A bit of a long read but certainly worth it!
http://projectorandorchestra.com/scoring-the-cosmos-a-conversation-with-alan-silvestri-and-seth-macfarlane/
Quote from the article:
"It was also an extremely rare scenario where the composer wasn’t asked to spend a lot of time creating elaborate synth mockups to audition each cue before moving on—and the outcome speaks for itself. “There were no demos,” says MacFarlane. “Part of it was schedule, but part of it was: the more I do this, the more I realize that’s just a better way to do it. The technology has pushed composers into this corner where they have to demo absolutely everything, and send synth tracks so everybody can give notes on everything. It’s a bad trend that just needs to go away. When you deal with a guy like John Williams, he plays you some themes on the piano and then he goes and writes his score, and you hear it when you get to the scoring stage. The more I do this, the more I realize that’s how it should be done. Because there’s an enormous amount of time and expenditure of effort to make these mockups so a director and producer can hear the music. It’s time that is taken away from orchestration, time that the composer could be using to actually make the score better.
“If you hire a composer and you trust that composer, he or she should be treated like an actor. This is the person you hired, this is the performance they’re going to give—and you can give bits of direction, but to go in and nitpick every little piece will drive a composer nuts, just as it will drive an actor nuts. We found that it worked great. When the scores came back, we had a composer who knew how to handle an orchestra, who was a serious musician, and we got wonderfully legit music. This was all Alan.”
Enjoy!
- Mike
http://projectorandorchestra.com/scoring-the-cosmos-a-conversation-with-alan-silvestri-and-seth-macfarlane/
Quote from the article:
"It was also an extremely rare scenario where the composer wasn’t asked to spend a lot of time creating elaborate synth mockups to audition each cue before moving on—and the outcome speaks for itself. “There were no demos,” says MacFarlane. “Part of it was schedule, but part of it was: the more I do this, the more I realize that’s just a better way to do it. The technology has pushed composers into this corner where they have to demo absolutely everything, and send synth tracks so everybody can give notes on everything. It’s a bad trend that just needs to go away. When you deal with a guy like John Williams, he plays you some themes on the piano and then he goes and writes his score, and you hear it when you get to the scoring stage. The more I do this, the more I realize that’s how it should be done. Because there’s an enormous amount of time and expenditure of effort to make these mockups so a director and producer can hear the music. It’s time that is taken away from orchestration, time that the composer could be using to actually make the score better.
“If you hire a composer and you trust that composer, he or she should be treated like an actor. This is the person you hired, this is the performance they’re going to give—and you can give bits of direction, but to go in and nitpick every little piece will drive a composer nuts, just as it will drive an actor nuts. We found that it worked great. When the scores came back, we had a composer who knew how to handle an orchestra, who was a serious musician, and we got wonderfully legit music. This was all Alan.”
Enjoy!
- Mike