"Thief" (1981) - Tangerine Dream's Johannes Schmoelling interview.
Vložit
- čas přidán 14. 02. 2019
- "Thief" was second film score Tangerine Dream's and was considered a breakthrough for this band. German only. CZcams's automatic translation to English (and other languages) has been enabled - it's crappy but it's all I've got!
DISCLAIMER:
This is for entertainment and educational purposes only. I do not benefit financially from this video. All profits and credits go to their respective owners. - Zábava
Schmoelling gehörte zu der besten Formation Tangerines dream...der Mann ist ein absoluter Genie der Musik. Firestarter, Tangram, White Eagle, le parc, hyperborea, Exit, Poland...Alle sind absolute Meisterwerke der elektronischen Musik...und schmoelling war dabei als Hauptkomponist. Das muss gesagt werden... toll dass er auch erklärt wie thru metamorphic Rocks (von force majeure, Andere Absolute Meisterwerk trotz schmoelling hier noch nicht dabei war), warum genutzt wurde. Sehr interessant und wollte die Anekdote wissen seitdem ich es hörte in Thief Album. Danke sehr für den Interview.
fOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW> CZcams translation settings provide you the ability to caption the audio in english. Look for the gear icon.
thank you for sharing this epic moment
Lieber Johannes Schmoelling
Danke ganz herzlich für euer Werk an Kunst, euer Schaffen hat Mio Menschen begeistert, begleitet und fasziniert. Wie ich finde, haben Sie so viel Harmonie und Musik ins Team mitgebracht, dass aus Klang - Musik wurde. Ich höre EUCH immer wieder gerne, meditiere, Schleife Steine in eurer Welt des Klangs. Vor 46 Jahren bekam ich meinen 1. Synth geschenkt....hatte ARP 2600 usw. und wie so mancher Musiker EUCH als Vorbild...Ihr seid zu Legenden geworden, Menschen die Menschen sehr positiv geprägt habt. Eine ZEIT wo Menschen zusammen gewachsen sind...voneinander und miteinander auch den Mythos eures Werkens - Schaffens erleben konnten. Leider habe ich euch nie live sehen können. Aber um so mehr sind solche Interviews eine grosse Freude, und Musik von Damals und neue Werke von Ihnen u. Chris Franke weitere Highlights. RIP Edgar Froese!
Ohne TD von heute auf den Schlipps zu treten, aber für MICH heute klingt leider zu Vieles wie aus der Dose...Aber ist klar, dass die Technik, Einiges verändert hat.
Ich wünsche Ihnen, Ihrer Familie und allen TD-Mitgliedern und deren Familien BESTE GESUNDHEIT, FROHES SCHÖPFEN und VIEL GLÜCK u. FREUDE!!!
Thief is their best soundtrack followed closely by Firestarter, IMHO.👍
thanks for the subtitles so i could understand, worm
Gänsehaut!
Fantastisch...! Vielen Dank Johannes ...Sie sind das Beste...
I NEED A UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR, ENGLISH TRANSLATION PLEASE ! ! !
I'm sorry for the delay. I'll get on it as soon as I can. I've enabled auto-translater.
Alleine die Erläuterung dessen, was an Equipment im Hintergrund zu sehen ist, wäre ein weiteres Video wert.
Geniales Gespräch mit Johannes Schmoelling! Bin seid meiner Kindheit großer Fan von Tangerine Dream! :-) Echt Klasse was man nach so vielen Jahren zu "Thief" erfährt.
Tangerine Dream schrieb auch die Hauptmusik für Grand Theft Auto V.
genau der punkt, des erwartens eines regisseurs an die Musikspur Componisten & Musiker hat sich um 180• verändert; es wird studierte pimpup-musikhochschüler & Komponisten mehr denn je zuvor bedient und die Que(e)reinstiegsLeute
bekommen die wichtigen aufträge nicht
und für experimente gibtves studierte techniker-&-designer
❤Musik Konkret❤
Vielen Dank
CraP ! WE NEED ENGLISH SUBTITLES !!
I've tried to add automatic English subtitles, but it isn't "taking" - not sure why...
automatic translation works now
In this 2013 interview, Johannes Schmoelling, formerly of the band Tangerine Dream, shares his memories of composing and recording the unforgettable score for Thief.
JS: “How do musicians and directors manage to come together? And how can a director express what he wants to hear musically from his composers or musicians? Michael Mann was very open and direct in that regard. He always made (it) clear, ‘I’d like to work with your group, because you have electronic equipment, you’re not classically oriented, you don’t work with an orchestra. I want the otherness of sound. I want the music to make my protagonist, who’s a professional thief - by means of violent, pulsing noises, pulsating sequences and hard sequencing - I want to make him come across even harder than he already does.’
“I believe it was November 1979 when I joined Tangerine Dream. I still recall the first time I went to the studio of Christopher Franke, a member of the group. The actual leader and founder of the group was Edgar Froese. Everything you could imagine at the time in terms of electronic equipment was set up there, with the addition of electronic instruments that had been custom- built for Tangerine Dream.
