Danny Elfman:
Building Music for the Movies
Mixing MIDI and Audio
Elfman uses Digital Performer from Mark of the Unicorn to work out his arrangements on his Power Mac. “I lock the picture. I try multiple ideas. I throw in my own samples, plus orchestral stuff. If I get an idea for some live recording, I just add another track. In Digital Performer, I can be playing 50, 60 MIDI tracks and suddenly plug in a guitar and start playing live. Instead of a MIDI track, though, it’s an audio track. Digital Performer interfaces invisibly with ProTools so, instead of bringing up another program and having two programs run in sync, I can just add an audio track. Add another audio track. Add a dozen audio tracks. They just become more tracks in one sequence.”
“Red Dragon is prepared piano, with a certain type of interlocking harp pattern. That simply could never happen live.”
By now Elfman has assembled six or eight audio tracks along with 50 or 60 MIDI tracks in Digital Performer. “They’re all playing along together,” he says, “and they’re all sync’d. And if I make an edit — this is the real advantage — I can edit all of them together. If I want to take two measures out, I can take them out of the audio and the MIDI simultaneously.”
When he’s satisfied with one template…Elfman creates a half a dozen more. “I just go right back, try to erase everything I thought of, try it from a completely different angle. Now slower, more insistent, something more romantic. Or maybe it’s all percussion, or maybe it’s all orchestra.”
Working With the Director
Elfman records a two-track digital mix to review with the director. “When I have a seven, eight, nine-minute demo with a couple of hundred sequence parts that I’ve painstakingly laid out,” he says, “I don’t want to sit there with the director and have to grab a zillion faders. So I’ll record a mix when I’m composing.
“Yet I can easily switch out of the mix into the live sequence if I want,” Elfman adds. “What’ll it sound like if we drop these parts out? What if we leave this out? What if we simplify that? And I can do it on the spot. ‘All right, they’re having a problem with this. Why? Something here is throwing them off. Okay, it’s a combination of this string line and this brass line; it’s too much.’ And I’ll simplify the string line and suddenly they’re going ‘Oh, yeah. That’s much better.’”
When Elfman sees what the director is responding to, he starts to hone in on the tone and themes of the score. “Then I’ll take two or three major scenes in the movie,” he says, “maybe a scene towards the beginning, one in the middle and one towards the end, like a finale — and score each scene from top to bottom. They’re the turning points, the major melodic statements. If I can nail these segments, I’ve nailed the movie.”
“The goal for me,” says Elfman, “is to work out as much as possible with the director before we get to the orchestra so there are few surprises. With any luck, all I have to do is get a really good performance and work out the nuances.”
