All language subtitles for MasterClass Danny Elfman Teaches Music For Film - 07.Instrumentation

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is a five octave
extended marimba.

And what it means by extended
is that a normal marimba might

stop somewhere up in
here, but this one

goes down to the bottom.

I collect marimbas and all
kinds of tuned percussion.

This is one of the few
things in my collection

that was made this last decade.

Most of my collection
starts at about 1903

and goes through the--

what I call the golden
days of tuned percussion,

would be the '20s to the '40s.

And I was lucky enough
to get a fantastic access

to some great old instruments.

But the thing about--

[SOUND OF THE MARIMBA PLAYING]

The thing about me and marimbas,
as much as I love them,

I use them only as a tool
to experiment with rhythms.

I'm not a marimba player,
not by a long shot.

So--

[SOUND OF THE MARIMBA PLAYING]

So the point is, when
I'm playing on a marimba,

I'm doing simple stuff because
my background in percussion

is on five tone instruments
from the Gamelan,

five tone instruments
from West Africa.

So even when I'm
playing a full marimba,

I tend to play it as if I
was playing that balafon.

[SOUND OF THE MARIMBA PLAYING]

But I love these instruments.

This has always been
one of my passions.

One of my-- one of
these days, maybe I'll

even learn how to play it
like a real instrument.

But it's what I bang on at
2 o'clock in the morning,

and I just love the
ability to make noise.

And I do work out ideas
that I'll use in scores.

[SOUND OF THE MARIMBA PLAYING]

And I'll just work
out things, get ideas.

Obviously, none of my
playing on a marimba

are going to end up
likely in a score.

Other things, yes, perhaps,
but these instruments

are much, much better played
by the fantastic percussionists

that I frequently work with.

[SOUND OF THE MARIMBA PLAYING]

I just bang on them.

That's all I do.

I make noise.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What do I start with
when I'm writing?

Instrumentally,
orchestrationally,

what am I starting with?

I may want to just be working
in a broad overall sense

and just be working
literally on a piano,

even though the piano
won't stay in the score.

And it may be that the first
idea I'm hearing in my head

is some short ostinato
on marcato strings,

and I'm really going
to start with that.

And it may be the opposite.

It may be I'm really starting
with long gentle strings,

and I'm looking
for a sample that

will allow me to create
something that there's

nice, slow string sound
that I'm looking for,

that doesn't have any
attack and doesn't

have any sudden release.

So it just depends.

Moment on moment, what
I'm feeling in my head

is the first thing
I want to listen to,

and it could be anything
from a prepared piano

to a synthesizer to orchestral
sounds to just a raw piano.

By prepared piano,
for those of you

who don't know what
that means, that's

where you take the
strings and you

put metal or wood or different
things between the strings.

So they're going-- instead of
da da da da da da da da da,

they're going thud, clang,
cling, ting, dah, ding, tink,

bong, ping, ting, like that.

And now, I've got all
these tiny little sounds,

and I could be using that along
with the real percussion--

tom-toms and snare
drums and bass drums,

and those type of things.

To convey energy and
movement, however, it's

almost certainly
you're going to want

to have some kind of
energy going in your sound.

Now, obviously, there's a
million ways to do that--

having an ostinado.

Having something that's
building from the orchestra

is a way that's been used
many times very effectively

in many, many scores.

But you can also do that
purely synthetically,

and synthesizers are
actually great for that, too,

because you can start to
build a rhythm in a sound.

You can just have a
sound and start to work--

[MAKING RHYTHM NOISES]

And it's not--
you're not playing.

You're just holding one note.

But you're changing
your filters,

and your filters are
actually giving you a rhythm.

And this is something
I love doing

when I'm working with synths,
it's finding a rhythm in just

the filter, something in the
sound, and letting that-- oh,

now I've got this rhythm.

I didn't-- I like that, so now,
I'm laying other instruments

on top of that thing
that I started with,

only with one held note, but
working a fader and writing

a bit of a filter in.

So there's no
clear way to do it.

Percussion can be great,
but may not be percussion.

Samples can be really useful.

I've frequently used-- because
I love prepared pianos and piano

harmonics, just the
sound of a piano that

was being struck with
metal and ringing,

but I take all the attack off.

So I'm just playing, yoom.

It's like-- there's
no attack, but if I

played the entire sample,
you'd hear gaaang.

But I'm just letting you hear,
zhoom, zhoom, zhoom, zhoom,

and--

because I don't want
it to start too strong.

I want it to build.

And there's just a
million ways to do energy,

and that's actually part
of the fun of it as well.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Using different instruments,
using outside the orchestra

instrumentation--

I think, for myself,
that's where I started.

And my roots were in
percussion instruments,

was percussion
ensembles, was things

made of wood and
things made of metal.

So I just dealt to my own
roots, and in that case,

it was stuff like you
see behind me here.

And I used to always carry
a little wooden mallet

behind my ear, and I'd
wander into hardware stores

all the time.

And the reason I had that mallet
is I would see little measuring

cups or this or
that or odd shaped

bowls, and I'd go bing,
bing, and I'd just

walk through stores--

tang, tang, tang--
oh, I like this.

And that must've kind
of been an odd sight

to see-- somebody walking
through, picking things up

off your shelves and
pinging them, and then

looking very pleased and
putting it in the shopping cart.

But-- oh, my god, there was a
place called California Surplus

here in Los Angeles, which is
a surplus-- army surplus store.

