The Evolution of Film Music ft. Composer David Newman

00:00:00:02 – 00:00:22:01

Chris Hayzel

What’s up, everyone? I’m Chris Hayzel, and you’re listening to Orchestrated a Music podcast. I hope you guys had a really good holiday season. I know I did. You know, my my fairly young family decided to do Christmas at home for the very first time. Normally we would go out to California and visit parents and grandparents and do the family thing.

00:00:22:01 – 00:00:59:15

Chris Hayzel

But this year, you know, we decided to stay put and put up a Christmas tree and decorate and do Christmas morning. And it was like the first time that we ever did that in this house since we moved in a couple of years ago. So it was it was very cool. But I want to ask, you know, as the decorations are starting to come down and you’re hearing less and less jingle bells in the grocery stores, are there any fond memories that you’re walking away from 2023 with, you know, anything that you’re proud of, you know, And as we start to turn our gaze to the new year, like, is there anything that you’re really

00:00:59:15 – 00:01:21:21

Chris Hayzel

looking forward to and maybe you have some goals that you’d like to achieve or some experiences that you’d like to have? And maybe there’s a creative project that you’re really looking forward to hopping into. And I just want to say like, whatever it is, whatever it is that you’re looking forward to, I hope that you go into 2024 feeling motivated and inspired.

00:01:21:23 – 00:01:54:16

Chris Hayzel

I’ll tell you here, at Cinesamples. We have some big things that we’re pretty excited about coming up next year. 2023 was mostly dedicated to getting Musio built fine, tuning the experience to the best that it can be and packing it full of really good instruments and tools to help foster creativity and musical exploration. And now that we’ve gotten it to a place where we feel really good about it and we’re super excited to be sharing it with all of you, we are expanding our view to include building an online presence that aims to do the same thing.

00:01:54:18 – 00:02:24:18

Chris Hayzel

So next year, in addition to Musio continuing to grow, you can also look forward to more interviews and videos and podcast episodes that explore, you know, kind of just what it means exactly to be a musician in today’s modern era. Because at the end of the day, our core aim here at cinema samples is to support music creators like you and to inspire you and empower you and hopefully add value to your own musical journey.

00:02:24:20 – 00:02:45:16

Chris Hayzel

So with all of that said, as we’re getting those things planned and organized, I thought I’d go back through the Cinesamples archive and see if there is anything worth posting to keep you inspired while we kind of get our ducks in a row for 2024. And in doing so, I came across this brilliant interview from a few years ago with the American composer David Newman.

00:02:45:18 – 00:03:05:20

Chris Hayzel

Now, throughout his career, David has scored literally over 100 films. He made a name for himself back in the eighties with movies like Throw Momma from the Train, Heathers, and then later on, some of my personal favorites, you know, The Sandlot, Tommy Boy, Death to Smoochy. I mean, the list goes on. Like I said, it’s over 100 films.

00:03:05:22 – 00:03:40:06

Chris Hayzel

He also happens to be the son of one of the most influential figures in film music history, Alfred Newman. So naturally, you know, with those two experiences combined, he’s just full of a lot of historical knowledge, and he has some really keen observations of like, you know, the nuances of that history. In the interview, our CEO, Mike Pattie, sits down with David and they talk about his career, what it was like to get started back then, how music transformed filmmaking in the 1930s, and even a little bit about how technology has transformed music today.

00:03:40:08 – 00:03:56:15

Chris Hayzel

So needless to say, you’re in for a treat. I know I was when I was listening to it. Anyway, I’m going to start flapping my gums now and I’ll just say I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. So without further delay, here’s Mike Patti’s conversation with David Newman.

00:03:56:17 – 00:03:58:02

Mike Patti

Thanks for being here.

00:03:58:07 – 00:04:20:07

David Newman

it’s great. This is I love talking about this stuff. It’s it’s it’s just wildly interesting how this all develops. And the Fox stage is part of the development of film music from the you know, from the thirties when there was actually you could put mute you know, sound on films. I mean it’s it’s it’s an amazing history so as well I’m assuming get into it.

00:04:20:08 – 00:04:27:00

Mike Patti

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about yourself. First of all, you started off in the business playing violin.

00:04:27:00 – 00:04:45:07

David Newman

Yeah, I was a I was a I went to USC as a what we call a violin major. So I got an undergrad degree and I actually started as a piano major, but I ended up as a violin because I was both piano and violin. And and then I got a masters in conducting at USC in the late seventies.

00:04:45:07 – 00:05:07:15

David Newman

But during that time, I was, you know, we had our little group of friends and we sort of infiltrated. And there was so much work in Los Angeles in the late seventies. I graduated in 76, 1976. And so we a lot of us that worked at the Friends and everything, we started working in television and film, record dates, jingles.

00:05:07:15 – 00:05:27:18

David Newman

You know, there was probably enough work for five or 600 musicians to make a full time living in Los Angeles at that time. Very different now. But at at that time, everything in television was live. There was tons of record dates going on, tons of jingles, you know, jingles or commercials, you know. So it was it was a blast.

00:05:27:18 – 00:05:56:15

David Newman

You know, I had no intention of writing any music. I wanted to be a conductor. And I was studying, conducting, working, getting a master’s degree in conducting at USC. And I had a private teacher that I spent hours and hours with studying, conducting. And then I just it just never happened. And I kind of gave up. And then I decided that I try for film music and I had to teach myself to compose to a degree.

00:05:56:15 – 00:06:16:13

David Newman

I mean, I think everyone that’s trained in music in a conservatory knows how to write. You know, you have to write expositions of fugues and do dictation. So I mean, I could come something, play something and write it down, of course. But to really learn and then learning orchestration was just it was just terribly difficult.

00:06:16:17 – 00:06:22:19

Mike Patti

So. So as a violinist and this late seventies and eighties, what were some of the projects you got to work?

00:06:22:19 – 00:06:43:15

David Newman

Yeah, I worked a lot for Goldsmith and for John Williams. I worked on itI, I worked on the first Star Trek movie, which was at Fox. It was at MGM. But Jerry, the I mean, Star Trek was a Paramount film, Paramount as a stage, but Jerry loved the everybody loved the.

00:06:43:17 – 00:06:44:12

Mike Patti

Jerry girls that.

00:06:44:13 – 00:07:09:02

David Newman

Love the Fox stage and Lionel did a lot of conducting there, too. Lionel Newman, who was my dad’s brother, who was the head of music for your probably even longer than my dad in the seventies and eighties. And we I so I played I remember that we played for a whole week and they you know, basically we recorded about 15 minutes of music and in a week, four days or so.

00:07:09:02 – 00:07:34:07

David Newman

Wow. And all thrown out because Robert Wise didn’t like the music. Jerry Goldsmith is the modernist, hegemonic figure of the late 19th century, right? John Williams is kind of the populist. He is he’s a he’s brought up as a pianist and in big band. They all know they’re all completely trained in classical. I’m not saying that. It’s just Jerry was doing modern composition.

00:07:34:09 – 00:07:56:20

David Newman

John was doing began some and they and they, they became film composers. So they sort of moved into this kind of culture of of film music. So Jerry was still in the like, Papillon, Patton, Planet of the Apes era, which are all kind of modernist scores. So the original score for Star Trek was kind of like Debussy, like La Mer.

00:07:56:22 – 00:08:19:06

David Newman

It’s like a big ship, you know, in the night. And they just it’s Star Wars. It come out and it they just weren’t having it. They wanted a big theme and everything. And they just argued and argued and argued. And there are lots of stories, some of them quite funny and weird. And, you know, it got pretty crazy that week.

