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Custom Scores stop and we'd play on things. I'd go out with the percussionist and we'd bang on the side of a chair or on the floor, or they'd bang on the instrument stands. We were really looking to experiment, and this big red oil drum became a big hit for us. We tried to bring an element of surprise into it." The element of surprise is not only found in what Morris used to create the score, but how he used those instruments to write the score. He used small, ethnic instru- ments such as a lyre, or small harp, small ethnic woodwinds, and even a ukulele to juxtapose the power of Prohibition: David Cieri mixed sounds of the era with ones of today while creating the score. sample libraries to flesh out his ideas. Morris then plays everything back for the director's approval. "A lot of people lament the whole orchestral mock-up process, but I'm not one of them. I like hearing things realized in a way I can play for the director and have him react on an emotional level." While other generations of composers may The Grand Ole Opry returned to television this fall with a new theme developed by Megatrax Production Music's custom scoring division, Aircast Custom Music, based in LA. The themed broadcasts can be seen on Great American Coun- try on television and heard syndicated on the Westwood One Radio Network. "The instrumen- tation was a traditional live rhythm section — bass, drums, two guitars, piano, organ," explains Randy Hart, creative ser- vices director for Aircast (www.aircastmusic.com). Additional guitars, along with slide, rhythm and a banjo, were then added. The percussion loop from the demo was used too. 32 have tinkled their ideas out on solo piano for director approval, Morris believes this is a thing of the past. "My generation is a computer gen- eration. I grew up on computers. I had one of the first Apples, so I've always realized my ideas through technology; that's just how I work. It's a more efficient way to communicate with a director. They sit down and listen, and they either feel it or not. It's a process that I want them to really enjoy and get into." Immortals combines fantasy, ancient Greek mythology and modern visual effects. To cre- ate a score that incorporated all these ele- ments, Morris made clever use of ethnic percussion, choir, synth-y soundscapes and live orchestra. Since there is no recorded music from ancient times, Morris had free rein in terms of creating the soundscape. "I always knew that percussion would be part of it. I always knew that I wanted to bring in an ethnic woodwind player, and I found this wonderful guy in England named Byron Mul- len who brought in conch shells and war horns, Tibetan horns and Viking blowing horns. We did a whole session of just blow- ing into things that are made out of bone and wood and conch shells, and just really ancient 'of the earth' things to help infuse that layer of sounds that could be from any time in history." In addition to the traditional taiko drums, timpanis and other orchestral percussion, Morris also used an array of "found" percus- sion to add a modern texture. "We did a lot of found stuff where I would notate on the score 'metal object' for example, and we'd Post • November 2011 the orchestra and large choir. "That was kind of the M.O. for the score. The first time we meet the Gods, we pull back on this amazing camera move up to Mount Olympus. This is a grand moment in the movie, and I start the score with this tiny little solo ukulele and then behind that the strings and the choir come in very softly to support it. In a way it was a role reversal. I wanted to meet the Gods up on Mount Olympus with a very small human-sounding instrument. It's a con- nection thing, and my writing has developed like this over the past few years. I love the idea of connecting with people, and the orchestra can be a little abstract sometimes. If you put a little solo instrument into the mix then suddenly it feels like there is a humanity to it that I connect with." The score was written and recorded in two parts due to the picture editing sched- ule. First, Morris spent five days in England at Air Studios recording 60 string players and an enormous brass section, which consisted of two trumpets, eight French horns, two tubas, a cimbasso, four trombones and three bass trombones. They also recorded a large choir and percussion section. Morris then went back to LA for a month to write the bulk of the last reel. Once written, he returned to Air Studios for a final four days of recording. From the beginning, Morris knew that he wanted to record at Air Studios. "Air Studios is a renovated church in Hampstead in Lon- don. It has natural sunlight through stained glass and this beautiful reverb time to it. It's not a boxed recording studio. It has the most amazing sound — this was the sound I was writing for in my head, so we always knew we'd end up at Air." Morris not only wrote the score, but also conducted the massive orchestra while at Air Studios. "I've worked with that orchestra many times before so I knew many of the www.postmagazine.com principal players. It's a very comfortable envi- ronment for me, just knowing the principals and my favorite engineer, Jeff Foster. Tarsem my director was there, the producers were there, Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari, who worked on 300. I would come in between takes, talk to my director and have that inter- action with him and hear the music get real- ized, not only for myself but with the team." Morris completed the mix in his mix stu- dio on a 5.1 set-up of PMC IB2 monitors for LCR and the surrounds. The mix was done on a Euphonix System 5. "The mix was intense. We were really pushing my console. My System 5 has 340 inputs. It's a large for- mat mixing console and we were pushing it to the limit. It took a lot of time, but I love to mix. We mixed for 18 or 20 days on this movie, which is enormously long, I think, for a feature like this. We had four Pro Tools rigs: three for playback and the fourth for printing high definition video, the same as source video, or 1080p out of the Blackmagic video card to make it look and sound the best." From the initial concept right through the end of the mix, Morris was heavily involved in the score for Immortals. For him, that is the best way to work. "I was very involved and that's the way I like it. It's better if it's a col- laborative effort. Every step of the way there are key collaborators, whether it's an orches- trator, or a recording engineer, or it's mixing, and I'm there to help guide them through what I hear in my head, to help the ideas get realized in the way I intended them to be and in a way that serves the picture the best it can. There are no surprises and it flows better." PROHIBITION Airing this fall on PBS is Ken Burns' docu- mentary Prohibition, chronicling the rise, rule and eventual elimination of prohibition as an amendment to the Constitution. The music of the temperance and prohibition era is steeped in piano and jazz traditions, making it a natural fit for composer David Cieri (www. davidcieri.com). Cieri is no stranger to Ken Burns and Florentine Films. He recently won an Emmy for his score on The National Parks: America's Best Idea, a six-episode series pro- duced by Ken Burns and Florentine Films. The score for Prohibition is a combination of music arranged by Wynton Marsalis, and original music created by David Cieri. Using music from the era, combined with new music written in the spirit of the era, the score tells the story of prohibition in a mod- ern way. "The music I wrote in some ways can sound like it's from the '30s, and at the same time sound more modern," says Cieri. "For example, there was a piece that I