guitar.jpgThe other day, I shared a few excerpts from a recent conversation with composer Sean O’Loughlin, who has been working on orchestrating the work of local singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile for a performance she’s doing wih the Seattle Symphony this weekend.

Here’s the thing about music: some instruments just don’t work together, nor do some musical traditions. It’s cool when artists like Rodrigo y Gabriela make something like flamenco feel like rock and roll simply because many fans of rock and roll may not otherwise be exposed to the intricate dexterity of Spanish guitar, and vice versa. It’s no small task, though. It requires the right kind of people, determined to eschew genres and stylistic traditions in order to find some common ground with their instruments. It can be the sonic equivalent of wrapping bananas with bacon. Some people can make anything taste good; some people just can’t.

What’s cool about a modern classical composer teaming up with a burgeoning roots artist is that, by definition, folk/roots/country music is the most accessible, un-decorated kind of music there is. Dragging a 30-piece orchestra into the fold could easily destroy the honesty and simplicity at the heart of the songs.

To that end, Carlile counts among her musical heroes Paul Buckmaster—a cellist who studied with Miles Davis before going to work as composer/arranger for folks like Elton John and the Rolling Stones. His compositions are deliberate and highly emotive, but frequently sparse. While some artists seek to utilize every individual member of an orchestra for optimum effect, Buckmaster focuses on making a large body of strings sound like a single instrument. He goes for the slow build, exercising restraint and teetering on the edge of understatement; but when he goes for it, he really goes for it. It’s a risky path for a guy at the helm of a large assortment of instruments. Buckmaster tends to rise to the occasion, though, coloring the work of the artists he accompanies in ways that only an orchestra can. In other words, he makes bacon-wrapped bananas taste really good.

Talking with O’Loughlin, I got a sense that he comes from the Buckmaster school of arranging music for rock bands. Using his show with Carlile as a jumping-off point, we discussed what cues a composer with a classical background takes from the work presented him by his collaborators. The remainder of that conversation follows:

SS: Does it make a difference when…for example, Brandi has a cellist in the band. Does that inform what you’re doing with the strings? Or are you just looking at it as though Josh Neumann is the principle cellist?

SO: I’ve actually spoken to him a couple of times now and we’ve emailed back and forth, because it’s really important for me to know what he’s doing. I want to make sure I’m staying out of the way when he has solo parts that come out of the songs, so he’s still the featured, prominent soloist. I’m also giving him the cello parts from the orchestra arrangement so he’s able to play in and out. If he’s not normally playing in a section of a song, but the rest of the orchestra is playing, he can play along. So he’ll have two options: what he normally does and what the orchestra’s doing.

In fact, this one song, “Pride and Joy,” has kind of a big outtro instrumental section and Josh starts the whole thing off with this really cool almost “Eleanor Rigby”-like lick with real rhythmic intensity. So Brandi has this idea of having Josh start and then we’ll bring in the rest of the orchestra’s cellos on top of him. We’ll double up so we’ll have this really organic feel and then the whole band will come in.

SS: At what point do you start working with the orchestra?

SO: Oh, we get one day.

SS: Oh wow.

SO: Yeah, you’ve got to bring it. That’s just how it goes. I think we have a two and a half hour rehearsal in the afternoon and then the show’s that night. So from my standpoint I need to be as prepared as possible before getting onstage at the rehearsal. That trickles down all the way to the music copiers that we’re using…they work on all the major feature films, so they’re used to high pressure, high deadline situations. It’s just really important that everything is prepped right so that when we go in there, there’s no music issues and rehearsal really functions as the band getting used to hearing the orchestra behind them. Also making sure that what I’ve written lines up with what the band is playing. That’s kind of important. [laughs]

SS: What happens if it doesn’t?

SO: Yeah, fortunately I’ve been able to draw from my experience and cut any of those pages off at the pass. Because what we’re doing now in the process of the collaboration…Brandi and I are going back and forth. I’ll send her a synth mock-up or a synth demo of the arrangement that I’m writing and I’ll try to recreate a really basic guitar riff that she’s used to hearing. I’ll put that into the demo so there’s at least some common or familiar hooks that she’ll know, Oh okay, that’s where this song’s beat is, that’s where this song is going. We’ll talk about exactly how she wants to play it for the number of measures that the orchestra has, how to line it up with the number of measures her band is playing. The trick, Kim, is that Brandi was really open about admitting, right from the start, she goes, “I don’t read music. So I’m just going to rely on you using the MP3 versions or the live versions to match the length of all these songs to make sure everything comes out properly.” 

SS: Are you going to be conducting?

SO: I will, yes, which is kind of a payoff for me. There’s the thrill of hearing it. People ask me, “As you get older does it get old hat to hear your stuff?” And I tell people it’s not, especially people who aren’t writers or composers, there’s nothing like hearing notes that you’ve written come to life in a hall with real people. It never gets old. It really never gets old. I’m sure the same thing is true when you see an article of yours in a publication. That’s something you had blood, sweat and tears over, staying up until three in the morning because the deadline was coming. And then, bam, there it is, right there in the public’s eye. It’s just really empowering.