Friday, November 6, 2020

Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone wrote soundtracks for 'Spaghetti Western' films.  His compositional style is easily recognisable by these elements:

Ostinato - he often uses a short repeated figure

Human voice - whistles and wordless singing are used a lot

Call and response - short motifs are used as call and response and are frequently repeated

Simple chords - the chords are consonant and simple and the melodies are also simple, often using triad arpeggios. (notes 1, 3 and 5 of a scale)

Silence and foley/musique concrete - there are moments where all music drops out and he often uses non-musical sounds such as whips and bells as rhythms

Electric guitar - Morricone was an early user of the electric guitar in film music in the 1960s

https://flypaper.soundfly.com/write/5-compositional-elements-that-define-the-music-of-ennio-morricone/

These are illustrated to great effect here:




Task1: complete the quiz on classroom whilst listening to the sounds from the above clip.

Task 2: Download some suitable sounds from freesound.org and upload these to your drive. Use these to create a short piece of underscore in the style of Morricone that would be suitable for a Western and upload the mp3 to classroom to the library music assignment. Keep it simple!

There is a documentary here:






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