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10/26/2020 0 Comments Music- Henry Mancini Henry Mancini was one of the most prolific film and television composers of all time. By the time of his death in 1994, he had received more Grammy award nominations than any other artist (this has later been surpassed by Quincy Jones). He is also one of the few film composers to have one of his arrangements become a #1 hit when his version of the “Theme from Romeo and Juliet” knocked the Beatles off the top spot in 1970. Mancini was equally respected among film critics, audiences, and popular music listeners. Of the great film composers, he stands with the top few whose music is a terrific listening experience outside of the context of the film.
However, much of Mancini’s impact seems to have been forgotten in the post-Star Wars era when big, symphonic scores returned to popularity. Film music, like any artform, has cycles, the symphonic (I daresay, classical) scores of the 1930s and 1940s gave way to rock and roll inspired scores in the late 1950s and 1960s. Disco music reigned in the soundtracks of the 1970s, until Star Wars returned the style to symphonic music. One could argue that, depending on the film genre, symphonic scores are still the norm (with added electronic elements). Mancini, like many great composers, stands out because his music often stood out as contrary to the prevailing style of the time. What the general public remembers about Mancini are the Pink Panther and Peter Gunn scores, which are incredible, yet only a fraction of Mancini’s output. By examining Mancini’s work, we see he was quite versatile. Mancini got his start in Hollywood working at Universal Studios as part of a composing team or music department that would write music for giant monster movies. Often in situations like this, members of a music department would be uncredited and the title of music supervisor would be the sole credit. It was not until the end of the 1950s with the Peter Gunn television show that Mancini’s work was noticed. Also, Peter Gunn was his first collaboration with producer-director Blake Edwards, a composer-director partnership that would serve Mancini for the rest of his career. Today, listening to the Peter Gunn theme often reminds the listener of the James Bond sound. However, the influence actually went the other way. Peter Gunn premiered in 1958 and the James Bond series did not start until 1962. We could say that Mancini’s sound influenced the sound of the 1960s spy movies. Many times, Mancini’s score would complement the films by providing a contrasting counterpoint to the comic action on screen. Consider cues like “Nothing To Lose” from The Party and “Piano and Strings” from The Pink Panther occur during outrageous comedies. Like subtext for dialogue, his music would highlight the underlying emotions amidst all the chaos. Mancini was a master of jazz and pop orchestration. He actually wrote one of the few texts on the subject, Sounds and Scores, which I highly recommend. His use of string counterpoint and jazz harmonies were imitated heavily by other composers, especially in television. Despite his ability to layer sounds, his music never had to rely on complicated textures to evoke feelings. Often, a piece could be a piano melody with simple string pad beneath. A great example of this is “Hilly’s Theme” from Silver Streak. Some of his most notable melodies are recognizable within 5 notes. Consider “Moon River” takes about 3, “Pink Panther Theme” about 2, “Crazy World” about 3, etc. In terms of Academy Awards, 1961-1962 were quite special for Mancini. He won best score and best song (“Moon River”) from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and then best song for “The Days of Wine and Roses” the following year. His final academy award was in 1982 for the Best Song Score for Victor/Victoria. In between, he was nominated for an award practically every single year. He won a best song Golden Globe for “Whistling Away The Dark” from Darling Lili in 1971 and was nominated for 9 others. Including one posthumous award, he earned 9 Grammy Awards out of 33 nominations. Although his background was jazz, his classical sound could be quite evocative, many times having an Italian quality, which makes sense considering his heritage. A notable example of this is the Italian film Sunflower--no traces of jazz harmony or instrumentation, but unmistakably Mancini. Another outlier in his canon of films is Lifeforce from 1985. He jumped at the chance to work on a science fiction-horror movie when asked. The exciting title march fits well within the John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner scores of the era. Beyond his composing work, Mancini was also an accomplished performer, playing piano on most of his albums and soundtracks. His playing style is unlike that of any other pianist I have heard. When most pianists would play louder into the keys for a crescendo, he would back off with a lighter touch for the climaxes, as if he wanted the listener to be drawn in and listen closer. If you have not listened to a Mancini score before, or if it has been some time, I highly recommend it. Almost all of them can be found on Youtube and most of them are available on CD if you prefer the old-fashioned way :)
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 I like to break vocal tone production into 3 categories--air, space, and resonance. Each of these categories, of course, is broken down into further steps and sensations.  Air For air, I covered most of it in an earlier post. The biggest idea is to keep everything very relaxed and tension free. This includes not obstructing your breathing by leaning back or hunching over. You have much more control over the inhalation and how much air you take in than you do by pushing on the exhale. If you can remember to breathe to the bottom of your lungs, and let your belly pop out, you will be going in the right direction.  Space For space, you want everything as open as it can be. Starting with the jaw, we drop the jaw without forcing it down. If we think of the “aw” vowel shape, we can mostly keep the jaw dropped even when our lips are forming other vowel shapes like “eh”, “oh”, “oo”, etc. For “ee”, we simply raise our tongue. This small adjustment with the jaw can make a dramatic change in your sound. Try practicing it in the mirror to be sure your jaw stays down. A good exercise to practice this feeling is to say “yaw, yaw, yaw, yaw, yaw” but keep the jaw in the low position and only use your tongue to say the word. It will sound silly, but the sensation will be there. Going further into the mouth, we can use our tongue to feel the roof of our mouth. At the front of the mouth is the hard palate, which does not move. About halfway back is the soft palate. The soft palate naturally raises when we yawn. With practice, we can consciously raise our soft palate when we sing. Try exercises using words with the “ng” sound like sing, ming, etc. to feel the soft palate raise. This is where we get the “tall” tone that many singing teachers describe. Keeping the soft palate raised is one technique that I have struggled with for many years. What I have found helps me to check the position of my soft palate is to touch it with my tongue. Obviously I don’t do this while I am singing, but a brief tap right before I sing helps me to be sure it is raised. Eventually, it will become a habit to have it raised. The difficult part is that you cannot use a mirror to see this happening, so it all needs to be done through sensation and the evidence in your sound. With the jaw dropped and soft palate raised, the last step to creating space is to be sure to keep your throat open. I have a terrible habit of tightening my throat when I know higher notes are approaching in a song, when in reality the high notes would come out no problem if I just stayed relaxed and open. Practicing exercises with series of notes going down can help to relax the throat and lower the larynx.  Resonance For resonance, there are several ways to think about it. Every instrument produces sound through resonance. For a guitar, the strings vibrate as well as the body of the instrument. On a clarinet, the reed vibrates as well as the body of the instrument. A drum or cymbal is great to watch for resonance because you can see the drum head or cymbal moving. For singing, the vocal cords are vibrating but there is also vibration happening in tissues in the sinus cavities, mouth, lips, etc. Just like with your soft palate, you cannot see this in a mirror, but instead go by the feeling.
