Watching the new John Williams documentary has me newly in awe of his talent—although that’s not really accurate because I always feel that way.
Much is made about him being a “dinosaur” in that he composes with a pencil, piano and paper—and that’s it. He explains in the documentary how it takes him longer to write out all the notes compared to somebody on a computer workstation.
I love so much music that is composed digitally, with modern recording techniques—from composers who don’t read music or have a particularly complicated vocabulary.
But there has definitely been a ton that has been lost from the switch to new-school methods, particularly when writing symphonically. I won’t name names but this is even from composers whose music in the 1980s and ’90s used to be so much more memorable.
But it’s about more than the composers: schedules, temp tracks, audience expectations, sound mixes, and the multiple layers of approvals.
A thought experiment for today. Say you are producing a mega-blockbuster and the composer came in with this demo for a pivotal action scene:
Would you really have the imagination to know it would ultimately sound like this?
I’ll bet not!