multidisciplinary

I explored the expressive possibilities of my ‘Saxleton Live’, the modulated prepared piano and other hybrid sounds I worked on such as the vocoder through scoring several scenes. They are excerpts of short films I actually scored this way, or rescored to explore and demonstrate the hybrid instruments capacities.

Horror Tales: is a very short scene we scored with my colleague Alex Pielsticker. I always felt electronic modulation had a big potential for horror movies. For this scene we were looking for a new, unique sound which would translate the increasing anxiety and chose for prepared piano played with an e-bow and different ‘damping’ systems and modulations which still emphasise the discomfort feeling. I wanted the piano to be recognizable nonetheless, because I like the idea that we keep using acoustic instruments and the sensibility they have to offer when scoring films, but if ‘necessary’ I could go further with the modulation and make it even more abstract. this question of keeping the instrument recognizable or not is an important one for me when working on film, where you don’t want to attract too much attention to the music but at times still want to carry maximum expressivity.

Walk scene Exp. vocal & Vocoder: are 2 versions of a rescore of my own score for a scene in Pamela Breda’s short film The Shape of Things to Come. I wanted to experiment with the vocoder and observe how it would alter our understanding of the scene. It showcases 2 versions, one sung by my fellow Master student Marie Weiss and one where I treat her voice through a vocoder. It is very subjective, but I believe the ‘robotic’ version increases the feeling of solitude and sort of ‘darkens’ our expectations about what will come tomorrow and that it again puts more distance between us and the character.

Hands dance scene: is a another beautiful excerpt of the same short film I scored for Pamela Breda. My score for it showcases my use of hybrid saxophone for dance performance and experiment with detachment. My goal was to create emotional and abstract material and to ‘play’ with the electronics to suggest distance between us and the dancers. I balanced melody and sound texture in the saxophone part and changed the modulation through the scene. It starts and ends with tamed high frequencies and reverberated modulations to invite the viewer to feel distant, like we are witnessing this scene in a dream. then when the camera gets closer, I reopen the eq and cut the reverb to bring us closer to the characters, before going back to the ‘reverie’ towards the end of the scene.

Indéfini (L. Sommers): is the closing scene of a short film I worked on. The scene was actually cut at the final edit, but here it is! For me, the modulations and distortions resonate with the suffering of the main character who feels broken inside after being victim of a rape. I recorded my (out of tune) piano and saxophone and the acoustic instruments hesitate between acoustic and electronic, between hope and despair with her, and with us.