Sibelius Blog

John Metcalfe on arranging Peter Gabriel’s “Scratch My Back”

Daniel Spreadbury — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:53:27 +0000

The cover art for Peter Gabriel's new album, Scratch My Back

This past February, Peter Gabriel released his eighth studio album, Scratch My Back, which is a striking collection of 12 songs made famous by a diverse range of artists – including Lou Reed, Elbow, Radiohead, and David Bowie – arranged for full orchestra. Peter Gabriel collaborated with pianist Jason Rebello, orchestrator and arranger John Metcalfe, and producer Bob Ezrin on the album, which he has described as “a swap shop of songs.” It’s quite a remarkable album, with a unique sound: Gabriel’s vocals over sparse piano and lush strings.

I caught up with John Metcalfe, who did all of the orchestral arrangements for the album, to ask him about the project. More after the jump.

John has been featured on this blog before, thanks to his involvement in the unique live composing project that he and fellow composer Simon Hale have toured around the UK with The Bays and the Heritage Orchestra, and it was through this project that John got involved with Scratch My Back.

“Peter Gabriel’s manager, Dickie Chappell, came to a Bristol show on our tour with The Bays and the Heritage Orchestra,” he says. “Peter was looking for arrangers at that time, so it was a good bit of luck, I guess!”

Of course, there is more to it than pure luck: John is a highly sought-after composer and arranger who has already worked with a number of luminaries from the pop and rock worlds, including Morrissey and Chrissy Hynde, and writes regularly for film and TV.

“Yes, lots of roads leading to Real World,” says John, referring to Peter Gabriel’s famous studio. “I had also done some composing for guitarist Tom Kerstens, who is releasing an album on Real World Records and was down at the studio in Box, so I knew some people there, and the label boss had seen my band perform and knew my music.”

John came on board after Gabriel and Rebello had already been working on the project for a little while. “They had already demo-ed a few songs by the time I got involved,” he says.

A Sibelius-printed part on the stand (Courtesy PeterGabriel.com)

The album had a long gestation period, and several of the songs were revisited again and again. “Some of them were quite quick,” says John, “but some took months to get right! Peter, Bob Ezrin and I went into every nook of the arrangements to make sure they were exact. Coming back to something after a break, for example, will always lead to further tweaks. The real detail of Power of the Heart and Listening Wind particularly took a lot of time to evolve.”

John is delighted with the end result, and I asked him if he has any particular favourites from the album. He couldn’t name just one! “Heroes, Boy in the Bubble, Mirrorball and Street Spirit are my favourite arrangements,” he says.

All of the parts used in the orchestral recording sessions were produced on Sibelius. “Once the arrangements were agreed, I went straight to Sibelius for the orchestration. Dave Foster laid out the parts beautifully!”

John relies on Sibelius for much of his work, and I asked him to name his favourite features. “Magnetic dynamics are a great time-saver, as is having shortcuts for just about everything. Also, I love using Panorama view – it really helps with the workflow for me.”

Scratch My Back is available now on CD, vinyl and via download; check it out at Amazon. There’s lots more information about the making of the album at Peter Gabriel’s web site, including a series of podcasts, some videos about the recording of some of the tracks, and even a free download from the album.

As for John, he’s got plenty more interesting projects in the pipeline. Besides being involved in the live shows supporting Scratch My Back, in May cellist Matthew Barley is curating a series of events at King’s Place in London in support of a new CD of works that John has written for him. On 13 May, the John Metcalfe Band & Matthew Barley will be performing; the next night, works from Constant Filter will be premiered; and finally on 15 May, John’s string quartet, The Duke Quartet, will be joined by Barley for a programme including new string quintets that John has written. Do try and check them out!