00:08:19:08 – 00:08:35:20

David Newman

So we all went away and then a month later came back. And then, of course, that. Da da da da da da. He wrote that, which is a triumphant kind of theme for Star Trek. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t where they started on them, on on the movie. So that was all. That was all that at Fox, you know.

00:08:35:20 – 00:08:36:01

David Newman

Really?

00:08:36:02 – 00:08:43:12

Mike Patti

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you did Violent and then so what did the transition to being a violinist, to being a composer?

00:08:43:12 – 00:09:11:19

David Newman

Well, by the time I was in my twenties, I wasn’t. I wasn’t really I didn’t want to do violin as a career. I was doing it to make money. And, I mean, I loved playing the violin. I actually once I didn’t care that much about it, I, I really improved it. It’s, it’s a weird thing. But anyway, I wanted to be a conductor and I was obsessed with it, but it really wasn’t constitutionally compatible for me.

00:09:11:19 – 00:09:33:22

David Newman

I didn’t like traveling. It was very difficult to get into. You needed to mentor with somebody either in Europe or at Juilliard, you know, various things. It just I was more interested in the we used to have these platonic discussions about what is conducting it fun. Like Plato would ask, what is justice? Or, you know, what is beauty, right?

00:09:34:00 – 00:09:58:04

David Newman

Why is a Beethoven symphony beautiful? I don’t know. I mean, so what is the essence of conducting? It’s a nonverbal, you know, blah, blah, blah. And we went into this the weeds with this guy who I found just by luck. His name was William Kettering. A lot of film composers studied with him. My brother Tom did, Randy did, and a lot of he did a lot of ear training for film composers, too, and counterpoint.

00:09:58:04 – 00:10:15:18

David Newman

And, you know, it kind of that kind of thing. And then I just I just it just was not going to I just I got married. I needed I didn’t want to be a violinist the rest of my life. And so I just decided nobody asked me to do it. Yeah. And I made a demo and I worked.

00:10:15:20 – 00:10:36:05

David Newman

I start off working with another composer because I just wasn’t, you know, And I you’d think I’d know how to orchestrate, but I didn’t. I played in orchestras all my life. It just it’s a whole different process, learning how to how to orchestrate you know, even though I knew all this, this music, it just it didn’t click for me.

00:10:36:07 – 00:10:58:13

David Newman

But eventually it clicked. So by the like, I’d say from about 81. So I worked 76 to about 82 in the studios, and then from about 82 to 85, 86, it took me to get a job. I did a couple of like industrial films and stuff, and then I got it and then I got it. Then I got a show, I got a Roger Corman film, and then I got to this film called Critters.

00:10:58:13 – 00:11:16:22

David Newman

And then DeVito hired me to do with Romano from the Train, which I think was 87. And then I was off to the races, you know, once yeah, once you did a film and that era, there just weren’t that many people that could say they had done a a studio film. So it was much easier to make a career when I started than it is now.

00:11:17:02 – 00:11:22:02

David Newman

It’s virtually I mean, it’s very difficult to make a career now. So.

00:11:22:04 – 00:11:29:00

Mike Patti

So maybe that’s a good segue way. So what does it look like today as a composer? You know, compared to yeah.

00:11:29:00 – 00:11:57:23

David Newman

As a young person, I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s just so many more people that can do it for there wasn’t any technology. Okay. So 86 there is very rudimentary technology to do mock ups. So that that’s Elfman starting then, Right? Right, right. And they’re doing mock ups. What they really don’t sound very good. Like I remember a story of Elfman when he did Batman, which was a big film that for Jon Peters and crazy people it is Batman.

00:11:57:23 – 00:12:14:12

David Newman

Is Warner Brothers, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he did a mock up of Star Wars of the Stars. So he played them the Star Wars. Q Right, the John Williams Great. And then he played them a mock up of the star was getting says, Look, this is this is the difference but this is what you’re going to hear on Batman.

00:12:14:12 – 00:12:17:07

David Newman

But see, this is where it’s going to get, you know.

00:12:17:09 – 00:12:18:13

Mike Patti

And so we educate to.

00:12:18:13 – 00:12:43:02

David Newman

Try to educate them as much as you can educate somebody like because it was really very rudimentary. So I didn’t start mocking up anything till late eighties. So I was doing I was just orchestrator. I didn’t use an orchestrator. I just I had score paper on my piano and terrible handwriting. And then my first foray into technology was with music engraving.

00:12:43:04 – 00:13:07:02

David Newman

I found a company because I used to I ran the composers program at Sundance from I think 87 to 90 or something, and there was an outfit there. It was called a Rado music manuscript, or they’re now out of business. But it was a PC based, tablet based thing, and I started using that because it really cut down on my error, you know, copying errors and stuff.

00:13:07:06 – 00:13:10:22

David Newman

Yeah. And then eventually I started little by little mocking things up and.

00:13:10:22 – 00:13:11:19

Mike Patti

Working in a sequencer.

00:13:11:20 – 00:13:36:02

David Newman

Yeah, I started in some PC based sequencer. I forget what it was called. And then I used vision of OPCODE, which it doesn’t exist anymore, which had some really nice stuff that I wish Logic and Cubase but they don’t like. You could have you could, you could stack like 32 sequences and then you could do like little pieces of stuff and then paste it all together, you know?

00:13:36:05 – 00:14:08:04

David Newman

Yeah, but it wouldn’t work now because you have to, you have to print everything now, you know, but you know, and then eventually technology. So with technology you completely opens up the, the thing. So yeah. And there are all these music schools I have my pros and cons about that, about paying all that money for a degree in film composition when it’s going to be so hard to get the money back that you might have borrowed to go to school.

00:14:08:06 – 00:14:22:14

David Newman

I mean, at least it’s not for you. This is not like going to law school or med school, but it’s still I don’t know that they really help you get a job or really are honestly explaining to you how weird this is. You know.

00:14:22:16 – 00:14:26:04

Mike Patti

I think that’s the best way to learn is to assist another composer, right? Yeah.

00:14:26:04 – 00:14:27:17

David Newman

But then, but then you get stopped.

00:14:27:17 – 00:14:29:09

Mike Patti

Actually, just doing it is.

00:14:29:11 – 00:14:57:02

David Newman

Yeah, I don’t know. There are pros and cons of that too, you know, You might not be. I could never have worked for another composer. It just I wasn’t constitutionally able to do it. It’s hard enough for me to work with an orchestrator. I’ve hardly ever had anyone ghostwrite or assist me writing on a on a series, you know, and and I’ve seen people get stuck in mentor in turn relationships.

00:14:57:02 – 00:15:18:16

David Newman

And so I don’t know you know, I the only advice I can give a young person would be to be have a well-rounded education and because I know and try to get your music to Ed is not music Ed is not directors, but editors because they cut in music. They don’t care where it came from. They’ll cut in music while they’re filming.

00:15:18:18 – 00:15:37:06

David Newman

And if you can get your music to an editor, that’s you have a much better chance of somebody listening to it and seeing, you know, what it is. And then the other things have a well-rounded education. You know, be well read, be no theater, no music opera. You never know what a director is going to be interested in talking about.

00:15:37:06 – 00:15:39:18

David Newman

You want to be an interesting person to talk to, you know?

00:15:39:20 – 00:15:47:12

Mike Patti

So it sounds like it’s almost like you won’t have the foundational musical stuff established. And the technology is something that is just a tool that you use. Yeah, but.

