Recording - February 2012 - 70

Even if it’s blind, you have to sense that what you’re doing is right. Have you ever fallen victim to “the last thing I wrote is the best thing I wrote” syndrome? And you think, “Wow, I just came up with this—it’s genius.” Then go back and look at it the next day and you go, “Not as genius as I thought.” Absolutely. Sometimes you can finish at the end of the night and think, that was good, then wake up in the morning, hmm…, wasn’t so good. But those are things we have to know and trust in ourselves. We have to have sort of an instinct of what we’re doing and where it’s right and where it’s going. But then the other thing is technique. There are techniques to develop music. There are different forms; there are different ways to develop notes in music and harmonies, and then there are different instruments to express them. And there are different tempos. So those are all choices that we make, and there is a certain amount of musical knowledge you have to have to write something in a long form for a symphony orchestra. With a song, not necessarily, you just have to have the need to bring out what’s inside of you and try to find a way to shape it and sculpt. They are very different processes. But in the end, you apply the same sort of integrity to it. Am I just writing something that comes easily and sounds good? Or have I really brought out something in myself … and that’s emotion? Does the confidence grow to trust your instincts more the longer you do it, and the more frequently you’re rewarded? I guess getting paid is the ultimate reward, or having an audience love what you do. Do you become more confident with every year? The short answer is no. [laughter] He is a musician, ladies and gentlemen. [laughter] You never feel confident. I always wonder, “Oh my God, is this gonna be terrible?” or “Am I going to write something that’s unplayable?” or “Can I get those musicians?” No, I think that self-doubt is good, you know? Every time I go to a recording studio for a new performance of a new piece and stand up in front of an orchestra, I always have tremendous doubt. Do I need more time? But then when I stand at the podium and I’m looking at a symphony orchestra, at that point, I’m very confident that I know what I want. But really, it’s not until that point, because when you’re on the podium you can’t change it anymore. But until that point, you can always change it. You have to know when it’s right, when it’s finished, and how many more decisions to make. And there’s the slightest thing: a forte, a mezzo forte, the phrasing. Those are all decisions. So there’s always a certain degree of uncertainty, of “Is this the best way?” Ultimately, the clock stops ticking and you have to be finished.

Do you get better as you get closer to the deadline? I get faster. [laughter] In the book, you tell a great story about how early in your career you had a jingle-writing assignment. I love this. You are all gonna relate to this, a jinglewriting assignment for which you wrote three horn parts, even though the film—the actual video— showed only one horn player onscreen. And you wrote in the book, “Surely one can make changes from accepted conventions that are commonly used, but only after one understands what made those conventions work in the first place.” I think that’s incredibly profound advice. And if I remember correctly, the point you make is to give them what they ask for, which may not always require the groundbreaking genius that you think they should have. I’ll tell you two stories. That one, specifically, I was young and getting started, and I had this opportunity. There was a fellow named Mitch Lee, who wrote Man of La Mancha—if you remember the show with “The Impossible Dream.” He had a very big commercial company called the Music Makers. I was introduced to him, and I think he, in fact, was a student of Boulanger also. That may have been the reason for the introduction. He was very nice to me and said maybe he could give me a job. He had a whole staff of people—arrangers and composers. Actually it was a factory. When he got a commercial, Mitch Lee would write the theme, and then he would do the lead arrangement. He would do the first trumpet part, the first clarinet, the first saxophone, and then he would have staff arrangers fill in all the other notes. Anyway, I had a chance to meet with the head arranger and see if he would give me a job. Honestly, I needed that job very badly. So he gave me a couple commercials to do that were already on the air to see how I would arrange and orchestrate them. And that’s what you’re talking about. It was a theme that Mitch had written with a French horn, and there was an animated character of a little boy playing a horn. As I say, this commercial was already on the air, this was an audition piece. So I arranged it, and I thought to myself, “Sure, I can just arrange it for one horn, but why not be a little magical about it? Why not bring in something different?” So I wrote kind of a three-horn harmony counterpoint based on the theme. It was a cartoon after all—the whole world was not a real world. Well, I brought it in to him, and he looked and he said, “How could you write for three-horns? It says one horn.” And I said, “I know, but…” The reality was I was thinking more magical. You have to know the convention you’re writing for. The very first rock ’n’ roll record I ever arranged, I didn’t bring in drums. I thought it could be more innovative. [laughter] Continued on page 73

Continued from page 69 He’s doing the “Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand.” Anyway, I was commissioned to write a piece for him honoring Chopin. I knew that it would have to be [inaudible], I would have an orchestra to work with. At the same time, I didn’t want to step in the footsteps of Chopin, obviously. It would have to be an homage to him, so I had to work with that. There is this extraordinary jazz bass clarinetist called Eddie Daniels—you may know him. And I’d been promising Eddie that I would write a piece for him. So I incorporated the clarinet with the piano, then wrote this. It gave me a chance to expand the piano sound and the clarinet sound. Anyway, we had this concert last year in Gdansk with 22,000 people standing in the area where the Solidarity Movement started… I forget your question. [laughter] How did you learn to translate emotion into music so well? Firstly, you have to internalize. What is it we’re trying to do? I always start with the film, because you’re dealing with emotions, with people on the screen. First of all, I do it by getting the thought process into what makes that film work by watching it a number of times, watching the process of the cutting of the film, which when I see it may not even be completed. You have to invest yourself into the world you’re dealing with and kind of know it. Really, if it’s a commercial, if it’s a song, if it’s a symphony, or whatever, I believe we should approach it all in the same way, with the same importance. Obviously, in terms of dealing with notes on paper and orchestration, there is a technique. You know, there’s a technique with what the ranges of instruments are, obviously, and what combinations of instruments sound like, and that helps to fuel the emotions. Can you really look at it on paper and go, “I can see that this is getting too morose, or this is too happy?” Oh yeah, I hear it. I hear it, and I see it in relation to the screen—if we’re talking about a film. I know the relationship that the music should have with those characters. The question is: how do you know? Well, it’s instinct. It really is instinct. You sit down, you’re facing what you want to do. Sometimes the first thing you do right off the bat is the best you’re ever going to do. Sometimes you have to work for days just to come up with that. Sometimes it takes a lot of going through the motions to come back to see that my immediate reaction was the best. You have to learn to trust yourself. In terms of emotion, you have to trust that you know what you’re doing, that you know where you’re going.
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Recording - February 2012

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