And they had tons
of great old shit.

I mean, they had old miner's
pans, and I loved miner's pans.

I learned that I could
take them home and put

the center of the miner's pan in
the middle part of a brake drum

that has a hole and bang out the
middle, and before you know it,

you're making all kinds
of tones for these kind

of weird gong-like instruments.

I had an instrument
built of beer cans.

I called it my Schlitz
Celeste, and it actually--

I used to go around and pick
up beer cans everywhere I went.

And I'd ping, ping, ping,
ping, ping, ping, ping

because you can't
tune a beer can.

You can only luck upon a note.

And so I came--

I eventually built about an
octave and a half of beer cans,

and that was great.

Measuring cups-- I had a
rack of tuned measuring cups.

I love that kind of stuff.

It's hard to play
live in a score,

because the other
problem I realized

is that, when you start bringing
nontraditional instruments

into a room where
there's an orchestra,

you find yourself losing
incredibly costly time

that nobody wants to do.

And I said, all right,
this isn't working,

so there's only
two ways to do it.

One is you either pre-record
your weird instruments--

everybody's got a little room
somewhere in their studio,

and you lay down your click,
and you have your demo.

And so I started pre-recording
my own percussion.

I would lay tracks down and
bring those into the orchestra,

so they're already
recorded on tape.

The other way, of
course, as we all know,

is you make your samples.

You sample your instruments,
and now, you can kind of

play them any way you want.

You can also tweak the pitch
one way or another if you want

and have a lot of fun with that.

I still prefer laying
down the stuff live,

but they both work
in different ways.

I mean, you could do
things with samples

that you could never do with a
room full of live instruments

and vise versa.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The digital realm versus
the orchestral realm--

I just see them as two
hands on the same body.

There are things
digitally you can

do that's great that you just
can't do with real instruments,

and I frequently love that.

And there's things
an orchestra can

do that you can't do digitally.

We all know what film
scores in the '80s

tended to often
sound like when they

did what sounded like a
regular orchestral score

on synthesizers.

It's crap.

It doesn't hold up.

But there's many great things
we can do with digital music

that an orchestra
could never do.

There's tonalities.

There's rhythms.

There's effects.

There's feels for
things that can't

be expressed in any other way.

So you just have to look at--

there's digital.

There's percussion.

There's voices.

There's orchestra.

These all offer their
own opportunities

that nothing else can do
like them, and some of them

are live.

Some of them are the
opposite of live.

Some of them are really
down to just all night

long tweaking, tweaking,
tweaking, tweaking knobs.

But it's the same thing.

It's all towards the same end.

They're just different
sonic fields.

And sometimes, they
happen at the same time

and come together,
and sometimes, they're

all one or all the other.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In terms of sample libraries,
I use many different sample

libraries.

Obviously, when I'm
making my demos,

I've got lots of
orchestral sample libraries

that I combine for strings,
for woodwinds, for brass.

It's always my hope that
every single orchestral sample

disappears by the end.

Occasionally, there
are a few samples

that I'll hold and
maintain because I may need

a little bit of it in the mix.

And particularly those are
pizzicato, because I'll go,

I need a pizzicato
sound, and I just

don't have the
players to give up

to have a live pizzicato
that's full enough for me.

And in my mind, the
samples that work best--

orchestral samples
that work best

would be short
strings and pizzicato.

So sometimes, I've got a very
aggressive ostinato happening

on the bottom, and I'll go, it's
just not quite enough celli--

or cellis and basses to
get what I want, and I'll

mix a little bit of the short
marcato strings or spiccato

or staccato-- because
different libraries,

it's going to be-- but it's
all essentially the same thing.

It's a sharp attack
on a short sound.

And those are, in the end,
the best sounding samples

in terms of an overall mix.

The worst are long strings.

They sound like shit--

I don't care who does it--

because there's no vibrato,
and there's no variation.

And the thing that makes long
strings and brass work so well

is their overtones
and variations.

And with strings in particular,
you've got bits of vibrato--

same with woodwinds-- and
they're not consistent

vibratos.

And no sample
really covers that.

You can get a sample of
a certain note covering

a certain held--

OK, the vibrato's lovely.

But that's just a note.

And besides, you
start getting in

that-- you're losing
the richness of it.

And there's a great
argument to be

made for who gives a shit,
because in the concept

of the score and the
sound and the noise,

the richness is
not what matters.

I personally disagree with that.

I believe that real instruments
give a richness, which

can't be reproduced,
so my samples

are divided into the
throwaways and the keepers.

The keepers are going
to be percussion.

I don't want to play live
percussion with big drums

and with all kinds
of exotic drums.

They just take up a
lot of time, and they

tend to sound really
crappy in a full room

with an orchestra, where you've
got these big overhead mics.

So to use percussion, you either
have enough time and budget

to get great live recording in
a smaller room, more contained,

with-- you mic it
totally differently,

and then it can be great
if you have the time.

And if you don't, I'll
go with samples of sounds

that I have from my
room that I really like.

I've recorded them really well.

I'm happy with them.

But overall, I stick
with synthetics stay.

My percussion samples stay.

My weird ass-- obviously,
my prepared piano stuff,

which I could not do live.

Even if I wanted to, I'd be
recording it, and manipulating

the sound, and
putting it back in.

The things that I hope to lose
at least 90% of, if not 100%,

is the orchestral--
the woodwinds,

the brass, the strings.