It has been quite a while since I posted in this section. Four years, in fact. It is representative of the significant change in focus in my life, and in Sonic Cinema, since I was coming off of taking online courses through the Berklee College of Music for Film & TV Music composition. I’ve already touched on that change of focus in earlier posts- this is about some musical ideas I’ve worked on, and some ways I’m looking to mark this year in my musical life.
In January, it occurred to me that 2018 marks 20 years since I began composing music while taking sound recording and MIDI classes at Georgia State University. It’s been quite a journey since that moment, and it’s seen a lot of musical growth over the years. Listening back to those early experiments, there are interesting ideas, but a lot of raw thinking about how the process worked. By the time I graduated college, I was a bit more refined, though still had a ways to go before I would really take my music to the next level. I recently did a retrospective look at one of my first projects for that MIDI class as part of my Patreon campaign for Sonic Cinema, and it was fun to frame the steps in that piece’s evolution with variations no one has heard since 1998. It also marks a dry run for an upcoming episode of the Sonic Cinema Podcast that I’ve had on the brain for a while, in some form. I’ll have more musical posts on Patreon, whether it’s sharing and doing commentary on older work, or if it’s giving exclusive looks at any new pieces I may have coming down the pike. While the Sonic Cinema Patreon is primarily about my movie writing and commentary, I hope you join me on that. It’s not only inspired my creativity further, but a way of supporting an artist who would like to make his online voice as broad as possible.
These blogs have typically been about revealing new musical works. Of course, that usually means there HAS been new musical work, and while that still holds true this post, it’s certainly not a lot of new music. Since I got married in November 2015, musical output has been relatively barren- my focus has been more on Sonic Cinema as a movie blog, and the Sonic Cinema Podcast; the inspiration has not been there on a regular basis. Back in 2016, however, I did have some inspiration to do a new take on old material for me with “Chant of the Vocoder 2016”. It’s actually kind of fitting that this is the first time I’m really discussing the piece on Sonic Cinema as I’m starting to look back at my 20 years of composing, because this was a piece inspired by a 1999 trilogy of pieces that are included on my 2000 album, “Dark Experiments”. The original “Chant of the Vocoder” pieces were done with a vocoder patch on a MIDI instrument- since I’d had an actual vocoder instrument for about 8 years, at the time, it’s surprising it took me so long to do a new piece in this vein. It was an interesting reworking of a concept for me, if not particularly original.
One of the personal revelations I’ve had over the past couple of years is that, film music is not to be as a primary career. I thought I might have had a way in when it comes to local filmmakers for a bit in 2016, it never really moved anywhere beyond talking about making movies and doing tests with cameras and software. It was kind of disheartening, but as the Sonic Cinema Podcast started to pick up steam, and I began to focus more on reviews, this revelation was not as disheartening as I thought it would be, because what I’ve been doing with the podcast, and how much I enjoy writing reviews, has taken over, and if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know how varied it’s become in what I’m doing with it. The creative energies I once wanted to exert towards film music have been largely directed elsewhere. I say “largely” because, there’s always going to be a piece of me that has a musical itch to scratch, and the past couple of years have given me some inspiration leading me to the second piece I’ve written since being married.
One thing you will notice during the Sonic Cinema Podcast is how much my affection for “Star Wars” has been renewed over the past couple of years, not just because of the films and new projects, but also because of how the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has fed into that. In both 2016 and 2017, Meredith and I joined some friends to see the ASO play a concert of John Williams music, with the second half devoted primarily to his work for “Star Wars,” and last month, we went to Symphony Hall to watch them perform the score of “A New Hope” live with the movie playing, and that experience, combined with Williams’s score for “The Last Jedi,” and unexpected performance of Leia’s theme at last April’s Star Wars Celebration, inspired me to write a piece I’ve been looking for inspiration with for a couple of years now.
One of my favorite characters in the whole of the “Star Wars” Universe is Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan who first appeared to audiences in the “Clone Wars” movie in 2008 that preceded the TV show of the same name. If you had told me that would be the case after that first introduction, I wouldn’t have believed you, but as the series commenced, the complexities of the character, and her relationship with Anakin, made her a fascinating addition to this franchise I love so much, and the way her arc ended when the series ended its run in 2012, inspired me to think about how I would continue her story, and as Williams has built upon his musical legacy for the franchise with “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” (and since his theme for Leia was one we studied in my online courses), I thought about the idea of writing a theme for this character I love so much in his style- I just didn’t have the musical notes coming to me. After seeing the ASO perform “A New Hope” live, however, they began to come out, and I am proud to give you a listen to the second piece I’ve written in the last two years, “Ahsoka’s Theme”, a video presentation of which I have embedded below from my creative YouTube channel.
“Ahsoka’s Theme”
While I haven’t had a lot of new composing happening, I do have some things I’m hoping to do in the next year to mark my 20th year as a composer. I’ll have more looks at my music via the Sonic Cinema Podcast, as well as Patreon, and I hope to release a couple of albums I’ve been putting off for a while now. I will have more on all of that as the year goes on, and I hope you enjoy!
Thanks for listening,
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
brianskutle.bandcamp.com
“Creative Beginnings” at CDBaby
“Dark Experiments” at CDBaby
“Sonic Visions of a New Old West” at CDBaby
“Beyond the Infinite: A Musical Odyssey” at CDBaby
“Storytelling” at CDBaby
“Arpeggiations & Atmospheres” on BandCamp
