# B!tch Slap Score



## JohnG (Oct 19, 2009)

Hi everyone, 

The score for "Bitch Slap" is now available on iTunes and CD Baby. Both feature such classic titles as, "Clambake," "Motorcycle Vasectomy," and "Kinki Spank!"

CD Baby offers physical CDs too.

CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/johnrgraham

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=336507623&s=143441 (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt ... 3&amp;s=143441)

It's a pretty funny movie, though not for the faint of heart.


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## Hannes_F (Oct 19, 2009)

This sounds really good, John. Ordered


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## artsoundz (Oct 19, 2009)

wow,John! very cool. Congratulations!


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## JohnG (Oct 19, 2009)

Thanks guys!


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## ChrisAxia (Oct 20, 2009)

Great sounding stuff John. Well done!

~C


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## Daniel James (Oct 20, 2009)

Amazing work! You make me feel ashamed to call myself a composer 

Dan


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## cc64 (Oct 20, 2009)

JohnG @ Mon Oct 19 said:


> HOWEVER,
> 
> Somewhat inexplicably, at least to me, iTunes offers only 11 of the tracks, whereas CD Baby includes all of them (29), plus physical CDs are available too.



Hi John,

they're all there you just need to scroll down.

Great music BTW!
Did you get to record with live musicians? Sounds really good if it's all VIs.

Claude


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## Ian Dorsch (Oct 20, 2009)

Kick ass! Sounds great, John. I'll definitely pick this one up. :D


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## Ranietz (Oct 20, 2009)

Listening to the clips at CdBaby now. Sounds great. Congratulations on the release.


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## JohnG (Oct 20, 2009)

Thanks a lot guys. I killed myself on this. 90-plus minutes of score. 

There are two versions (and possibly three) of the movie, so you can picture what a headache that created for everyone -- producers, director, post sound. I prefer the longer version because it has more jokes (and more score...)

As far as the track count, Claude, I must have been looking at the iTunes link yesterday before they'd put all the tracks up or something -- they are all there now. I'll adjust my original post.


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## nikolas (Oct 20, 2009)

YAY John! At last I can buy this album!  Cheers for that!


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## Craig Sharmat (Oct 20, 2009)

Sounds great John...Congratulations!


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## rJames (Oct 20, 2009)

Bitch Slap and Long Flat Balls...and these albums are found in the classical genre.

Tender love stories?

(congrats on both albums)


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## Patrick de Caumette (Oct 20, 2009)

Tracks sound great, congratulations John!


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## Guy Bacos (Oct 21, 2009)

Congratulations John! 

You must be very proud of this baby.


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## Dave Connor (Oct 21, 2009)

Very nice stuff there - loved 'Trunk Man'. Congratulations and job well done.


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## JohnG (Oct 21, 2009)

Thanks guys -- I do like the score and certainly slaved over it. "Trunk Man" is indeed one of my favourites. And yes, very happy that "Bitch Slap" is classified under Classical, along with, say, Brahms.

"Long Flat Balls II" is actually an excellent movie; if you have children, it's particularly fun. Or if you love Don Johnson. Just as an alternative source of appeal.


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## schatzus (Oct 21, 2009)

Congrats and great job! I don't know why, but I have to see this...


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## Colin O'Malley (Oct 21, 2009)

John, 

This sounds really cool. Also your mixes are really warm and effortless sounding to me. Analogee. How did you do it? Tell us your secrets!

Colin


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## JohnG (Oct 21, 2009)

I don't know any tricks so I hire Mike Aarvold to engineer everything -- 805 522 6252

There are a lot of great engineers out there -- he is one of the best.


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## mixolydian (Oct 22, 2009)

Interesting. John, if you do a/b comparisons between your and Mr. Aarvold's mixes what did he add to your music, what's the benefit?


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## Rob (Oct 22, 2009)

congratulations, John, excellent work...


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## JohnG (Oct 22, 2009)

mixolydian @ 22nd October 2009 said:


> Interesting. John, if you do a/b comparisons between your and Mr. Aarvold's mixes what did he add to your music, what's the benefit?



One can't always perform the a/b test exactly because of recording live elements, but anyway, I know what you mean.

I don't know if I am the best-qualified person to comment on engineers, but here's a partial list of what I perceive:

1. Engineers listen to music with a completely different set of criteria than most composers -- certainly than I do;

2. Part of what they accomplish is cohesion and balance of the overall sound, making sure, for example, that live overdubs and sampled elements sound as though they were recorded in the same room at the same time;

3. They own more high-quality mics and preamps and the rest of the gear than most composers and have more experience knowing what choices to make when recording;

4. They bring energy and focus to the recording and mixing process at just the point in time where my energy is flagging and I am ready to just send the tracks to the dub stage without listening to them one more time;

5. They are very sensitive to anything that is poking out -- high end or low end rumble -- and help guard against that;

6. In my case, I like to have the tracks go pretty raw to the dub stage but naturally want to have a nice mastering process before they end up on a CD or a demo and the engineer does the mastering; 

7. They know what they are doing with all the gear. Just because I can buy it doesn't mean I can operate it well; and finally,

8. Rarely in the business does one meet any individual who will give honest feedback and yet be 100% on your side. Some engineers will do whatever you tell them to do and never say a word, no matter how wretched they might personally think your choice is. The better engineers have an opinion about sound and about music with picture, and can help improve the sound at the end of the process, sometimes in ways that are not obvious until you get into a theater with surround sound and so on.

There are lots of more experienced guys on this forum. Maybe some of them could chime in about why they use engineers and what they think the engineer brings to the sound.


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## germancomponist (Oct 22, 2009)

Congratulations, John!

I am listening now and for sure will order your great tracks.

