JEM

Singer songwriter Jem, entered the music industry by storm via the exposure she gained from her tracks featuring as sync, soundtracks for TV shows including The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, CSI Miami and Six Feet Under, whereby literally millions of listeners worldwide have heard her music. 

Jem fused elements of rock, new wave-styled electronica and trip-hop in her first album Finally Woken.  I would say she is a an alto vocalist who if was transported to a jazz bar would easily be in harmony with her slightly husky laid back vocal sound.

I would be speaking on behalf of her if I claimed she is clearly influenced by Imogen Heap, who I will shortly be posting a blog about. However as a listener, whether musically trained or not you can easily hear the similarities in their new wave electronica style intermixed with live orchestral string timbres.

She is an artist who really relishes on different timbres and captures the essence of contemporary classical music.  Tracks such as 24 have featured in the trailer Ultraviolet; the TV series Smallville and Without a Trace; and the film Center Stage: Turn It Up.  The use of the track in film Centre Stage: Turn it up was a fundamental musical accompaniment to the final dance scene of the film, whereby the piece begins with a monophonic melodic line played by the violins in close harmony, which acts as a driving ostinato figure throughout the piece.  Following, the hip hop beat kicks in, supporting the imagery of contemporary ballet into a jazz style of dance.  The diatonic harmony of the strings is interrupted by the forceful distorted sound of the guitar who acts as a continuous interjected drone throughout the chorus’ playing the first and third beats of each 4/4bar. Today, within the film industry the recent, new up and coming genre of dance themed films tend to choose a similar style of music combining a traditional romantic piece (Tchaikovsky) for a ballet sequence with modern day urban club music.  This is generally because the films would only be popular to a young audience if the contemporary times of dance were included, thus a fusion of dance styles and a fusion of music genres.   

Check out her website if you like what you hear...http://www.jem-music.net/

Write a comment or recommend a film you have recently seen where the music really captured the scene for you from any style of film.  

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Notorious BIG Theme

The recent film Notorious illustrates the journey behind Notorious' B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) entering the world of rap music by storm straight out of Brooklyn from life to death. 

The film composer depicted the character and the suspense within the first notes of the piece beginning.  Elfman needed to create a leitmotif supporting the identity of Notorious and create awareness to the audience of his presence, composing title music and underscoring.  The sustained low strings as a drone moving into a two note ascending and descending riff across semitones.  The use of the swung hi-hat gives that gangster feel and the offbeat bass guitar as pedal note.  Following the layering of higher strings and flute melody gives this running chase feel as if its a race.  The entire use of strings, woodwind and percussion throughout the theme not only reflected the character and his position yet the composer set the scene behind the music.  Introducing the pure nature of the people and culture at that location in the time of year the film was representing and the conditions the characters were portrayed.  

Elfman’s film scores can be described as dark and brooding, lush and romantic, wild and manic - reflecting the many composers and styles which have influenced him.  His influences range from Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, jazz and rock, yet he is not a typical classical composer and he is self- taught and uses synthesizers as a layering to his music. Furthermore he has composed many phenomenal scores for the motion picture industry such as Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Simpsons soundtrack.  His work for the film, Planet of the Apes is highly polyphonic with dissonant lines among the complex use of cross rhythms.  Furthermore Batman, his biggest work today uses the whole tone scale with chromatic ostinatos and juxtaposing dramatic chords e.g. E♭minor to C♯major within an antiphonal texture throughout each of the themes for film.

Film Music today is underrated and is not recognized as popular music, yet really it is where the biggest fusions are created.  The soundtrack to a film is a score expressing the characters in their different situations and sinarios, their emotions.  Furthermore the music can simply set a geographical scene e.g. Bhangra and hip hop in the award winning film, Slumdog Millionaire.

Feel free to comment on what film soundtracks have caught your ear and grasped you emotionally to the particular scene you are waiting and thoroughly engaged in.

Check out his website...... http://elfman.filmmusic.com/

MUSE, The Resistance

Recently I went to go see Muse’s visionary performance at Wembley Stadium. The concert was a compilation; popular extracts from their old repertoire with their new fused sound, which is illustrated in the current album, The Resistance.

Muse are an example of ‘musical hybridity’.  Within the music industry it is difficult to explore new ideas without losing their style, sound or image, and still remain authentic in the public’s eye.  However as a band they are continually expanding on their audience and the excitement animated in the fan’s faces that surrounded me at the concert showed just how successful fusing the musical style that people recognize with ‘innovation’ can be.

Their current album The Resistance, adds to their musical identity with the use of orchestral timbres and the detailed use of crescendos and diminuendos throughout each track stimulates a listener’s emotions when heard.  As a listener, if you were to close your eyes to tracks like Expogenesis Symphony (Part one overture) you would think your listening to a piece of film music and feel as if you have just been transported to the cinema watching a scene from your own imagination. That is why artists like Muse have featured on many soundtracks within the film itself not just the credits (recent films: Twilight series with Supermassive Black Hole and Neutron Star collision: http://muse.mu/media-player/). Expogenesis Symphony (Part one overture) begins with a chromatic rising riff played with a rubato feel by the strings followed by the cellos entering with broken chords in order to increase the tempo of the piece as a dramatic introduction to the vocals and drums; the tense dissonant chords at the end of unresolved chord progressions are typical elements of the romantic period. Concert overtures were typical of the romantic era and developed into the symphonic poem- a type of programme music, they were a short, single movement for orchestras.

Matthew Bellamy has a huge vocal range and uses the technique of falsetto in many tracks; and bends and slide the notes, vocally and on guitar (typical of blues and classical music (glissando)).

Muse’s sound is not just described as tracks and songs of an album but symphonic pieces of music in which they are now composing contemporary concertos (Expogenesis Part One, Two, and Three).

Most listeners do not recognize the elements taken from the classical genre when listening to bands such as Muse.  It is not just the use of orchestral instruments it is the artist’s interpretation when composing for the instrument in which you can truly see their influence. 
Muses's website...http://muse.mu/

Prelude to my Blog

Today we live in such a diverse society, that we are given the opportunity and choice to pick and mix what we like and dislike, what is old and what is new, which gives us the freedom to create something with the vast influences we are use to in order to create something not entirely new but a FUSION... the culture of  hybridity.


Today, the range of music on our Ipod and mp3 playlists illustrate and tell us how open minded we've become and what a diverse music listener you are.  


When musicians are composing they are not plucking ideas out of thin air they are bouncing off what they have absorbed through learning their instrument or just pure enjoyment listening.  The skills and techniques required are distinct from one genre or sub-genre to another.


My Blog will be discussing the various artists out there who are either successfully or unsuccessfully aiming to bring back the Classical period with a twist in order to bring back popularity to the genre and keep up with the modern moving times.  I won't just be talking about artists such as Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson, the typical singers who come to mind when discussing the genre but also reflecting those producers and writers who sample many famous composers works.  Furthermore analyse the current chart music who use traditional orchestral timbres to enhance their music and sound.............


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