Patch Notes: Ennio Morricone Tribute

TheEndorphines

"Ennio Morricone tribute patch based on the Good, Bad & Ugly soundtrack.
In this patch we are using Furthrrrrr generator with exponential FM to add inconsistent pitch drift in order to make the sound more realistic and human."

---

As many of you likely know, film composer Ennio Morricone passed away on July 6. He didn't work primarily with synths but he did incorporate them. He actually composed the soundtrack for The Thing using synths as a tribute in a sense to John Carpenter. From The Vinyl Factory:

"This is an unusual release in the soundtrack back-catalogue in it being a rare instance where John Carpenter chose not to score one of his own films, and where Morricone experiments with synth-tones in his composition, seemingly in acknowledgement of Carpenter’s style.

There’s a lot of muddied details that surround it, but as the story goes Carpenter was disappointed with what his musical hero (he got married to the music of Morricone) presented and embellished what appeared in the cinema with some of his own fills, leaving out a great deal of what Morricone had prepared. The LP however, includes tracks selected by Morricone and trumps his other works for horror in suspense and execution. Nominated for a razzie. Go figure."

I read that Ennio Morricone believed a synth shouldn't be used to recreate real world instruments, but rather as it's own instrument. via Wired:

"To create that original score for Tarantino, Morricone largely turns to tools unavailable in 1964, like synthesizers, which drive the tense, gloomy eight-minute overture. (Morricone’s compositions for The Thing, used in The Hateful Eight, were some of his first work with synths in the early 1980s.)

The experimenting composer isn’t above technological advances, but he’s quick to warn young composers of the dangers of seductive technology. “Electronic instruments have to be used to justify something that doesn’t exist, not to replace for instance an orchestra,” he says. “If you use the synth just to recreate the sound of an existing musical instrument, it is wrong. But if you use the synth to create sound that doesn’t exist, that’s a very wise way to use it.”

So technology can be a cautious step forward in music composition, as long as you don’t use it as a crutch. “If the composer—or the so-called composer—becomes a kind of slave of technology, if he uses technology in a toxic way, this is not progress,” he says. As Morricone sees it, technology’s role in music is “a moral stance, not only a technical stance.” A broader variety of possible sounds can benefit a soundtrack, of course, but the ease of synthetic sounds is not worth the loss of the authentic and everyday. Use technology to add a human whistle or the real tick of a watch, but don’t replace them with false facsimiles. As he describes it, in composing, “everything must start from your soul, from your heart, even when you use technology.” In his score for The Hateful Eight, Morricone is, in part, reusing music composed for a thriller in 1982 for a Western in 2015—but 70 years after his first Western, he insists he’s still experimenting, from the heart."

P.S. Thanks to gridsleep for requesting a post on Ennio Morricone and TheEndorphines for the video. I was hoping something to pay proper tribute would come in and it did.