# JNH clip and him playing with his samples



## IvanP (Nov 12, 2005)

... in the King Kong thing

http://www.kongisking.net/perl/newsview/15/1131757640


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## choc0thrax (Nov 12, 2005)

8)


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## Niah (Nov 12, 2005)

No sleep 'till...kong!


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## dcoscina (Nov 12, 2005)

Very cool. I wonder if he uses VSL or EWQLSO? I know he's got a private collection of samples too though. He used to have 28 Roland S-760s in his studio although I imagine that he's sold them on eBAy and replaced them with Gigastudios and such....

Someone should do a feature on him with his updated tools. The last interview was for Dinosaur in 2000 featured in KEYBOARD magazine....


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## Ed (Nov 12, 2005)

dcoscina said:


> Very cool. I wonder if he uses VSL or EWQLSO? I know he's got a private collection of samples too though.



zimmer probably gave him a copy of his. (havent watched the clip yet_)


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## Ed (Nov 12, 2005)

Just seen it, WOW that looks really cool. he seems to love having a crazy little amount of time :shock:


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## José Herring (Nov 12, 2005)

Quote from James Newton Howard when I met him at the ASCAP filmscoring workshop way back when he was doing "Space Jam": "I love to work".

Well he must.

He said that he sequences every line individually, but I saw him banging away on that generic string patch. :roll: 

Well anyway not bad for a guy that's pushing 60. And those samples sound awesome. I guess private libraries are the way to go.

Jose


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## Ed (Nov 12, 2005)

josejherring said:


> He said that he sequences every line individually, but I saw him banging away on that generic string patch. :roll:



Where? The only place I saw was him playin percussion, and then playing ideas for the director :?


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## José Herring (Nov 12, 2005)

Ed said:


> josejherring said:
> 
> 
> > He said that he sequences every line individually, but I saw him banging away on that generic string patch. :roll:
> ...



You're right. I didn't catch that he was demoing to the director.  

Faith restored.

Jose


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## Ed (Nov 12, 2005)

hehe


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## Niah (Nov 12, 2005)

It depends on the string patch 8)


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## José Herring (Nov 12, 2005)

choc0thrax said:


> I don't see what the problem is with banging it out on an all strings patch?? Is this regarded as being worse than composing on a piano?



No. It was just that he had mentioned that he sequences each instrument individually.

But it turns out he was just demoing.

Jose


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## Scott Cairns (Nov 13, 2005)

Thanks for the link. Did I see Wagner Tuben in there? There's some funny looking curve shaped brass instruments at one point.


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## jc5 (Nov 13, 2005)

Scott Cairns said:


> Thanks for the link. Did I see Wagner Tuben in there? There's some funny looking curve shaped brass instruments at one point.



Indeed you did, quite the line up of them...

*insert inside joke here  - you know who you are :wink: *


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## choc0thrax (Nov 13, 2005)

You aren't referring to me are you? Cause I think Wagner Tubas are great!


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## José Herring (Nov 13, 2005)

Any library that has Wagner Tuba samples?


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## jc5 (Nov 13, 2005)

@ choco: After all, whats not to love about them? 8) 

@ Jose: This instrument remains elusive in the sample world - to my knowlege there are only two options, and both are locked into the large and expensive libraries, and don't cover everything.. 

Platinum comes with a limited wagner tuba ensemble patch, two tenors and a bass doubling an octave down. Not sure how it sounds, as I have never heard it demoed independently..

VSL has a very nice solo tenor (no bass, alas) with all the trimmings (performance legatos, etc), but this is only available through the large package, which makes it a tad... inaccessible.. especially if all you are looking for is a wagner tuba specifically..


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## José Herring (Nov 13, 2005)

Guess I'll have to start my own VIproII for odd and unusual instruments.


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## choc0thrax (Nov 13, 2005)

choc0thrax said:


> You aren't referring to me are you? Cause I think Wagner Tubas are great!



Great for throwing into the dump as they pay money for scrap metal.


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## Scott Cairns (Nov 13, 2005)

You get the Wagner Tuben in the Gold Pro XP upgrade because of the fact we get all the Platinum articulations.


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## José Herring (Nov 13, 2005)

I guess everything is leading up to spending money on the gold proxp upgrade.

Gotta start coming up with some good excuses to the wife again.