We can feel this vibration, or as I describe “buzzing on the front of the face” when we have closed consonants like “m” or “n”. When the lips touch you can really feel the vibration. To practice controlling resonance and use it to its fullest potential, it is good to start with these types of sounds before moving to other types of consonant and vowel combinations. Words like mom, marmalade, now, one, etc are good to use in exercises. During my second or third year of teaching, I began to have problems with vocal pain and fatigue. Since there was nothing physically wrong with my vocal mechanism, I was referred to speech therapy, which made a world of difference. It turns out, I had not been using much resonance in my teaching. When I wanted to speak louder I would try to push air or push from my throat. What I learned from the speech therapy is that more sound comes from more vibration--more resonance. Putting these three concepts together- air, space, and resonance, allows one to have a tall tone that stays consistent across the range from low notes to high notes. It also allows you to create a big sound with very little effort. If you are just starting out to explore vocal tone, I recommend that you work on just one category at a time, in the order I have presented them. Get your breathing working properly for you to start. Next, be sure you are providing the sound the space that it needs. Finally, work on producing some good resonance. Please let me know in the comments if you have questions or different tricks that work for you.  Sometimes we can be held back due to the fear that we have to know a concept completely before we try anything using that concept. As teachers, we can transfer this fear to avoid introducing concepts to our students. Over my years of teaching, I have learned to never underestimate what students of any age can do with the proper supports or scaffolding. There is nothing wrong with beginning to understand how music is grouped as rhythms and how sound can be organized through time without first understanding fractions, time signatures, division, etc. The way I introduce rhythms with PreK is to start with echo clapping. I simply clap a pattern and have students echo with the same pattern. With clapping, we don’t have to worry about the correct way to do it as we would with using a drum or another rhythm instrument, the students’ full attention can be on responding to what they hear. We may play this game for a couple of classes. Next, I count aloud as I clap (1 2 and 3 4) and ask the students to echo the clapping and the counting. I do this before even explaining that we are putting notes in groups of 4. We may do this exercise several times before transitioning to the same thing with rhythm sticks and then hand drums. Sometimes, a student notices that I stop at “4” and that is great. If no one notices, that is okay too! Once the students are confident echoing rhythms, we pass the beat around a circle. It starts with just the counting. I start by counting “1”. The student next to me (I would explain if we were going clockwise or counter clockwise) counts “2”, the next student “3”. This is how we then figure out that after we get to “4”, the next person will actually say “1” and we start over again. A student may get confused and say “5”. That’s nothing to worry about. Often, the student will realize what they have done and laugh. Simply start over again with 1. If needed, I demonstrate counting to 4 and starting over at 1 again. The next level of the exercise is to pass the beat and play instruments while counting.  After these exercises, I introduce what notes look like. We talk about how they have a circle part and then an up and down line. We don’t worry about what each part is specifically called or what each part means at this time. I then show 4 quarter notes in a row. I would say “remember how we counted notes in groups of 4? Let’s count how many notes we see”. At this point, every student is desperate to show off their counting skills. So I call on one volunteer to count the four notes. But what about all the other students?? Everyone gets a chance to count the four notes! The repetition is really good for learning how rhythms work. Next, I would change one beat to two eighth notes beamed together. At this point, students don’t need to know the specific names of the notes, that two eighth notes fit in the same beat as quarter notes, etc. I would simply ask “which notes look different in this picture?” Once again, a class full of volunteers will demonstrate their understanding. I would then say, “when we see two notes with a side to side line (beam) like this, we put the word ‘and’ after the number”. I then count the rhythm. Once again, if each student in the class wants to count each rhythm, that is fine. I make sure to count it in rhythm each time so that students hear the eighth notes as shorter than the quarter notes.  For several weeks, I will share 2 or 3 pictures of quarter and eighth note rhythms and have us count them as a class. The next step is to invite students to attempt counting a rhythm before we do it as a class. I have found about 75% of students are able to correctly count the quarter and eighth note rhythms at this point. I am not simply talking about memorizing the sequence of the notes as a group, but actually pointing at each note and saying a number or an “and”. With more practice visually, aurally (through hearing and echoing), and kinesthetically (through playing instruments), by the end of the year, I have found that each student is able to count simple quarter note and eighth note rhythms.
Sometimes very advanced musicians that have been performing for years forget about learning the basics. I know I cannot remember the first time I counted a rhythm. It was probably when I started piano lessons. I do have to admit that I didn’t understand time signatures until I was in middle school. My strategy with PreK rhythms takes away much of the complication and returns it to counting to 4 and recognizing pictures as symbols without having specific vocabulary that can muddle things up. |