00:15:47:14 – 00:16:09:23

David Newman

Yeah, but a lot of people know there are a lot of people now that, you know, are some of our biggest composers are don’t read and write music. The Beatles didn’t read or write music. They celebrated not reading, writing, music it again. I’m constitutionally unable to even I do not judge it. I just cannot imagine making music without being trained.

00:16:10:01 – 00:16:33:18

David Newman

I don’t think training does anything in terms of how good you are as a composer, because I think composition is a procedure of choices. You know, you you do something and you write, you think on it. And retrospectively you edit it and you know, and I don’t I don’t think that has anything to do with training. It just I would think it would be terrifying to be a musician and not be really well trained.

00:16:33:18 – 00:16:34:11

David Newman

But. Right.

00:16:34:13 – 00:16:34:19

Mike Patti

Right.

00:16:34:19 – 00:16:58:01

David Newman

But there is a lot of that now. It because the technology is so good, you know, I mean, I basically orchestrate everything in logic now, you know, and because it’s pretty damn good logic at at transcribing because you can you can there are a lot of things you can do with No because it comes from a note later.

00:16:58:01 – 00:17:03:21

David Newman

It has a little bit of a DNA of notes here. And then what was it after Annotator? It was, but there.

00:17:04:00 – 00:17:04:21

Mike Patti

Is no magic or.

00:17:04:21 – 00:17:28:14

David Newman

Yeah, imagine that’s what it was. And they have a they have a DNA of, of that they don’t allow you to, to quantized the duration which is a problem. But the the you can make it look writes quantized in the notation without quantized in the music because as you know with samples quantized samples sometimes just doesn’t that doesn’t work.

00:17:28:14 – 00:17:29:00

David Newman

You know.

00:17:29:00 – 00:17:47:16

Mike Patti

So obviously technology has changed, right? I mean, we can talk for hours about stuff everyone kind of already knows. But what are the similarities between the like the craft of film? Music, in my opinion, is it’s really been the same. Would you say are there any similarities between it was and, you know, in the seventies and eighties as there are and scoring pictures today?

00:17:47:17 – 00:18:12:02

David Newman

I mean, you can look at epochs or stages of film music, you know, from 1930. I’m fascinated now by the early thirties because the there wasn’t any film music till really till 1931. And they struggled for years to try to figure out what it was. My dad was a large part of that. He was here in 1930. Max Steiner was here, Franz Waxman was here in 1934.

00:18:12:02 – 00:18:37:00

David Newman

Korngold came from Vienna. You can’t I cannot express how famous George KONKLE was. And I mean that torture of Erich Korngold was in the thirties. He was he was as famous a musician as there was in the world at that at that time. And he came to do Midsummer Night’s Dream and that all mixed up. And you get 1939, you get Gone with the Wind, you get Wuthering Heights, you get Wizard of Oz.

00:18:37:00 – 00:19:06:00

David Newman

It’s kind of a mature art form by then. It’s basically viognier in light motive with Italian arias. So kind of melody singing. So it’s light mode is in that there’s a theme for a character and the themes are Italianate, and then they’re kind of songs like they are song structure is kind of, you know, four bars, eight bars or, or whatever, or it’s a like jaws, like a two note motive or something, you know.

00:19:06:02 – 00:19:30:12

David Newman

And that is what it became. But I wouldn’t say that’s what it is now. I think it’s fundamentally different now. Interesting film technology has changed so much and but more most of all, the means of distribution have changed. So with social media, short form stuff, Yeah, I think look at it all. You know, look at TikTok, look at YouTube, look at all that.

00:19:30:12 – 00:19:53:10

David Newman

That affects what movies are. And I think movies the way they historically have been, I don’t think they will cease to exist by any means. But I think it’s a different business now. And, you know, money like how much film made over this weekend and how much this made and this made this much money. And and these, you know, this obsession with how much money it made.

00:19:53:12 – 00:20:23:20

David Newman

Okay. Yeah. But when you compare it to the money that Apple and Google and our world now where you’re talking hundreds of billions and a one or $2 trillion companies, the whole film business is six or $7 billion. It’s like nothing. You know that. I think that’s what’s affected a change. And I think film music has gone a little bit down on the scale of what it used to do to tell the story.

00:20:23:20 – 00:20:49:23

David Newman

I don’t think it’s really cinematic right now. It’s more I wouldn’t say it’s sound effects because it is thematic. It’s just not cinematic in the same way, I think. I mean, that’s a fairly nuanced statement and it’s my opinion. I, you know, of course, there still are movies that have themes and stuff, but really up to a certain point, as you said it was, you could really follow it, that it was this, this.

00:20:50:00 – 00:21:16:12

David Newman

Yeah, in the sixties it became Mancini and Alex North and, you know, Goldsmith, did you know Planet of the Apes and you know, and John did a bunch of very modern ish scores and then, you know, and then you get Jaws, which is a complete change disruption and Star Wars, which yeah, now everything is, you know, Star Wars and, and we are sort of still in the Star Wars universe with Marvel and stuff.

00:21:16:13 – 00:21:37:05

Mike Patti

Yeah. So I wonder because you mentioned technology, because, you know, there’s all these streaming platforms and all this stuff and the amount of content that’s required nowadays is immense. Yeah. And so the timelines for composers and you know, Yes. Have shrunk. Yeah. And to create, I mean how has that affected the quality or the type of scores that we write?

00:21:37:07 – 00:22:02:12

David Newman

I just think there’s so much more so it goes so much faster. There’s less money being bandied around. It just affects the quality. It just does it’s, it’s the it’s the nature. But, you know, too much money is a bad thing, too. You know, when you have unlimited money, you get you know, excesses and screwy things, too. But too little money is that’s the normal thing.

00:22:02:12 – 00:22:31:20

David Newman

Too little time, too little money, too little understanding of what music is there for. Those guys really thought about in the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, John’s generation, Goldsmith, John Williams. GOLDSMITH They really thought about what music is doing there. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, unless music is constantly through the movie from beginning to end, where you start and stop is like a monumental decision.

00:22:31:22 – 00:22:50:13

David Newman

When there’s no music in a in a film or television or even a YouTube, you know, there’s no music. And then all of a sudden there’s music. It doesn’t even matter in a certain sense what the music is, just the fact that there is music there. And then when it ends, the fact that it ends, it’s making a statement, statement, statement.

00:22:50:13 – 00:23:14:04

David Newman

So what I find now is they don’t they want you to try to hide. It’s making a statement. What what the thirties generation would call a commentator for music, music that is commentating in real time on what’s going on in the screen or setting something up for later, or all the things that we would think of as that style of film composing.

00:23:14:06 – 00:23:50:08

David Newman

That is not what people are asking for now. They want to not, they think it’s giving away the story to comment, for the music to comment on it. So it’s more like I would say. Then again, this my pitch is more like diegetic stuff. It’s like there’s there’s something in the picture that makes this okay to have this music or something, you know, Not that they didn’t do a lot of that in the thirties and forties too, because they had these huge research departments and there are lots of films that are basically source music based or song based.

00:23:50:08 – 00:24:12:05

David Newman

You know, think of like Casablanca is all based on a song, all of it. I mean, almost the entire score is based on a song. It’s like a theme and variations of a of a of a song. So they weren’t opposed to doing that. Or like my father’s film score, How Green Was My Valley, which probably a lot of your viewers won’t know, but it was a very famous like 48, 40 or late forties.

00:24:12:10 – 00:24:28:04

David Newman

It’s based on a on a on a Celtic folk song or a Scottish folk tune. And they did they researched, you know, this and there’s a lot of source music in it that is put together with scoring and stuff. Yeah but I think now go ahead.