Strictly Composing winner Julian Pombo is a Sibelius Student

Daniel Spreadbury — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:24:04 +0000

I was delighted to receive a letter here at Sibelius HQ from a young composer called Julian Pombo, who has won the Strictly Composing competition, which was organised as part of the UK government’s Tune In – Year of Music initiative. The Year of Music is designed to get children and young people across the UK more involved in musical activities in the 2009/10 school year. There are all sorts of things going on, including the Sing Up! campaign to get singing into primary schools, school visits by pop musicians including Pixie Lott and the Jonas Brothers, workshops with ensembles like the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, local festivals, and a great deal else besides.

Julian Pombo

The Strictly Composing competition invited students aged 19 or under to compose a tango lasting no longer than five minutes, for any ensemble provided it includes violin and piano. Entries closed at the end of 2009, and the jury was chaired by Antony Hopkins CBE. The winning piece is set to be professionally recorded and performed in London by violinist Sian Phillips later this year.

Julian Pombo’s tango, Amor Joven, was judged to be the winner, and the 15-year-old composer, who has been studying flute at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama for the past three years, used Sibelius Student to write his winning piece. “Sibelius Student has helped me a lot in my composition classes, as well as giving me hours of enjoyment,” he said.

Julian hopes to move up to working in the full Sibelius 6 product soon: “Having won this competition, I would like to enter other competitions that will require writing for orchestra, and for that I’m going to need the full version of Sibelius!”

It’s always great to see our products helping students realise their creativity and playing a role in their development and success. Congratulations, Julian!

Avatar composer James Horner: “Without Sibelius, we’d be lost”

Daniel Spreadbury — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:48:13 +0000

Check out this fantastic video taking you behind the scenes on the scoring and sound design of James Cameron’s Oscar-winning blockbuster, Avatar, which became the highest-grossing movie in history in an astonishing 20 days. And if you are one of the millions of people around the world who has seen the film, you will have been immersed not only in the astounding 3D visuals, but also in the extraordinary music and sound design.

It will surely come as no surprise to learn that Avid’s broad range of products played a vital role in Avatar’s production, and the video above shows you how Sibelius and Pro Tools were used to create the ethnic-fused score and alien sound world of the planet Pandora.

Composer James Horner says:

To keep track of what I’m doing now transparently, instead of using just pen and paper, I’m using Sibelius, writing in ways that are not conventional ways of writing: I mean, without it, we’d be lost. And Pro Tools is just such a wonderful enabler: it’s like a library, a writer, a recorder, an everything tool.

Watch the complete video above, or in glorious HD.

Composer Blake Neely on HBO’s The Pacific

Daniel Spreadbury — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:15:18 +0000

This Sunday sees the US broadcast on HBO of the first episode of a major new ten-part miniseries called The Pacific.

The Pacific is perhaps the spiritual successor to Band of Brothers, itself a ten-part adaptation of the book of the same name by American historian Stephen E. Ambrose. While Band of Brothers told the story of the part played in the victory in Europe of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US Army, otherwise known as Easy Company, towards the end of World War II, The Pacific tells the story of the US Marine Corps’s participation in the Pacific theatre of war.

The series is based on memoirs by two US Marines, With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie, and tells the story of the war against Japan through the eyes of these two men, and a third Marine, John Basilone.

The same production team that worked on Band of Brothers – including Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks – are behind The Pacific, so it is appropriate that the people behind the music have some links to the earlier series. The composer on Band of Brothers was Michael Kamen, who sadly passed away in 2003, but his orchestrator on that series, Blake Neely – himself now an acclaimed composer, arranger and producer – has collaborated with Hans Zimmer and Geoff Zanelli on The Pacific, and the results are sure to be epic.

Blake was kind enough to make time to talk to me about his work on The Pacific, his collaboration with his co-composers, and how Sibelius plays a part in his work. More after the jump.

Blake Neely is one of the most in-demand composers in Hollywood at the moment. Not only has he worked on some of the biggest films of the last decade – including collaborating with Hans Zimmer on the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and The Da Vinci Code – but he is currently providing the music for two weekly drama series, ABC’s Brothers and Sisters and CBS’s The Mentalist, as well as scoring Warner Brothers’ upcoming feature film, Life As We Know It.

