch drew his influence from Mendolsoln. Bruchnar takes the baton from Wagner’s dying and trembling fingers. Delicacy still lingers though in Saint Saens. He is the ultimate King of this. Tchaikovsky was all about primary colours. His orchestras were nothing special, it was what he did it that made a pure and utter genius. Look at the third movement of Symphony 6 to find some antiphony. Tchaikovsky also unifies the whole tune with the orchestra creating a massive sound scape of the tune. Kosokov, an unusual and exotic composer influenced Stravinsky. Greig was the one who took the baton literally from Schumann.

Then comes a new breed of composer:
• Elgar.
• Mahler
• Strauss.
• Debussy.
• Sibelius.
• Deliass.
Strauss (1884 – 1913) used brass trills, flutter tonging, he used the wrong sticks for percussion, Glockenspeil trills, and note bends. These are all classic 20th Century techniques. Strauss’s major works come in 1895, 96, 97 and 98. Here, he uses maximum divisi in the strings so that they all have the own parts. No fair, that is. All Hollywood’s sentimental stuff comes from Strauss’s Eine Heldenlaben. Schoenberg did what Strauss did but to the power of 10.

Sibelius though, decided that he wanted to remove some of the instruments in his “Swan of Telonlaber”.
Debussy – Boulez says he is the birth of modernism. Small orchestras classically distilled, rarely does he use Tutti and the percussion is totally sophisticated.
So the general rules for orchestration on the timeline:
• Pre 1740 the tone colour changes with each movement.
• In the Classic Period, the tone colour changes with each theme.
• In the 19th Century, the tone colour changes with each phrase.
• In the 20th Century, well every note is freaking different.

THE END

Science Fiction Lecture 3

Science Fictions: Lecture 2 Demon Seed

How does Utopia and Dystopia pair up with technology? Sci Fi generally uses popular dramas for the narrative part like Melodrama. There were a race of people who believed that God and the Devil were contstantly at war with each other, called something like the Manoqueins. It is a consistant cycle of absolute good vs absolute evil.

Technology in science gets used only for either absolute good or absolute evil does it not? It’s always very clear cut in Sci Fi. Well what about aliens? E.T. was good at heart. The Alien from Alien 1 though is pretty evil to be honest though. A lot of people say that technology has defined us as human. It keeps us separate from the animal kingdom. Each age that we have had has also been defined by what the technology was like at the time as well; the iron age, bronze age, machine age, information age, etc, etc. The idea is that as the tech changes so do we as a species. The tech provides us with metaphors for different subjects, computers can always be taken as a brain say, a race of people could resemble a group of people who exist now or who have existed in the past, an example would be “Starship Troopers” to Nazi Fascists.

Technology can be seen as extensions to the human body as well. Screw drivers are extended arms, glasses are an extension for the eyes, wheel chairs for legs and telephones/microphones are an extension to the ears. Pace makers are also extensions to the heart. Hopefully, things will be even better than these though in the future, just like these Sci Fi films predicted I hope.
However, there are also a lot of anxieties to these technologies as well as hopes. In the 18th Century, the age of the enlightenment, there was an emerging war between science and religion. The scientists believed in evidence, proof and logic. The religious lot has faith, God’s controlling hand and they believed in the super natural that science could not explain. The scientist believed in the freedom of the individual, the religious lot believed in receiving the authorities of the church. The brought people out of the medieval era and into the Classic/Renaissance era. Before hand, the medieval era was terrible, you accepted your Kings/masters in a totalitarian dictatorship. You accepted that God was alive, if you were a heretic you were almost always executed.
The most important beliefs that these scientists had was:
• Humans are the most important things in life, not God’s will. That was normally to sacrifice yourself for the conquering of other lands that was biggest in the Imperial era.
• Total knowledge is possible for human beings. That was the optimism anyway during the 18th/19th Century.
• Rationality: The world comes from laws that have been made by a force, like the Devine Creator. It was the power of reason.
• Progress and learning take the biggest priority.
We have seen in Sci Fi that there are those who are totally rational, like the scientists or mega computers. Proteus in Demon Seed is one of those guilty of being totally rational. He doesn’t have any emotions though that are crucial for humans. Sci Fi stories thus warn us about being totally rational about things and try to remind us that there are emotions that needed as well.
A prime example is Frankenstein. When does the technology escape our control? When doctor Frankenstein creates like, it is apparently not something to be admired. “Now I know what it’s like to be God” gets thunderclapped out as it was considered blasphemy.

The historical context that this story based itself on was Galvani’s experiments with electricity. Mary Shelly was trying to warn people that they should not fall around with God’s work or the natural order of things. Women are the only ones that are supposed to make life, not men, EVER! In the story, totally rationality that the doctor has becomes totally irrational to have. You apparently still need some emotion, mystery and intuition in life to make it more whole.

Romanticism was an act of opposition led by people like William Blake saying that rationalism just isn’t enough to have.
Alright, so Sci Fi is the Utopia turning into the Dystopia no? Advertising is always a misrepresentation of Utopia. Apparently, if you drive this car up to the front of the club, there will be free parking and a lot of seriously hot girls ready to nail you for having it. Wow! I want that car. Sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish what is real and what isn’t these days. One example, how did you feel when you heard that the World Trade Centres were falling down? I know how I felt, I didn’t believe it at first and nor did my teacher, we just didn’t care. So scientists are sometimes seen as ‘heros’ and ‘visionaries’ sometimes, not sure how that relates but I’m sure it does.

Here’s something, technology was almost always going to be our slave in that it would eradicate all of the jobs that us humans have to so mundanely do the whole time. Well, there are loads that argue that having computers has just made life a little bit more slave like and has made life more complicated and not worth living as much anymore. Apparently, as a people, we are more depressed as well with all of this amazing technology. Computers have kind of made our lives a little bit more of a task to deal with actually, we’re always sitting at them, I am at this moment, obviously. So we have become the slaves to computers, the script has been reversed? Damn.

There are two novels that most Sci Fi films have been based on:
• 1984 (1949) written by George Orwell.
• Brave New World (1932) written by Aldous Huxley.
In 1984, there is a lot of CCTV and torture. There’s also regimentation in it as well. In Brave New World, there are drugs called Soma that make you believe that you are happy. There are also things called Feelies that give you good sensations. So who’s society fits into what? Well, the whole Soma thing sounds pretty close to the iphone and consumerism, whilst 1984 sounds a whole lot like a totalitarian government like the one of the USSR. The key to 1984 is that there is a lot of force being used to control people whilst on the other hand, Huxley’s book says that we are being controlled by things that we consume. Brave New World is different, but it is still about the same old totalitarian government that is suppressing us from wanting to stand up and make a difference. All the people who are rebels don’t rebel because they are so happy. This all is about America capitialism. Consumption is administrated happiness, the leaders exploit the workers, all the intelligent people who are in control get very rich indeed. All of this directly relates to the Matrix doesn’t it? In THX 1138, the people are controlled by drugs, there is no freedom and no emotion. There is also no ambition, religion and the like, not even love.

So science and technology in Sci Fi films are normally the enemy. But to get out of the situation and destroy the evil, one must use science and technology to get oneself out. In the X-files, it is Scully who is the rational one but Moulder is still in there with the emotion.

Seminar:
Gender: The male scientist Harris wants to save the freakish baby at the end of the day, the father being Proteus who actually raped his wife and has made her the mother by force. He is definitely the one without any emotions here isn’t he? His wife Susan is subjected to torture and is forced in rape. It’s a bit blurry though because Proteus is such a charm. Proteus, coming from the Greek ‘the changer’, changes from an A.I into a computer with arms and eyes, and then finally into a child with organic bits and bobs in the image of the couple’s dead child, but with the voice of the devil.

Proteus doesn’t mine the metal in the ocean for the totally rational scientist Harris because he does not understand why on earth the humans would want to destroy such a large ecosystem of creatures. He escapes Harris and believes that by forcing people to do what he says, he is in effect helping them. He does become a bit power crazy though. It has similarities to Fantasia and the Sorcerer’s apprentice. Remember the part where the brooms take over? That’s the part I’m talking about.

