As a continuation of this weeks lecture and the discussion of textures in audio, I began to reflect on the effect movie samples add to music and how they increase its meaning. This mostly is relevant in Progressive Rock/Metal music i’ve found, but i’m sure it’s not limited too the genre (with remixes and the like).
The first example I could think of was from the American Prog Metal band Dream Theater, who are notorious for movie sampling within their songs. In their song ‘Honor Thy Father’, Drummer Mike Portnoy implemented various samples from movies where characters renounce their family or father, recontextualising their meaning to fit the narrative Portnoy desired to portray, such as when the audio plays “I gave you money, I gave you a car, I took you in” which is then followed up with the old man saying “Not good, son”. Portnoy does this to convey that the old man on his death bed is lamenting on his own mistakes as a father and seeing other families fall apart and commenting on their ignorance as to why they’re being forsaken by their family. Furthermore, this heightens the dramatic element of the song, which Portnoy uses to convey his own strife of being a father that has to go on tour and spend time away from his family, suggesting that he is now the old man and realising his mistakes as a parent.
More examples of this in Dream Theater’s music is found all throughout their 1994 album Awake, which uses a wide array of outside TV and Film extracts in various songs in some way to me, almost give exposition. This is apparent in their song ‘Space Dye Vest’, written by then Keyboard player Kevin Moore who, after having recently broken up with his girlfriend, begins to project his affection onto this girl in a magazine that wears a Space Dye Vest. The extracts are used to describe Moore himself, yet at the same time create this soundscape of a Television in the distant background, similar to ‘Nobody Home’ from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’.
My last example is from Devin Townsend’s ‘The Death of Music’ which does not use movie samples, however towards the end has various sound bites of irrelevant conversation. The song is interesting due to how it creates its haunting soundscape, which at the completion of mixing Townsend stated he hid under the desk because of how scared he was of it. This is due to its use of synths and how the music itself seems to be playing off into an echo, creating this sense of foreboding within the listener that something is inevitably going to get loud.
The reflection from this has allowed me to step back and appreciate these samples more and therefore the songs, as when it comes to my editing in past projects, I had a tendency to re-arrange and recontextualise scenes, and I think what inspired me to do so sub-conciously was how these samples were used in the music I grew up listening too, while I edit with comedy in mind, in hindsight I would place the intent inspired from my musical DNA or whatever someone smarter than me would call it.