January 2024 Coda

musical reading list, addendum to my 2023 best stuff, & plug-in recommendations

As the month comes to a close, here’s what I’m calling a monthly coda. In music composition, a coda is a musical passage that brings a larger piece to an end. In these codas, I intend to include various themes from my month. Perhaps they’ll be reprised in future months, perhaps not.

Let’s get into it!

2024 Reading List

One of the most common new year’s resolutions is to read more. I did okay last year in terms of reading, but, like everyone, I could do better.

Starting the year off right, I have a pile of books to get through, many of them enthusiastically paralleling my composing journey. Here’s some on my shelf:

📔Diaries 1898-1902 by Alma Mahler-Werfe

All of the books on this list are non-fiction, but this one reads the most like fiction. It’s a selection of diaries from the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, Alma, which I learned about via 10 Things Succession's Jeremy Strong Can't Live Without.

I’m a huge fan of Succession, Jeremy Strong, and composers, so I had to pick this up. In the link above, the video should play starting with Strong’s take on the book.

I’m about 200 pages in and I’ll likely write again about the book when I’m finished, but so far what’s been most compelling to me is how enmeshed Alma is in the art scene of her time and how little we know about the many figures of it now.

To me, it just goes to show how much more important a scene is than the figures we remember from it. I find solace in the idea I’m taking away from the book thus far, that all artists during a time matter, regardless of what name ends up bubbling to the top when we look back on history.

🎼Idiot’s Guides: Music Theory, 3E by Michael Miller

Another resolution of mine this year is to get back into music theory. Ironically, this is one of my biggest blindspots when it comes to composing. Thing is, these days theory isn’t really the biggest need for film composers. I would argue understanding Digital Audio Workstations (DAW’s) is the higher priority.

That being said, knowing music theory as a musician, especially in communicating with other musicians as your scoring collaborators grow, is… instrumental, teehee.

My musical background was studying piano for 14 years primarily using the Suzuki method, where the emphasis lies in ear training rather than notation. While I did eventually incorporate reading music, since I was a child/teen during those years, I relied on what was easier, which was my ear.

If you’re looking to brush up on your theory or start learning it for the first time, Idiot’s Guide is the highest regarded, cheapest, and most approachable place to start.

💿The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Austin and I talked about it briefly in my last post. Yes, it’s the creative book that seems to be everywhere…

I’m only a couple chapters in so far. Right now, it’s mostly like clouds of text that pass through you, sometimes you hold onto a nugget of wisdom, sometimes the text is not quite concrete enough— a little like how ideas work!

The book lends itself to sitting on your coffee table and picking up to read a chapter if you’re in a creative block or you need some encouragement for that project you’ve been stumbling through. I’d recommend, very easy read.

🤠Composing for the Cinema The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film by Ennio Morricone & Sergio Miceli

What is it with Italians and film composing? Why does spaghetti go so well with Westerns? I wanted to find out. Especially considering my Italian heritage, I thought understanding this lineage was the most earnest approach.

There’s a lot of them, but the most well known is Ennio Morricone. Most well known for his contributions to the western genre, in his lifetime he composed over 400 original scores for cinema and television. The Thing is one I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from on my latest film score.

I have to give my respects to the Godfather, hence this book, a transcriptions of seminars done by Morricone and his musciologist colleague Miceli. The book isn’t a how to for composing film as much as it is what the composer does and his relationships to other roles in the film industry.

The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd

I actually read this last year, but I can’t recommend it enough, so I’m including it. Plus, the author is giving it away for free as a PDF now!

It follows the true story of Paul, who, after doing everything “right” in his career path and finding what many would call success, found an emptiness inside him. To find purpose in his life, he had to do many things against others’ suggestions. There was much searching and much uneasiness, but it led to something better than he imagined his life could be.

This book was extremely helpful for me getting the courage to tap into my creative self, lean into uncertainty, and dive head first into film composing. To some extent, this newsletter also wouldn’t exist without it. I highly, highly recommend!

---

Poor Things

Still from the film Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Alright. You know how in my 2023 favorites post I said the best score of the year was from Killers of the Flower Moon? Well… I was wrong. The real answer is it’s actually Jerskin Fendrix’s inventive and warped musical additions to Poor Things. I didn’t catch the movie until earlier in this month, which is why it didn’t make my Best Of list.

The score is bolder, more innovative, and more provocative than any other score I heard this year, debatably more than any other album as well.

Notably, this was Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ first time working with a film composer. Despite Poor Things being his eighth feature, Lanthimos has never commissioned original score before now, instead opting for utilizing previously recorded music as score.

In addition, this was also Fendrix’s first film score, his previous work consisting primarily of an experimental opera and untethered pop album, the latter of which Lanthimos discovered while in pre-production and lead to the collaboration.

This series of firsts culminating for the score couldn’t have been better suited for protagonist Bella Baxter’s journey within the film. Just like Bella approaching how to live in the world in a fresh, new way, so too has Fendrix approached how a score lives in a film.

Another thing of note, considering I’m currently scoring a feature myself and entering the process prior to a locked edit, is that Fendrix completed 95% of the score from the script, concept art, and set designs alone and did not score to picture as is status quo. It’s worth considering how scores might change based on when a composer enters the process and if directors and composers can use these estimations to their advantage.

---

*If you’ve been enjoying the conversation and want to read about some audio plug-ins I’ve been exploring for my latest film score, that sections is for paid subscribers and just a few clicks away.

I want to keep most of this newsletter free and accessible, but I do want to experiment with the subscription model. Five dollars a month or a discounted fifty for the year will get you access to the remainder of the interview and future posts like it, as well as providing me with monetary encouragement for keeping this newsletter going in the new year!

Thank you for your consideration! Now back to audio nerd stuff.*