Exploring Music in Media

** My formatting at the beginning got messed up… sorry ’bout it! Proofreading and final thoughts coming soon! **

I’ll waste no time. We have a lot to talk about.

From Russia with Love (1963)

Music by JOHN BARRY

Fig. 1 The cello part in the opening. Click to enlarge.

Opening Scene

This scene is unbelievable. I absolutely love it. I watched it a dozen times because there’s so much to say. After a brief statement of the James Bond Theme (just the Guitar Part), the opening scene starts in silence. Bond is sneaking around and we only hear footsteps, birds, and crickets.

The bad guy steps on a twig- cue huge brass hit. Notice that it’s in the same key as the Bond theme. And this starts the music for the scene. It starts with a quiet, low, very slow cello line repeating six notes over and over (Fig. 1). It’s minimal to help us transition out of silence, but don’t take that to mean there isn’t depth. This is a simplified, slowed down version of the Guitar Part in the Bond Theme. What I mean by that is if you boil down the Guitar Part to its simplest form and leave out all repeated notes and chromatic passing tones, you are left with the pitches F G F Ab G F which is exactly what the cello plays. It’s no coincidence that’s the only part of the theme we’ve heard at this point in the film. It’s also still in the theme’s original key which makes the connection even stronger.

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This was originally part of my piece on Dr. No, but it grew too large and cluttered an article that was supposed to be about the film.

Here’s the structure of the whole theme-

Interlude, Guitar Part x2, Interlude, Trumpet Melody x2, Brass Bridge, half Interlude, Guitar Part, Ending. (more…)

First I want to go over the structure of these articles. I’ll start by going over background information about the film, composer, or score. In this one, I focus on the origins of the iconic James Bond Theme. Next is the listening guide. It’s basically just the notes I took while watching the film. You can follow along while watching the film and I’ll highlight specific aspects of the music and sound that you may otherwise overlook. At the end, I’ll summarize my observations and conclusions.

1. Background Information

2. Listening Guide

3. Recap (more…)

I’m finally beginning my long-planned, frequently delayed James Bond film music project is finally about to begin! I’ll be looking at the use of sound and music and its evolution through the series. The first post will be tomorrow at 12:07 AM (0:07, if you will). I’ll be going in chronological order, so Part 1 is Dr. No and talking about the James Bond theme and Monty Norman’s score for the film. One of my inspirations was John Gruber, who is in the middle of a similar series, talking about each Bond film in order. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time- ever since John Barry passed away on January 30th of this year. He did the score for 11 James Bond films and is responsible for establishing much of the mood for the series as a whole. But I don’t only want to look at Barry. What I’m really interested in is how the sound and music has evolved over the course of the series. There have been 22 Bond films over the past 50 years, which means there has been a new one almost every two years. That’s a remarkable pace and speaks to the tremendous following Bond has garnered. But in all those films, only one composer besides Barry has worked on more than one.

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