Welcome back to Scoring for Films with Vito Lo Re and Fabrizio Campanelli. Today we’re talking about something specific to film scores: instrumentation and the use of certain instruments, particularly orchestral instruments, but we’ll see it’s not just about them, not just. Just last night, I was helping my son review for his music lesson. He had an oral exam today, and I remembered that until the 1500s, composers didn’t write music specifying what instruments to play it. Then, more or less from Monteverdi onward, they started saying: "I want this piece played by this instrument, with these characteristics." So today, we’re talking about… Today we’re talking about instrumentation. From where it started to where it’s headed… ...

So, we began with silence, because when cinema was silent, there was an initial phase where there wasn’t… anything; there were no dialogues, but there was no music either. Then they said… "Nice film, but… but it’s missing something; it needs some sound." Of course, film reels at the time couldn’t carry sound yet. So, what did they do? Cinemas had a piano, partly because most cinemas were repurposed theaters, so a piano was usually available, and they published books with music suitable for different scenarios. However, the music wasn’t written for that film. In these books, you’d find: music for a chase scene… The precursor to the library concept, right?

Or: music for a horror scene. So, you could watch the same film in three different cinemas, each with three completely different musical scores. And three, perhaps, and three very different outcomes. We started with an upright piano, then other instruments began to be added, maybe a violin, maybe a double bass, maybe some percussion, which in some cases would improvise, or in other cases, these books provided instructions, guidelines to follow. In some cases, there was the piano part and two other tracks that could be played by a flute, a violin, an oboe... depending on what was available.

But then there was some evolution, wasn’t there? I fell in love with a film called The Artist, an Oscar-winning score, which tells the story of the tragedy of an actor who, from the glory days of silent cinema, finds himself in a world with sound... where everything changes for him; he’s no longer the center of this new world of sound. And to make organized shoots possible, with the right lighting setups, the right sets, so there were no variables, these soundstages were built—they were soundproofed, isolating the sound to prevent an ambulance or other external noises from interfering... Soundproofing was crucial. So, soundstages became an essential element.

Soundstages made it possible for cinema to speak. And, beyond speaking, they made it possible to host a soundtrack. This evolution led to the Golden Age of cinema, that period between the 1930s and 1940s of cinematic splendor, driven partly by market forces: people went to the cinema because TV hadn’t yet reached every household. Theater had been around for ages, while cinema was a relatively new form of entertainment. Everyone went to the cinema. They had double features, so in one evening you could see two films, spending the whole night at the cinema.

Vito, I’m a Golden Age producer. I’ve got a wonderful film where the actor even speaks! But who do I hire to write the soundtrack? There were so many great composers you could call, the Newmans, first generation, so David and Alfred, Rozsa, who we see in this image, and then of course Steiner, Waxman... But what is that characteristic that unites them? Coming from a late Romantic musical background, and with cinema having at the time an incredible budget, the orchestras were huge, and the music was always very grandiose, with famous themes like Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur...

it was music that was very grand, often overly so, and sometimes disconnected... Why? They tended to create a really strong theme, but if you then look at the underscoring of various scenes, at least from today’s perspective... it’s debatable. A director today might say, "Tone it down a bit." If one of the students who attends our courses created something like that, we would say it feels a bit disconnected from the image. Someone would say, "Tone it down," perhaps not in terms of the size of the orchestra, but in terms of the redundancy in the writing.

That is, the writing has an entropy so high it drains your brain of cognitive resources. Try to put yourself in the mindset of a composer from a late Romantic tradition, culturally raised with the world of opera and theater, who suddenly finds themselves having to operate in a completely new language— —the language of cinema—and so they probably applied and transferred what was their way of writing for that world to this new world. In this photo we see Charlie Chaplin, I believe it was during the recording of Limelight. On my channel, I made a video specifically about the curious case of Charlie Chaplin's soundtracks. We’ve done many episodes on microphones... recording...

and here these walls, which almost look like concrete... I don’t see sound- absorbing materials... I don’t see the famous mattresses that used to be hung on walls to block out the outside world. We’d have to ask the engineer... even the floor looks rather worn... So we start with a piano and end up with a large symphonic ensemble...

