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Interview: Danny Elfman |  |
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Writing for Film and TV SONGS FOR FILM & TV MUSIC SUPERVISION 101 PRODUCTION MUSIC LIBRARIES SONGWRITING DEALS FOR FILMS RESOURCES INTERVIEW: DANNY ELFMAN INTERVIEW: ALAN SILVESTRI |
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The Following Interview was conducted by John Braheny in 1990 for the Los Angeles Showcase Musepaper directly after he finished scoring Dick Tracy. For a complete filmography and bio go to http://www.filmtracks.com/composers/elfman.shtml and for a complete Oingo Boingo Discography, go to http://www.rit.edu/~elnppr/oben/discog.html JB: What's your musical background? I first saw you when you played at the (Los Angeles) Songwriters Showcase with The Mystic Nights of the Oingo Boingo, we were at the Improv then. What went on before that? DE: Well the Mystic Nights was seven, eight years of work, and writing lots of strange little pieces, nothing contemporary, very theatrical. JB: I still have images in my mind of what you guys were doing then, the costumes, that whole thing was just great theater. DE: Well it was my first chance to write anything that was non rock 'n' roll. So, it was stuff that served me well later in film. I taught myself and whatever rudimentary notation that I possessed later, came from that period, which wasn't much, but was something. JB: What instruments were you playing? DE: In the Mystic Knights, I played trombone, violin, guitar, percussion, it was like a little bit of everything, and with Oingo Boingo it was just guitar and singing, and I really left behind all that I had done, because as a songwriter you don't really write, you develop ideas. But, I didn't write one more note on paper except an occasional horn line, or something like that, between 1978, when the Mystic Knights ended, and 1985, when I did Pee Wee's Big Adventure. JB: Did you have any formal training? DE: No. Whatever I know or don't know is all just self-taught. JB: It's great that you would teach yourself such different instruments. DE: Well, I've always been a mimicker. On the trombone I would mimic the style of the old Duke Ellington trombone players, on violin I would try to mimic Stephan Grapelli, on guitar originally I would try to mimic the rhythm playing of Django Rheinhardt, since obviously I couldn't approach the lead playing, but that style of strumming and playing, and I always had a good ear. Even now I often go back to stuff that I heard in movies when I was a kid, and I know when I'm doing bits of Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman or Erich Korngold. It's all this vast repertoire to pull from. JB: So, you've really studied it. DE: I listen. Yeah definitely, I listen a lot and, in listening, I learn. JB: You were influenced by jazz then primarily? DE: Well, pre-1938 jazz. For a long time in Mystic Knights I wouldn't listen to anything if it was written from 1940 on. Its almost like it didn't exist. The orchestral music I listened to all came from turn of the century through the 30s. You know I loved Stravinsky, I loved Darius Milhaud, Prokofiev. Those were really my favorites. JB: They were adventurous in their time. DE: Adventurous in melodic sense and rhythmic sense, and Harry Parch, although that didn't go back that far. I think that related to the ethnic music that I loved. But then with jazz we're talking Ellington, Cab Calloway, Django Rheinhardt. That was the stuff I loved the most, especially Duke Ellington. JB: Do you have any one particular approach to songwriting? DE: No, I never really go in with any ideas whatsoever. I wish I had a technique for songwriting. I have technique for film composition, but no technique as a songwriter. Two opposite extremes for me. I have never in my life been able to sit down and say I'm going to write a song today and actually write a song. And, I've never been able to finish a song that didn't want to finish itself. Some songs go down in nothing flat; some songs I'll partially finish and then they'll sit on the back burner for ages. Sometimes under the gun, when we're about to go in the studio, I'll find myself finishing up some of the tunes; but others will just fall by the wayside and never get finished. It is mainly not knowing what the song is about and what the attitude is that will keep it from ever getting finished. That focus. There are some songs I know what they're about, but it's just a matter of getting one last verse or something like that, then I know it will finish itself. Others I am not even sure what they are about, and those are usually my favorite songs. I just have to let them finish themselves or not. JB: What starts them? Where do you get ideas? Do you read a lot? DE: No, not really. I don't know, it could be anything. Often its just whatever I'm thinking about at the time. I find that when I am writing songs, the best thing for me to do is I have to get in the opposite frame of mind than when I am scoring. When I'm scoring, I keep myself really wound up because it takes so much effort and discipline that if I'm relaxed at all, it's like forget it, I'm just not going to meet my daily quota of bars written. In fact, if I'm really wound up, I'll find myself writing less in terms of songs. I do most of my songwriting when I get in a very kind of spaced-out state-of-mind. I hate to say, but for a lack of a better word, I tend towards absentmindedness, and when I'm writing my most songs is when I tend to be most absentminded. JB: What do you think are the relative freedoms and restrictions of writing songs and writing film scores? DE: Well there are all kinds of freedoms writing songs, they just have to essentially have some type of melody to follow and a beat to follow. JB: You're really good at dynamics. DE: Some songs call for it, some songs don't. Some songs for the new album are pretty much one-dynamic most of the way through, and some songs go through bigger dynamics. I think it all just depends on the song. I don't really have any rule for that other than my own subjective thing when I'm writing. Obviously when I'm writing a score I must write so much per day, inspired or not, and I have to keep all these melodies and pieces of music always in my mind, because out of an enormous score all the pieces have to connect, so the entire score has to act as connecting tissue. On an album there's nothing like that. Once a song is finished it could leave forever. JB: So whatever continuity there is as an album is just really kind of based on where you were at during that writing period. DE: Yeah. I have a bunch of songs, we start playing them, and we find which songs seem to work well together, but there's never any intention of making one song sound like another. In fact, it's the opposite. If I'm working on two songs that are similar, I'll already know that only one will survive and that maybe I'll only finish one because there's no chance that the two of them will end up getting completed and both on the album because they're too similar. So, it's almost the opposite, where the more diverse, the less continuity melodically and rhythmically, the better it is. 1, 2, 3 | next page > |
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WRITING FOR FILM & TV - SONGWRITER RESOURCES - INTERVIEWS WITH SUCCESSFUL SONGWRITERS
THE LOS ANGELES SONGWRITERS SHOWCASE - SITE MAP