 |
[HOPE AND FEAR] : BEHIND-THE-SCENESPost-production: recording the music |
|
On 5th May, at 6.00 a.m. pre-planning for a scoring session starts. The meeting takes place in Paramount's music building which is appropriately named Crosby (as in Bing). Supervising Copyist Robert Bornstein and his staff handcopy musical parts for 44 musicians.
THE SOUND OF TUNING UP
By 1.30 p.m. the musicians start arriving at the studio. Dennis McCarthy arrives at Scoring Stage M at 1.45 p.m. The scoring session for [Hope and Fear] is scheduled to start at 2.00 p.m. Music Editor Gerry Sackman joins the sound mixer and the recordist behind the mixing board in the window-lined booth. Inside the quiet booth, conversations are easily heard. But on the other side of the glass it is LOUD. Every musician is tuning his or her instrument - violins, violas, cellos, basses, the brass and reed sections, and the percussion. There is also an electric guitar adds to the volume and a synthesiser creates an orchestra of its own. They end on one chord, in tune, in pitch, in unison. Tuning time is over. The musicians turn toward the conductor's podium although Dennis McCarthy is not there. He is getting himself a soft drink.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
On each musician's music stand is his or her part of the musical score. The ink is almost, as they say, still wet. Most of the parts are not fully notated. On some of the parts, the rhythmic bars are indicated, along with the key signatures and the key or chordal modulations, but knowing the correct individual notes to play is left to the musicians themselves.
Dennis McCarthy: "They're all my buddies. We've been recording together for years. They know what I want and I know what they can play." Occasionally he suggests changes in the timing or the chordal structure of a cue from the podium. "I can see the score in my head," he says. "The violin players are all playing pretty much the same thing, so when I dictate to one of them, I'm dictating to them all. Sure, the brass and woodwinds are all playing different stuff, but I just start with an idea, like 'E-minor over this or that,' and just start barking notes at the guys. I just yell, 'Everybody got a pencil? Well, roll tape."'
Red alert: The picture below is 112Kb.
Also helping the musicians is the fact that the cues are all very chordal and non-rhythmic, which is standard practice on Star Trek. "Right after [TNG: Encounter at Farpoint] Rick Berman told me that he didn't want themes, that the music should just state where it's going and that's all. Occasionally I can sneak a theme in, but I think the last time I wrote a melodic piece was in [Year of Hell]."
In front of the podium, a monitor plays the segments of [Hope and Fear] that correspond to Dennis McCarthy's cues, and he conducts the orchestra according to the mathematical timing on the monitor. But he does not conduct the segments in story order, or even in the order they are listed on the cue sheet Gerry Sackman has given him. The cue sheet breaks down the cues by time and instruments. The list confirms that the cue for the final action scene has been broken into two parts, one timing out at 2 minutes 1 second, the other at 2 minutes 25 seconds. The second cue, coincidentally, begins with Scene 96 and runs through Scene 108, when we see Voyager in normal space. The sheet also stands testament to Dennis McCarthy's and Gerry Sackman's sense of humor: each cue has been given a name, and not necessarily one that sounds like it belongs on Voyager. McCarthy has dubbed the sequence where Seven attempts to access the Dauntless' primary systems, while Arturis destroys the controls "The War of the Buttons." He calls the second half of the sequence "The Rescue." And the final scene is named "Ode to Summer" because, Dennis McCarthy says, "It's the last cue that will play on Voyager this season."
Dennis McCarthy's and Gerry Sackman's "cue sheet". The sheet lists the length of time for each cue, the instruments that will be required. For this particuar session, except for the woodwinds and trumpets, it's all the musicians all the time.
The session is expected to last 4-6 hours. 1 hour 34 minutes into the session, Dennis McCarthy says, "Let's do the last action sequence. I'm in the mood." That means "The Rescue". He rehearses two bars of the music twice, listening for the balance of the percussion each time. "Let's roll it." 2 minutes 20 seconds later the piece is on tape, and he McCarthy walks to the booth to listen. Everyone in the booth likes the take, but he feels that several bars in the beginning need to be fuller. Back at the podium, he reverts from conductor to composer and calls out a series of changes.
To the percussionist: "Don't come in at beat 17, wait until 21."
To the brass: "Guys, I need you to crescendo from the 4th beat of bar 42 up to the 'and' of beat 3 in bar 43. (These bars correspond to Scene 103, where Voyager curves off in its "U-turn.") Then keep that level happening, and still crescendo. We need to have the YO! thing happening there. But save something for bar 48 when we go into the tempo change."
To the drummer: "On the suspended cymbal, keep on truckin' through 43, 45, and 46."
Then to all: "It's just a matter of filling in on those dynamics. Everything else is going great, and I have nothing else intelligent to say, so..." he raises his arms and his baton to conduct: "Roll it."
After the take, he again enters the control booth to listen. The take is perfect. "You know, I didn't write that until last night," he suddenly admits. "I'd finished about 30% of it and just said, 'This ain't happenin'!' It went straight into the shredder and I started again. I used Jerry Goldsmith's Voyager theme twice there. Obviously I used it full-bore when we cut to see the ship in normal space at the very end. But I also used a few seconds of it earlier when we see Voyager firing at the Dauntless. That's in-your-face Voyager theme."
Credits:
- Thanks to Moyra's Web JewelsSITE CLOSED
Note (!): On my Wordplay Site I have a section of names for prequels of well-known films
For "The Sound of Music" the prequel title offered is "The Sound of Tuning Up". I took this page's subheadings from that.
Navigate using the lefthand floating menu.