Collage and the Slam Dunk Method of composition

As I've said elsewhere on this web site I like to collage. I like putting sounds together in unusual combinations just as I like throwing concepts andgenres together in the scriptwriting stage. And editing itself is also purecollage.

The elements that I thought I would use were Transylvanian folk rhythms to represent the European Vampire Tradition, Chinese funeral music to evokeChinese qualities, and West African Voodoo derivatives, because these areway cool.

Transylvanian folk music, like Hungarian, favours the use of uneven meters such as 7 (2+2+3) (count 1-2-1-2-1-2-3 and repeat). Bela Bartok's music is very influenced by these meters. Perhaps they on't evoke castle Dracula to the average movie goer, but I like the geographical connection.

When I was living in Taiwan I had the chance to see Funeral parades every few days. Mounted on the back of a truck would be a traditional ensemble of sona (a simple oboe) drums and cymbals or gongs. Interestingly the cymbals often beat out a 2+2+3+3 rhythm that, although it sounds Chinese when they play it, has a connection to Transylvania.

West African Voodoo music has leached into our popular consciousness thanks to the slave trade and the influence of Afro-American music on world wide Pop music. The beat made famous by Bo Diddly harks straight back to Africa, as does much Cuban and ‘Latin' music. Also note that the rhythms of the Carribean and New Orleans can also be seen to be in uneven meters. The rhythm usually written in 4/4 as dotted crochet, dotted crochet, crochet is in fact 3+3+2. This rhythm underpins much of Cuban and New Orleans music.

The other main ingredient is the organ music of J.S. Bach. The organ, because of it's mechanical nature samples very well, and I am able to get quite a realistic pipe organ sound from my geriatric EPS sampler. With MIDI control I was able to adjust the music to fit the action with a freedom that I would not have had if I had a recording of an organ. Also I would have had to pay the organist.

Bach's organ music instantly evokes horror films to the modern audience. Karloff playing the D minor toccata in the Black Cat is but one example of the clichéd use of this music.

Working on the music for this film I found myself often throwing a couple of pieces together and liking the results, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that they were in different keys, tempos and time signatures.

For example, the music for the final fight was lacking a bit in intensity, and needed to be slightly different to what we had heard before but since it was in the conclusion needed to avoid being a completely new element. Following the Slam Dunk method I took the track Chinese Voodoo and throw it over the bass part of the Vampire Mambo. The result as you can hear in the movie clip Fight works as if it was made to be that way.

All materials © 2006 Phil Davison
All rights reserved.