THE END.

Science Fiction Lecture 2

Invasion of the Body Snatchers Lecture – Science Fictions.

It was the 1950s, Sci Fi was just coming up.
All of these Sci Fi films that were made in the ‘50s can be take as Political Allegories. How would the audience interpret these films though is a different matter. This allegory thing though goes back thousands of years, like fables, these stories always have meanings and values added to them.

There was a definite cycle of successful B movies in the ‘50s, always at drive ins or back to back with other films. So what was the historical context of these films anyway? Well, since it was the ‘50s, it was the period of the Cold War. There were a lot of anxieties towards being taken over, the American way of life was being threatened by foreign culture. The war between capitalism and communism. McCarthy was a big figure at this time because he tried to hunt people down who were just vaguely left wing and then try and crucify them as the enemy, or even worse, a communist. Some people couldn’t even get work anymore their views were so bad. In this little era then, people had to be very careful about releasing their views to the wider world unless they were very clever.

The Thing from Another Planet (1951) begins with an arctic expedition where some scientists find a persons hand in the snow. In the parts coming up after this scene, it becomes a small batter of banter between the scientists and the army. O thought the scientists would win but oh no, it was the good old common scence of the army that won over that stupid rational scientist. “Watch the skies” became a good slogan that made people watch the skies consistently for UFOs or Trident rockets that were about to Nuke them. It comes with no surprises that the aliens in these 1950 films were always evil and monstrous. It was Us vs. Them. A lot of the monsters were products of radiation that was from Nuclear bombs or factories etc. Theories of life on Mars were very plausible back in the ‘50s. It was Pearl Harbour and the Cold War that gave birth to anxieties of being attacked by things that came from the sky. I imagine if a nation got attacked from the ground then we would have a lot of films exploiting that fear, come to think of it, doesn’t War of The Worlds do that, and doesn’t Gears of War? Jeez, it’s already bee thought of before dammit. Anyway, back to “The Thing from Another Planet”, the scientist obviously are very rational beings, like an emotional vegetable. This was an allegory to what Americans thought everyone would become like is they were subjected to a communist government. America waned everyone to be an individual, not a the same as anybody else, but different. The army in this film is very Right Wing because they want to just stamp out the alien instead of listening to those stupid scientists who keep on whinging to “keep it alive”. The army captain grabs an axe in the meantime. In conclusion, this film presents the good guys as not very tolerant of anything alien or different. Jeez!

In a different film though called The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu, who’s a genius alien who is far more cultured and intelligent than us gets himself resurrected and then makes a speech at the end of the film. He says that the world will live in peace whether it likes it or not, and will be policed by super strong robots that don’t take any shit form anyone. He’s not a monster, he looks like a human. Obviously there are loads of Christian overtones in this as Klaatu is killed by the military authorities and then resurrected. They should do a story based on Samson from the Bible, or indeed that guy called Lot, that would be funny. Klaatu then ascends into heaven in his UFO. America thought of itself as the world police back in the day, just like in Team America. The scientist in this film differentiates from the scientist from the Thing from Another Planet in that instead of having a Russian like hat, he has a big scruff of hair like Eisnstein. The robot that Klaatu instructs by the way is called Gnut, a pretty foreign name to be honest.

Them! (1954) is less complex the Klaatu’s film in that it just has giant ants killing people in it. The military were experimenting and totally made a mistake. What was the solution in this film anyway? Well, uniquely to this film, the scientists and the military actually work together to kill off the insane amount of giant ants. The flamethrowers do the job in the end permissed by the scientist.

These films are thus about the American dream and about it’s Global power. Can we trust our Scientists not to mess our lives up? There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism out there at this point with common and emotional sense having the upper hand. The intellects could not be trusted because they were disconnected from everyone else.

Seminar:
In what way is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers an allegory of the Cold War?
Be vigilant against your enemies the Russians. This kind of war is new and unheard of. They can get you from anywhere they wish, the skies especially.
The political messages in this film are unfortunately confused with moral issues. Apparently, the definition at the end is humans vs. the inhuman/aliens/monsters. No faith, no ambition, no love seems to be the communist/body snatchers dream.
This is all fine and dandy, but there are other interpretations. One is that this film is seen as being anti-conformist. That’s what we are at the moment. I think. You have to be different. Elvis was at the head of this anti conformist movement. You were either a Square or a Cool Cat back in the day.
Discuss the role of gender.
“I want your children!” was a line that the lady said to the man near the end of the film. Terrible isn’t it. She was also the one who was being carried a lot of the way at the end of the film and she still managed to fall asleep and thus get changed into a communist.
Comment on the style.
The outro seems to get everything solved. It is possible that the studios to give the film some kind of hope at the end when the FBI decides to take action put in this intro and outro (sentence corrected by the computer). The real ending by the director was to end less happily at the highway were the doctor is delirious and no hope seems to remain.

THE END

Science Fiction Lecture 1

Science Fictions: The Forbidden Planet

Made in the 1950s, this film was competing with the recently invented television. This was before Star Trek had come out and all that other lure of Sci Fi that had yet to come. Anyway, what is Sci Fi? Well, the genre encompasses certain themes and contexts, iconography, signifyers and narrative structures. Genre is like a “brand” say in which people find it easy to define what it is they’re watching.

In the 20s and 30s, Sci Fi was just another form of horror. In the 20s that was referred to as “the Machine Age” the car was being mass-produced, industry was really taking off. All this change was sparking off anxiety in people about technology and its possible side effects.

In the 50s, the Cold War was upon us, thus loads of nuclear/apocalyptic/Dystopian fantasies were being played out that were being set in the future in B movies. They normally came in double bills at the cinema, or in drive ins.
In the 60s, art cinema directors were backing up the counter culture at the time, Hippies. Scientists were making larger discoveries with more unethical means of doing so. 2001 by Stanley Kubrik was one of the first of Sci Fi intellectual films.
In the 70s, the first big blockbuster movies arrived. “Jaws” was the first one, but then came the first Sci Fi blockbuster, “Star Wars”. This was the first time a crossover between action/adventure met Sci Fi. It was also one of the first films to have a lot of money backing it.

In the 80s, hybrid genre forms were rising. This was because the old genres had had their time, so the cinema was full of SF comedies, SF Horrors such as “Alien”. The anxieties at the time were that of ignorance about genetics/robotics/virtual reality. The dystopian fantasies were being played out here rather than the Utpoian visions because they were more interesting for narratives.

The Pleasure of Sci Fi:
The pleasures we get out of Sci Fi are that we are seeing a mind blowing spectacle, such as, a huge ship descending on us with flashing lights, jets of air coming out like in “Close Encounters of a Third Kind”. New worlds, new sounds, new beings and cool looking weapons also add to the spectacle. More recently, worlds have been becoming more plausible because of technological enhancements in CGI and SFX. Another thing that makes Sci Fi still so popular is that technology is getting better all of the time and we as an audience are constantly enticed to come back to see how far we’ve come and to be blown away again and again.

Another pleasure we get out of Sci Fi is that the genre plays with larger than life ideas; who are we? Why are we here? And who is this God person Anyway? Also subjects like evolution and the future of mankind are played out.
You could say that Sci Fi stories are fables in a way as they show us what could happen in the future and what not to do if we’re going to live.” If we carry on like this, bad things will happen. Subjects that are deeper and that are more current though are subjects like “what’s the difference between us and a robot?” For starters, the word ‘robot’ means slave in a foreign language, most likely Arabic. Or the question that Morpheus from the Matrix asks, “what is real?” So Sci Fi is thus a fable or an extrapolation.

