Seeing as how we’re at the junction of Independence Day, Bastille Day, and Canada Day, something patriotic and vaguely militaristic seems to be in order.  Enjoy a bit of brass and percussion fanfare, performance courtesy of the Budapest Film Orchestra.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Triumphant Victory

Here’s the end title theme for Hal Cantor’s comedy web series Hold Please,  which follows the exploits of an actress struggling with her office day job.  In my mind no instrument says comedy quite like vibraphone… except the guiro.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Hold, Please

This week’s cue comes from the film Home Room, wherein Alicia Browing (Busy Phillips) attempts to spring a friend from a psychiatric hospital. The scene has a somewhat impish tone, so I picked instrumentation that was brighter than the moodier palette I’d used thus far in the score. Here we have a riff for 12-string guitar and hammered dulcimer, along with an African drum called an Udu and sundry other percussive goodies. (And yes, the title is a weak pun on the lead actress’s name.)

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Getting Busy

This week’s cue offers some orchestral action/suspense writing for a daring escape scene involving airplanes, armed thugs, and, of course, tax auditors. That shaker you hear at the opening isn’t your everyday percussion instrument, but a South American caxixi – essentially a tiny woven basket filled with seeds. Acoustically, this rare instrument can be described as sounding almost exactly like a shaker.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Escaping the Country

This week we have a simple piano cue from Home Room‘s score used to accompany the passage of time.   (Perhaps I should have posted this one on a Wednesday!)  Here the film’s theme is transformed into a kind of contrapuntal echo of the simple open-fifth left hand pattern.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	The Clock

This suspense cue (from thriller feature Hell Bent) introduces the film’s murderous antagonist, your classic guy-with-sharp-object-dressed-in-devil-suit-lurking-in-forest archetype. Rather than give the killer a theme, I gave him a sound – a truly hair-raising effect produced by a rare wind instrument. It comes in around one minute into the track; see if you can guess what it is!

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Devil in the Forest

The scene in Home Room which this music accompanies centers around the topic of acceptance of death.  To reflect the moment’s introspective mood, as well as the quiet of the morgue setting, I wrote harmonies for three flutes – standard, alto, and bass.  The bass flute in particular has a wonderful hollow haunting sound which works wonderfully with picture.  Piano and a touch of cello round out the ensemble.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	The Morgue

Here’s a moody and somber piano cue from Home Room‘s score. The hollow-sounding sustained tone in the background wasn’t produced electronically as you might expect, but by percussion guru M.B. Gordy’s swinging a flexible plastic tube overhead in a circle! The result produce a more organic sound than an analog synthesizer-style preset, though it required a special effort to mic.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	The Mirror