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November 2011

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CUSTOM SCORES [ Cont.from 34 ] the first episode of the series. He had to score a propaganda film created in '20s that depict- ed a young girl in a bar getting hit with a glass and her drunken father having to take her home. "It's a little propaganda film that is very overly dramatic, very vaudeville. It's the romantic era where all the emotion is out on your sleeve. There is something very innocent and beautiful about that era's ability to express simple feelings in a very vulnerable way. I had a really fun time writing music for this just because of how hysterical it all was. I had to push the outer limits of my playing to try to harness hysterical. You have to find the limit of who you are as a piano player as to accentuate what's happening in the scene. So that kind of franticness was fun to play with. For three or four hours there was a lot of laughter happening in the studio, trying to find that limit. At times I was barely able to hold onto the piano before the song would begin to break apart." After Cieri had written several compositions, he went to studios in and around New York City to record. At times, he would be playing solo piano, and some tracks he recorded with other musicians who played drums and bass. In the tradition of jazz, Cieri would col- laborate on the drum and bass parts. "The beauty of the jazz world is that it's highly collaborative, and I allowed the other musicians to really find their voice with respect to what's happening instead of dictating their parts to them. The melody and the feel are locked down, but how they want to move about in that feel I leave to them." For the recording sessions, Cieri favored Dream- land Recording Studios near Woodstock, NY. "It's an amazing old church that was converted into a recording studio. It has good natural reverb; it's a wooden structure and the sound in there is amazing." All mixing and mastering on the tracks was com- pleted by Dreamland's studio engineers. For Prohibition, Cieri began work over a year and a half ago. He feels that being involved very early on in the project has been beneficial for the creative process. "Florentine Films allows the music to develop in sym- biosis with how they're putting the picture together. So as the picture was in rough assembly for a year and a half, the music was being developed in tandem with that. I really like this because then music isn't just 'sprayed on' afterwards. What you get then is not the picture plus music, or music plus picture, you get an entirely new thing because the two grow together. There is this weave that Florentine Films has patiently allowed to happen. I find, for my taste, that to allow things to be stitched together over the course of a long time creates a tighter-knit relationship." TRUE BLOOD Nathan Barr (www.nathanbarr.com) is a composer and multi-instrument musician who has written and performed the score for HBO's True Blood series for the past four seasons, and will soon begin work on the fifth. As expected after four seasons, the sound for True Blood is well established. Now settled into the groove of things, the biggest challenge for Barr is keeping the themes sounding fresh. "The series has always been a very thematic show in terms of the music. Alan Ball and the shows' creators want some recognizable melodies throughout the show to help propel the story forward. So whether it's 'Bill and Sookie's Theme' or 'Eric and Sookie's Theme,' those melodies are in there. Each sea- son I try and introduce a couple of new instruments to keep the score exciting." This season, Barr has sought out bizarre stringed instruments to add some interesting flavor to the score. In particular, Barr worked a marxolin into the score. "A marxolin is a weird hybrid violin-dulcimer kind of instrument. It was sort of popular for five min- utes 50 years ago. If you dig deep on eBay you come up with these instruments that have been forgotten about outside of the circles of collectors. There are some great sounds that you don't hear that often on TV or in films these days." In addition to finding new instruments that would work with the established True Blood sound, Barr has also developed the character themes to change with the characters. "When you're following the same char- acters, you can't possibly keep playing the same cue over and over again. It's a matter of mixing up the themes to the point where it sounds like it's developing with the character. For 'Bill and Sookie's Theme,' I actually wrote a 'B' theme because we hear it so much. That was really prominent in the first and second seasons, but not as much in the third and fourth seasons now. It's a fun chal- lenge just figuring out how to play things a million differ- ent ways so it sounds fresh, yet, remains recognizable." At the beginning of a season, Barr has two weeks to score each episode. In that time, he writes and performs all the parts, starting with the episodes' biggest cues. "It's really about the big picture per episode. Finding where the biggest cues are and starting from there because that's usually going to define what happens in the rest of the episode. If I can nail those big moments, the small moments become more apparent." The sound of True Blood, according to Barr, is very cello- and guitar-centric, with the addition of prepared piano and bowed gui- tar. Being a cellist and guitar player, Barr per- forms all the parts himself, which he records into Apple's Logic using two Okta- va mics. "I play several different instruments, so with True Blood, I either start with a prepared piano, or with an acoustic guitar www.postmagazine.com Post • November 2011 43 or bowed guitar, or a cello. I like writing at the actual instruments as opposed to just pulling up sounds on a synthesizer. I use Logic for my recording and editing. It's sort of the most flexible and exhaustingly useful applica- tion. It's all really covered by Logic, the sequencing, the recording, and the editing. On a show like True Blood I try and focus on the live recording of instruments. The percussive elements are samples, but generally speaking, part of what has become my sound is the fact that I am performing and recording everything myself right there in the studio. That brings an added element of depth because it's all being performed live on the score as opposed to something that is sequenced or that relies more on synthesizers." This season, the storyline has grown in terms of scope. There is the addition of witches and séances. To score this Barr has incorporated more orchestral ele- ments than usual. "In the first episode this season, we recorded live orchestra for a couple of the bigger cues where Sookie wakes up in fairy land or goblin land. I would write all the parts, and those would get trans- ferred to paper, and we'd record a live orchestra." For Barr, using a large variety of instruments, which he performs live, is what distinguishes the music on True Blood. "I grew up playing cello and guitar equally, and I hated the cello growing up. My parents forced me to play it, and now I'm grateful they did, because it's a big part of my sound. Also, because I play bowed and plucked instruments, there are enormous families of other instru- ments I can access, whether it's a mandolin or an oud (a continued on page 46

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