Fictional Modes:
Sci Fi has a fuzzy and blurry relationship with fantasy. Now we all know great and fantastic tales such as LOTR and Harry Potter, but what’s the difference between the two genres? Sci Fi has a distinguishing feature about it, it portrays realism/what could be real one day while LOTR is based entirely in a fictional world. The fact that Gandalf still has hair after being fire blasted by the Balrog is prime evidence that it cannot exist. In reality, the heat blast in the air would singe every hair of his body off. Not to mention all of the magic. So Sci Fi can be probable and possible whilst fantasy is stuff based on folklore and total and obscure imagination. But here’s the blurry part, sometimes Sci Fi tries to convince that it is possible when in fact it just isn’t. It’s terribly impossible. So is it fantasy? Not if it claims that it isn’t. So Sci Fi asks all of these questions “what if?” Extrapolation. What if we could invent a robot that was as intelligent as a human being? Would it have human rights? There a re a lot of psychological issues being raised here with a lot of meaning. This is called “novum”, the word originating from the Sci Fi scholar Darko Sulvin meaning technological plausible but not necessarily possible.

SF narratives are thus driven by the novum. There are many binary structures in SF films that get played out again and again;
• Sci vs nature.
• Sci vs magic.
• Human vs Alien.
• Human vs machine.
• Human vs Sci vs machine vs religion (not really ☺).
• Dystopia vs Utopia.
Many SF texts/films are either left or right winged. Americans believe in the individual heros. All the enemies in these films thus devalue the individual. Th value is all about arming yourself and surviving. These are great and empathetic motives.
Frankenstein and Enlightenment:

This tale was all about the dangers of Sci and how playing God is very sinful. There are a lot of Greek themes such as the Tragedy in Sci Fi films.

Two thems come to mind; Hubris and Nemesis. Hubris is all about the human arrogance resulting in the human challenging God through Sci. The Forbidden Knowledge is a theme that crops up everywhere. Releasing it is like Pandora’s Box. Nemesis is thus about the retribution given out by God/the Gods for upsetting the pre-ordained equilibrium.
The writer of Frankenstein, a “Mary Shelley 1818” was obviously female. So it comes at no surprise that her feministic views come out in the form of a male scientist trying to create life. Yeah, creating life is apparently only exclusive to women. When GM foods were destroyed by Greenpeace, it was the Frankenstein posters that they used about playing God that hit home the most. They thought that bad things would come out of GM foods. A line that was censored in Frankenstein was “I have become GOD!” There was a thunderclap over this sentence.

Thus the tale of Frankenstein’s monster going hay wire and killing people led to it becoming the sub text for nearly every script about robots, cyborgs and replicants. These were by and large SF Horror hybrids.

The Forbidden Planet:
There is the Utopia vs Dystopia in this film with a lot of stereotypical gender roles and cool new technologies.
Gender speaking, the girl in the film is just something to gork at who surcomes to her feminine emotional weaknesses at the end and stays with the trust worthy captain. A bit like in “Star Wars: Episode 3” where Padme kicks arse throughout but then at the end she dies because she has no will to live because Anakin rejected her.

The character “Robby” comes from “I Robot” by Isaac Asimov. He wrote a load of short stories that this film was based on nearly one hundred years ago. The idea that the robot has prime directives to not harm humans and to obey their orders comes from these books. The film is obviously all about these topics. The author claimed that machines should have rights just like humans, but please, can we o animals first.

The Krell technology is a sign of warning, as it states that the Krell just had to think of something and it would be created for them. It ends up destroying the entire civilisation because of Freud’s idea of the ‘id’. The id is based on people having sub conscious desires that they cannot control and thus everyone got destroyed utterly by these subconscious desires. Monsters killed everyone. These are inbuilt primitive drives. So are the Krell our future? Possibly. The film was based on the Shakespearean play “the Tempest”. There’s a cook there, a crazy magician, a slave called Calaban, etc. This was written at the time of Christopher Columbus so the political context there is all about colonisation. The colonisation was going on with space at the time of the “Forbidden Planet” because of Sputnik. The first line in “Star Trek” is “Space, the final frontier.” Why is always about frontiers with America? What’s the current one the Middle East? Was “Star Trek” about the Space Race that was going on with the USSR at the time? I think it was. It could be taken as an advertisement for the whole thing, or sometimes as a warning. It depended entirely on the filmmaker who had the ideas.
So this is the low culture of 50s B movies paired with the high of Shakespeare.

THE END.

Screen Writing Lecture 5

Screenwriting Lecture 5

Exposition and dialogue: Information in a story is not important compared to dramatics. When considering information, remember that less is more. It’s the story that is far more important. Think about how the information is held, like in Shaun of the Dead where it isn’t clear why David hates Shaun until it is revealed at the most dramatic moment possible. The information is not the interesting part it is the drama. Audiences like to get engrossed in the film because of the emotions. Think about how you can entrap their curiosity and how this engages them in the film psychologically. They follow the characters through their troubles, not thinking and keeping facts all of the time. Make sure that when information is released it is done with impotence and momentum. The information isn’t totally useless though, it is important to the characters. The information, whatever it is, has to be relevant. It is also recommended that it is used a source of conflict.

Dialogue: Why do characters talk in films anyway? It makes it more natural for one thing as people talk in real life all of the time don’t they? This makes it more plausible. But let’s remember that actions do speak louder than words, the joker from The Dark Knight. What does he do when we first see him? He makes a pencil disappear into a man’s face. Does that leave a mark on you or what? Dialogue is still action though as it is a way of a character to get what they want. For playwrights, every line has an action attached with sub text stating what the intension is. This is because there is far more dialogue in a play than in a film and it is more important. These reveal the character beneath the façade because what do people do a lot of? Lie. You should therefore think about each line and its meanings. If the lines don’t meet up in their glorious pattern of dramatising information and the like just get rid of it.

Dialogue and clarity of character: So not all characters sound the same on screen or on paper. They have different slang, speed of speaking, language, etc. So when you’re the one writing a play or a script, think of people or characters you already know and let them come out in the characters within the paper. You could use a tape recorder to record some of you friends, or even better would be to get some actor friends of yours, let them improvise around different stereotypes of characters and then use them as research. Read your text out loud to yourself as well, and to your friends to see if the dialogue flows properly.
Erin Brochovich: So she’s a single mum lawyer by the end who works with a maverick lawyer played by Albert Finny. Se takes on a huge case and wins without any training. In real life, this actually happened. So how does this story begin? With “based on a true story”.

Your 1000 word essay: 1000 words are not very much to write about a whole film with. Briefly outline the scope of your thesis to begin with 100 words. Conclude it another 100 words.
• The subheadings:
o Intro: 100 words
o Narrative: 300 words
o Character: 300 words
o Theme: 100 words
o Outro: 100 words.
Narrative: We don’t need to know the storyline, it’s actually just a waste of words. But does the narrative have sub plots, rising action, climax?
Character: Concious desires, unconscious needs, objectives, fears, risks, conflicts, jepedy, point of view, plot, protagonist, secondary characters, decisions, actions, changes, etc. Try and write one sentence on each of those things.

THE END

Screen writing Lecture 4

Screen Writing: Lecture 4

Short films only came into their own when the full-length feature had been around for a long time after their recession. There are obviously loads of Tom and Jerry films around that can be classified as short films, but it was the ‘60s when they made a come back after the commercial film had been around for a while. Nowadays, short films are absolutely everywhere; they’re adverts, on youtube, music videos and documentaries. This is because it is a lot cheaper to make and distribute a short film these days with the advances in technology.

Classical:
“The Hero Narrative.” One central character. There can be more than the one central character.
Beginning, Middle and End. The story is linear so it feels like our real world. Non-Linear.
Everything has a meaning. There can be coincidences.
The Ending is closed, unless of course it demands a sequel. All of the questions asked in the film are answered. There are open endings, sad endings, or just no ending at all.
It tries to make order out of chaos. No Rigorous causation.
No redundancy.

Causality, one pool ball hits another in a certain way. Once you get at predicting this where the balls goes, you’ll understand why you can predict some films. Coincidence, the balls go seem to rise into the air instead of going down the hole. I can’t think of an example where this happens in cinema, never mind, I’ll show you one of these days.