Dream jobs

“This year I’ve worked on some dream television projects,” he says. “On each I have been given great creative freedom and am allowed to enhance with music rather than merely ‘wallpaper.’ Each has rich stories and characters, which fuel my inspiration, and each one requires a different musical style and sound world, so I’m never bored.”

Each of the three shows for which Blake provides the music are very different, and the music he provides is accordingly very different. How does he hit upon the unique sound of each show? “When I see a show for the first time, usually an early edit of a pilot episode or a first cut of a film, a specific musical idea will come to me,” he says. “If it doesn’t on that first viewing, then I usually panic a little bit, because this is almost always my way in.”

Blake knows the importance of following his instincts. “What comes to me might be a theme, a sound world, a style or even an instrument. But it’s usually one that I instinctively feel will work well for the show. From there, I spend a few weeks experimenting and exploring ideas based on this initial concept. And a sound world of instrumentation, style, and themes evolves. With a series, I then have 22 episodes a year to build this world and hopefully make it better.”

I asked Blake just what his weekly schedule is like when creating the music for a series like The Mentalist. “For me, the only negative in scoring television is a lack of time per week to create. For a weekly network series, I generally have six days to complete an episode. With an average of 25-30 minutes of music in each episode, I need to be writing and recording 4-5 minutes of music per day, per show.”

This doesn’t sound like much, of course: until you consider that there are many competing demands on your time. “No, not bad – until you are doing three series and a film, meetings, spotting sessions, playbacks, and so on, and so on. Then the time constraints multiply and become overwhelming. But over the years I’ve developed lots and lots of tricks, templates, organizational and management systems to make me a very fast writer. I also surround myself with helpful and talented musicians and together we make these deadlines a reality.”

Doing it for free

One of those helpful and talented musicians who helped Blake in the early part of his career is the late Michael Kamen.

“I have so many memories of working with Michael,” he says. “I learned so much from him, whether it was how to approach a scene, how to choose your orchestration, or perhaps most importantly in this business: how to accommodate a director’s requests and stay true to your vision.”

It is clear that Blake continues to hold Kamen in high regard. “He was a master composer, great all-around musician, and a good and caring person to all who knew him. Michael also taught me that the business of making music should always be enjoyed and enjoyable. To paraphrase him, ‘Do you think they’d still pay us if they knew we’d do it for free?’ I always remind myself that, even during some dark and stressful hours on The Pacific, being able to do this for a living is unbelievably fun and a real gift.”

Blake and his co-composers came on board with the project after filming was complete and rough edits of all ten parts had been assembled. “Once we’d watched a rough version, we each began writing themes and trying to find a style and instrumentation that worked,” he says. “After we had some basic themes and knew the orchestration, we set out scoring. Since it’s a ten-part series, and we had the entire first cut, I would literally hop around and write a scene in Episode 8 and then see if the same material would work for the set up of that story in Episode 2. We approached it like it was just one 10-hour feature film. This gave us continuity. As the project unfolded, we would focus on particular episodes and fully score one before going to the next. But we had a good idea of the overall arc of the score before we did each episode.”

Being able to write the score for the entire series allowed the freedom of ensuring the musical continuity throughout the entire series. “One fascinating part was realizing as we were scoring Episode 7, for example, that something we had written in Episode 4 no longer worked because we’d discovered a new approach. So we would have to go back and redo these particular spots. This happened very frequently, so much so that our last recording session was to simply record the rewritten areas.”

Blake found it useful to start with the destination in mind. ”The first piece I wrote for the series, back in September 2008, is actually one of the last pieces you hear in the show: Eugene’s homecoming,” he says. “I do often work backwards on a story, so that I always know where I’m headed and everything in the score can lead to that point.”

The character of the music itself is “noble, melancholic and elegiac”, but it has nothing in common with the score for Band of Brothers. “Everyone on the project wanted The Pacific to be its own thing. If you hear audible links, then it is either coincidence, or a bit of Kamen sneaking through my pen, as it does from time to time.”