“Due to my training as a classical pianist and organist, my function, of course, involved keyboards. Christopher before he joined Tangerine Dream, I think in the early ‘70s, was the drummer for Agitation Free, and you could clearly tell that he was responsible for the percussive and rhythmic aspects. And of course Edgar’s contribution was his guitar, which was enormously important in Thief, because it created the pressure and the dimensionality we needed.
“One mustn’t forget that Tangerine Dream came out of the tradition of musique concrète, or at least we always invoked it. That’s a musical form developed in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that came from Stockhausen, for example, or Pierre Schaeffer in France. It initially tended to involve acoustic music with environmental sounds. We never saw ourselves as Kraftwerk, as a pop-oriented disco group that turned electronic music into dance music. That was never us. We were a more experimental group that always held noise and sound above all else and always looked for that.
“The advantage of us musicians working with noise is that in electronic music we can adapt them tonally. An orchestra isn’t capable of that. So our job was really not just to compose music, but also to develop a sound design, which at that time was a novelty. We basically broke into the phalanx of sound designers and integrated our noises musically into our music, perhaps taking work away from other people - I’m not sure.
“All this was new, and it all fascinated Michael Mann. And he made (it) clear to us, in a very open and friendly way, ‘This is what I want from you.’ And he used it that way. So in (the) summer or early fall of 1980 we began working on the soundtrack for Thief. Michael Mann gave us a VHS tape. It was a pretty good rough cut, so we were able to work with the film practically right from the start. I think he followed our process of composing the music not just from the outside, by listening to our demos, but also by coming to our studio in Berlin and getting directly involved. “For example, he had three important sequences or segments that he wanted illustrated with music. They were the break-in sequences, where he wanted music that was more atmospheric, music that resembled the drilling noises - very nerve-wracking, pulsating music, as well as hot or cold, to reflect the character played by James Caan. Second, there was the emotional element. This was focused on the sequences where Frank, the protagonist, contemplated his life or tried to shape it. This was the emotional aspect with Jessie. And the third important element was his failure. His life is destroyed, and he proceeds like an ice-cold killer in the end and destroys everything dear to him.
“I think we were fascinated by the fact (that) he’d given us so much freedom, so much room to develop and present ourselves. Consider that in the first ten minutes there’s not a single line of dialogue. The fact that Michael Mann gives us ten whole minutes and says, ‘Get started’ - that was incredible. No dialogue, no bringing the music down or pushing it into the background. Instead, image and music are on equal footing right from the start. We can even hold our own against the sound of drilling, because our noises or sounds can exist in parallel with that. Then there are sequences with no music at all, which amazes me. This incredibly long dialogue where he approaches Jessie and more or less places life at her feet with this ‘picture disc’ and says, ‘You’d fit in here. This could be you.’, which is incredible. The fact that someone would make advances like that was meant to reveal this person’s character. Of course, at first we thought, ‘We need some grand romantic music here, extensive synth pads, something very sentimental.’ But Michael Mann wanted none of that. It’s simply quiet. Really fascinating. Only at the very end, when they take each other’s hand and she sheds a few tears, there are a few little cues, little strings we added. Just a bit of - I don’t know - emotion, nothing more. For Michael to allow for music without dialogue and to say, ‘As loud as possible,’ and elsewhere to say, ‘You have no business here’ - that was incredibly fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it.
“I should mention that Tangerine Dream’s style in the ‘70s, tended toward improvisation. We didn’t necessarily use classical structures. Instead, we had patterns of sound or sequences running in different rhythms, for example. There were synth pads sometimes in the form of noise. And we wanted to maintain this principle of improvisation in the score for Thief. So for the atmospheric music - for example, during the break-ins - we worked in such a way that the 16- track machine had different tracks for the rhythmic sequences, or heartbeat-like pulsating sequences. Then there were noise pads, some menacing, some processed with filter sweeps, to illustrate certain emotions the thieves are experiencing in the scene. Then there were also pure noises, produced with the Mellotron, that came across as very mystical. Some sequences were composed by mixing the different tracks on the board. And when Michael Mann was in the studio, which he was on occasion, we’d ask him to sit down with us. And he’d enjoy seeing his images and moving the faders, whose function we’d explained to him. I won’t say he was ‘composing’ to his own images, but he was feeling his music and mixing it. I think it was an amazing experience for him that he could to some extent create his own music. We didn’t do that extensively, but for the atmospheric sequences you can assume that certain mixes were created by Michael Mann.
“Also important was an album from when I wasn’t yet in the group, which came out in the summer of 1979 - Force Majeure. Michael Mann brought that up later and played us certain tracks that really interested him, specifically one called ‘Thru Metamorphic Rocks,’ to give us a good idea of what he wanted. Besides the improvisational style I described - composing at the mixer by moving faders up and down - Michael Mann also wanted some quite conventional pieces that I, as keyboardist, played, where we actually wrote down notes.