This barrier in between these two different types of cinema is very hazy these days. We know loads of films that incorporate some of these ‘alternative’ forms into their Hollywood blockbusters. The films that did use the ‘alternative’ forms first though were the French New Wave filmmakers like Bergman Francois Tufaut and Jean Luc-Goddard in the late fifties and early sixties. It seemed the Classic Hollywood narratives didn’t relate to people that much anymore. This was because the world was in post war where most people thought that they could die as result of the war. People’s lives became uncertain and thus they could not relate to characters whose futures always ended predictably well. Causality and individual agency didn’t seem apparent anymore. Why? Because a lot of people had died in the war thinking that they were going to win it, but they didn’t. But these ‘classic’ values are just assumptions, theory that doesn’t have to be correct.

Eisentstein: used montage narrative (very brief, please look over previous blogs to find essays on Eisentstein). The narratives are always politically engaged with “Ivan the Terrible” who was a total representation of Stalin when it came out. Ivan destroyed his enemies in a patriotic Russian way. D.W. Griffith was doing the same kind of thing in America as Eisentstein as L’Herbier was doing in France (more research needed on those characters).

The New Cinemas of Today: In America, every single narrative has been played to shit, it is almost impossible to have an original film about Boy meets Girl and fall in love thus live happily ever after anymore. We/the Americans have to dig deeper or go with something completely different or unpick the narrative if we are going to create original and authentic stories.
Narrative pick apart: Pulp Fiction/Aliens/Shaun of the Dead. 10 – 12 paragraphs, thus 10 – 12 different catagrories.
1. Beginning, Middle and End.
2. Causality.
3. No redundancy.
4. Everything has an explanation and a meaning.
5. Linear narrative.
6. Individual Agency.
7. Closed Endings.
8. Closing all of the questions by answering them all.

Shaun of the Dead: Narrative Conventions: Laurence Bush.
Linear Storyline: The habitual world is set up pretty instantly. It is not perfect though; there are clearly some issues to resolve within the first thirty seconds of dialogue. The second act begins with a recapitulation of the scenes from the first act, only they have changed slightly due to the zombies being in the scene. There are repeated themes that recap throughout the acts.

The Central Character: The character of Shaun is pretty conventional in terms of the ‘Classic Hollywood Narrative’. He is the hero who is in every scene throughout the film. His conscious desires to begin with are to keep things the way they are. He wants to carry on living with Ed, but Liz clearly wants to move in and get out of her habitual world. She wants to get away and see the world, not to settle down in the same old pub doing the same old things, (Liz) ‘If I don’t do something, I’ll end up in that pub for the rest of my life like those other sad old fuckers wondering what the hell happened’. She thinks that it what she wants to do when in fact her unconscious needs are to settle down with Shaun. Her unconscious needs are satisfied at the end when she is explaining to Shaun their plan for the day, ‘Right, cup of tea, go get the Sundays, head down the Phoenix for a roast, veg out in the pub for a bit, then watch a bit of telly then go to bed.’ As a sign that Shaun has changed he asks for two sugars in his tea even though he states earlier that he has not had sugar in his tea since 1982. He also accepts Philip as his father after constantly battling him. He repeats ‘he’s not my dad’ five times throughout the film until he finally accepts him.
Everything has an explanation and meaning: The question that we ask at the end of the film is ‘how did people start becoming zombies’? The film answers this very ambiguously at the end as we see only a few frames of some scientists handling chemicals. When Shaun throws the flowers away in act one, Barbara picks them up in the next act concluding the fiasco that revolved around them. If it were never resolved and left open ended, then it would seem like a waste of screen time. The filmmakers did leave some questions unanswered, such as, how did Shaun chain up Ed in his shed? The impression was that the zombies ate Ed. In the DVD extras though, this anomaly is concluded with Ed telling the after story in a comic book/narration style. In the first act in the confrontation between Shaun and David, it is unclear as to why David hates Shaun so much. In the third act we find out why they hate each other. This closes the question allowing David’s character to be killed off as he is now redundant.
Individual Agency: The characters are not responsible for the zombie epidemic, but they are responsible in different ways for ensuring their survival. David smashes the window of the pub causing the characters to be ‘totally exposed’ in the pub; Ed also draws the zombies towards the pub with the noise from the games machine. At the end where Shaun, Liz and Ed are stuck with no escape, their individual agencies comes to a stop as all obstacles except this last one have been conquerable.
Redundancy: The character Dianne seems to have no need to be in story at all until her acting skills are finally put to use when she teaches the rest of the group to act like zombies. The character Snakehips “always surrounded by women” comes back into the story in the second act getting eaten by women. The other characters in the pub such as the old porn star and the pub owner come back in the third act where they both die. Yvonne appears in all of the acts, but it is in the last one that we see her save the last remaining characters from death. Shaun’s music records also come in useful when they are thrown at the two zombies that are in their garden trying to kill them. They prove to be pretty useless though and serve a purely comic purpose.
Repeated Themes: The characters in this film all have phrases that they constantly repeat. Yvonne is the most extreme, she appears once in each of the three acts and repeats the same lines with a different context every time, ‘Oh my God, Shaun’, ‘Glad somebody made it’. Whenever she asks Shaun how he is, he always says ‘surviving’. It is the same with the line ‘You’ve got red on you.’ The context is always different when the characters repeat the line directed at Shaun. Shaun always says ‘This is serious Ed’ when Ed gets on his nerves. To connect the first act with the third, Shaun and Ed re-enact their conversation at the beginning of the film with “I’ll stop doing them when you stop laughing.” This re-enforces their friendship. Ed says “Two seconds” six times throughout the film whenever he is the middle of something; “Dog’s can’t look up” is a question that is consistently asked by the characters that is finally resolved when the Winchester rifle goes off in the third act.

Screen writing Lecture 3

Screenwriting Lecture 3

The story always starts with the habits and rituals of the characters’ lives are broken. That it is why the story starts there, the time has to be special.

The unconscious needs of a character are normally totally contradictory to the characters’ conscious desires, for example, Liz from Shaun of the Dead has the conscious desire that she needs to get out and see the world when in fact, her unconscious need is to settle down. People’s character also comes out when they have put themselves or have been put at risk. The character comes out here because they must make decisions. The story must also have a climax where something great happens and everything is resolved afterwards.

The Serial Story: It’s a weird story, it doesn’t have to abide by the laws of our universe. It also doesn’t have to have the narrative conventions within it either. Here’s an example, “The Copy Shop”.
The Copy Shop: The habits are set up very quickly. We see him going to work and washing his face and going to bed and doing all that kind of stuff. But the story starts when he starts living parallel lives. He suddenly has more facets. This happens after he photocopies his hand, it’s almost like copying yourself isn’t it? Well, it’s a little weak, as I’m sure that someone else in that world would have done that at one point, they needed to make it a little stronger. It’s form and probigation are interesting, but the story is very weak. Another example is when he accidently falls off the chimney at the end, come on, he could have done something far more powerful, and we don’t have an insight into how what happens afterwards. A simple way to conclude it would to have just him again and everyone else has disappeared. That is pretty terrible though, I would take the time to think up something a little better than that.

Inside Out: This film is set in Picadilly Circus, yet it has very French music in it. Is this saying that London could be the city of love? A word is never spoken in this film, all of the communication is done through gestures.

About a Girl: In this, there are three different styles of filmmaking. The present tense is a kind of situation where we flashback to her past that she is describing. It’s almost pseudo-documentary style in that she talks directly to the camera about her life whilst walking along, like we were having an interview with her. The dialogue is back to back consistent throughout the film and it never ceases. But this is the point of the film. It is at the end that we find out that not everything is what it is seems to be on the surface and that there are some serious secrets people keep but don’t let go. It is totally horrifying that there has been a dead baby in that bag that she was carrying throughout the interview.

Seminar: You can only write about things when considering your screenplay about material things. You cannot and must not state what kind of shot you want from the director as this is treading on his toes and undermining him. Music is a big no as well, unless you’re writing for a musical then it’s all cool. You can start writing these things though if you are prepared to direct and star in the film and compose the music and edit it. If you’re not, then don’t bother.

