Cartoon music and musical innovation: Chewbacca and Stockhausen

I know I’m back tracking a little, but I wanted to briefly mention our discussion of Carl Stalling a couple weeks ago. In Jeffery’s presentation we got to hear Stalling’s discombobulated approach to cartoon music, juxtaposing various folk tunes, quotations of classical music, crashes and bangs from the percussion section. He changes pace and themes in a very Ivesian way. However, his music is almost entirely meaningless without the visual aspect of the film. Stalling didn’t compose the way he did from a perspective of innovation. Or at least it doesn’t seem like he was explicitly composing in order to push the boundaries of art music. Again, like most film music, Stalling’s compositions serve the story. His music is secondary to plot and character.

A few weeks ago, I watched the extras DVD for the movie Wall-E. I know; I live such a sophisticated life. However, there’s a fascinating section on sound design featuring sound editor Ben Burtt. Burtt earned significant acclaim for creating the sounds and many of the voices for the Star Wars film. I can’t comprehend the kind of imagination and innovation it took to create sounds for imaginary objects that had existed only in the minds of sci-fi writers: laser guns, light sabers . . . Chewbacca? Yes. Is my inner nerd showing? I’m really impressed by the kind of aural ingenuity it takes to create sounds for fabricated objects. I’ve included a brief clip, it’s not as good as the one on the DVD, of Ben Burtt talking about how he when about creating some of the sounds and voices for Wall-E. You’ll notice that many of the clips he utilizes are sounds he recorded in his everyday world and then manipulated in the studio. It’s strikingly similar to musique concrete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A58fMkMo3cM&feature=related

Getting back to Carl Stalling, there’s a really interesting section in the DVD extras where Burtt walks you through Disney’s old sound studio, the same studio that was used for the Mickey cartoons. Nearly all the sound effects for these cartoons were done with acoustic instruments. The recording devices of that era weren’t nearly as sensitive as they are now. You needed the sonorous projection of musical instruments in order for the machines to pick up the sound. Also, early high-quality sound equipment was not portable. And the systhesizers of that era-A. crude, B. enormous. Ben Burtt samples sounds from real life. This wasn’t an option for the early Warner Brothers and Disney cartoonists. All the sounds had to be created in the studio with a good amount of projection. So how do you characterize characters creeping, being startled, crashing into one another, with the use of acoustic instruments? Stalling’s compositions were innovative out of necessity rather than a desire to further musical growth.

That brief DVD extra really opened my eyes as to what kind of sound technology is currently available, to what is possible in sound design. I never took music technology, and even if I had, I’m sure Pixar has a much more sophisticated studio than anything I could have encountered at an educational institute. It’s mind blowing to think what that type of technology could do for electronic music if composers had access to it.