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Liner Notes
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Composing for Film: An
Interview with Film Score Composer Keith Kehrer
From a classical music education
to playing in Phoenix-area bands to studio production to composing for the
award-winning film Standalone, New Jersey-bred film score composer
Keith Kehrer brings a variety of experiences to his work. Recently Keith sat
down with our Ed-in-Chief to discuss how it all came together.
MBADC:
Before you got
into composing for film you were an active member of the music scene in
Phoenix, AZ. Tell us about some of the projects you were involved in there,
and how it evolved into composing for film.
Keith Kehrer:
I was in quite a few bands, some of them memorable and some of them not…I
caught the end of a band called the Jetzons in the Phoenix area--I replaced
the keyboard player, then I joined a band that was started by the bass
player Damon Doiron called Mortal Engines--it was kind of like a powerhouse
world funk new wave band...I [also] played with a band called Jumping Genes
which was a world beat band in the true sense of the word because we would
have anything from ska to reggae to South and Western African styles, Celtic
music...We had a last recording that took place in the middle of Mill Avenue
in Tempe, Arizona. They’d close off the street and there would be bands up
and down the street, and we recorded live to DAT. It was really cool.
Hundreds of people would be dancing, it was great. The last band I played
with that was mine was called Thunderthing, which was born out of the ashes
of Jumping Genes, and it was kind of like a psychedelic, heavy guitar-driven
band which started out with just me singing lead and then with two bass
players, one with 8 string and one 4-string, and my old drummer from Jumping
Genes and a guitar player named Dave Plagman. He left the band, and
eventually they said ‘you play guitar’, and it was the instrument where I
could express myself the best.
That was basically my music career in Phoenix, then I had my music business
teaching voice and other instruments and doing production and studio
work, and just kind of immersing myself in the whole scene during that whole
time. Eventually I got out of it and started doing web pages and got into
that…Then I discovered computer applications for recording music, and I
started to teach myself how to engineer using computers. That’s where my
film composing started. I was gathering all the tools I needed to record.
MBADC:
When you’re engineering on a computer vs. a traditional console, does it
change the way you write?
Keith Kehrer:
A little bit, because I’d been dabbling in sound design and being able to
manipulate sounds before –I’d been using a lot of MIDI stuff in other
studios—But [engineering on a computer] allowed me to do everything myself.
I could sit in my studio and weave a patchwork quilt of whatever I wanted,
whether it’s a song, or whether electronic dance, or just pastiches of
sound, or just sound design… I mean, everything I’ve done in my life has
prepared me in to write for film. I was trained to write for orchestra by a
teacher who’s now 96 years old living in New Jersey. Evelyn Hartman. One
night I saw her when I went up to Asbury Park to view our film for the
Garden State Film Festival. It started at a very early age, my preparation
for doing this. But little did I know that I wouldn’t have to write out
everything on score paper.
MBADC: For our
readers who may never have considered film scoring, what’s the difference
between composing for a film and writing a song, in terms of structure and
also in terms of the mindset you get into as a writer?
Keith Kehrer:
Well, with a song of course you have something that’s your own that you’re
trying to express. You write a song and say you’ve had a heartbreak, or say
you’re writing about an event in your life. It’s something where you’re
responding to something that’s your own story. When you’re writing for film,
you’re responding to somebody else’s story. That’s the main difference. It’s
not verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. It’s not structured like a two or
three minute little slice of life; it can happen over time. When you’re
writing a film score, you’re not thinking you’ve gotta be getting to a
point, reaching a climax, and then ending. There may be many, many climaxes
to the movie…It’s closer to orchestral writing. It’s also closer to creating
soundscapes, if you’re creating electronic dance…with electronic dance
you’re going to be ebbing and flowing. How I’ve worked is, I’ve written
pieces that suit the film, and then I’ve gone in with the director and
figured out where to place pieces of those; it’s almost a cut and paste.
You’re not going to do that with your song. If you license a [song] to be
used in the film as your song, then that would be the case.
MBADC: Do you
find that easier, or do you find it more limiting as a writer?
Keith Kehrer:
At this point since I’ve been writing for so long at this point I find it
freeing because I’m not bound by a short little structure. I can just let my
imagination roam…I find it freeing because of course I’m not fitting it into
the lyrics as well. Lyrics give you a very strict skeleton to work with.
Whereas if you’re just writing for a scene in a movie, if it’s a fight
scene or a love scene or whatever you’re not bound by the lyrics. The lyrics
are happening on the screen really.
Keith Kehrer Page 2
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