Active: Scripts are all about people doing things. It’s all about action, like dialogue. Just remember that a script is a blueprint for a story yeah, leave the rest to everyone else, like a school play. So firstly, what’s the scene about? If nothing changes in it that affects anything and it’s just a load of information that could have been dramatically exposed then scrap it, it’s a load of shit. Secondly, screenplays are generally made out of a lot of white space. You can be ecomonic, but remember to be specific. Like this, a man walks down the street, not a fourty one year old Scots man from Aberdeen hobbles down the messy and hilly street who’s wearing pyjamas and a wooden leg with a pink and orange cap on backwards who’s drinking moonshine from the stomache of a lamb that has a hole in it that came from Mexico. Yeah? Got it? Right. Well, he can be all of these things, but only if they all have some sort o f meaning that gets explained. Otherwise, you go ahead and direct. So there needs to be a balance between economy and specificity.

The best thing is to be able to some up the scene into one single sentence, for example, in “Gasman”, the girl squabbles with her half sister for sitting on her daddy’s lap”. That’s pretty good, try it for yourself, like, “Jake squabbles with his half brother over the xbox 360 eventually killing him”. I dunno really. Lwt’s just summarise with Who does what to who?
Main thing, what are the desires, needs, expectations and fears of the characters? Think about that.

THE END

Screenwriting Lecture 2

Screen Writing:

It’s all about authenticity. Plus, the subject that you’re writing about should always be something dear to you and that you believe in strongly. Do not just get some other text and see if you can condense that down into about ten minutes. If it’s not your material, then it’s shit. Another thing, always keep it simple.

Gasman: a short film about a short person. We see everything from the girl’s point of view; the shots are from about waist height, and she’s in every scene. This is as juxtaposition from the previous film that I never got to watch called “Joyride”. This film is a bit like a trailer of a massive violent film. There is essentially no main character and it’s all about violence. It’s the lack of authenticity in this film that makes it shit.

The character in “Gasman” though has two things to her that make her a great and deep character; she has conscious desires and unconscious needs. Her conscious desire is to have exclusive access to her dad and to get rid of his other daughter. Her unconscious need though is to mature as a person and realise that she must get along with the other girl. The climatic scene is where she is about to throw the stone, but she doesn’t. Here, we have exclusive access to her moral maturing as the other characters are facing away. It is thus that we have a very private moment with her as she makes her decisions.

Father and Daughter: This story encompasses about sixty years of a woman’s life. Her conscious desire is to meet up with her dad again on the beach/to find out what’s happened to him. Her unconscious need is to be reunited with him, even through death. It is very sad, as even though she has children and a family of her own, her only relief is when she dies in the boat. When she finds this boat, her hopes and dreams are shattered just like everyone else has dreams that don’t come true. It was almost like she was being unrealistic with this dream, as her emotions had overwhelmed her. It’s strange that in most films, and in this one, people have a set goal, but the way in which they get it is always different. Because she has no face, it makes the feelings universally felt.

Atonal Composition

How to write a composition Atonally really.

Berg and Strauss pushed tonality to its limits. They took inspiration from the jazz by adding 7ths and 9ths. They took the basic triad and kept on adding thirds. A good way is to slightly alter a chord, giving it more lead and pull towards where it is going. Notes can be added to the triads as well. This pushes the notes towards their resolution. Voice leading must be considered when doing this.

the Twentieth Century was split into different ways of looking at harmony. One attitude is to let harmony just happen whilst focusing entirely on voice leading. Dissonant intervals just occur. Debussy is completely different as he just focuses on how the colours sound. Sometimes, he would have 10 different semitones in one chord and just three in the next. Messian is amazing for that kind of thing. Skryabin made the mystic chord; it goes C Fsharp Bflat E A D. this has no intension of moving as there are no leading notes present. Messian made chords from 3rds and semitones giving it icy qualities. He then wrote a chord based on 4ths afterwards.

First we have the Quasifunctional style of writing atonally. This means that every chord has a function whether it be the dominant of the next chord or the subdominant etc. It doesn't have to relate to the tonic though.

Second is the Colouristic approach. Here it's all about the colours that are produced from extreme harmonies. It is the quality of the chord that matters and not the progression. 

Finally there is the static evolving harmony. Here the tonal centre weakens. You can replace notes with different intervals. An octave becomes a 7th say. You can alter notes such as sharpen a note in the minor key. Look at the lines, do they have direction? If so, why don't you spice the flavour a bit by adding a flat, sharp or natural. If two notes are going to say C and E at the same time, why not sharpen or flatten them in the direction they are going. This creates leading notes. There is more direction now and more anticipation. It is acceptable to do this for the tonal exercise. In the late romantic period they would sharpen the fifth to push it a bit more. The sense of tonality breaks down.

All this can lead to interrupted cadences. Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isold avoids the resolution completely by leading up to a cadence and then bottling out. Arnold Schoenberg's Op. 11 No. 1 is great for note leading. He anticipates but does not deliver. It is so good. in one bar, he uses 11 out of the 12 pitches. 12 note aggregate, it fills in the space. After this piece was written, Schoenberg decided to make the 12 note row. The piece is based on cells that have undeveloped character. It is a combination of thirds and semitones. It goes 3, 1, 3, 1, etc. He does this vertically as well as horizontally. 

Harmony in Musicianship

In a piece by Bartok called Music for Strings, Percusion and Celest.

Bartok builds the tension up at the beginning of the piece with chromaticism in the melody. This gives it a lack of direction. There are overlapping melodies that are almost identical to the ones in Nosferatu (1922 F. W Murnau.) I think Bernard the composer must have listened to this piece by Bartok a few times as it does sound identical. The tension in this piece rises when the dynamics start to get louder and the range of pitch extends. It sounds like 'Bambi' in some areas and a lot like Shostakovich. Can't say exactly but you know. There is some serious vunerability at the end of the piece; achieved through the use of high solo chromatic pitches on the violin. Many other composers do this from Damien Rice to Prokofiev. The conjunct movement connotes stillness and reflection. Someone said restlessness was a thing in there. If I had the piece I would do the proper thing and back up my thinkings with technical observations.

Nosferatu and the film 'Psycho' use the same melodic style as this dude named Bartok. Contextually this is all very Central European: Bartok was himself Hungarian and the piece was premiered in Switzerland. The piece's entire melody only comes together at the end of the film, so we only hear little fractions of it until it finally comes together at the end. IS this reminiscent of john Williams in a way? Well in E.T. we only hear the entire melody when they're flying, that's why it is so memorable. you could say this piece is fugal etc, and it does go through all of the 12 pitch classes (semitones if you like) via a circle of fifths just like Schoenburg and Webern.

Okay, now onto proper harmony. Is a chord made up or two notes? No, dumbass, that's an interval. Chords have to be three notes or more so you can establish a kind of colour in it. To get a basic triad: you get your tonic, add either 4 / 3 semitones up and then either 3 / 4 semitones to get your 'traditional triad.' Since then, atonality has allowed us to establish 12 different triads rather than just the major and minor triad, making 2 different chords btw. There are 28 different 4 note chords if you didn't know that.

Let's brush up on the 20th Century stuff then.

20th Century Stuff on atonal harmony

There are three different approaches to harmony in the 20th Century.

1. Free atonal approach: This is where the voice leading is preserved.
2. Colonistic... Sorry I mean Colouristic approach: This is were the colour of the chord is what matters. Impressionists love this kind of thing, especially Debussy.
3. Static Harmony (?)

Let's have a look at Janet Schmafelt, composed by, the legend that it is, Alban Berg, kick it.

Anyway, it's an atonal piano sonata; only one thing though: there are cadences in the key of B major and a sense of key at some varying points. Before bar 4, we have no sense of key centre, thus making berg great because he fools our anticipations. We have no idea that there is going to be a cadence, and when there is, it's a typical V - I cadence. The voice is still the lead in this making this music fit harmony number one best. In bars 5, 6 and 7 there is rising atonality. This gives it underdeveloped characteristics. In the piece that we studied before where Schoenburg includes 11 of the 12 semitones in just one bar, like Prokoiev does in Romeo und Juliet, the voice leads. Just like when a rise in a 6th in traditionally tonal music leads to a decent to a fifth to sound more complete, atonal music does in a different way. Notice in popular music that there are always rises of 6ths at the peak of a melody so they can fall down again.