00:24:28:07 – 00:24:48:22

Mike Patti

I was going to say I’d say that well, on a positive note, I think that there have been I mean, although rare, there’s been some good scores that come out when you’re working with a director that can trust you or a director that’s being trusted to to let the composer do what they want of is he? SYLVESTER He still gets to put out a good score once in a while.

00:24:49:00 – 00:25:00:06

Mike Patti

I mean, and there’s and John Powell and some of these guys are really doing great work. But it’s rare and it’s unfortunate because, you know, if we let composers do what they really can do. Yeah, I think.

00:25:00:12 – 00:25:20:18

David Newman

It’s it doesn’t happen instantly. The stuff it’s you know, it’s like, of course, there’s still going to be movies and theaters and, you know, but it’s inevitable. You can see where it’s going and you can see that the film industry itself is kind of not really even facing the issue. If you look at the what the academy is doing.

00:25:20:18 – 00:25:39:15

David Newman

And when people talk about film in theaters, it, you know, you don’t really get a good understanding of that. They really understand what’s going on, you know, and try to, you know, figure out what they can do to, you know, to figure out how to make this happen. You know.

00:25:39:19 – 00:26:00:02

Mike Patti

It’s like it was also there’s other areas of media that are just exploded beyond film. You get a lot of short, short form. Yeah. That are that are making a living, getting to write these big symphonic scores with themes like in the video game industry. Yeah, really is lending itself towards this kind of yes composing. Yeah and I do a lot of stuff for like the Disney parks and you know we can actually write a theme and stuff.

00:26:00:02 – 00:26:16:11

David Newman

Well they want you to because then it, then it makes sense. What I’m saying is with what you see in film, feature film, Yeah. And what you hear of composers and touring, I don’t want it to. I don’t want you to do anything I don’t want. This is too much for your comment. The same. But is.

00:26:16:14 – 00:26:17:15

Mike Patti

It? It makes sense. Yeah, it.

00:26:17:15 – 00:26:38:18

David Newman

Is. And maybe the movies can’t handle it. It’s probably you don’t know till you actually write it and look at it if the movie can even handle anything. COMMENTATOR Of it all, you know where you’re have a theme and it comes back and you recognize it from before, which is the essence of the Wagnerian light motive, you know, which is 1850.

00:26:38:18 – 00:27:04:03

David Newman

I mean, that that’s back to, you know, that that period of time. I mean, Faulkner’s really the the grandfather of film, film music, even though it’s generally not Germanic, as I said, it’s, it’s more tuneful and a little bit easier to comprehend. But still the idea of a theme for a thing, a character or a feeling is that’s completely Wagnerian.

00:27:04:05 – 00:27:14:21

Mike Patti

Let’s talk about your dad. Alfred Newman Yeah, he probably was the modern inventor of film music. Yeah, we that we know of. And so, yeah, talking.

00:27:14:21 – 00:27:27:09

David Newman

About can I tell you a little story I conduct at the Bowl every year. John Williams was so gracious. He lets me split a program with him every year around Labor Day, and they’re like rock concerts at the. I don’t know if you’ve ever been Hollywood Bowl.

00:27:27:09 – 00:27:28:22

Mike Patti

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:29:00 – 00:27:30:23

David Newman

They’re like rock. They’re great. They’re crazy.

00:27:30:23 – 00:27:35:01

Mike Patti

Right? We all went the whole thing. The samples crew was there cheering you on. so.

00:27:35:01 – 00:27:36:19

David Newman

You heard my story.

00:27:36:21 – 00:27:37:13

Mike Patti

Tell it again.

00:27:37:14 – 00:27:56:15

David Newman

Well, my dad and Gershwin were born. Gershwin was born 1899. My dad was born in 1900. They both lived in New York. You know, my dad was born in New York. He’s the only great father of film music. What they call it that, that was born in America, but just barely, you know, for 20 years from Russian-Jewish parents.

00:27:56:20 – 00:28:18:09

David Newman

And he was a child prodigy and he they were dirt poor. There were ten of them that lived in a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment in New Haven, Connecticut, where a bunch of Russian-Jewish immigrants lived. But he was a prodigy. His mother recognized it, got him lessons, and he was making a living by the time he was 12, 13 years old, doing vaudeville and everything.

00:28:18:09 – 00:28:37:17

David Newman

So he met Gershwin when he was probably 14 or 15 because Gershwin was a song plugger at a publishing house on Tin Pan Alley, which was 28th Street in New York between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. And there were a ton of them, and they were they were selling sheet music. Sheet music was the only way to play popular music.

00:28:37:17 – 00:29:07:00

David Newman

There was no recording, right? And so they met. And then and then they met again in 1920 when my dad took over for Max Steiner, who was music directing a show called Dear Mabel, which was just some friggin show that Max Steiner got sick. It used a bunch of Gershwin songs and my dad took over and then him and Gershwin became friends, and the stage manager was George Cukor.

00:29:07:02 – 00:29:32:14

David Newman

So George Cukor, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman and Gershwin are all doing, and they’re all 20 years old and they’re in New York. It must have been awesome, by the way. And they’re in they have no idea what’s coming in in 1930. Not Gershwin, but all those three are in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, early 1930. Right. When talking films are becoming commercially viable.

00:29:32:16 – 00:29:55:07

David Newman

And Steiner and Alfred Newman, as I said. Waxman Later, Korngold, they invented film music. You can read if you are so inclined and can find it them discussing this. What do we do? Do we have music at the beginning? At the end, just in between scenes, it wasn’t evident what to do, and the director said, Why is it?

00:29:55:09 – 00:30:09:01

David Newman

Why should we have any music here? We don’t have any. It was more like they wanted to do like what 19th century melodrama would have been were a play and you have a scene change. You have some music, right? Right. No music during the scene because it’s a play right? Maybe we do that or maybe we were like silent film.

00:30:09:01 – 00:30:42:03

David Newman

We just Babylon with music through the whole thing. But don’t do anything, you know, just, just do. And then they talked about trying to educate. They said or talked these directors into letting them write some more original music because they were still like, interpolating things. And like, there’s a story of Steiner with King Kong. They 1933 where he’s they test the movie and people are laughing at the stupid special effects.

00:30:42:03 – 00:31:06:03

David Newman

And Steiner begs King Vidor, who was the director? Please let me write an original score to scare the pants out of it. And he does. He writes an original score and it completely changes. It becomes a big hit, which is the genesis of everything in Hollywood if it makes money. Right. And people like it. And there were all kinds of things, Alfred Newman doing things, you know, and they eventually figured it out.

00:31:06:05 – 00:31:24:06

David Newman

And my father was at U.A. United Artists, which is basically Goldwyn, which is over on Formosa and Santa monica Boulevard. It was that studio that had the best scoring stage of all in in Hollywood. It was the first to go, but it was the that’s where Best Years of Our Lives was recorded. And if you know that recording.

00:31:24:08 – 00:31:37:11

David Newman

yeah. So he stayed there until 39, then 39, he wrote the logo for Darryl Zanuck, I think 1933 or 34. But he wasn’t under contract yet to Fox.

00:31:37:14 – 00:31:38:14

Mike Patti

The 20th century.

00:31:38:16 – 00:31:57:11

David Newman

To 20 years. So but yeah but the first part of it, the yeah, not the what the extension the first LA doctor around to the doctor that that that that that did it all that was the end right. So any fanfare up till 1954. That’s the fanfare it’s like 9 seconds it doesn’t have the da da da da.

