Steve Sauder Composer

Happy New Year! | Steve Sauder Get more from Steve Sauder on Patreon

https://youtu.be/tAnc62O3iws?si=B-GtLjzmHxX2jowE
This showed up on my YouTube feed, what great memories! This is a cover of Adele’s “Skyfall” theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. My friend and collaborator Rania sung the lead vocal, and knocked it out od the park, her buttery rich contralto voice was perfect for this song! I did the arrangements, played all the instruments (including a smoking hard rock fuzz guitar in the choruses, just to keep it fresh), and did the production. If memory serves, we submitted it to a competition on the wonderful (but sadly now defunct) Indaba Music, a superb web space for musicians, and I think we did really well with it! Listening to it again after a few years, I’m really pleased at how good it sounds, and a blown away (again) by Rania’s performance.

Adele "Skyfall" (RANIA Cover) Cover today's hits to earn money on YouTube.http://www.indabamusic.com/submissions/show/143741

https://www.bifsc.org/

So they just announced the winners of the 2024 Berlin International Film Scoring Competition. I entered, and didn't make the top 10, so I'll likely be accused of sour grapes for this post, and in truth there may be some of that, but there is a more important point to be made. The film Trail of Light is a retelling of a creation myth, specifically the creation myth of the Pawnee Native American nation. The link at the top of this post will take you to the 3 winning scores ... and I'm not taking anything away from the winners, their scores are beautiful, lush, full-on orchestral scores that showcase the talent and artistry of the 3 winning composers. I highly recommend you give them a watch/listen, they're gorgeous.

But ... there's not a trace of any reference to the fact that this is a Native story. To me, it feels a bit like the judges forgot what kind of film they were working with and just picked the most pleasant sounding of the entries. I'm not saying my score deserved to win, I'm not even saying it should have placed in the top 10 (I'm still learning my craft), but what I *am* saying is that the 3 winning scores make no reference at all to the film they are attached to. And apart from being a bit tone-deaf and cringe (setting the Pawnee creation myth to a European orchestral score without any drums?), it feels to me like a major part of the job of a film composer is to honour the material, and the vision of the director they're working with.

After doing my research, I realized that the culture that comes about as a result of this creation story (i.e. the Pawnee, or even more generally Native Americans) have a certain musical style that is based on rhythmic drumming and singing, so I focused my score on drumming and singing (of course I added orchestration, in fact in parts, I tried to pay homage to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" which has a similar pre-historic feel, at least to me), and toward the end of the film when we are presented with the result of this act of creation (a Native village by a bend in a river), I utilized field recordings that I had done at a Native powwow out west a few years ago as a basis for the final music, completing the musical circle, so to speak. I've put my score on soundcloud at this link (I'm not permitted by copyright to post the video here or on soundcloud, but I retain the copyright to the score I wrote, so that's all there is - if you want to try to get the full effect, open two windows, play the film from the BIFSC site with the volume down, and you have 15 seconds to switch to the soundcloud window and hit play on my score at the 15 second mark):

https://soundcloud.com/ourson66/trail-of-light-score

Trail of Light Score My entry into the Berlin International Film Scoring 2024 (film: Trail of Light) competition, minus the actual video which is avaiable at the competition site (https://www.bifsc.org/) ... this track be

I'm really excited to announce that my new album, called "Environments" is now available on digital music stores and streaming services everywhere! "Environments" is an album of contemporary orchestral music, that attempts to answer the question: "What would music about architecture sound like?" There are 18 sections, each one describing a particular environment (initially, I positioned an "environment" to be a piece of architecture - a building, or piece of public art, occupied or abandoned, but that grew to include natural spaces and more emotional places)....

Environments Now Available! I’m really excited to announce that my new album, called “Environments” is now available on digital music stores and streaming services everywhere! “Environments” is a…