and this is a monumental change, because it lays the foundation for what will become the sound of film, the sound of cinema, that sound which would later be revived by Williams in the 1970s, with the reintroduction of the grand symphonic orchestra in the performance and writing of film scores. It’s an ensemble that begins to mold itself to the needs of the films. Yes, because, you know, the history of cinema, like all human history, follows a sinusoidal curve. In cinema, what happened? After this phase, until the 1950s and ’60s, when synthesizers began to emerge, in the 1970s there was a phase where many composers created electronic soundtracks, and in some cases there was even a connection to pop music. We’ve also talked about Latin jazz...

or disco music, a little further down the line. Many soundtracks from the 70s adopted this more electronic sound. Until, as you said, Williams brought everyone back home... These films from the 30s were grossing - in the 30s - millions... In a film grossing maybe 10-15 million, spending $20,000 on a top orchestra was nothing. Let's take a little focus on five historic soundtracks.

We've analyzed two of them, but not specifically from an instrumentation perspective, which holds some surprises, even funny ones. We’re at the end of the last century, precisely in the 1979-1999 period. The first soundtrack we’re looking at is Star Trek, which has been discussed recently. The Star Trek orchestra was a large one, with woodwinds in triples... a tenor saxophone, which is quite unusual overall. Three bassoons, the third with contrabassoon duties.

Six horns. Four trumpets and six trombones. And then we also talked about the famous synths. Two pianos, celesta, and clavichord... I notice something, Vito. Strings, just like that...

With no indication of how many. Yes, they’re not listed because, with an ensemble this large, with all these brass, you’re looking at a minimum of fourteen to sixteen first violins. Just like in the best recipes: Strings, to taste. Nobody would handle such an orchestra with 6 first violins... But the most interesting thing about this instrumentation, and also the others we’ll see in a few minutes, isn’t so much the orchestral ensemble, which is fairly normal but rather the percussion section. Alright, let’s see these percussion instruments.

A glockenspiel... Two vibraphones, because if you have only one you’re a bit cheap... A bass vibraphone... You never know if you’ll need to play ONE note... this orchestral arrangement might have meant that certain things we only heard once, in the entire soundtrack, like the bass vibraphone that really did a... Marimba, bass marimba, alright, but let’s look at something a bit stranger.

The elephant drums... Guys, I don’t know what that is. Write in the comments if you know what the elephant drums are. I didn’t look it up. You’ve got time to look it up... But we also have boo bams...

which are bamboo-based instruments. Theoretically, we looked it up. From the pictures, it seems to be something actually made of bamboo. Then we have tambourines, snare drum, we won’t even consider these... And a devil chaser. I swear, I don’t know what a devil chaser is.

And now I’ll show you. we explore and learn new things ourselves. And then, a trans-celeste. How could we live without a trans-celeste!... It’s a microtonal percussion instrument. So it has metal bars tuned, I think, to quarter tones...

Let’s skip forward 6 years to 1985: "Back to the Future." Here too, we see a large orchestra, with triple winds, 6 horns, 4 trumpets. Anyway, we’ve understood that if you don’t have triple winds, you’re a loser... 5 trombones, 2 harps, 2 pianos... 2 electric pianos... Synthesizers... Strings to taste...

There’s one very interesting instrument, right, Fabri? There are rub rods... That we see in this video... They’re rods that are rubbed to emit this very glassy sound... I don’t remember where they were used in Back to the Future... Tomorrow I’ll rewatch it!

But it’s a sound almost for a sci-fi movie... Let’s move on to our beloved Danny Elfman, in Batman. 1989. So here, you see the usual triple winds, but... with 5 flutes!... 3 weren’t enough.

6 horns, 6 trumpets, 8 trombones. It’s practically a brass band. Two harps, two celestes, two pianos, organ, electric piano, two synthesizers Jazz double bass... And electric bass. Choir. Of course.

What would Danny Elfman be without a choir? Here we see a couple of crazy percussion instruments. But I wonder, is this amount of percussion a composer’s choice or the orchestrator’s? Or both? I think he called every percussionist in the United States. Elfman, in particular about percussion, is always very hands-on.

So I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, in fact, these are all his choices. But it’s possible that the orchestrator contributed something. In any case, obviously, I think he personally listened. You know, he listened and said, this is cool... this is less cool... this is awesome.

