Music Hath Charms? - Brief Article

PSA Journal, Nov, 1998 by Ray Wallace Thompson

Well, sometimes it has, but other times it is far from charming. A friend over the Internet implied he had encountered some difficulties in selecting music for slide shows. I'll bet that this difficulty applies to us all when making audio/visuals. I began to have this problem in 1958 when I attempted my first A/V and it continues, much to the irritation of my marital managing director (MD).

One just has to have some sort of interest in music, not the present popular stuff which consists of, perhaps, three chords and one line of repeated script. My own introduction in the early 1920s was pretty rugged for a small boy and consisted of monologues and solos, and when I got a bit taller I rebelled, heard Django Rheinhard and Segovia and decided that a "geetar" was for me. Ultimately I bought one of the first electric guitars (a Premiervox) and during the 39/45 war played in army dance bands and swing outfits as rhythm man. So when considering music for audio/visual shows one must put such preferences behind and concentrate on linking sound to scene. Personal preferences give way to appropriateness.

There are times when, exhausted, I sit and listen to that remarkable invention, the radio, and listen to wonderful music of all kinds. Relaxing, I find myself interpreting sound to imagined pictures and I have no doubt at all that wonderful team led by Walt Disney has a lot to do with it. Try it sometime and you will begin to lessen your difficulties.

Mostly I am dissatisfied with my own results but recently we excavated an A/V of a visit to Greece and realized that we had some nice flower pictures. Usually if one has a large number of slides of one kind, say 15 or so, it can become boring, but this time we used the wonderful musicianship of Maria Robless and her harp playing Debusy's "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and--know what?--we love it.

My friend mentioned an assembly of butterfly pictures, in themselves a lovely and colorful subject. Our local butterfly farm provided such and we used "Cassenoisette Suite--Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and it fit so well with the light trills and feeling.

Mind you, my taste for picture/ sound often leads into rather strange destinations and the Radiophonic Workshops here and there do a terrific "mood" job. MCPs are good in this field and there's not only Atmospheric Synthesizer but also Atmospheric Moods. From them one can match up with everything from a mystic atmosphere to thunder and lightning.

I always try to vary content and keep away from repetition of the same instrument and type of music lest the audience get thoroughly bored or irritated. Piano selections in my collection can even include some Fats Waller, some Chopin, and Rick Wakemen. If you carefully delve into that awful POP scene you might just come across Rick Wakeman. He is a keyboard man in a group (or was) but when he begins to play straight and some of his own interpretations on piano, such as "Floating Clouds," "The Dream" etc., you really have something to work with. He is brilliant.

With great care one can use music from Dorsey to Previn, but when one enters the symphonic area one must do a lot of listening because crescendos tend to pop up at unexpected moments. When I have tracks ready on which speech and effects have been laid on the four-track recorder, before I put on a couple of music tracks, I listen carefully with a stop watch in hand to find where those "lifts" and "drops" occur and try to fit them in where they do the most good. What must be avoided at all costs is to include false endings when the music virtually changes to the next phase of the composition. It leads your audience into a false viewing-expectancy position.

The other route is to select the music and then fit the slides to it. In some respects this is a much easier way if one is not "telling a story" or "going on a journey." However, using this method means that care has to be taken to avoid too much repetition of slides because one tends to find a musical theme reoccurring. Captivating an audience with this kind of work is very satisfying.

In music there is an abundance of opinion and some will not use any but symphonic, usually with good effect for those solely interested in that variety, but so many others prefer lighter music and my MD just loves music from the shows. (Often threatens a walk-out when we disagree!) So I try to vary content consistent with the mood of the pictures. Current television appears to have attracted a bevy of producers who include questionable music of unsympathetic intonation. Frequently it is intrusive to the extent that we immediately reach for the remote control to shut it out until the visual scene changes. Occasionally there is included some unintelligible voice noises which are also very distracting and spoil the story so badly that we simply close the thing down, thus losing some fine picture work.

By comparison the camera work and direction on TV is sometimes quite thrilling. Recently we saw one of the most brilliant comediennes going back through Northern India to Bhutan to retrace the steps taken by her grandparents some decades ago. The choice of music and sound for such a difficult subject was quite lovely. So there is hope.