Author Archives: Simone "4MuLA" Giuliani

The importance of intention

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I have recently scored a soundtrack for a short movie that inspired me very much for its genuine content and powerful simplicity. I found the story so compelling and beautiful that at first I thought of writing something that could be defined minimal and very polite, with the intention of leaving enough space to the characters without overshadowing them and let the story evolve without too much distraction.

After a few days of work I realized what I was doing was ok, but was not exploiting the full potential of the beautiful message that the director was trying to convey. In other words, everything was fine to my eyes and ears, but my work wasn’t adding much to the movie. It felt detached. Why was that? How could that happen, since I felt so attached in the first place to the story and the characters?

The answer came to me the day after, when I asked myself (I often talk to myself): what is this movie really about? What is the sparkle that triggers all the events in this movie? What’s the primal dynamic? My answer was: intention. That was the only thread to follow in the story, the one element that I needed to translate into music. I kept ‘intention’ as my only reference and as soon as I started writing new music everything fell into place, magically.
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From Your Kitchen to ABC

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I have to admit it, I like comfort. I’ve always loved working on a track while sipping some good Port, enjoying all the nuances of a perpetual loop. Unfortunately, this is not a luxury that a composer/producer can always enjoy. This one time I was desperately trying to deliver a track on time for a submission, yet-another ‘maybe it will go through’ situation. I had to catch a flight to LA a few hours later and was really looking forward to this trip, since I had never been to California! I really almost refused to work on this submission this time, I still had to pack and get ready for some gigs I had there with Kirsten Price. But it happens often: you get the call, they need a track, but NOW! You end up working impossible hours to make the deadline and…’Sorry, they loved it but it didn’t make the cut’.

I really had no time to run back to the studio to work on this track, so sitting in my girlfriend’s kitchen, I decided to give it a shot using all I had there: MacBook, MOTU Ultralite audio interface, Korg K USB controller and a pair of cheap ear-buds. Talk about basic! For the sounds, I used a couple of Virtual Instruments: Spectrasonics Trilogy, Stylus RMX and the Korg synth bundle that came with the K controller. In the end the track was done, mixed and uploaded via FTP to the production company within an hour total, all the time I had. I made it to the airport in time.

One whole year later, to our surprise, this one made the movie, that turned out to be ‘A Raisin In The Sun‘, a pretty major TV event that aired on ABC. The lesson I’ve learned: never get too comfortable, always be ready to deliver in a professional manner -even when working from your kitchen- and your music will take care of the rest.