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When an orchestra sits down to record a film score, do they take time to rehearse or go through a dry run, or do they simply start recording right away and hit all the right notes flawlessly?
I'm guessing that a good musician can perform a new piece of music as easily as I can read a book aloud. This sounds amazing (and it is!) but I suppose orchestras perform so many pieces on a regular basis that they would be used to this.
Sorry if this has been asked before!
Michael
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Posted: |
Apr 24, 2016 - 9:32 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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When an orchestra sits down to record a film score, do they take time to rehearse or go through a dry run, or do they simply start recording right away and hit all the right notes flawlessly?
I'm guessing that a good musician can perform a new piece of music as easily as I can read a book aloud. This sounds amazing (and it is!) but I suppose orchestras perform so many pieces on a regular basis that they would be used to this.
Sorry if this has been asked before!
Michael
Studio musicians are among the best most professional musicians around, often better than those in national symphonies. And since scores are most often recorded in only three or four days, I don't believe there's much rehearsal time. If there's a mistake, they just stop, start again at that point, and then it gets edited into the final finished cue. It's not like they're a live orchestra where they have to play the entire cue all the way through with no mistakes, though they are exemptions, of course, but now days the studio time is very expensive.
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Yes, top notch people. In fact I've heard one composer say before that in studio sessions, they expect you to get it right the first time. If you don't, they'll get somebody who can. If you're some kind of famous musician who turns out to be very limited in his skills and chords, they might give you some lead way).
Even before recording, the musicians are assembling as they arrive, and if you've seen any sessions, you know individule players will sometimes run threw parts they have to play, while waiting. But mistakes do happen, and even things which are not the musician's fault but rather something that doesn't work or doesn't sounds write versus what was composed, can be changed on the spot, requiring having to record again.
I don't know how often it happens, but cues on scores take several takes, sometimes full play-throughs, sometimes just partials up unti la problem arrives, and they start again. Take dozens and dozens of takes were done on each cue from, for example, "Star Trek: First Contact".
And because some lines or scores in parts thereof, have ad-libed performances (which happend more than people know and still happens to a degree these days) on thr spot, more than one take may be necessary to nail it.
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When an orchestra sits down to record a film score, do they take time to rehearse or go through a dry run, or do they simply start recording right away and hit all the right notes flawlessly?
I'm guessing that a good musician can perform a new piece of music as easily as I can read a book aloud. This sounds amazing (and it is!) but I suppose orchestras perform so many pieces on a regular basis that they would be used to this.
Sorry if this has been asked before!
Michael
Well, the proper people to ask here are James Fitzpatrick of Tadlow, who makes his main crust recording OSTs for current movies. TV, and games etc. (some of which he generously blows on us with his re-recordings) or possibly John Morgan etc..
Firstly, 'as easily as I can read a book aloud' isn't quite so relevant. I'm a V/O artist, and we need to take quite a few takes of everything to get precisely at what the creative directors want, sometimes we give them more than they asked, sometimes we need to go against the grain and suppress our own better judgement, but they're paying! Many different reads, accents, variations, speeds, moods, distances from the mics etc. are to be tried. Generally a VO for a short ad on TV is about 1 hour.
So no matter how good your session player is, it's the same, the composer will want to try different rubato, amplitude etc.. He needs to HEAR what he's written. No-one generally catches a cue in one take, OF COURSE there are run-throughs.
Also, the pieces can be chopped up and segued, especially today with digital, so a piece for recording need not all be played at once. Splices can be taken from several passages of different takes. Nowadays a lot of that process can be sorted post-production, because of digital. It wasn't always so.
There may need to be several plays with different sections in overlay, as with big brass passages for example. I'm wondering how Tadlow have decided to deal with the many pianos in 'Is Paris Burning?' for example. One solution may be to overlay different performances on fewer pianos. This is done more often than is realised.
Recording time is expensive, not just studio time, but multiples of hours of orchestra fees and salaries. Whoever's paying up front will also have, for instance if it's a TV or radio production, station fees for each channel, and they've tons to part with before they even get to the studio budget. Also, busy studios have full schedules, so if a session is booked for six hours, you need to be out before the next session. In the case of a film score, it'll be a block-booking of about a week I suppose.
They basically have to keep going as long as they need to, to obtain what they need to obtain. The skill of the players is a given, otherwise they wouldn't be there, but time is needed for experimentation, orchestral changes, and timings.
Digitalisation means that lots can be done in post-prod, even to nudge speeds whilst retaining pitch etc..
People in studios, mixers etc., tend to be very friendly people and getting the best out of performers is part of their professionalism. The know-it-all myths about how ruthless they are are largely urban myths, but TIME is limited, and they tend to be strict on that.
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Posted: |
Apr 24, 2016 - 3:05 PM
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By: |
Tadlow
(Member)
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When an orchestra sits down to record a film score, do they take time to rehearse or go through a dry run, or do they simply start recording right away and hit all the right notes flawlessly?
I'm guessing that a good musician can perform a new piece of music as easily as I can read a book aloud. This sounds amazing (and it is!) but I suppose orchestras perform so many pieces on a regular basis that they would be used to this.
