Obsession:

Movie soundtracks. Epic movie soundtracks. I live for them.


Downsides: movie soundtracks are not good for taking a nap to. The epicness of them usually increases your heart rate and sleeping becomes the last thing you want. They are also not helpful when doing homework, especially reading. I get very, very distracted and spacey.


Other than that... Seriously, they're one of my favorite things. They get my creative mind going and are one of my biggest inspirations. (Strangely, Olivier Messaien, a huge composer of 20th century organ music that sounds really bizarre, also seemed to be inspiring... I might have to look into that again. If you're curious about the idea of primitivism, you should definitely check him out. But that's another tangent.) Especially today, composers are taking things like the traditional symphony orchestra and adding to it with things like electric guitars and pipe organs. A couple of years ago I would have cringed if anyone had told me that electric guitars played with a symphony. Hans Zimmer changed my mind.

This is one of my favorite soundtracks, "The Kraken" by Hans Zimmer for Dead Man's Chest. I love the nuances that I as a music nerd can detect, like how the organ in the beginning is playing the theme with quiet stops, and then when the orchestra comes in to play the theme the organ explodes with sound with them. It's so cool!!


I secretly dream of maybe writing something as epic as this someday. Me, a composer of music... it would take along time, and lots of practice because when you write for a group that big you have to start thinking about what kind of a sound you want here, what chords you want there, what kind of drums the percussion need to beat on, and if you add other instruments (like guitars and organ) you have to start figuring out when they'll play, what other instruments will accompany them, what kinds of stops you want to use on the organ, etc etc etc. And I'm sure there's so much more to think about.


But man... if I could pull that off? It would be SO COOL!!! I totally want to try.


So while I'm learning and trying to figure it out, you can listen to the clip, and then, after you've been plastered to the wall with how amazing it is, you can go to Pandora and create a new station called "Hans Zimmer (composer)". Sometimes you'll have to thumbs-down the slower, lamer songs (no offense to Road to Perdition but... your songs generally aren't epic...) but for the most part... it's awesome.


Movie soundtracks. I'm in love. It's a good thing Husband Man loves them too. <sigh> I'm such a music nerd... it's so awesome.