00:31:57:12 – 00:32:19:18

David Newman

That was later. Which we can talk about if you want. So in 1939, Darryl Zanuck hires them and then he’s at Fox for 20 years on that gorgeous scoring stage, which they totally figured out where to place mikes. And they my dad was obsessed with microphone placement. It was really the only if you placing microphones that’s how you mixed music.

00:32:19:20 – 00:32:46:18

David Newman

And his idea because of his training is like when you sit in a great hall you sit in Carnegie Hall or or the Philharmonie in Berlin or their concert house in Vienna, you know, you sit in the 10th row, it’s just perfect. You hear the sound stage, you hear where everybody is, but it’s all blended. You don’t hear any individual violin playing, you know, unless it’s a solo or something.

00:32:46:19 – 00:33:05:07

David Newman

So it’s all about the blend that’s very hard to get in a studio. So you would get it by where you place microphones in a particular room and you experiment. You know, I think I told you the story about MGM. If you go and you know those rafters at MGM, you can climb up those. Yeah. Have you been up there?

00:33:05:09 – 00:33:26:20

David Newman

Their marks for how the West was won, which was in 1963, because he had a whole session just for microphone placement, because he was freaked about it, because he had been freelance for a few years. He had done everything at Fox. They had all the microphones exactly where they wanted. If they needed to do, say, some more big band stuff, they’d move the microphones, you know, That’s how they mixed with literally.

00:33:27:02 – 00:33:46:11

David Newman

All right, literally hanging microphones. I hope you can get your hands on some of the pictures because you can see the mikes, how they did it. I don’t think they used a tree. Maybe they did. Maybe they I think they use single mikes, like way back against the back wall. I’m sure there’s people you can ask about it.

00:33:46:11 – 00:34:10:03

David Newman

It’s completely fascinating to me because the mike placement when I was playing a lot, I tried to sneak in and hear what I could hear and different engineers would place the microphones in different places and really to get the sound of a symphony orchestra like that, like as if you’re sitting in a hall, it’s very hard to do and you have to have the ear that that’s what you want.

00:34:10:03 – 00:34:11:21

David Newman

And maybe you don’t want to do that, you know. So.

00:34:11:21 – 00:34:16:08

Mike Patti

So was this the first time then that they were figuring out how to record an orchestra?

00:34:16:08 – 00:34:17:16

David Newman

They were figuring it out in.

00:34:17:16 – 00:34:18:21

Mike Patti

A in a studio?

00:34:19:01 – 00:34:40:09

David Newman

Well, they were figuring it out in the thirties. But the technology initially was so bad, you know, That’s why there’s a lot of tuba in a in a in a, in a in the trumpets Don’t sound very good in early films, you know. But the technology developed so quickly that, as I said, you get you get from 1932 1939, you listen to Gone with the Wind and it all sounds like film.

00:34:40:10 – 00:35:07:11

David Newman

I mean, that’s not the greatest, but it sounds like a film score, right? But if you listen to films 3132, which are completely fascinating, I highly recommend you. You’re got your viewers and everything. Just check out like my father did, a 1931 King fighter movie called Street Scene Based. It was a New York Broadway play, very little music, but there’s enough a music in it and just see how it’s used.

00:35:07:11 – 00:35:27:00

David Newman

And you think, Why isn’t there any music here? Why wouldn’t you know? But if you take the ride from beginning to end, you can see what they were up against, what they were trying to figure out how to how to do it. But by the late thirties, by the time he got to Fox in their own ways, each you know him.

00:35:27:00 – 00:35:50:04

David Newman

STEINER Franz Waxman. Korngold was at Warner Brothers. Yes. So Reiner was at Warner Brothers. You know, who am I kidding? Dmitri Tiomkin, the Russian. I mean, he was at Paramount, I don’t know. But they all these had studio orchestras, full time orchestras. Basically. It would be like, you know, Haydn or that era. They have an orchestra at their disposal.

00:35:50:04 – 00:36:16:13

David Newman

24 seven. They have to pay them a certain number of hours a week, whether they use them or not. So they’re there’s they’re on call. They’re all so happy to be there. Musician because they were getting way more money than they would playing in the L.A.. Phil or Philadelphia. So you’ve got great musicians, you’ve got all these musicians flooding in from Europe, Jewish, Jewish, Russian, Jewish, Viennese, Jewish, German, Jewish.

00:36:16:15 – 00:36:44:21

David Newman

They all have great instruments because it wasn’t expensive to have great string instruments. You can’t imagine what a difference that makes having a beautiful violin, cello, viola in a bow, it violins, bows, cellos. It can go from sounding like horrible to being like God made it So a Stradivarius violin or a Del Jesu a canary violin, you know, costs millions of dollars.

00:36:44:21 – 00:37:00:22

David Newman

Now then it was, you know, 20. Yeah, it’s something you could afford. Or a bow. Now, a taught bow. The French bows were the bows. They all had this stuff, you know, would now cost two, three, $400,000. It would have cost $2,000 then. So yeah.

00:37:01:00 – 00:37:05:04

Mike Patti

And these musicians, they also had to learn how to perform in a studio that’s an exact so that.

00:37:05:04 – 00:37:24:03

David Newman

They were taught because Max Steiner and Alfred Newman, as I told you before, they came from Broadway, that their they they learn conducting in you know Steiner did in Vienna and then here you know there’s a lot of like popular music in Vienna is a big popular music city, too. It’s not it’s a you know, it’s a walled city.

00:37:24:03 – 00:37:50:09

David Newman

It’s it’s a very weird place. It’s a fun loving, you know, it’s not Brahms and Beethoven, Just there’s that in opera, but there’s a lot of pop music that’s in the DNA. So Korngold comes. That’s why he just was natural, good at its own composing. He he was a he had an opera. Ditto to start was an opera he did in the twenties when he was just a kid.

00:37:50:11 – 00:38:03:18

David Newman

It’s still in the repertoire. I mean it he was that famous and he came here. He wanted to go back, but he couldn’t go back. Now. None of them could go back till after the war till 45, and many of them didn’t go back, you know, so.

00:38:03:22 – 00:38:14:22

Mike Patti

So I wanted to talk about. So Alfred was running the music department at Fox. So like, what was that like? Who was working under him? How did that, you know.

00:38:15:00 – 00:38:34:06

David Newman

39 to 59, 32, 39. He’s working at United Artists on the lot at Ewa there, which was they said on foremost I don’t know what they I think it’s I don’t know what they call it now but it’s still there the studio not just not the recording session. And he’s working principally for Samuel Goldwyn. So basically he answers to no one but Samuel Goldwyn.

00:38:34:09 – 00:39:02:11

David Newman

He’s given a budget. He does whatever he wants. Somehow he figure it out to zero in on Sam Goldwyn politically, and then he could do whatever he wanted. Darryl Zanuck was desperate to get my father at Fox from like 1933 on this way and write the logo for Fox. He begged and begged and begged. And finally my dad acquiesced in 1939.

00:39:02:11 – 00:39:33:16

David Newman

It was kind of a crossover year, and he worked there. The only person he reported to was Darryl Zanuck. Everything else was run almost as a is a despotic dictator. It is completely unique. I think in in, in in in this kind of environment, though, you know, they all had a lot of power, obviously. But Alfred Newman and the Fox Music Department, you can talk to John, you know, all these guys, it just it was another universe, you know.

00:39:33:16 – 00:39:55:20

David Newman

So he came out of it very you know, Bernard Hermann was working at Fox in the forties before Hitchcock. You know, bathroom was impossible to work with. My could care less what a jerk he was as long as he delivered, as long as he was talented and deliver, he just didn’t care. And if you weren’t, were so gone.