Team effort

With so much music to write, the division of labour is very important, not only between the three co-composers, but also the teams of orchestrators and copyists who all come together to create the music.

“Hans and Geoff are not orchestrators in the traditional ‘notes on paper’ sense, so there were several additional orchestrators on The Pacific: Bruce Fowler led a team of excellent and talented people,” says Blake. “For me, however, I got into this business as an orchestrator and still love that part of the process, so it’s hard for me to relinquish those duties.”

Nevertheless, with a project of this size and such tight deadlines, Blake had no choice. “Something had to give,” he says. “I ended up sending about 25% of my music to other orchestrators. It was a surprisingly enjoyable for me, an admitted control freak, to hear what someone else did with my music. Orchestration is such a subtle and misunderstood dark art – I wish that listeners understood how vital it is to composition.”

Once the composers and orchestrators have had their say, each cue moves along to the third part of the process: creating the parts that the musicians on the stage can play from.

“I’m not sure exactly how many copyists worked on The Pacific, but probably not enough!” says Blake. “Copyists are always the most overworked and sleep-deprived people on a scoring stage. We composers and orchestrators tend to wait until the last minute to have them do this incredibly detailed and important job – and then we expect there to be no mistakes!”

The copyists worked under the supervision of Booker White. ”Booker led an amazing team, and I can tell you honestly that the only mistakes made in the parts were those created by us composers, and they never missed a deadline! I sent an orchestration one morning at 3am. It was roughly a three minute cue, and our downbeat (start of recording) was at 10am. All the parts were on the stands and perfectly playable.”

Conducting and recording

In addition to being an accomplished composer and orchestrator, Blake spends much of his time on the podium in the scoring stage, conducting ensembles for his own and others’ scores. For The Pacific, Blake conducted the orchestra through the sessions for all ten episodes.

“The orchestra was about 75 players,” he says. “We recorded close to six hours of music over 10 different recording sessions at Sony Scoring Stage, with Dennis Sands as our engineer. There are literally hundreds of score pages and thousands of individual part pages. It is a lot of music.”

All of those pages of music were produced using Sibelius – well, almost. ”Except for one cue, which I wrote out by hand during lunch on the scoring stage, every orchestration I completed was done in Sibelius,” says Blake.

Some of the orchestrators on the project worked in Sibelius, while others worked in Finale (“Hey, it’s their funeral,” Blake jokes). For Blake, though, Sibelius is one of a handful of indispensable software packages that he relies upon to do his job.

“I have three tools that use every day and on every project: Logic, Sibelius, and Pro Tools,” he says. “Sure, I could resort to the old-fashioned pencil and paper and metronome, but it would be arduous. I have come to rely on these programs so much so that I find it difficult to write music any other way. I create a multi-track sequence in Logic which syncs to the video in Pro Tools, which is also the input for all of my synths and samplers. Once I’ve completed a synthestrated demo of the cue, I can present it to picture to the director. After it’s approved, I then export all of this MIDI data to Sibelius and begin working on the final orchestration. When I’m happy with this, then I send the Sibelius score to the copyist and they output the parts.”

Blake has used Sibelius for years, and can’t imagine using anything else. “What I love about Sibelius is its feel. No other program feels like pen and paper to me. Its new features like Optical ties, Magnetic Layout and improved playback functions are ideal for me to easily and quickly create a final score.”

But like all Sibelius users, Blake has his own wish list for future versions of the software: “If only it worked more seamlessly with Logic, all my problems would be solved.”

Exceeding expectations

Blake is excited that this project is just about to see the light of day, after having worked on it over the last eighteen months. “We were recording music up until the very last days of the sound dub, so we got to see everything,” he says, “which is very unusual: I often score to scenes that are still green-screened, but we got to see The Pacific evolve to the point of writing to scenes with completed visual effects. I’m sure there will be some visual or aural surprises in the final version when it airs, but so far it exceeds my expectations on every level.”

