Have you ever wondered “why do we need Art today?” – or even better “do we need Art today?” Art, in the 19th and even early 20th century used to be associated with everyday activities like ‘entertainment’: a gathering at some friend’s living room or a collector’s exhibition room or a gallery later on, a theatrical play maybe. With books it is a bit different because people read for many reasons: information, stories, knowledge, science, you name it. But why do we go to a gallery of modern art or listen to music? Is there place in our society and

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A music theme is powerful, direct, understood, loved, remembered when it is simple! From nursery songs to Doctor Zhivango’s main theme, from Beethoven’s two notes in 5th symphony to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, simplicity prevails! Who could argue with Einstein’s beautiful equation e=mc2? It resembles Newton’s first law f=ma. Simple, universal, powerful. Like life itself! Had Einstein’s law had 12 elements and advanced mathematics, everybody would question it, because it would be too pretentious… Because we do not trust complicated things that try to describe something ‘Big’… like music tries to portay when talking about love, joy, death, loss, loneliness

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Orchestras have a long story and has been changing their size, formation and tone, if I may say, over the centuries. Modern orchestras, mainly film orchestras that I mostly deal with, can be almost of any formation you can think of, including the traditional but also un-conventional instruments. We all have an idea of the orchestra as a formation though, as an instrument of its own. Undoubtedly different schools of composition have given more prominent roles to different sections of the orchestra, with modern masters of orchestration balancing them in a remarkable way. I must admit that I find orchestration

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We all agree that technology has advanced our lives in ways unimaginable a few years ago. One wouldn’t even want to think how life would be without the web, tablets, GPS, tweets every couple of seconds, a sequencer for composers or Sibelius (if you are still one of us who actually write notes on paper…) Back in the 18th or the 19th century one would have to wait for a concert in order to listen to some music. Later on, the wealthy ones could afford a gramophone and a few records per year maybe. Now, you just go to YouTube,

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If I had a ‘facebook like’ every time I get asked this question… Of course this is only hypothetical, since I do not have a facebook page. When I try to answer, although I state that I can’t answer the question, I slowly start to get an idea myself of how it should be done. You see, music is a universal language, meaning that it made out of the fabric the universe is made of. It is not artificial. Of that I am certain. The only artificial part of the whole process of composing music is when it gets ‘infected’

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By dynamics we mean the general perceived loudness of music (or sound in general). It is common knowledge, something like second nature in every one working with sound these last decades the ‘loudness war’. This is a war of trying to fit more ‘perceived loudness’ into the digital world by over-compressing the hell out of everything, so that it sounds more impressive, more massive, it cuts through the overall sound effect madness of the films, etc. There are millions of articles about it, some of them trying to teach you how to do it, and some trying to talk sense

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How often do we have the chance to be lost far in a forest, completely isolated by the rest of the world, the noise of the cities and modern life? Not as often as I would like, I admit. But for the last few days, I had the luck to experience it to the maximum, lost in the forests and slopes of mount Olympus. What is astonishing is how fast one feels part of it, part of nature. It is as if our body keeps memories of other lives, when our everyday life was close to nature and part of

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Have you ever thought what makes music and image stick together? What makes us perceive it as if it was always there? I guess most people, although they know it isn’t true, they could be convinced that music was present on the live shooting set at some point or another of certain films. Is it because our mind glues together all incidents that happen at the same time? Is this what makes it so believable? Technically speaking, yes. But some times it is just happens, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it is magical… What makes it magical? Obviously a great

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When I was a kid back in the 70s and 80s, as people of my age can remember, music was all around us. The glorious radio days were an introduction to this marvellous universe for most of the people. I remember having to rush home from school to listen to a specific radio producer who would play all the new rock releases before anyone else, or listen to experts on classical or jazz music tell you all about the recordings they were playing down the who the sound engineer was, or where the drummer was playing before this group and

Continue readingPeople are unhappy because there is not enough music in our lives