The first thing that drives me crazy is the big metal trash can. Have you seen Stomp, that musical entirely made with percussion? So, it’s a metal trash can that’s struck... And again, the boobam, undisputed protagonist of 80s soundtracks! And something I adore: the musical saw. And two – because one was too few – clangorous metal plates ...

Noisy. And then also things super oriental: the Balinese ceng ceng... I admit I don’t know what it is. Fast forward three years: Basic Instinct. Here we see the orchestra at the end with woodwinds at 2; I almost feel embarrassed for Goldsmith... Four horns...

three trombones... And a list of percussion instruments that, compared to what we’ve seen before, seems ridiculous. There’s a cute little thing. For example, we see this Simmons Tom Tom. What is a Simmons Tom Tom? It’s an electronic one...

We see in this a legacy of the '80s... Probably he didn’t need a grandiose ensemble to portray the intimate aspect of Basic Instinct. We’ve talked also about that: the choice of the ensemble as a whole, as a mass of sound and therefore a timbral mass that communicates one thing rather than another. Moving to 1999, we close out the decade with another iconic soundtrack: The Matrix by Don Davis. We see an ensemble that is indeed very large, certainly; some woodwinds at three, some at two, six horns, three trumpets... Four trombones, a tuba, two pianos, the choir, strings...

But the madness of this score is the percussion section. Look at these fantastic elements. First? The Styrofoam Cup. I didn’t know what it was—I mean, I know what it means in English, but we had to look it up... We see it, but we see it used in a particular way.

In the end, we don’t know how it was used. Here we’re seeing it rubbed, with a bow... and then the Aluminophone... This clang, clang, of aluminum pieces falling... Our attention then falls on the nipple gong... Because these gongs, in fact, if we look again, have a vaguely...

Can we say “nipple” on YouTube?... Then the monkey drum. The monkey drum—what is the monkey drum, excuse me? We see it. It’s the one with little monkeys... Yes, I dropped it...

I’ll go grab it right away... Then fantastic, exotic things... like the ceng ceng, Chinese tom tom, and then Odaiko, Taiko, Daiko, Hiridaiko... We are quite familiar with Taiko... They really make a lot of noise. Then there’s Gagaku, which, as far as we know, is more of a genre than an instrument...

Probably an ensemble of percussion instruments that are part of a traditional sound system accompanying that type of music. Back to the Matrix score tomorrow! and see where they used it... And after this overdose of instruments, in the last 20 years, something new has happened in some respects. Yes, we’ve leaned heavily toward electronics. Here, we have to give thanks, in some ways, to Maestro Hans Zimmer, who made it an aesthetic choice, an expressive choice.

Think of films like Inception, Interstellar... All those films where he redefined the rules of the game. There’s also a return to electronics, if you will, as a dominant, fundamental sound matrix in the score. Perhaps because of the style that accompanies certain films today, a specific photography, a certain way of storytelling in scenes... Driven by directors’ requests, especially in cinema – much less in television... They ask for less thematic material, fewer recognizable melodies, and more sound.

I even worked on a film called Calcinculo In this movie, I was explicitly asked to work heavily on electronics, on electronic sound, starting from an entirely acoustic piece because the auteur style, applied to that story, applied to a specific psychological setting, required that grayness and otherness of electronic sound, which is very much in vogue at the moment. Who is the cause and who is the effect? Have we arrived at today’s situation because composers used electronics for expressive or budget reasons? Or because directors asked them to? Or because the audience’s taste demands it? Probably a combination of all three.

But I tend to see current taste as something that, for many factors, self-determines and always pushes in one direction rather than another, including how you use your sound palette; maybe even inspired by something that fascinated you... Think of Zimmer, the famous Zimmerbraam... It didn’t exist before, but now, whenever you need to highlight a moment... This way of experiencing the particular effectiveness of a solution also sets a trend for the moment. Now you need to do three things: Subscribe to the channel... Second, leave a like – unless you hated the video, in which case you’re justified in not liking it.

But third, write in the comments – without checking Wikipedia – did you know the instruments we talked about? Because some of them were, frankly, completely unknown to me. See you in the next video, bye.