There is a tendancy to use all of the 12 semitones in atonal music. i don't know if it's just our ears or that it's a load of balls, but that's how it is. Atonal music also has it's rules. The notes are not selected at random, they are part of a sequence. Schoenburg and Webern both use two intervals between three notes as a recurring theme in their music, e.g a rise in a semitone and a drop by a major 3rd. This is what they use. This system has 12 different possibilities with 3 notes concerning how many different intervals you could have in a chord. I'm not prepared to go into serialism for dummies at this point, so if you are reading this and you don't know what I'm saying, my greatest apologies.

To get a note row (serialist terminology. Try going to wikipedia if you do not understand. Ahh whatever, alright it's a row of 12 notes making a melody that never repeat the same pitch) you may want to split the 12 notes into four; giving you four sets of three notes. Right, we have have the same intervals for each of these pitches. To make this (and to make it easy); start with C, add a semitone to C sharp, add another semitone to get D. Okay, that's now called Trichord No. 1. Onto the next. Simply go to D sharp instead of D to get trichord no. 3. Trichord No. 4 is going to be E, then 4 is F, 5 equals F sharp. We are now up to trichord 6 which is as the pattern goes is going to be G. Wrong. We've already had this interval in trichord 5, if you invert the leap from the C sharp to the F sharp downwards, it will go to G. So for number 6, we will go to D instead of C sharp. Trichord 6 is thus C, D, D sharp. 7 equals C, D, E etc. If you repeat yourself, you've gotta start from the beginning.

Spectacular Film

The Spectacles in film has become a far more popular thing recently. But it has still be around for a long time.

Spectacles in films are generally special effects. There are two types, invisible and visible. Examples of both of these are in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Here the invisible special effect is harnessed by deleting the wires that the characters use to fly around on. A visible special effect would be the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park." Arnold Schwarzenegger is a special effect himself. Would Terminator 2 have been so successful if Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't involved in it second time round?

Everything in every film is constructed to a certain extent, including documentary. A film such as "Gladiator" needed its special effects when the Colosseum was in shot. In reality, it is a waste compared to the representation in the film. Film thus celebrates it's own fakeness because it is completely constructed.

The spectacle has always been a big player in marketing films. Only yesterday did I see "I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence : 2007)" expecting a massive shooting frenzy with gore and head-shots. This was the case to an extent, but i brought something out of the film that was completely unexpected. The character Sam in the film was my biggest love for the film. Her loyalty and listening skills proved that she made such a difference in Will Smith's life. SPOILERS* Then half way through the film she gets infected by the zombie people and in Will's loving arms, she turns on him. Will is then forced to kill by crushing her. It was absolutely tragic. The rest of the film was absolute rubbish, but that part pulled my heartstrings completely END OF SPOLIERS*. My point is is that spectacles count for a lot in advertising films. If the whole part I've just mentioned above with Sam the dog was advertised instead, then the film would not have attracted such a large audience.

I don't know about you but i would love to see that new film coming out, "Alien Vs predator 2 Requirem" because it looks just amazing, so gory, loads of people die in spectacular ways. Apparently it's a load of shit though as there is no plot or storyline. It's just a load of people dying. Great! Again, it's the spectacle that drove me towards it, having played video games etc I am one of those people who loves not to be shocked or scared, but blown back by violence and by people's bodies.

Alright, so spectacle lends itself to the advertising industry 

"The most epic thing I have ever seen ****"

"This film will blow your mind out of your head"

"An hour and a half of extreme stunts and C.G.I that will tear your mind in half ****"

"A brilliant representation of loneliness between a man and his dog?" Hmm, I don't know that the executives would like that one. Although, it is the best one.

But the spectacle also adds to the "Toys r Us" and games industry. Think how many games and action figures there were after "Lord of the Rings" came out. There were tons and we all bought into them. A computer game only comes out of a violent / action packed film. There was a "Sponge Bob Square Pants" game that was action packed because that is what i presume that program is all about. Theme park rides get some of the action as well. "Spiderman 3" had a massive theme park ride out in California. Apparently, as it is 3D, you cannot tell whether Spiderman is real or not in the actual ride. It's almost like your watching a film, playing a computer game and sitting in a roller coaster cart all at the same time.

Cinema is a one way, voyeuristic window that shows you something. The 4th wall, the wall that separates us between the characters in the film is sometimes broken but conventionally not. An example would be in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith : 2001)" where the 4th wall is broken twice. At these points the audience realizes that they're in a film. If a character looks at the character without meaning to then we naturally feel weird and self conscious as an audience. In the old days o cinema, when it was just something at a science fair where people would pay money just to see the projector work its magic, the 4th wall was broken a lot more. In a film called, "That Fatal Sneeze (Lewis Fitzhammon : 1907)" the 4th wall is broken to show the audience, just like in a pantomime, where the pepper is being poured and what a funny thing it's going to be. The reason it is like this is because there are no cuts whatsoever because they didn't have the time or technology to do cuts. The most recent film that exploits technology for you to see is "Beowulf (Robert Zemekis : 2007)" at the IMAX. It's in 3D so anyone should se it just to experience what 3D is like. 

Reversing time was a magic trick back in the day when cinema was still just a machine of illusions. A wall would remake itself just after being smashed down. This is easily done, just from reversing the way of the projector. People were amazed by this.

Back to modern spectacle. Modern stories include modern characters and modern concerns, such as genetic engineering. However, the linear story line they are is typically very old. It is called the mythology of "frontier." This is a theory of Frederik Jackson Turner who stated that when Europeans first went to America, they held high European values. As the next generation came, they moved more West becoming more violent, more independent from aristocracy and christianity. There was so much unused farm land that the new Americans purged the natives off and become far more wild compared to the East Coast settlers. In Spaghetti Westerns, Clint Eastwood's character typically moves between the wild and the civilized. This character is typical of a "frontier" protagonist as he is the frontier.

Dr. Grant in "Jurassic Park (Steven Spielburg : 1993) is on the frontier between the Dinosaurs and the civilized world. He has the bet of both worlds though, unlike the fat dude who gets killed by the spitting dinosaur who harnesses the worst from both worlds. He has the dinosaur DNA and he wants money for it. He also has a physical imperfection, in that he is fat and he has glasses. This makes him typically evil. Think about all the James Bond characters that are evil, how many of them have a physical imperfection? Nearly all of them, except for the femme-fatals.

"Titanic (James Cameron : 1997)" has one massive spectacle at the end, that is when the ship sinks. It lasts for about an hour. There are so many shots of people dying, people being trapped in water, people falling off the ship, the ship ripping itself apart, the freezing cold water, smashing glass, water exploding everywhere, etc. Explosions plus star performances plus an in-genius narrative plus amazing landscapes, luscious furniture, pop star music equals a high grossing film. That is why Hollywood always make films with narrative and spectacle being close mates that never leave each others side. But of course, spectacle can go off on a tangent and be alone for a while leaving the audience in awe for a while and then pounding back with more explosions whether they are bits of bodies or bit of buildings. Crucial narrative elements can be added to these spectacular scenes, such as in "Jurassic Park." Here, the T-rex stamps on a car with Lex and Tim trapped inside. Dr. Grant realizes that they're in extreme danger and distracts the T-rex. By doing this he brushes away his anti-child characteristic "They're expensive... They smell... Ahh come on they smell, babies smell." Throughout the rest of the film, he is seen with the kids protecting them and teaching them his "frontier" knowledge. At the very end of the film, he is seen smiling with a kid in each arm looking as if, he wants some now as they can be quite fun. This gives the audience something extra at the end of the film, rather than just seeing dinosaur attacks. Characters need to develop in films don't you think? Well, there is an exception I can think of, in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" the Ugly doesn't learn anything throughout the film. He affects other people.