Blake Neely’s web site, which includes lots of his music to listen to, is found at BlakeNeely.com. You can also check out the web sites of his co-composers at Hans-Zimmer.com and GeoffZanelli.com. The fruits of their labours on The Pacific is released as a soundtrack album today, March 9, on Rhino Records.

The first episode of The Pacific airs this Sunday night on HBO in the US: one of the trailers is embedded below.

Best Original Score Oscar-winner “Up” scored in Sibelius

Daniel Spreadbury — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:52:32 +0000

Courtesy Disney/Pixar

Last night’s Academy Awards ceremony honoured composer Michael Giacchino with the award for Best Original Score for his score for Disney/Pixar’s Up.

The conductor’s score and parts were all prepared using Sibelius by the expert team of copyists led by Booker White in the music office at Disney Studios in Burbank, California, and Michael himself also uses Sibelius.

Echoing the sentiments of many others who are delighted to see Michael win an Oscar, Booker told me, “It was a good day for all of us who have been with Michael since the beginning of his film career.”

Michael’s much-praised acceptance speech has a timely message for all young people thinking about entering the music or movie industries:

When I was nine and I asked my dad, “Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8 millimeter camera that was in your drawer?” And he goes, “Sure, take it.” And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, “What you’re doing is a waste of time.” Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you’re doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was OK to do that. I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time. Do it. OK? Thank you.

Many congratulations to Michael, to Booker and his team at Disney, and to everybody else who played a part in this well-deserved award!

Last few days to switch from Finale and save!

Daniel Spreadbury — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:00:57 +0000

Time is running out to take advantage of our special offer on switching to Sibelius from Finale, Encore, Mosaic or Notion. Until March 19, you can save a further 35% off the special crossgrade price, meaning that you will pay just $129 in the US or £129 in the UK to get a copy of the multi award-winning Sibelius 6.

Further details about the offer are in this previous post, but hurry – you only have ten days left to place your order!

Huffington Post says Sibelius is “a technological wonder”

Daniel Spreadbury — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:45:24 +0000

One of the top online destinations for news, The Huffington Post, has started a new column by Ken Gruberman, a Los Angeles-based technology writer and professional arranger and music copyist, who calls himself The Tech Daddy!

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Ken on a couple of occasions, including a very convivial lunch in Anaheim, California a couple of years ago, while Ken was in the middle of working on the music for HBO’s acclaimed miniseries John Adams as copyist and score supervisor. All of the music for that multi-Emmy award-winning production was scored in Sibelius (of course!).

Anyway, Ken’s first column for The Huffington Post details how he got into computer-based copying nearly 25 years ago, when he bought the state-of-the-art (at the time!) Professional Composer notation software for Mac. Of course now, many years later, Ken uses Sibelius, and says:

Still, there are plenty of technological wonders to amaze us all. One of them is Sibelius, the notation software I currently use; I’ve been a fan for several years, and enjoy occasionally demoing the product.

Check out Ken’s column now. It’s worth setting up a bookmark or an entry in your feed reader for Ken’s articles: he’s an engaging writer and will no doubt have some interesting insights into the world of personal technology in the weeks and months to come.

Special offer for multi-seat Sibelius 6 upgrades in the UK

Daniel Spreadbury — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:00:08 +0000

A music technology classroom, yesterday.

If your school, university or other educational institution has a site license for Sibelius and you’re thinking about upgrading to Sibelius 6 (you certainly should be!), then now just might be the best time to get on board.

Until March 26, educational institutions in the UK who upgrade their existing site licenses to Sibelius 6 will receive one extra, free license for the software for every five licenses upgraded. You can choose whether or not you want to add the free licenses as extras seat to your existing site license, or instead receive extra stand-alone copies of Sibelius 6 that can be used by staff and faculty either at school or at home for lesson preparation.

Depending on the size of your existing site license, upgrading to Sibelius 6 may cost as little as £29 ex. VAT per seat, and if you upgrade a 20-seat license, you will receive four extra licenses of Sibelius 6.

