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I always heard that Jerry Goldsmith's score for "Planet Of The Apes" used "no electronic instruments", but didn't I hear an electric guitar with a wah wah pedal in the opening of the main title?
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I always heard that Jerry Goldsmith's score for "Planet Of The Apes" used "no electronic instruments.....
right, and the knife never touched Janetl Leigh's body in PSYCHO....
folks, he used an echoplex, i.e a tape machine to process the music. that's called using an electronic instrument.
bruce marshall
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Posted: |
Jan 5, 2011 - 8:28 PM
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By: |
Heath
(Member)
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Echoplex... echoplex... echoplex... echoplex...
Remember folks that an Echoplex is a simple tape delay machine which, when a sound is fed into it, creates, yup, an echo! The word Echoplex is just a brand name like Hoover. It's no more a musical instrument than a mixing desk is.
For POTA's main title, Goldsmith used the bass notes of a prepared piano (that's a piano with bits and pieces shoved between the strings to alter or dampen the sound producing that distinctive, richly harmonic bass heartbeat that opens the title), a bass slide whistle, some amplified sand slooshed around to created the wooshing sound you hear, a rams horn, steel mixing bowls, pizzicato strings, woodwinds, unison french horns, and various exotic percussion. The echoplex delay was added to certain sections of that instrumental group.
Just brilliant.
That man had a hell of a musical imagination... to conjure that out of nothing. Just brilliant.
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a tape machine is an electronic instrument
there are concert works entitled "for orchestra--and tape" - think Edgar Varese
c
but the relevant question is is,c why Goldsmith fans tout this classic score specifically because it didn't use electronics.
Goldsmith was a progresssive composer who used eletronic instruments many times before POTA and after.
its all rather silly, i must say 
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.... but the relevant question is is why Goldsmith fans tout this classic score specifically because it didn't use electronics.
Goldsmith was a progresssive composer who used eletronic instruments many times before POTA and after.
The bottom line is the effect the composer wants to create in the listener, and how it fits the visuals. With Goldsmith, his TV years gave him a great facility with instant orchestration: he knew just how EVERYTHING would sound, and what unconventional mixtures would produce. He always attributed that to his experience gained in the TV studio quick scores.
He was highly intuitive in his approach, but he thought stuff out too. In the case of PoTAs, what did he want, and how did he achieve it? He wasn't concerned with the usual techno-electronic sci-fi cliche, he seems to have wanted an organic 'animal' sound, and that's what you get: jungle noises, bodily function/animal call music. That's the whole thrust of the film's feel .... adult monkey music, the hunt, and stone-age architecture.
Some people above seem to think he shouldn't have imposed that limitation on the score. But what he DID was remarkable, and the more so since he knew the variety of conventional instruments.
Nowadays, there's so MUCH electronic music everywhere that this generation sees it as a universal 'norm' medium. If older fans say they dislike that, then they get written off as Luddites or reactionary grumps. But it COULD be argued that today people are less and less connected to 'nature'. There's a reason why woodwinds are good for pastorale music. They are and sound ORGANIC, like birdsong etc.. They have subliminal harmonics etc.. In the old days, a composer would only use electronic music for sci-fi or highly 'technological' modern dramatic settings. Even an old fashioned factory or production plant setting doesn't really need electronics, it's a 'space' or computer thing. But it has become so ubiquitous nowadays that it's used for EVERYTHING. I think that's a bad, limiting thing, because I think it alters our perceptions. I'd stick my neck out and say that people brought up in urban environments (or very treeless bleak landscapes) don't notice the 'artificiality' and coldness of techno, they think it's the natural, what they're used to.
But it isn't. When you hear PotAs, think nature, jungle, adrenalin, animals, chase. That doesn't need electro, it's not the Daleks, and Goldsmith knew that. Try to listen to what a composer INTENDS. Watch your cat or dog for a while to get this score, don't stare at your fridge.
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I am speaking as a complete know-nothing here
..... that booklet left a lot to de desired, namely a more detailed and scholarly dissertation....
.
Scholarly?!
Have you seen Jeff's avatar photo?!
LOL!
bruce
ps was this posted by Thor's evil twin brother?
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Oh, well I guess that explains your writings in the booklet for the 1997 Varese Sarabande CD release of Goldsmith's PLANET OF THE APES!
I don't mean to insult.....
gee, i would hate to see your compliments!
bruce
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Hmmm. I suppose a tape machine could be considered an instrument in it's own right. But there has to be a recording ON the tape and the only example that comes to mind is the Mellotron.
But apart from that, it's only a device that stores music that was already played.
Additionally, I think that to say that any instrument which requires external amplification is an electronic instrument is too broad a generalization.
If it was a Mellotron, it would be the only time Goldsmith ever used it in one of his film scores (considering he went through every electronic keyboard imaginable from almost every manufacturer [including Yamaha, for which he did a photo ad that was seen only in the U.K.]).
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