Sorry if this has been asked before!
Michael
Well, the proper people to ask here are James Fitzpatrick of Tadlow, who makes his main crust recording OSTs for current movies. TV, and games etc. (some of which he generously blows on us with his re-recordings) or possibly John Morgan etc..
Firstly, 'as easily as I can read a book aloud' isn't quite so relevant. I'm a V/O artist, and we need to take quite a few takes of everything to get precisely at what the creative directors want, sometimes we give them more than they asked, sometimes we need to go against the grain and suppress our own better judgement, but they're paying! Many different reads, accents, variations, speeds, moods, distances from the mics etc. are to be tried. Generally a VO for a short ad on TV is about 1 hour.
So no matter how good your session player is, it's the same, the composer will want to try different rubato, amplitude etc.. He needs to HEAR what he's written. No-one generally catches a cue in one take, OF COURSE there are run-throughs.
Also, the pieces can be chopped up and segued, especially today with digital, so a piece for recording need not all be played at once. Splices can be taken from several passages of different takes. Nowadays a lot of that process can be sorted post-production, because of digital. It wasn't always so.
There may need to be several plays with different sections in overlay, as with big brass passages for example. I'm wondering how Tadlow have decided to deal with the many pianos in 'Is Paris Burning?' for example. One solution may be to overlay different performances on fewer pianos. This is done more often than is realised.
Recording time is expensive, not just studio time, but multiples of hours of orchestra fees and salaries. Whoever's paying up front will also have, for instance if it's a TV or radio production, station fees for each channel, and they've tons to part with before they even get to the studio budget. Also, busy studios have full schedules, so if a session is booked for six hours, you need to be out before the next session. In the case of a film score, it'll be a block-booking of about a week I suppose.
They basically have to keep going as long as they need to, to obtain what they need to obtain. The skill of the players is a given, otherwise they wouldn't be there, but time is needed for experimentation, orchestral changes, and timings.
Digitalisation means that lots can be done in post-prod, even to nudge speeds whilst retaining pitch etc..
People in studios, mixers etc., tend to be very friendly people and getting the best out of performers is part of their professionalism. The know-it-all myths about how ruthless they are are largely urban myths, but TIME is limited, and they tend to be strict on that.
It all depend upon the difficulty of the music! But in general on my sessions we spend a while on the first cue...choosing one that is reasonably long and with lots of dynamics so that the engineer can set his levels and not be surprised by any double forte section in a later cue. Once we have got the orchestra balanced and the sound I want it is full steam ahead doing what we call "prima vista" recording.."first look". So very little actually rehearsed separately apart from very tricky sections, rather we do recorded rehearsals and adjust things as we go. In the case of London and Prague the sight reading is staggering and it is rarely that a good orchestra needs more than 3 to 5 takes of any cue. The longer cues if lots of tempo changes will be split in shorter sections. But for Thief of Bagdad...as the CoPPO love playing Rozsa nothing was actually rehearsed in advance...so you could say you were getting the excitement of a "live" studio recording...if that makes sense? Everything is performed live with just an few overdubs rather than some soundtracks were each section of the orchestra is recorded separately and then mixed in with samples. For me I prefer the excitement of a whole orchestra performing as one! Nothing beats the sound of a full symphony orchestra "going fot it"!!!!!
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Posted: |
Apr 24, 2016 - 3:14 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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So no matter how good your session player is, it's the same, the composer will want to try different rubato, amplitude etc.. He needs to HEAR what he's written. No-one generally catches a cue in one take, OF COURSE there are run-throughs.
Absolutely right. But of course, the distinction between a "rehearsal" and a busted first take that you recorded is a subtle one. I work in television. Back when we used to shoot on film (expensive), we'd be very rehearsed before we shot anything. Now that we use digital HD video (cheap!), we often shoot what would once have been a rehearsal because, well, why not?
I think some people seem to think of sheet music as an absolute guide to the one true performance of a piece -- almost like you just press "play" and the musicians read the notes and you're done. But even with the notes written out and tempo markings and the like notated, there is a lot of interpretation that must be done. This is why classical fans seek out recordings by their favorite conductors, who bring out an expressiveness they prefer. Sure, a Beethoven symphony has very specific notes and tempi, but there remains a lot of wiggle room in performance.
A composer has an idea in his head, but then he has to actually hear it performed. Yes, of course, an accomplished composer has a pretty good idea what the end result should be, but he also hears it and adjusts it.
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Thank you all for your insightful comments, and particularly to James for your insider's view. (Also thanks for Lawrence of Arabia and all your continuing hard work.) And my apologies to the LSO and City of Prague for unintentional inference that they are only as good as my reading voice  Most of this is kind of what I thought the process must be like, with high profile orchestras being an impressive (and undoubtedly expensive) exception, and it makes sense that it all depends on the piece, the orchestra, and time/rules/money. This question was born out of the bonus tracks on LaLaLand's phenomenal Star Trek: The Motion Picture set and Quartet's Total Recall, both of which I find fascinating!
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