04 December 2013

Reading the scene...


I just got home from a dinner with Steven Price, who composed the music for “Gravity,” and I was so jazzed (every pun intended), I knew I needed to give to a music charity tonight.

He and I talked a lot about his score and the music that influenced him. He drew from all these difference reference points that, once he mentioned them, made sense to me, but I would have never them figured out on my own because I don’t have that kind of musical vocabulary, but also because he created his own imprint.

We also talked about whom he felt were the top composers who could “read a scene” better than others. I’d never thought about composing in such an intuitive way where a musician can immediately sense the emotion in the scene and figure out what sounds to create to complement that. How incredible to be able to see something and then hear what the image needs. 

I studied piano for 8 years and know how to read music, but I have absolutely no natural musical ability whatsoever and am in awe of people who do. They speak a different language than I do. 

Some of them are born with the talent, but in many others, it’s cultivated through school programs. As we all know, music programs in schools have been decimated over the last few years. VH1’s Save the Music Foundation is dedicated to restoring music education in public schools and making sure people understand how a music education benefits every aspect of a child’s academic pursuits. 

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