00:39:56:00 – 00:40:30:07

David Newman

Wow. He was scary. My dad. I mean, he could, but he loved talented people as long as they delivered. But that’s a range. Was composers, you know, orchestrators or arranger orchestras. The library. That library is still there. Basically. They still have this library. It didn’t get thrown away like MGM or this ridiculous stuff of the you know, Disney has a good library, but everything was under there under his basically his control.

00:40:30:07 – 00:40:59:00

David Newman

And he was very good at delegating once he liked somebody and trusted them, he would delegate authority, but he taught those musicians how to do this, how to play in this style of what you would think of is golden age Hollywood film music, which I would call this hyper rubato style. There’s always been rubato. You hear about Mahler and the way Viognier conducted and Brahms conducted that there were bottom meats slowing down, speeding.

00:40:59:00 – 00:41:33:12

David Newman

It’s really a term of like stolen time in Italian, but it it’s ebbing and flowing. And it was he principally did it under dialog, but it became a, it became stylistic. Yeah. And, and it was just in its zenith in the late forties and fifties and Fox in the stage and as I said they set up the mikes for this and when they would have like a solo, they’d have a soloist, they, they’d, they’d have a solo mike and you could hear it’s more of a chamber music he sounds than it is a huge orchestra sound.

00:41:33:14 – 00:42:02:06

David Newman

The winds in the brass are a little more defined, punchy. They’re a little less roomy. They’re still roomy and it’s still blended. So for instance, the Fox Orchestra of the late forties and fifties on these big films that are triple wins, which, you know, three, three, three, three, but they wouldn’t do it like that. They go two flutes, two oboes, five clarinets and two bassoons.

00:42:02:08 – 00:42:45:08

David Newman

And the idea was the clarinet family is the melodious single read, right? And it’s the melodist part of the woodwinds that have the entire range. He’d have maybe an E-flat to be flats, B-flat, E-flat contra, which is not generally used. It’s a would kind of symphonic band instrument and then the the contra and he would use that to it when he needed to blend wins as an ensemble to blend with the strings because they were all about blend but on the stage they had to deal with these microphones because there was really very little you could do mixing in e cueing and stuff like that.

00:42:45:08 – 00:42:46:12

David Newman

You know, it was.

00:42:46:14 – 00:42:51:07

Mike Patti

Right from the beginning to get interesting. Yeah, from the because that’s very interesting about the the woodwind setup.

00:42:51:12 – 00:43:00:19

David Newman

Well you can see does it make sense right. Because yeah if you want winds to like you want to feel them but you don’t want to really hear them unless it’s a solo, if it’s a oboes, you know.

00:43:01:00 – 00:43:01:20

Mike Patti

That this is a you.

00:43:01:21 – 00:43:22:12

David Newman

Right. Yeah. You write the oboes in a certain range because in a certain range they don’t stick out. The clarinets can be like almost inaudible in any range. It’s part of the way you can play a clarinet bassoons. You can’t do that, you know, you might blend bassoons with horns, which bassoons blend very well with horns, whatever. But the idea was to blend.

00:43:22:12 – 00:43:50:21

David Newman

When he wanted to blend, that’s what you would do. You’d have a big choir of clarinets that would help blend the. Yeah, the the the woodwinds and the brass were like a lot of them. Weren’t these big bands like these Harry James, is it Harry James Band was the ones that my dad used to use. You know, they did a lot of those films too, you know, swing films and big, you know, big, brassy, you know, films and stuff too.

00:43:50:21 – 00:44:15:06

David Newman

So they had a certain style that they did with that too, which really was a big band with orchestra. And he did the Newman system, the he did the clicks and streamers system. 1933 34 He developed this streamers and the flutters because because most of them were doing with a sweep hand clock, you put the timing and the score and you’d watch a clock.

00:44:15:08 – 00:44:41:12

David Newman

But, you know, here’s your stand, here’s the clock, here’s the orchestra and here’s the movie. So my dad was a really good conductor, so he wanted it to be like, he’s in a pit, in an opera pit. And what in an opera pit, you’re looking up. So now it’s on the film, all the sync stuff. So you’re you can look at your orchestra, which is really important, and you can look at the film, which is what you’re performing to.

00:44:41:13 – 00:44:52:21

David Newman

Yeah. So he developed this thing of these streamers, these lines that go across and flutters so that you on as a sort of boogie sync places. Yeah. And then the streamers are like, like how do.

00:44:52:21 – 00:44:53:19

Mike Patti

They make those.

00:44:53:21 – 00:45:06:20

David Newman

They scratch, they take a work print and skirt like a streamer, three foot streamer, five foot streamer or one and a half with streamers depending on how long you wanted it to take to go across in the flutters. They just punch a couple of holes in the film.

00:45:06:20 – 00:45:14:18

Mike Patti

And isn’t that true? Like, and it’s scientific, like literally score the film, but that was where the term. Yeah. Scoring came from. Yeah. Right.

00:45:14:18 – 00:45:19:03

David Newman

Yeah. And spotting the film music goes here and this spot.

00:45:19:03 – 00:45:19:12

Mike Patti

Yeah. Yeah.

00:45:19:12 – 00:45:40:01

David Newman

And then it stops in this spot and, and the actual. Yeah. The actual frame of the frame itself. Yeah. That’s fine. And then he developed also the of the flutters as I said that were, you could see it would go every other frame, maybe three or five or seven, whatever you wanted, you could sink it on the third frame on the first frame, you know, it was all silent.

00:45:40:03 – 00:45:55:21

David Newman

There was a book of how to do it in the music. Editors did it. And the thing about Flutters is you’re conducting and you don’t have to be staring at the at the screen. You could be looking, say, at the cello, say, and but peripherally, when when something flashes your eyes.

00:45:55:22 – 00:45:56:20

Mike Patti

You see but you know, you.

00:45:56:20 – 00:46:22:19

David Newman

Can see so so they and that’s still used today. Yeah that system is I just did home alone at Hollywood at Disney Hall it’s all streamed in flight. Well it wasn’t it’s fluttered a little bit but it’s all streamed right. Just like that used to be. Now we put Barbie counters on it, which they didn’t do. And now, of course, you can have you can have a streamer every bar, which you could have do, but was just to work intensive.

00:46:22:19 – 00:46:42:21

David Newman

Somebody had to scratch the emotion off the film. Click has always been used. That was an innovation from the beginning. Max Steiner did that. They all used click from when they when they needed it, but Alfred Newman probably less than than most of the Max Steiner always, almost always used clicks because he wasn’t that great a conductor. Yeah.

00:46:43:01 – 00:47:12:00

David Newman

I’ll tell you a story like I did Casablanca. You know, you must remember a kiss is still a kiss. So it’s the whole score is a variation of that. So where Alfred Newman would write down Auto 34.123, four. And if it was a cue, he’d go. DOTTY No, no, no, no, no, no. But it would all be notated in four or just block notation.

00:47:12:00 – 00:47:42:20

David Newman

It wouldn’t be noted. Max Steiner The opposite. It’s all triplets and, you know, da da da da. Yeah, it’s like it looks like a mess. It’s like the musicians have to like what? You know, you have to figure out because it would be click, click, click, click. So he’d write the Roboto into the actual music itself. John Williams told me that because I was doing it at Tanglewood one year, the last scene, and I thought, Why is he doing this?

00:47:42:20 – 00:47:51:20

David Newman

And I thought, Do you know why? And he said, Well, you’re just writing in the rubato. Yeah, my dad would conduct the rubato. Max Steiner would write in the revised because he always use a click track.