This offer is available to schools and colleges in the UK only, and is valid for full-price upgrades to multi-user licences only. Orders are also subject to standard terms and conditions, available on request.

For more details, please download and complete this PDF order form from the Sibelius web site.

Sibelius training in Sheffield this Sunday 7 March

Daniel Spreadbury — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:52:46 +0000

Martin Thomson of LoNote Music, an experienced Sibelius demonstrator, will be running a training session at the Showroom in Sheffield here in the UK this coming Sunday, 7 March 2010 from 12pm to 4pm (with a coffee break in the middle!). Organised by the Northern England branch of the Musicians’ Union, this is an excellent opportunity to see Sibelius in action, and ask any burning questions about the software that you might have.

Martin says:

I will be covering all aspects of the program, along with showing how to get the most out of it. I will also be including a Q&A session at the end for people with specific problems or requests. In addition, I will be offering a special sale price for those who like what they saw!

If you would like to attend, the great news is that the event is free. Registration in advance is encouraged, so if you plan to go, please email manchester@themu.org or call 0161 236 1764. Do go along if you can!

Composer Yalil Guerra scores Univision’s World Cup theme

Daniel Spreadbury — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:44:36 +0000

Composer Yalil Guerra

Cuban-born composer and Sibelius user Yalil Guerra has arranged, orchestrated and co-produced the theme music that will accompany the coverage of this summer’s football World Cup on America’s primary Spanish-language television network, Univision, and I got in touch with him to find out more about this project.

Yalil Guerra first trained as a classical guitarist, but for the past twenty years he has been composing, arranging and producing music for television in the US, and he has worked with Univision for nearly a decade. “I have in my portfolio the composition and production of the theme music for the Latin Grammy Awards, and other prominent shows on the network such as Premio lo Nuestro, Viva el Sueño, Premius Juventud, and many more,” he says. “At the same time, I have an active career as a classical composer, and have had works premiered in Europe and the Americas, including by wonderful ensembles like the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.”

With this year’s World Cup coming from South Africa, I asked Yalil whether the rich musical tradition of the continent had played a part in the music he wrote. “Yes, the work starts with an African section, with energetic rhythms and chants,” he says. “After the intro, the song starts with a techno-style arrangement, and aggressive, modern-sounding brass, with two trumpets and trombones, both sections doubled, performed by some of the best musicians in Los Angeles, where I live.”

Most of the people watching Univision will be rooting for the teams from the American continent that will be participating in the competition, including the US, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, and Brazil. There must be a Latin-American feell to the music too. “In the middle of the song, the music travels to Brazil,” says Yalil. “A Batacuda-style section, with surdo, cuica, tambourine, repique and agogos, creating a Carnaval atmosphere that again ends with the techno part. The main chants then return, until the brass again enters, building to the finale.”

Yalil uses Sibelius as his main software. “I have been using Sibelius for nearly three years now for composition, arranging and printing parts. I am very pleased with the user interface, how easy to use it is – the program simply works.”

Yalil’s theme music will be heard daily on Univision once the World Cup kicks off in 99 days! If you want to know more about Yalil and his other music, check out his web site.

Sibelius Blog

John Metcalfe on arranging Peter Gabriel’s “Scratch My Back”

Related posts:

Strictly Composing winner Julian Pombo is a Sibelius Student

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Avatar composer James Horner: “Without Sibelius, we’d be lost”

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Composer Blake Neely on HBO’s The Pacific

Dream jobs

Doing it for free

Team effort

Exceeding expectations

Related posts:

Best Original Score Oscar-winner “Up” scored in Sibelius

Related posts:

Last few days to switch from Finale and save!

Related posts:

Huffington Post says Sibelius is “a technological wonder”

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Special offer for multi-seat Sibelius 6 upgrades in the UK

Related posts:

Sibelius training in Sheffield this Sunday 7 March

Related posts:

Composer Yalil Guerra scores Univision’s World Cup theme

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