“I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.”
— John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo” (1937)
John Cage’s powerful insight has been a driving force behind the music of composers as varied as Messiean, Stockhausen, Xenakis and Hendrix. My personal passion for music arises from the belief that music is one of the most powerful ways of communicating ideas. People back in l937 reading Cage’s quote must have found his thinking flawed and absurd. The means of producing and manipulating sounds electronically were still primitive. Pierre Schaeffer later called this idea “musique concrete.” I have long been drawn to musique concrete or “found sound” music, which is predicated on first establishing the quality of an idea for a composition, and then searching for and constructing the musical context around it; a true improvisational process from start to finish.
It would seem that making music out of “found sounds” wouldn’t require formal musical training. Quite the contrary–understanding music theory and composition is essential.
More and more often, over the past several years, our clients, producers of feature films, trailers, TV shows, and TV & web spots, have come to us requesting that we incorporate random sounds into the music we craft for their projects. For example, I was recently asked, “Can you make a bunch of dogs sing the Star Wars ‘Imperial Death March’?” The challenges this kind of question presents can only be addressed in the context of a musical process. The results of this process are in our VW spot “The Bark Side.”
When applying “real-world” sounds to musical compositions, there are three basic tenets I follow:
1. The key to finding the music in everyday sounds is finding the way a sound interacts rhythmically with its environment.
2. Actively integrate traditional music concepts like melody and harmony. Obviously, in the spirit of “musique concrete,” harmony and melody cannot be applied here in traditional ways. The challenge (and the reward) is in the process of discovering how to meld these divergent approaches. What makes things interesting is how you eventually discover they do apply.
3. Phrase is everything. When I began practicing the art of sound design, it never occurred to me that it had anything to do with “sound effects.” I approached sound design as an art form that was concerned with digitally manipulating musical samples and phrases. This is an essential approach when dealing with musique concrete. To ensure the listener’s ears will trust the authenticity of the sounds, it is necessary to have unedited “phrase samples” accompany the highly manipulated and “performed” sounds.
The ultimate challenge of writing in this fashion rests in composing an original piece of music that potentially reflects a whole new genre. It is in this spirit that I offer one final quote from Mr. Cage: “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”
Composer Jeff Elmassian is founder of music/sound house Endless Noise.
L.A. Location Lensing Declines In 2024 Despite Uptick In 4th Quarter
FilmLA, partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, has issued an update regarding regional filming activity. Overall production in Greater Los Angeles increased 6.2 percent from October through December 2024 to 5,860 Shoot Days (SD) according to FilmLA’s latest report. Most production types tracked by FilmLA achieved gains in the fourth quarter, except for reality TV, which instead logged its ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline.
The lift across all remaining categories came too late to rescue 2024 from the combined effects of runaway production, industry contraction and slower-than-hoped-for post- strike recovery. With just 23,480 SD filmed on-location in L.A. in 2024, overall annual production finished the year 5.6 percent below the prior year. That made 2024 the second least productive year observed by FilmLA; only 2020, disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, saw lower levels of filming in area communities.
The continuing decline of reality TV production in Los Angeles was among the most disappointing developments of 2024. Down 45.7 percent for the fourth quarter (to 774 SD), the category also finished the year down 45.9 percent (to 3,905 SD), which placed
it 43.1 percent below its five-year category average.
The two brightest spots in FilmLA’s latest report appeared in the feature film and television drama categories. Feature film production increased 82.4 percent in the fourth quarter to 589 SD, a gain analysts attribute to independent film activity. The
California Film & Television Tax Credit Program also played a part, driving 19.2 percent of quarterly category activity. Overall, annual Feature production was up 18.8 percent in 2024, though the... Read More