Her soundtrack

It’s so good! Although listening to it while writing sad things = being sad and holding in tears. You have been warned.

Comme une rosée de larmes – Ludovic Bource

I imagine this being played as a guy is waiting in a restaurant on a date.  He nervous — fidgeting with the tablecloth, and adjusting and re-adjusting the utensils on the table to their exact place.  He constantly turns to look at the front of the restaurant, hoping, wishing to see his date.  He waits and waits.  Couples are all around him, laughing, smiling, and enjoying themselves, while he sits alone at his table with a candle burning.  A bottle of red wine sits unopened at the table.  A loyal waiter comes to check on him now and then, but the guy only gets refills of water in his glass.

Hours have passed.  The last couple leaves the restaurant, while the guy still sits there, the last bit of hope in his eyes dying.  He gives the restaurant a last look around, searching for that one person, then lets out a sigh of defeat.  He puts money on the table, gives the waiter a smile for tending to him the entire night, and trudges home.

The waiter goes over to the table, and blows out the now-short, barely flickering candle.

Summer 78 — Yann Tiersen

Perhaps Fifth Avenue Cinemas does in fact have good taste in music.  I heard this playing in our lobby the other day, and was very surprised to recognize it.  It’s an instrumental piece, written by Yann Tiersen, from the Goodbye Lenin! soundtrack, one of my favourite pieces from the film.  I hadn’t heard it in ages, and after listening to it a few times that day, it really inspired me to pursue writing piano pieces again, since I’ve been unable to write songs to pour out my feelings.  I’ve always been able to write just piano songs with less difficulty, probably since it only requires the piano and no words (and I am very particular about lyrics).

Maybe I’ll get to writing next week, during my week off from school.  I feel like I need it.

“Gymnopedie No. 3” — Erik Satie

A piece that will likely be in my short film I’m shooting on Saturday.  It’s so simple and mournful that I couldn’t imagine anything suiting the scene better than this.  I know I’m being vague because I’m not explaining the scene, but if you really do want to know, click on this to find out more details: http://www.indiegogo.com/June-a-silent-ghost-short-film

Writing music is hard

Especially 25 minutes of music for a silent film.  Very hard.  Thank god I’m done.  Now it’s on to re-writing and re-writing a story for the Purple Letter Campaign (submit a story yourself, everyone!).

Busy busy

Writing 25 consecutive minutes of piano music for a friend’s film + preparing for a show tonight + dealing with short story publications + organizing production meetings for my next shrot film + lots of schoolwork + work =

Crazy.

30 Day Song Challenge: Day 15: A song that describes you

It would’ve been so easy to just post any song I had written but I’ve already done that so that was a no-go.  And for a while recently, one of the original songs from Glee, “Get It Right” was totally I song that felt like I could’ve written, about trying to do the right thing and constantly getting it wrong.  “What do you do when your good isn’t good enough?/And all that you touch tumbles down/My best intentions keep making a mess of things/Just want to fix it somehow”, the lyrics from the chorus of the song, are words that made me tear up when I first heard and saw it on the show when it premiered.  This also would’ve been an easy choice to to post.

But somehow, it didn’t feel… complete enough.  Although I think the song is hopeful in the end and that it describes a lot of who I was and am now, it’s missing… something.  Upong listening yet again to “Last Man”, composed by Clint Mansell (who also wrote the score for Black Swan, among other films), the tears I had from my eyes after listening to “Get It Right” finally came down.  I guess I figured out that though “Get It Right” is easy to interpret since the lyrics are right there, it takes a little more effort and thought to come up with the meaning of “Last Man” because it’s strictly instrumental.  I feel like because it has no words to the piece, instead of telling you how you should feel, it leaves it up to the listener to try and make sense of it.  Everyone hears something different in it, and “Last Man” is a piece that I can interpret to mean more than just sadness, which, admitedly, is a lot of it for me.

Here’s a link to “Get It Right” as well:

30 Day Song Challenge: Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep

As I mentioned in my facebook post, I don’t have any song that make me fall asleep.  If a song bores me, I just turn it off or switch to a good song.  It was either this one or “Comptine D’autre ete” by Yann Tiersen and I’m trying to post song songs instead, so I decided to go with some Kelly Clarkson.

After listening to it again though, it made me kinda tear up in a sad way.  But “Irvine” isn’t just a song that makes me sad.  I can imagine myself, were I ever sleepy enough to stay up and listen to music, falling asleep to this song…

“Time” — Hans Zimmer (Inception Original Soundtrack)

Since the nominations for the Oscars a few days ago, I decided to take a listen to some of the nominees for Best Original Score.  I have seen How to Train Your Dragon, The King’s Speech, and Inception but seem to be the only person not to have seen The Social Network yet.  127 Hours is also a film I wanna watch though the prospect of watching James Franco cut off his arm is a little off-putting at the moment.  Anyway, I remembered that there was quite a good melody/theme in Inception, and since it had been a while since I saw it, I went on the awesome site that is youtube to hear the soundtrack.

Although I absolutely love the pulse-pounding Inception theme in “Dream is Collapsing”, I particularly like the nostalgia and the emotional impact of “Time”, the closing track on the soundtrack and if I remember correctly, also played during the end credits of the film.  Although I do feel like Inception lacked strong emotional connection with the characters, this track almost (*almost!*) makes up for it.  It’s slow and contemplative in the beginning, add in the orchestra later and it bursts into true Zimmer spirit.

(Eww.  I just had a kettle corn kernel and it tasted like a cherry tomato… yuck.)

I’ve always been a fan of Zimmer, and I think this is a better, more rounded soundtrack than Sherlock Holmes.  I have a feeling this won’t win the Oscar for original score but oh well.  This is a great score nonetheless.

Symphony No. 7, 2nd Movement, “Allegretto” — Ludwig Van Beethoven

I have not been able to get this piece out of my head.

Since I saw The King’s Speech last week with my sister, there was a particular piece in the (fantastic) film that stuck with my because I had heard it somewhere.  After finding out that it was Beethoven via imdb, I searched on youtube and found it and then I saw it in the related videos.

The Fall!  Of course!  It’s the main theme (I think.  Or at least one of the more prominent ones) from the movie (another fantastic one).

So what to say about this one?  I saw someone’s comment on youtube that said that at one moment in the piece, it made him/her “want to cry and have an orgasm at the same time”, to which the uploader of the video said, “Then the piece is working.”

I personally don’t have many words to describe what a moving, emotional, piece of work this is.  Have a listen for yourself.