March 2022 - Wrap Up

So Hans Zimmer won the Oscar. While it was kind of expected, it was still surprising that after all these years where he obviously shaped the entire genre of film music and the academy ignoring it, this year they decided to hand him the award. Personally, I really liked the score for DUNE in the way how it worked in the movie. It's not that I would want to listen to any of this on its own but the score definitely gave the movie a very special vibe. Of course, on the musical side he was walking well treaded paths of "desert music clichés" but the production was impressive. Just the other day I was stumbling over the Filmtracks.com review on DUNE which was a roastfest including the user reviews at the bottom. And while I can understand and share some of the critizism, I still think that the music served the movie well.

The most entertaining quote from the review is this one:

These efforts yield one of the composer's truly silly, mind-boggling, media-whipping quotes: "It's an electronic score, not an orchestral one, but in a peculiar way it's one of the more organic scores I've done." (Say, what?) This score led to several other amusing Zimmer quotes about instrumentation as well, including this gem: "Part of what makes all of this so much fun is the misuse of acoustic instruments. Curiously, the rhythm of the drums and the percussion keeps appearing as organized chaos. I tried to think of something that maybe in 10,000 years you would think of it as a good groove, but right now you'd just hear it as a little iconic motif played by percussion, like weird code." Or, if that quote requires too much drug use to appreciate, you could enjoy the following indulgence: "I just tried to do things that are humanly impossible by pushing the envelope of technology. I asked for more things to superimpose the sonic quality of one instrument onto another so you would [create] these impossible sounds." You cannot blame some listeners for trying to tune out such pompous drivel.

Anyway, I think the Oscar for Dune was deserved, more as an acknowledgement of how Zimmer has shaped the industry and not for a singular achievement of filmscoring. Of course there is also this discussion of how much of the score Zimmer actually wrote but that is another can of worms.

The more unexpected thing was that in spite of the enormous outcry in the industry about the demotion of several categories (including Best Score) to not include in the live ceremony, the Academy did not walk back on their decision. This is a horrible devaluation of essential departments of film making and really is a disaster. I don't want to jump the train of how everything was better in the old days but I like to remember 20 years ago when THIS was part of the Oscar ceremony.

Nevertheless, it is just an award ceremony and has been controversial for as long as I can remember.

Other than that, March has musically been a relatively unspectacular month, with most people having their minds on other things happeneing in the world. 

However there was a bit going on behind the scenes of this Patreon. Next week, I will be accompanying one of my patrons to Prague to have his first orchestra recording experience. He asked me to give feedback and help prepare the music and to be his wingman during the recording session. It is really great to see how people who are on here take their first steps into this world and I really love to help them make the step into it. 

Especially since I launched the Discord channel for this Patreon, I really enjoy the more direct communication with you and to have chats about nerdy things.

Personally, I'm currently in early stages of a super exciting project which I will hopefully soon be able to share more about. And if all goes well, I can do some deep behind the scenes of this project for this Patreon but more on this later.

As always, thank you so much for being part of this community and supporting my Patreon!

Robin