Jose


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 14, 2005)

JNH has always been one of my favorites but HE would admit, he would never even attempt this without his staff of orchestrators....

It in no way dimishes it for me - can't wait to see what he comes up with - in only 5 weeks.

I bet he is 'focused'  


Rob


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## José Herring (Nov 14, 2005)

Rob Elliott said:


> JNH has always been one of my favorites but HE would admit, he would never even attempt this without his staff of orchestrators....
> 
> It in no way dimishes it for me - can't wait to see what he comes up with - in only 5 weeks.
> 
> ...



His orchestrators do a lot of work for sure. But James writes almost every note at the keyboard with his samples.

Somewhere floating around here is a midi mockup of a cue from his Dino. film. It was easy to hear that he had really written all the notes and his orchestrators did what orchestrators do which was just to make it a little more playable by live players.

Jose


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## Evan Gamble (Nov 15, 2005)

josejherring said:


> Rob Elliott said:
> 
> 
> > JNH has always been one of my favorites but HE would admit, he would never even attempt this without his staff of orchestrators....
> ...



and to think it was him rockin with elton john on the keyboards waaaaaay back in the day :D


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 15, 2005)

The guy is a machine. He is probably writing 4-6 mins a day (for a 80 piece orchestra and choir.) What would it be if he was 'commissioned' to write a 10 minute piece and given 3 months to do it. :D 

Rob


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## Andy B (Nov 15, 2005)

I don't want to take anything away from what he's achieving, but given the time line, I don't think there's going to be much room for quality control. 

I read somewhere that it's possible to impose a subconscious structure or form on to a piece of music written in an extremely short amount of time, but surely he's having to rely on first or maybe second layer cliches to pull it off?

I've just finished rewriting a score for a six part series that needed about the same amount of music (240ish mins), in about the same amount of time, though I didn't have to score the thing out for orchestra :shock: - having said that I didn't have a huge team to take care of that either 8) . I made the deadline, but I'm not sure if my children still know who I am...... :?


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## PaulR (Nov 15, 2005)

Rob Elliott said:


> The guy is a machine. He is probably writing 4-6 mins a day (for a 80 piece orchestra and choir.) What would it be if he was 'commissioned' to write a 10 minute piece and given 3 months to do it. :D
> 
> Rob



I watched the video and agree. The man's tremendous to be fair. A lot of it will be drawing from reserves I would imagine - like you say Rob, the fact that he has a team and specialist orchestrators takes nothing away from him; that's essential anyway given the timeline, although I too have an inkling about what Andy says - quality control - by that I assume musical content as opposed to production values. The production and sound will be first rate.


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## Andy B (Nov 15, 2005)

PaulR said:


> although I too have an inkling about what Andy says - quality control - by that I assume musical content as opposed to production values. The production and sound will be first rate.



Hi Paul,

Yes, I was talking about musical content.

I'm not trying to compare his situation to mine (after all I was chasing an 'in time for Christmas' DVD release - not a world premier!), but I realise that he's only human and we must have experienced similar problems. I can tell you that I didn't have much time to even think about playing something in more than twice, which can certainly focus your writing. It's quite a strange and mostly unpleasant way of working.

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## José Herring (Nov 15, 2005)

James is also an inspiration to creativity. He's not so much of a God gifted genius as he is an intensly alive hard working guy.

He's very aware of his creative processes and can easily say exactly what he does to achieve his effects.

He says that as soon as he gets a film he sits down with all films that have any kind of similarity to the one he's scoring. He's a big fan of Goldsmith so those are at the top of his list. He then spends days just digesting scores via film and CD. Then, he puts it all away and starts scoring to picture. He doesn't use timing sheets he just marks out bars and beats to picture.

He's also a self taught academic reading a lot of standard orchestration and music theory books.

And the most important thing that I got from listening to him speak was that everything comes from his gut. 

Jose


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## Ed (Nov 15, 2005)

josejherring said:


> He says that as soon as he gets a film he sits down with all films that have any kind of similarity to the one he's scoring.



ive found that works really well for me too!


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## Niah (Nov 15, 2005)

Ed said:


> josejherring said:
> 
> 
> > He says that as soon as he gets a film he sits down with all films that have any kind of similarity to the one he's scoring.
> ...



Same here. Sometimes even a simple movie poster or a picture of a character can help me.


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