00:47:52:01 – 00:47:52:11

Mike Patti

Wow.

00:47:52:11 – 00:47:55:19

David Newman

So they all had different styles. And my dad, all.

00:47:55:19 – 00:47:58:05

Mike Patti

The same end result is.

00:47:58:07 – 00:47:58:17

David Newman

His own.

00:47:58:17 – 00:48:06:12

Mike Patti

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things I want to talk about is the room itself. Yeah. Which has been around since 1930. When was it built?

00:48:06:12 – 00:48:11:16

David Newman

I don’t know. It’s built in the thirties, right. Yeah. I don’t think it’s before. Yeah. You can get the.

00:48:11:18 – 00:48:29:00

Mike Patti

Yeah. Well we’ll look that up. Well then we’ll show the picture. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the history of the stage. Well, you had a full time orchestra there. They were just. What? It sounds incredible to me. I mean, I feel like we were born in the wrong decade, but. So what was that like? And what was the room like?

00:48:29:00 – 00:48:30:02

Mike Patti

Technically speaking?

00:48:30:02 – 00:48:41:19

David Newman

Okay, as far as I know, the room was put back in 89 to exactly the dimensions as it was when it was built. However, the the.

00:48:41:21 – 00:48:44:00

Mike Patti

Okay, it was put back. What when did they say.

00:48:44:05 – 00:48:59:22

David Newman

I’ll give you the thing. So he goes in the fort right now, those of you that have been to Fox, you’ll show pictures. There’s a big huge control room at the back of the at the back of the room. Right. That didn’t used to be there when my dad was there. That was the wall that was the back side of the studio.

00:48:59:22 – 00:49:05:07

David Newman

So he’s facing the screen and back of him. And so.

00:49:05:08 – 00:49:07:08

Mike Patti

The screen locates the screen location where.

00:49:07:08 – 00:49:07:23

David Newman

It is. Now.

00:49:07:23 – 00:49:10:11

Mike Patti

This hasn’t changed in a hundred years or whenever. Yeah, but.

00:49:10:12 – 00:49:34:08

David Newman

The the recording booth was upstairs to his as he’s standing looking at the screen. It would be to his right. Yes. There were squares that you’d go up. That’s where the control room was. And there was a Wurlitzer there too. That was. Yes, that was part of the thing. Yeah. Nate, Nate Barnes and somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so that’s the way it was, right through all the years of my dad.

00:49:34:08 – 00:49:57:08

David Newman

And then when television started getting ramping up where it all had to be live and they were doing sessions, you know, morning, afternoon and evening, you know, five, six days a week, you know. And Lionel was there at that at that time. They decided because they needed there weren’t any ISO booths or I don’t think there were any ISO booths.

00:49:57:10 – 00:50:23:04

David Newman

What you know, they just didn’t do it that way. Everybody was in there. Now they need ISO booths, you know, they need a drummer in a ISO booth. They don’t want it. Yeah. It’s impossible to record a drummer in the, you know, in a space with the orchestra if you want to really do it. And you know, maybe a stand up bass player or whatever they so they, they, they rejiggered it, they, they, I, I think they moved the, the, the, they moved they, they had the, the control room.

00:50:23:04 – 00:50:42:18

David Newman

Now I’m not sure of the exact history of this somehow the control room and ended up where it is now. It wasn’t near the size that it was and they used a bunch of these eyesores. They still have ISO rooms now but they, they, they moved it back and they moved it back to the original dimensions. So that went on for years.

00:50:42:20 – 00:51:06:00

David Newman

Lionel left TV, kind of started dwindling in more feature films, were now being done at Fox and then the powers to be at Fox like they do with all the studios. Some brilliant genius decided, Well, we’re not making any money from the scoring stage, which of course they don’t really, you know, it’s more of a value added proposition.

00:51:06:02 – 00:51:24:09

David Newman

Of course, they don’t care that it’s historic and, you know, it should be a landmark, you know, should we ever fucking be able to touch excuse my language, be able to touch it? Yeah. Now let’s get rid of it. Let’s turn it into offices or of a dubbing stage or whatever. And Robert Kraft, God bless him, fought and fought and fought to restore it.

00:51:24:09 – 00:51:47:14

David Newman

Let’s restore the stage. Let’s have a big event. Let’s let’s you know, and we’re going to be one of the only stages and so they did they put it that physical space, to my knowledge, is put back almost exactly to where it was Now, the control room is included and there is an ISO room on each side as you as you know that you can use.

00:51:47:16 – 00:51:50:11

David Newman

So it’s great. It’s best of both. Both. So the stage.

00:51:50:11 – 00:51:52:14

Mike Patti

Is basically what it was.

00:51:52:20 – 00:51:53:20

David Newman

Dimensionally in.

00:51:53:20 – 00:51:54:06

Mike Patti

The 19.

00:51:54:06 – 00:52:12:15

David Newman

40. I mean, I don’t know that it’s the same wood, but it might, might be I don’t know what the but but the wood that it’s a wood floor in the layout, the whole thing. Yeah. Now the organ is not there anymore but, and the control room’s not up. It’s where you know where it is now of course, a fantastic control room.

00:52:12:15 – 00:52:20:00

David Newman

I mean it’s got you can have 20 people in there easily and it’s not an issue at all. It’s great. I love the control room. Yeah, it’s my favorite now.

00:52:20:00 – 00:52:29:10

Mike Patti

A lot of composing now the way that Alfred and a lot of the composers, they would have the orchestra position a certain direction. Is that right? He would be facing the screen. The screen.

00:52:29:14 – 00:52:50:10

David Newman

It’s kind of like it is now. It looks sort of like it is now. I think sometimes some people would experiment with going sideways. They did that, I think at MGM more messed around with the room. But like I said, my dad had it. They had a set up and they just they just left it. You know, they they basically was just set up all the time.

00:52:50:10 – 00:53:11:01

David Newman

So at a moment’s notice, you could get everybody in and record something they used to record, like all night, you know, And my father, they would rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. You hear directors talk about this a lot. You know, some directors just don’t want to do take after take after take. They think it gets it gets everybody worse.

00:53:11:03 – 00:53:31:00

David Newman

So they either rehearse. Well, a lot of directors don’t rehearse. They just they just want, you know, to have this authentic thing. But the idea for my father was to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, get all the wrong, you know, you know, get all your ducks in order. Write one, take.

00:53:31:02 – 00:53:31:19

Mike Patti

One, take.

00:53:31:21 – 00:53:52:01

David Newman

Your first take. It’s just going to be your. They see the red lights on. It’s like playing a concert. That’s what that was the idea. Not not that they didn’t do things over and over. They of course they did. But that wasn’t that wasn’t what they were planning for. But everything was just left, you know. And I think they probably would adjust it depending if it was a big band score.

00:53:52:03 – 00:54:15:07

David Newman

You know what? There were there were like three kinds of scores. There was like the comedy with the big band thing. You know, And then there was the noirish Bernard Herrmann type of scores. And then and then the dialog, you know, big, big picture scores, you know, and they probably adjusted it depending on what it was. Also the size of the orchestra.

00:54:15:07 – 00:54:38:06

David Newman

I think there was only maybe 40 or 50 people on contract because a lot of the films they did were, you know, B and C films. I mean, they were just churning that stuff out. You know, a lot of them were lost to history. But I, I when they did a big film, you know, they had their setup once they figured it out, that was that was what they did.

00:54:38:06 – 00:54:39:16

David Newman

Yeah. So.

