Welcome back to Scoring for Films where you are always greeted by Vito Lo Re and Fabrizio Campanelli; if you enjoyed the last episode, you have three things to do: first, subscribe to the channel; second, activate the bell so you know when we upload a new video; and third, watch today's episode which is the sequel to Basic Instinct. Last time, we saw Nick descend into the infernal circle of the damned, captivated by the allure and cunning of Catherine, whom Goldsmith perfectly framed as we began to see analyze, and now we must continue with... So, we left Nick and his colleague taking Catherine Tramell to the police station, and we left off with her cutting to her in the car, where Goldsmith lets us hear what we can now decisively say is Catherine's theme with very specific characteristics. We're in the car. So, a 2/4 beat; this theme, this held E-flat, is a characteristic part of Catherine which we'll see especially in a few minutes in the legendary interrogation scene. And we also have another characteristic of Catherine: being associated with unusual harmonies.

The harp will be a constant scan, a sort of clock. Yes, also to give a sense of obsession, of machinery. Catherine is plotting, her web is weaving methodically. So, this rhythmic scanning of the harp is truly interesting and we'll find it again in the interrogation we'll see later. But let's go back because Goldsmith also makes an interesting use of that Mickey Mousing which only he could do so well! Also Williams...

Let's go back for a moment. Nick's turn also corresponds to a kind of amazement, because Catherine has shown a sort of arrogant, manipulative attitude. So, this Mickey Mousing is not only physical on Nick's head movement, but also psychological, giving us a sense of amazement, of surprise. And then the descending chromaticism gives the idea of descent, decay... Let's move on, now keeping well in mind that the harp is moving and continues its methodicity, but the woodwinds over a C pedal in the low range of double basses and cellos start moving in a "weird" way. Strange.

Here's the woodwinds. It's an A-flat minor, but with a C natural in the bass and B played by harp. Here it goes up a third. Goes up another third. Here it picks up the same harmony, but along with Catherine's theme. Here it is.

Fix it in your mind, because we'll hear it again in the interrogation. Here it is on her theme. And again, the upper third play on her, again! As you can see, there's nothing random: the play of two continues The interesting thing is that in the duet we understood to be the logical and schematic center of the entire construction of the score (even under their dialogues) there's also a crescendo. There's a crescendo because the thirds take the violins up and as the violins rise the string tension increases - we'll see it also in the interrogation - the tension reaches us by analogy as well. Here, the string is stressed!

That "glassy" sound appears again that we heard when Nick saw her naked behind the glass. With such a Maestro, nothing is random: when she's in the frame, her theme plays, when he's there, we hear cellos... all that language that turns a beautiful score into a masterpiece. Sure, they're builders of details that are crafted on the image, on the edited footage and also on the scores where the sync points are. Yes, they're marked in the score as we can see "Touches shoulder" so, or here there's a line from the script and so this musical part will go at the beginning of the line or it says "Catherine in car" so when she gets in the car so, nothing is left to chance. I'd say Nick is now ready to face the trial of his life, which is also a bit the trial of all of us when we saw for the first time a scene that made history not only for Sharon Stone, not only for Verhoeven...

We'll see the interrogation room: I've never seen an interrogation room like that... The interrogation rooms where they interrogated me were different... You were interrogated? More than once! Let's start with this cut where you can already see that she has control of the situation and that - as you said earlier off-air - she is the cat playing with the mice. Let's start with a line of hers that gives the cue to the music.

Actually, the scene starts before, they start questioning her and there's no music; when does the music come in? This is a very important topic: where to bring in the music? They start questioning her in a rather generic way. When does the music come in? When she hints to the other "mice" that there might be something between her and Nick. Here she asks him if he has ever had sexual activity under the influence of narcotic substance.

Here are the "stressed" strings descending on the percussive synth sound we heard in the car, and what do we have above? The harp. We're getting into the heart of the machination and here come the cellos i.e., the male part - as we saw in the previous piece - and her theme playing with them. They're more and more in Catherine's web, which is in fact manipulating and stressing the interrogation; so, the theme Goldsmith prepared us for in the car, the violin theme with this very tense descending sound, reflects even more the load of tension in the group. When we have such a low male part and such a high female part with nothing in between, it's really like putting her on a higher level. We also notice the introduction of the celesta is a bit unusual, Celesta is very important in noir and thriller in general.

It's a very used sound. So first, we have a synth celesta and we'll see how it plays with harp here they don't double up obviously but later we'll see how they interweave and their interaction and their combined sound creates a very interesting sound mesh because in this case they transport us into a magical world but a world that's still related to the tense context; an evil magical world. Celesta and harp together in unison it's a classic orchestration tricks that we also practice. The percussive sound we hear it's a sound from a Roland D-50, an 80s synth that made history and has been used many times. We'll also see it for example, used in a famous Enya song. There are sounds that are used in pop, in soundtracks, everywhere, but this sound will be recurrent as we go through the score and it's a sound that reminds us of stabs, the oscillating motion of the percussion of the synth is also a mimic of the arm's motion in stabbing, the dynamics of murder.

Let's move on and see what our beloved Catherine is up to. Here again is her theme on Nick shaken like the others in the group. The methodicity of the harp appears. And the violas nobody cared about in the previuos scene. Which I think is still even now. The held notes give a sense of palpitations.

