The year is 2001 and Thomas Newman’s seminal theme tune to the HBO TV series SIX FEET UNDER sets off a TV trope that has haunted us to this day. We were already being stalked by his Arvo-Part-esque piano track from American Beauty. But this trope would prove impossible to bury…. That trope being the impossible-for-an-orchestra-to-play pizzicato string score. Find ANY daytime reality TV show of this era and beyond. That moment of uncertainty. The moment when the proprietor of the restaurant establishment goes behind Gordon Ramsey’s back. The scheming, the bitching, the fumbling, the snitching. Roll out the pizzicato strings. And it’s all Thomas Newman’s fault.
We have released the first new Vault instrument of Crow Hill’s Season 2: Bridge Guitar and we are running a Composing Challenge.
We would like you to use the Bridge Guitar to recreate that classic noughties pizzicato underscore style but take it somewhere new: a fresh approach to the pluck!
We’re looking for a 30 – 60 seconds of ‘daytime/reality TV underscore’ using Bridge Guitar alone or in combination with pizzicato strings if you like.
N.B. - The idea behind these composing challenges is to offer real world scenarios to give network members the experience of the kind of briefs clients would give when asking composers to pitch for jobs.
If the instructions seem a little vague or ‘minimal information problem’, it’s deliberate. To quote Alex Horne on Taskmaster: “All the information is on the task.”
Don’t look for hidden restrictions: there aren’t any. If we haven’t stipulated track length or genre or instrumentation etc. in the description for a particular challenge, then those things are at your discretion.
Anyone able to link me to the type of thing “daytime/reality TV underscore” would represent? Writing to picture is difficult when you’ve never seen more than an hour of the genre and that probably 3+ decades ago. Ideas?
Don’t worry, giving me a clue is unlikely to cause anyone to lose out on the top three spots. I just want to keep pushing myself. Thanks.
This YouTube search provided me with a list of candidates that I think are the kind of music being referred to here - hopefully you’ll get similar results.
(You’ll almost certainly be able to find full episodes of early 2000’s reality TV shows on YouTube, but why put yourself through that?)
Another reference (although much earlier, from the 40’s/50’s) might be something like Holiday for Strings by David Rose and his Orchestra.
Thanks. I still don’t really understand what he wants based on what I’ve found so far, but I’m going to take the few directions he does give and come up with something.
Here’s my entry! A little Pocket Strings and my own Acoustic Guitar fitted with a Babolar Vibrakill for a riff, some percussive snaps and bass! And obviously the fantastic Vaults Bridge Guitar!
I may be getting hung up on part of the brief that says “…using Bridge Guitar alone or in combination with pizzicato strings”… it seems the tracks linked here go off prompt a bit BUT I like what I’m hearing from everyone (and isn’t that the point anyway). Keep posting!
I agree that there’s some ambiguity in this part of the brief, and for those familiar with the series, Simon’s invocation of Taskmaster suggests that while “all the information is on the task”, it also implies that judging criteria may be mercurial, and exacting on those who don’t follow the rules.
My justification for deciding that this part of the brief refers to the pizzicato elements of the piece rather than the piece as a whole is firstly that it was more fun to read it that way, and secondly by comparison to the recent Pocket Strings challenge. That challenge stated explicitly in the Don’t Forget section that only Pocket Strings sounds should be used. That the Bridge Guitar challenge doesn’t make that stipulation implies (to me) that other instruments are OK.
My reading is that this section means “pizzicato elements should be built from Bridge Guitar, or Bridge Guitar plus strings, but not strings alone”.
Like ed.harper said, the pocket strings was specific, but allowed a lot of things that are not pocket strings (especially effects like splosh that are not in the package). I can say that reading the rules too literally doomed my attempt before I even started that round. The piece this challenge pointed to (Newman’s theme for Six Feet Under) features plucks/pizzicato, but is also embedded in a more general arrangement. Since the rules are even more sparse than the ones for pocket strings, it only makes sense to have compositions for this challenge include things outside of plucks/pizzicato as long as those are the central.
Of course, Matt and Ros have gone and made sparkling examples of composing with just the listed options…
Hey everyone! Yeah for my part i did as i read it too tired to think further than that.
So i used only bridge guitar, no nothing else, no fx. It was kind of a challenge to create something only with plucks, especially moody a bit.
Anyway, i did it and i’m happy i did, almost skipped this one lol. Feel free to tell me what you think I made it veery simple, nothing fancy here and no big expectations
These are all so good!
I had to learn a lot to do this challenge - I can’t watch any TV now without listening to how the music is put together! Brilliant!
I went for comedy with mine - using the Thomas Newman harmonic ideas, and the pizz strings, but changing the mood up. It was fun working out how to make it good to edit, great challenge!
too tired to think further than that.
I made it veery simple, nothing fancy here and no big expectations 