Sunday, July 04, 2004

Allow me to guide you through the second of five installments of new BenSchorMusic.

First off, "Shadowplay" comes from my second collaboration with filmmaker Ethan Shaftel. Having completed one narrative project with Ethan during the previous spring, a short feature called Empire Airways, he called upon me to work up some pieces of music for a promotional video that he was doing for Kansas University. At the time, I had no idea that this process of writing music during the summers for Ethan would blossom into the amount of music that it has. But, I had enjoyed working with Ethan, and I was itching to do some more instrumental writing.

The subject of the video was a Business professional Abroad program in Italy. Ethan had spent a few weeks on campus and in Italy to get his footage, and it was up to me to strike the right tone. For Empire Airways, I had relied heavily on my skills in programming, but due to the fact that I was in Seattle for the summer (and armed only with my acoustic guitar and four-track analog recorder), it was clear that I had a few limitations for instrumentation. And, unlike our last project, I would be working with Ethan over the phone and over a shorter period of post-production.

That said, my process for that first promotional project was simple. Prior to composing, Ethan and I outlined the sections of the video and their corresponding subject matter. Unlike Empire Airways, Ethan wanted enough music to put through the entire video. We talked about several editorial segments that he was putting together, and after that, I tried writing a few ideas for each section. After creating the basic framework and melody for some of the pieces, I got updated info from Ethan as far as the length of the sections of the video.

"Shadowplay" was something of a crapshoot. I had written a number of pieces, and of all of them, "Shadowplay" was the one that I felt would not fit into the video. I loved it, but was sure that It was a bit different from most of the other pieces. Regardless, I sent it to Ethan and listened for his feedback.

He loved it, and "Shadowplay" became the theme for all of the Abroad videos we did together.

"Knof Off" comes from the most recent collaboration Ethan and I did together. By the time we had come to our fourth video, and Ethan had seen and heard what I was capable of doing with my programming and guitars, he wanted me to do reorchestrations of many of the old themes, and to write a couple of new ones. "Knof Off" is one of the new ones, and a bit of an ode to someone I admire...

Lastly, "These Hands" is an old song that I wrote while in college. Early on in that phase of my writing, I was very taken by patterns, and it had occurred to me that my grandmother, my mom and I all had similar hands. I wanted to write something about my life. As is, "These Hands" contains one of my favorite lines I've ever written:

My hands are getting stronger/writing up a storm
that I hope will write the weather that will someday keep me warm

Enjoy the weather.

Cheers,
Ben