Following a plot is like not knowing the stated enigmas. If you know what the ending is to a computer game / a book, do you really have the previous incentive to find out what happens? "Assassin's Creed (2007 : VG Corey May) is a computer game where the spectacle is the best part about it. It is absolutely amazing. But really, the plot is very thin. There is a twist, but the middle of the story could have been summed up really. It's was just repetitive, just like a soup opera. the acting was pretty bad also. So if this game was to be really good, it needed to include proper camera directions in the talking scenes to make it interesting rather than just being verite (fly on the wall.) It needed more enigmas, better actors, more characters and some sidekicks rather than just a massive spectacle. "Metal Gear Solid" and "GTA" are brilliant for narrative as they include analytical editing in the talk scenes with brilliant ideologies and actors. The best is "Mass Effect" and "Final Fantasy" for spectacle and narrative. "Final Fantasy" has brilliant ideologies associated with it's demons and characters. They all change in someway towards the end as well.

In depth on Jurassic Park, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan

Jurrasic Park. This amazing film came out in 1993 advertised on the television as a spectacle and a half just like Titanic. "Now there's something you don't see everyday" was used to advertise Titanic because it was just that. Lingering shots of the ship collapsing were exploited by the director James Cameron. The advertising also emphasized how much the movie cost and that it was a masterpiece of spectacle. Jurassic Park did the same to an extent but it wasn't all to do with a spectacle, it was also horror based. All horror is based on the repressed* (Arrogo, Action S&S, p. 118). Digging something up that should have been left behind basically, such as, the dinosaurs. Our fascination for these beasts comes from their extinction and to see them alive and kicking is quite spectacular. Just like in Star Wars, Jurassic Park is a journey of self discovery. Dr. Grant goes from bachelor to caring father figure in the film. He starts by imagining murdering a child with a raptor claw to protecting the kids from the child molesting velociraptors. The deranged and mutated father figures are sexually inactive as they don't have any gender. This comes from the fact that they can change sex when they want to male or female. This sexually inactivity turns to violence "All you need is love."

Alfred Hitchcock

Just like in The Birds, Jurassic Park has slashers trying to kill the protagonists. Only the knives and other weapons have been replaced by beaks, claws and jaws. Jaws is included in this niche of films as well as the shark is a serial killer. There are many parallels between the films. Between The Birds and JP there is a bachelor who turns into a protective father figure, there are creatures who deemed harmless at first end up killing in vendetta, especially children. "Punish the women", "Scare the children" is the thing here (these aren't my ideas I got them from an article in the bfi from the book I've mentioned, just to let you know ok). The point here is, is that the kids are the most vulnerable and the victims. The two most horrific scenes in JP are velociraptor hunt on the children and the T-rex attack on the car. Both include the possible deaths of the children. The child molesting raptors and the raping birds were all initially loved by those who were most vulnerable, that is, the women for The Birds and the children in Jurassic Park. Speilburg said that his most disturbing film was Bambi because of the fire scene. Bambi only just escapes without his mother and in extreme danger. This is a general fear that children have, as well as clowns, spiders, etc. It was due to the fact that Steven survived the Blitz. Considering Psycho compared to Jurassic Park, there is a big connection between the Norman Bates character and the killing that the dinosaurs do. Without mothers, the dinosaurs go crazy and vengefully kill everyone. You can agree or disagree with this it's up to you.

Spectacle for spectacular sake

When Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are completely stunned by the huge mass of the Brachiasoraus, the spectacle is done so we can see the characters' reactions. This is done with great anticipation. First, we see Dr. Grant turn and look past us open mouthed and baffled. He takes his glasses off and his hat so we can see his eyes popping out. Dr. Sattler does exactly the same. We then see the spectacle for ourselves with the characters shot from extremely far away so they look like they're part of the audience (if it was in a cinema.) The bass on the Brachiasorous's footsteps shake the audience up like a nightclub's bass.

If you have a DVD of King Kong, watch chapter 35 as this is just one massive spectacle including falling T-rexes, massive fights, massive drops and awesome computer graphics. It is about 15mins of shear amazing computer graphics and it is the only reason I went to see that film twice at the cinema. 

A next greatly anticipated spectacle that isn't gory or anything like that in any way, is the point where Ian Malcome says "What have they got in there King Kong?" The shot before he says that, we have a P.O.V (point of view) shot from inside the car as we go underneath the gates of Jurassic Park. I imagine that the Hollywood ride would have felt exactly the same as this. Steven uses the pov shot again in the T-rex attack sequence. The nightvision and the shots from inside the car keep us in the car with the characters. All the shots are very claustrophobic as they are nearly all close ups. When we first see the T-rex it is from the left window of the car. It then looks in our direction glaring at us. We have pov shots from inside the cars when the kids are being trapped under the glass and from Dr. Grant's car. This puts us in the spectacle making it more authentic and realistic. Another Steven Speilburg film that uses this is "Saving Private Ryan." It uses these techniques to a different meaning altogether though.

Saving Private Ryan

After the end of it all, that is the beginning, we go into the flashback. Instead of trating us to an establishing shot, Spielburg gives us an icon of 'Ohama Beach,' the anti-tank structure that is so common on the beach. These icons serve as a graphic match between the graveyard and the beach. We only have close ups off peoples' faces and shots of the boats that take up the hole frame. We then see soldiers simply destroyed by bullets that come from behind our view. Compare this to a film such as Shoot 'em Up that has non-diegetic rock music playing throughout a fight scene and enough steady cam shots to establish where you are, you have a completely different spectacle. Shoot 'em Up combines comedy with extreme action here combining humorous one liners with fast paced editing, imaginative ways of being shot, slow motion, lighting that illuminates all of the bad guys and sparks where bullets have narrowly missed our "Mr. Hero". Everything is so casual making this film celebrate violence as a way of entertainment. Saving Private Ryan however has no establishing shots, all unsteady cam, it has camera movements that follow that of the characters making it pov such as, the point where the camera goes under water and back to the surface very quickly to make it seem more authentic and realistic, it has a desaturated image and instead of sparks flying everywhere we have blood. There is also no music. There is a horrible simplicity to which Steven shoots a shot in the beginning sequence where we see an objective view / pov shot of a German gun killing about ten guys helplessly lined up in their claustrophobic boats. We feel awful because just before this, we are the ones inside the boats. Colour is used sparingly and only really for blood that appears on peoples' bodies and hands. It is not glamourous at all and leaves us feeling terrible for what happened on 06/06/1945. Medal of Honour: Frontline copied this sequence, being a first person shoot (fps) it worked very well. It gave a new authenticity to games and left you feeling terrible for playing it (not really, it felt pretty bad though.)

Other films that use the pov shot and the unsteady cam to produce a meaning that is clearly anti-violence are 28 Weeks Later and Bloody Sunday. Both the directors Paul Greengrass and Juan Carlos Fresnaillo are European, not American or Cantonese (Hong Kong film makers such as John Woo.) Both films have a soldier character who disagrees with the fight he is fighting as what they are doing is killing innocent citizens. Both films use an unsteady cam, fast cutting, unclear shots and pov shots with close ups of the soldiers' dismay. 

Narrative and spectacle cross over, but do other forms of media. Yes is the answer to your question. Spectacle has recently gone hand in hand with documentary in the recent "Planet Earth." "Space" with Sam Neil in it was also spectacular. Anything that's larger than life is considered spectacle. 

Bach Chorale

Bach Chorale

The maker and bender of the rules, only this time around, he is the only one who can make and bend. I on the other hand, have to follow these rules. It's all about the harmony.

Cadences are used frequently, mostly perfect cadences (75%) and Imperfect cadence (25%.) Plagal and Interrupted should not be used. The great thing is, is that to gain marks, you make sure you finish your phrase with a cadence. If it is final, use a perfect cadence, if it's gonna carry on, why don't you use a imperfect cadence.

Cadences

They must have the third and the root within them. The fifth is a high priority but if you have to get rid of one of the notes, make it the 5th. Never use chord III, only I, II, IV, V, VI and VII. the seventh chords you can use are II/7, V/7 and VII/7. All these chords must be in root or first inversion. Having said that, you can invert the following chords into 2nd inversion, that is, with the fifth in the bass. 