The third ascent also here stresses the discourse and the violins rise. Here we find something particular that perhaps went unnoticed. Let's quickly go back and let's notice that Nick stands up and listen to his line which says, "Do you like playing games?" So, what we are receiving from the music, this game we talked about of the seductive, dangerous, deadly cat with the mice, who are now in fact her playthings, This game is replicated by Nick's line so there's a double meaning, narrative, linguistic and musical narrative, both going in the exact same direction. Again, the idea of playing a game. The violas obsession and then... Ah, well, these are typical Goldsmith's chords.

This violas phrase reminds Hermann again same phrase and some chords with a combination of notes, a truly particular chord opening that we will analyze soon in the sequencer. What do we hear underneath? We hear the Mermaid's song as we saw last episode. Magical synths, our poor Ulysses, not tied up, Nick, who along with the other sailors is now her prey. And let me point out another thing, here we have a long series of rhythmic changes, seven-eighths, four-four, seven eighths, four-four, many times giving you that sense of rhythmic indeterminacy that helps us communicate. Of course, this total asymmetry makes the whole journey oblique, uncertain, a truly particular dynamic.

You know, many times we change the tempo for a sync reason. In this case, instead, when we have something so methodical: seven-eighths, four-four, seven eighths, four-four, it's clear that here there's no longer a need for particular syncs, but it's the very pace Goldsmith wants to give to the music and obviously to the scene. Now let's go see it on the sequencer, there are some really nice things. Here we are on our Cubase, where we can immediately see something very nice, the thing we spoke about earlier, regarding the synth. We replicated with our Serum a sound that is similar, we can hear it. Here it is.

The delay in this case we simulate with our Sound Toys Echo Boy, it's a ping pong delay, so it bounces left and right. Let's listen from the beginning. Here we can already see the dynamics of the path, the celesta with the harp, we note the harp in yellow, the violas in green, the cellos in red, the double bass in blue, the celesta in blue. Violins... Here is our percussive sound in blue. Here we note the use of the alto flute along with the lower range of the violas.

The flute in this case is an alto flute because it plays in a slightly lower range. for the regular flute usually doesn't play below the middle C. So we see that notes played by the flute are in the lower part of the violas played with a mute. The sound is therefore very silky, a bit hollow, mysterious by its nature. The violas are often used by Goldsmith, also with harmonies created only within their section. Actually in this piece, we clearly hear the part of the alto flute but in the mix of the soundtrack it is heard very little, it is an ingredient that serves to highlight the lower part of the violas, but it is not a solo part.

At the end of the phrase of the violas and the alto flute begin what I call the "oblique chords": the suspension, the disbelief and that sensation of vertigo that we mentioned last time and that we will find in other chord arrangements later, with a sound created between violas, double basses and cellos that is very peculiar because it's a chord that has a bass on A-flat and the cellos playing an E-flat and another A-flat. C-flat, F-flat, so E-flat against F-flat. We can here, on the sequencer, raise the octave of the lower range and we see that they actually create second clashes, what we mentioned earlier: the E-flat with F-flat, and the A-flat with B-flat. So this chord played together would be like this. Goldsmith's use of very open chords and dissonances distributed across different octaves is unique. I believe his idea was to write a "tight" chord and then spread it across different octaves.

Try experimenting on the piano with these dissonances, because when distributed in the orchestra, they take on a different character due to the effect when played by strings rather than the piano. Yes, after all, dissonance is crucial in movies like thrillers. Why? What does dissonance do? It introduces something "wrong" into a "right" chord, giving us that sense of precariousness, that sense of evil that a great Maestro like Goldsmith used so well! And now...

Here comes the theme again. And after this unease of the chords, we hear reappear that descent of the Mermaid-Catherine's song that ensnares our hapless characters, but this time it's entrusted in unison to the celesta and the harp. This creates a very beautiful, very particular sound effect. Let's hear this passage played only with the celesta. Or only with the harp. Let's hear both together.

It's a particular sound that is used a lot. From the point of view of novelty, this soundtrack doesn't invent anything but it's a compendium of how thriller soundtracks were written until a few years ago. This sound and musical grammar is essentially timeless. Unlike, for example, synthesizers that immediately give a temporal connotation. Today, if we made a thriller using this orchestration, it would always be current. Then we can discuss taste: maybe today synths are more popular, but that's another matter.

What would Desplat be without the celesta? I don't know a Desplat soundtrack without the celesta. So let's hear the celesta and harp together in the tutti. Another particular thing: for the first time here in this piece, the violas pluck along with these notes of the harp and celesta, doing what the "glassy" synth was doing before. Always in the duet play, the held notes of the woodwinds respond to the violas' pizzicato. What was previously entrusted to the violas is now played by the woodwinds, for violas now respond in turn to the harp and the celesta.

We find again Goldsmith's Mickey Mousing in a piece called "Shadows." The Rock 'n Roll star has been killed by his girlfriend, and it's the plot of the book Nick is reading, previously written by Catherine. The percussive Roland synth is now a sort of sound leitmotif... And then our beloved Goldsmith's Mickey Mousing... Ah, fantastic. Very elegant. on the page turn.

On the violas' tremolo below we have the harp along with an electric piano, always giving that sense of glassiness that we already found earlier in the other synth sounds. The page turn leads us to the discovery. And when he closes it, the double basses play alone nad assertively and the closure becomes a sign of fate. I would say we have said a lot about "Basic Instinct," we have also seen a lot. I don't know if we have been attentive enough to the violas... I always enjoy watching this movie...

I would say we can say goodbye and meet again in the next episode. Don't miss it, of course. Goodbye.