00:54:39:18 – 00:54:57:07

Mike Patti

So one of the things that we did there is, you know, we were trying to when we sample, that’s what we do. We sample and we’re trying to preserve the history of these iconic stages. As you know, we sampled the. Yeah. And a whole orchestra at the MGM stage and who knows if it’ll be around. Yeah. You know, five, ten years in the future.

00:54:57:09 – 00:55:19:21

Mike Patti

And that that’s kind of one of the things we want to do at this stage is really capture this. Yeah. The history and present it to the community, sort maybe the next generation of composers to keep that legacy somewhat intact a little bit. And so what are your thoughts on, you know, using a sample library recorded at the Fox scoring.

00:55:19:23 – 00:55:45:00

David Newman

Well, I mean, it’s what you guys have done of I mean, it’s you guys are our bread and butter. I mean, it’s so inconceivable now how good your sample libraries are now. It it’s it you can get I mean, I suppose you’re really, really good at it. I mean the only negative is they sound so good and you get wow, this is a great oboe solo in these notes are great.

00:55:45:00 – 00:56:14:17

David Newman

I love these. Yeah. Notes. And they sound really good. So I keep I keep I keep writing to those notes. But as it gets better and better and better, you find you can just, you can do everything, which I find a lot of the string articulations are sometimes hard to find. You know, the the the the legato is like this where the deed or e like like where it’s articulated in to in a bow or three in a bow and you hear the, you know, stuff like that.

00:56:14:19 – 00:56:31:04

David Newman

But it gets better and better and better and I, I when I start, I didn’t do any of this. I just bang on the piano and, you know, just kept my fingers, you know, you play some stuff from the director and you just keep your fingers crossed because you go to a session. Of course, it doesn’t sound. Yeah.

00:56:31:07 – 00:56:57:15

David Newman

Anything like what? You know what they do. I mean, on the one hand there’s a magic with that because it’s not micromanaged, but really learning and when you sit at a sequencer and take a sample library, you know, you generally you’re only putting in one thing at a time. Okay, yeah, maybe you’re putting in a whole string part at a time, but you know, if it’s an oboe, it’s one at a time.

00:56:57:15 – 00:57:13:12

David Newman

It’s kind of like how you compose, you know, you write, you do this, then you should. I do And should I do this? okay, let’s do that. Let’s do that. And let’s do You’re going this way and this way, you know, or one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then how am I coloring bar one?

00:57:13:13 – 00:57:32:02

David Newman

How am I coloring bar two? And, you know, yeah, it’s like, it’s like a miracle. Now, I can’t even imagine going back to, you know, sitting there with a frigging pencil and an eraser. We used to have, like, piles of a razor in our piano. At least I had to write on a piano. And now it’s just, you know, it’s fantastic.

00:57:32:04 – 00:57:57:23

David Newman

So. And yeah, that these studios are historical monuments. I think they should be preserved. I think it’s great what you guys are doing. I hope they don’t go away. I hope the younger generations get to work in them. They’re there. There’s something about walking into these places. It gives you the chills kind of. I mean, if you’re if you’re interested in this stuff at all and you love movies and, you know, you know, you asked me about the young generation.

00:57:57:23 – 00:58:12:23

David Newman

I think the history of movies is something that most directors like to talk about. But it’s it’s intrinsically interesting how what they did and these stages go back to the beginning. Well, you know, it’s it’s awesome. I think.

00:58:13:04 – 00:58:18:21

Mike Patti

Yeah. So then how did how did your dad, you know, he was an innovator in his own right.

00:58:19:03 – 00:58:43:11

David Newman

They were all innovators because they started in 1930. And every year there was a huge innovation and they had staffs that were technology experts and they had the money. They had the money. So so where else are you going to innovate except in this brand new medium? And remember, there was pre talking films and talking films. I mean, can there be more of a disruption?

00:58:43:13 – 00:59:07:08

David Newman

I mean, the Internet, I think is a disruption that we lived through. Or maybe you didn’t. I mean, you might be too young, but I remember when I remember I remember when there was no Internet. Yeah. And then all of a sudden there’s Internet and it’s a disruption. But imagine there’s no talking films. And then all of a sudden they’re talking films and it’s like, what is, you know, what is this?

00:59:07:08 – 00:59:38:01

David Newman

You know, what are we going to do with this? And it was the most exciting place be to be in Hollywood here. And the sound was the new thing. So they they had complete carte blanche. All the technology companies were desperate to get their gear, microphones, you know, film technology, editing technology, technology of projecting where, you know, mag acetate, you know, all the things that they went through to get to, you know, where we’re now, which is just everything’s ones and zeros.

00:59:38:01 – 00:59:39:01

David Newman

Everything’s digital.

00:59:39:03 – 00:59:45:19

Mike Patti

Whenever you’re innovating in technology, you do get some flak from folks that maybe you want to hold on to the old way.

00:59:45:21 – 01:00:16:16

David Newman

What did he ever encounter? Because it was so bad initially that that it got to a certain point. Now, for us, of course, you know, when we went from analog to 16 bit, it was terrible. And early did did stuff digital stuff was very it you really lost something in memory when we went to 24 bit. it’s much better and the sampling rate 48 K and that you know and then eventually it just kind of disappeared.

01:00:16:16 – 01:00:28:02

David Newman

But then there’s a whole generation growing up on Napster listening to crappy threes. It’s not how I grew up listening to the Beatles and Hendrix and classical music on LP’s, on, you know, analog.

01:00:28:04 – 01:00:29:10

Mike Patti

And I think that’s coming back, though.

01:00:29:12 – 01:00:53:03

David Newman

It is. I mean, it they they are they are coming back and eventually it’ll all be, you know, didge will get so good that you won’t be able to tell the difference. You know, I think I think, you know, there was a lot of bad stuff with LPs too, you know. But my God, they used to make these acetates, which sounded awful, you know, And I don’t think any of them long for the old days until kind of our era.

01:00:53:03 – 01:01:12:15

David Newman

I think it was, you know, wow, we have a great new microphone. It sounds great on, you know, a saxophone or, you know, or we can direct right into the board or we, you know, and then as electronics came in and all that, I don’t think anyone ever looked back on, you know, on fondly on, you know, the thirties or anything like that.

01:01:12:16 – 01:01:15:04

David Newman

Yeah, but we do now for sure.

01:01:15:06 – 01:01:41:07

Chris Hayzel

Sorry about the sort of abrupt ending there. That’s just kind of where the video ended. But thank you guys for listening and I hope you enjoyed that conversation and like me, walked away from it feeling like maybe you learned something. I don’t know. And you know, if you haven’t already and you’re feeling inspired, go check out Museum. We’ve got over 1700 premium virtual instruments in there, some of which were actually recorded at the Alfred Newman stage at Fox Studios.

01:01:41:10 – 01:02:03:12

Chris Hayzel

And the best part is you get Museo completely free for 30 days. So what do you have to lose? Just get in there, explore the instruments, get creative and make something great. If you like this conversation and you want to hear more like it, be sure to like great review. Do all of those things and subscribe to catch future episodes and feel free to let us know what kind of stuff you’d like to hear too.

01:02:03:13 – 01:02:22:09

Chris Hayzel

You know, whether it’s interviews like this or tips and tricks or even just us sort of talking about current music events, we’re open to all of that. We really want to make content that inspires you, so reach out to us. We’re really looking forward to sharing more with you all in the New Year. But for now, signing off for 2023.

01:02:22:11 – 01:02:28:20

Chris Hayzel

I’m Chris Hazel and this is Orchestrated Music podcast Happy New Year and we’ll catch in 24.