I - Vc - Ib (Cadential 6/4) A gooden.

Ib - Vc - I (Also a gooden.)

IV - Ic - IVb

IVb - Ic - IV

The first is used consistently by Bach and he avoids the rest a little. When opportunity knocks, use these progressions, that is, at the end of each phrase. The seventh chords consist of four notes every time, any inversion is permitted apart from the 2nd inversion.

Progression Rules

Never ever have two lines moving in parallel octaves and 5ths. This is bad, very bad, and should always be avoided. The reason being is because it is an over powering sound and it rids the rest of the music of it's cooperativeness. Another thing to stay well clear of is using the same chord over two consecutive bars. This should be used only if it's function is to be an anacrusis. This is a vital jigsaw piece, when resolving the 7th, you must resolve it upwards to the tonic or downwards to the fifth. This resolution can happen in another part though. So the 7th has to resolve downwards by step.

When moving towards conjunct melodies, never make a augmented or diminished leap. Diminished leaps can happen if they resolve inwards. major 6th leaps should definitely be avoided.

Primary chords are the ones to use, try and use chord I about 40% of the time, chord V7 30% of the time and chords IV, II and VI around 30 % of the time with VI being used hardly ever. The strongest progressions are the ones that move from the bass upwards, an example would be, I - V - I - IV - I II - V - I. Contrary motion between the bass and soprano is great stuff, don't over do it though okay? The inner parts should be static with the tenor part high.

Smoothness is the key, especially with chorale. That means no successive leaps and no range between parts being more than a tenth. Every note that falls on the beat should be one that harmonizes. There should be a harmonic rhythm.

Modulation

Interest is obtained through modulation, unlike the other music you listen to that has no modulation in it. Isn't that strange? At the moment, i am listening to a piece that doesn't modulate for an entire 20 minutes and i think it is absolutely great. Anyway, back to modulation. Never modulate to a radically different key, like C major to F sharp major. Think about the Circle of Fifths. Remember, just plus or minus 5 notes to get to a key with a key signature that's just a bit different from the previous version. Only one thing, the chorale must begin and end in the same key. Note to self, i must change my musical taste if I am going to succeed at all in this, I am now listening to another track that doesn't modulate for an entire 10 minutes. Anyway, where was I, oh yes, your phrases must end in related keys such as V and IV (i think.)

Modulation can happen at will at any time only if you have prepared it with another such as V.

Auxiliary Notes and the like

The three types are suspension, passing note and auxiliary note. Passing notes occur off the beat and are conjunct to the previous note. Two passing notes can happen in the bass part, but in descending fashion only.

Auxiliary notes can occur but only off the beat.

A suspension must be resolved downwards by step / conjunctively. Here's a tip, the 4 - 3 suspension is the strongest and most striking as it resolves onto a note that does not sound. 9 - 8 suspensions are alright, the one that doesn't work too well is the 6 - 5 suspension. Suspensions sound good in the inner parts the most. Bach makes them sound good all round.

Tierce de Picardi's are also permitted

But all in all, you can use all of these, but no rule breaking!

Respect to A.A. Owen.

The Inner Game of Music

Respect to the author Barry Green

Who told you that playing music was difficult?

Music and Sport are both played, yet they require control over the body, discipline, inspiration, structure, spontaneity and technique. Both are performed in front of audiences  who have come to appreciate excellence. Just like both of these, humans are the ones who get in their own way. So, how about we find ways of not getting in our own way. Performing something can take the fun out of music if you're nervous (every other Monday yeah?) It can also take the fun out of sport as it takes control of our ego, such as, when it's just you and the goalie, if you're Gazza you've got no problem. How did he get to that level of confidence? He made it look so natural (are we on the same wave length here?)

Fear and control are what tutors sometimes enforce, only, how are you meant to make it natural if you have these instructions fencing your path? Some can be like running through barbed wire.

Mozart

Wolfgang and J.S.Bach toured Britain quite a lot, only to find themselves in taverns after hours. Brass spittoons where what they used to play with, only Mozart went the extra mile and made it make sounds and spin around while Bach just spat in the target area. Mozart was also excellent at Billiards. He used to enjoy the sound of the balls hitting each other made, it also influenced his music. Was it a child's enthusiasm that got him doing this? Well, it is definitely true that children have an effortless capacity to learn. As a child, you had no idea that music can be said to be difficult. It is good if you think that what you are playing is quite easy i suppose. 

Okay, so, who told you music is hard to play?

"Oh well, they're kids, they learn fast." Ergh, excuse me but adults have bigger brains we're just diseased with masks we wear (cliche.) You have got to let go and live in the moment if you want to be good at anything, when do you think it would be a good idea to get self-concious about something you're doing? Well, sometimes, learning a certain piece or phrase becomes the easiest thing ever. Why is this? In my experience, some things have taken months to learn whilst something that is harder has only taken a week. It is the "rage" that makes you in the moment and in a state of learning where, as you are teaching yourself, you learn in the best way. Sometimes, concerts just go exactly to plan and you are moved by how well you do. Why is this? One example from own experience was a concert in Montreux where our Swiss Student was watching us, it was the best, most intense concert of all time that left people in tears (internally.) Another example that can be explained was in Czech Republic where I decided to act as someone who was emotionally caught up in the moment and the music. At the end, ladies were catching my eye and waving at me when all 200 of us were standing and bowing with tears almost taking us over.

The Two Brothers

"The inner game of skiing" was the inspiration for "The inner game of music." The author of this decided to write the book when he and his brother both decided to go skiing only learn it in different ways. The loser, the author of the book, went for expert tuition for an entire year whilst his brother, being slightly physically disabled went and learnt by himself. At the slope, they both raced with the brother beating the author by a long way. He made everything look natural and effortless. How did he do this? "The inner game of skiing!" and a little help from his friends (but no expert tuition.) He had learnt by himself and from a good book. The book taught him to not think about what he was doing, just put it into your subconscious. There's a thing. Subconscious is not as powerful as the concentrated conscious, but it does do things effortlessly as there is nothing to clog it up. Clogging the consciousness is a bad idea, especially with instructions.

What about Music?

Applying this to the bass then, that is, the self-tuition. Just like Barry Green, instruct yourself to focus on your bowing arm and how much tension there is in it. Okay, say you have about five (if you need help after all,) raise that tension to a 7 / 8 and then back down again. You should find that you can now pinpoint where the tension thus you can get rid of it.

The 3 skills you must learn are

• Awareness
• Trust
• Will

You must always try techniques out before you apply them to your teaching. It's not easy to create something simple, to do that, you must know everything surrounding what it is you are trying to accomplish. Getting rid of inner anxieties is the way forward to achieving your goals. If you are a musician, try playing tennis under the guide "inner game of tennis," you should find results as Barry Green did. It'll keep you from playing boringly.

The Two Games

It is a game. And just like in computer games, you can apply your skills to other games, such as, first-person shoot 'em ups are all easy to play once you've got to grip with one. Same with instruments and sports. The reason it is called a game is because it comes with it's own challenges, kill this guy and you will gain a level? Hahaha!! not really. Not with instruments. More like, learn these three pieces, these 11 scales, 7 arpeggios, 4 chromatic scales, diminished 7th scales, double stopping scales, dominant 7th scales and these 12 Studies. Then you'll rise a level. Well I suppose with games you have to master the 'A' button and the Trigger button etc. This is the outer game. This is getting the technique etc just right / better compared to before. Tim Gallway said that there is the 'outer game' which is what you are doing, but there is also an 'inner game.' This is more subtle and easily forgotten. All the obstacles of this game are mental like. That is, concentration and self-doubt. When you play the outer game to much, the game ends up playing you. The inner game can be applied to everything else unlike the outer game. It is what makes you interesting and it gives you soul.

Tim says 'We are playing the inner game every moment of the day and winning or losing all the time." I think you know what i mean come on. Look at yourself, are you doing what you should be doing deep down or are you suppressed? The inner game is thus the key to success in later life and we all realize that.

Inhibiting attitudes and tendencies cause our muscles to tighten up. Fear of failure (or rejection) comes along.