Gunther


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## mixolydian (Oct 23, 2009)

John, thank you very much, this gives such a good impression.


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## JohnG (Oct 24, 2009)

Hi Ed,

I did have quite a bit of time to write this one -- about 8 or 9 weeks all told. I ended up rewriting a few cues during post because of the multiple versions of the film, though some cues we re-edited so we didn't have to re-record or remix.

I conducted the relatively limited live elements of the score. Overall, the score is dominated so much by Stormdrum 2 and Tonehammer and everything else so it was harder than usual to get the filmmakers to spring for live players.

Not to mention the fact that gunfire, explosions, bone crunching against bone (etc.), and that pesky dialogue that filmmakers insist on at times interferes with the audience's enjoyment of the music.


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## nikolas (Oct 24, 2009)

John,

I've not forgotten about this. But encountering a weird phenomenon with my wife which might be described as "the dreaded flu" and at the moment I don't have much else to do than sit home and babysit... :-/ 

But I have had a listen (more than once actually). Just don't want to speak until I have a more consice idea about the score!


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## rayinstirling (Oct 25, 2009)

Hi John,

Excellent work indeed and thanks for the insight into how your collaboration with a good engineer improved the recordings.
My personal favorite is 'Alpine Hi-Jinks' but I think that says more about me than it does you.

Regards

Ray


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## nikolas (Nov 3, 2009)

Better late than never, right? Well!

I've been giving the whole score quite a few listens and I have to say that it's very enjoyable! 

On first listen I heard a few things that seem 'recognisable' (for example the small motif in the middle of "Alley Saviour") but I realised that it probably reminded me of your own music, rather than anything else! 

General comments:

The mix of different aesthetics works for me fine. I love the mingling of clusters, with the tonehammer stuff, along with a bit of triadic chords from choirs and so on. Just love it, because it works so well together. (add the weird synth stabs here and there, unless I'm hearing too weird stuff).

I will admit that some of the tracks which seem influenced by somewhat "country" ideas are not much to my liking, but that's my fault... I just can't bring me to like slidding guitars, the tone rise in the bass guitar and so on ("Pinkys' ride" for example).

But what strikes me as a very very good result, as a whole, is the coherence that you got from the whole track. You have so many different elements but they all work together and they sound that they bellong together. I'm wondering if it's just a mixing issue, or if it's more of a time issue (I worked on it for a few months full time), or if it's the composer.

Oh and someone once told me that diversity is overated! I have to largely dissagree, after listening to this soundtrack! 

Thanks for offering the soundtrack for sale. It's very enjoyable, indeed and works very well on a number of occasions!


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## JohnG (Nov 3, 2009)

Thanks for your reactions, Nikolas. You take the discussion in in a number of directions that I think we all have to deal with. 

In my experience, the function of the music in the film -- what it is supposed to be doing there -- determines the basic vocabulary of what we do when scoring. Sometimes music comments, sometimes informs (some feeling that's not explicit but that we can introduce), sometimes creates fear or energy or what have you. 

Because Bitch Slap is a parody, the music to some extent parodies existing styles. It latches on to some of the cliches (70s guitar anthems) because the style of music that was used in the kinds of films that the film is parodying and, perhaps, that's the kind of music that the characters themselves might listen to. So one function of the score is to harken back to old B movies and remind us of the cheesy vibe they had. 

But at the same time, mocking parodies risk losing steam in 20 minutes and boring the audience. It's one reason most sketch comedy shows, even the genius Pythons, stayed largely with fairly short scenes on their television show. So inevitably, in order to avoid wearying viewers by offering the same joke over and over ("look at us mocking cheesy movies and cleavage ha ha"), good parodies actually morph into exactly the films they are mocking -- they must become a legitimate contestant in the genre being parodied. Bitch Slap, while parodying B-movies, is itself a B-movie too. It mocks itself and the genre, but at the same time lards on the guns, cars, explosions, tough-talking wrong-side-of-the-tracks characters (and cleavage) of its antecedents, to the point where it becomes, to a great extent, exactly what it derides. 

Because, then, the movie is not solely a parody, the music, while alluding to comedy elements that would dominate a full-on cartoon parody, actually must support a modern take on B-movie music, taking the movie seriously, as if it were not a joke at all but actually a dead-serious crime/betrayal movie with lots of explosions and gunfire. 

Which is a long way of saying that the music predominantly acts as the straight man and, given that, must be a "real" score. And if that is true and the score is going to succeed, it has to embody the expectations of the audience and mock them, but also actually seek to be legitimate score. 

(In the case of Bitch Slap, this idea of "legitimate score" leaves out a few cues, like "Alpine Hi-Jinks," or "Eastern Premesis," which are unambiguous parodies, but for the most part, the music aims at pretty full-on regular-but-twisted-and-thunderous underscore -- example is "Hel No" or "Clambake.") 

So back to the function of the score and to address your point about eclecticism -- the score in this case has to make the movie funny in places but, much more importantly, support the basic story-line thread, keeping it legitimate and interesting. That basic story line involves violence, crime, and betrayal (plus some "relationship" stuff between morally-challenged folk), so for the most part the score has to be a score for that kind of movie. 

But, because it is after all a comedy / parody too, along the way there are some odd scenes that go so far in a stylised direction that they have to be dealt with directly. That led to the score making lots of allusions to other styles when the film does -- "Pinky's Ride" has a lot of guitars in it, which were attempting to parody the 1970s more than country, but also gets corralled back into action/crime movie with tons of heavy drums and vocals and whatnot, just to inoculate the music from becoming solely a parody -- because the main function of the music in this movie is to help the audience suspend disbelief and accept the legitimacy of the story line.


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