“For example, we wrote the ‘Beach Theme,’ which occurs after the big break-in in Los Angeles, the big diamond heist, when the film cuts to Malibu Beach, I think. In any case, you can see the ocean. Something conventional was called for there, of course, the kind of music you’d expect in a scene like that. So I played notes, which we then worked with on electronic instruments, and on a Fender Rhodes as well, and developed melodies. And Edgar played a beautiful guitar solo over it, perhaps foreshadowing the ending sequence a bit, which was to sound more like Pink Floyd.
“As an example for the shootout scene, he brought us a piece from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I think The Wall had just come out. It was this gorgeous, incredible track called ‘Comfortably Numb,’ with an insane guitar solo by David Gilmour. For him that was the music for the ending, the shootout. We knew, of course, that the atmospheric parts wouldn’t be too hard for us, or the emotional sequences either. But for the ending, we knew it would be all but impossible to match the incredible sense of drama Gilmour puts into his solo, and, of course, the composition by Pink Floyd. We certainly could have created music for the ending, and of course we did. But I think Michael Mann wasn’t happy with it and ended up looking elsewhere.
“He promised us that for the premiere - I don’t recall when or where that was, but I think it was Los Angeles - he wanted the music really loud, and on eight channels, which was new at the time. No one was doing that back then. So we’re enormously indebted to Michael Mann for making our kind of music respectable in Los Angeles, and for introducing us and helping us get established there, leading us to assignments from Hollywood for years to come. I feel a deep sense of gratitude that I got to be a part of it. Though we later worked on lots of Hollywood films, I never experienced anything like it again. But that’s related to the idea that it’s always the first time we do something that moves us most and leaves the deepest impression.”
That was analog Rock N Roll !!!!!
why would they put this on an English blu ray as extras when it's in German?
It may've originally had subtitles, but I didn't get hold of them. Also, I tried to enable English autotranslate, but wasn't able to and/or the option wasn't available in YT!
In this 2013 interview, Johannes Schmoelling, formerly of the band Tangerine Dream, shares his memories of composing and recording the unforgettable score for Thief.
JS: “How do musicians and directors manage to come together? And how can a director express what he wants to hear musically from his composers or musicians? Michael Mann was very open and direct in that regard. He always made (it) clear, ‘I’d like to work with your group, because you have electronic equipment, you’re not classically oriented, you don’t work with an orchestra. I want the otherness of sound. I want the music to make my protagonist, who’s a professional thief - by means of violent, pulsing noises, pulsating sequences and hard sequencing - I want to make him come across even harder than he already does.’
“I believe it was November 1979 when I joined Tangerine Dream. I still recall the first time I went to the studio of Christopher Franke, a member of the group. The actual leader and founder of the group was Edgar Froese. Everything you could imagine at the time in terms of electronic equipment was set up there, with the addition of electronic instruments that had been custom- built for Tangerine Dream.
“Due to my training as a classical pianist and organist, my function, of course, involved keyboards. Christopher before he joined Tangerine Dream, I think in the early ‘70s, was the drummer for Agitation Free, and you could clearly tell that he was responsible for the percussive and rhythmic aspects. And of course Edgar’s contribution was his guitar, which was enormously important in Thief, because it created the pressure and the dimensionality we needed.
“One mustn’t forget that Tangerine Dream came out of the tradition of musique concrète, or at least we always invoked it. That’s a musical form developed in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that came from Stockhausen, for example, or Pierre Schaeffer in France. It initially tended to involve acoustic music with environmental sounds. We never saw ourselves as Kraftwerk, as a pop-oriented disco group that turned electronic music into dance music. That was never us. We were a more experimental group that always held noise and sound above all else and always looked for that.
“The advantage of us musicians working with noise is that in electronic music we can adapt them tonally. An orchestra isn’t capable of that. So our job was really not just to compose music, but also to develop a sound design, which at that time was a novelty. We basically broke into the phalanx of sound designers and integrated our noises musically into our music, perhaps taking work away from other people - I’m not sure.
“All this was new, and it all fascinated Michael Mann. And he made (it) clear to us, in a very open and friendly way, ‘This is what I want from you.’ And he used it that way. So in (the) summer or early fall of 1980 we began working on the soundtrack for Thief. Michael Mann gave us a VHS tape. It was a pretty good rough cut, so we were able to work with the film practically right from the start. I think he followed our process of composing the music not just from the outside, by listening to our demos, but also by coming to our studio in Berlin and getting directly involved. “For example, he had three important sequences or segments that he wanted illustrated with music. They were the break-in sequences, where he wanted music that was more atmospheric, music that resembled the drilling noises - very nerve-wracking, pulsating music, as well as hot or cold, to reflect the character played by James Caan. Second, there was the emotional element. This was focused on the sequences where Frank, the protagonist, contemplated his life or tried to shape it. This was the emotional aspect with Jessie. And the third important element was his failure. His life is destroyed, and he proceeds like an ice-cold killer in the end and destroys everything dear to him.
“I think we were fascinated by the fact (that) he’d given us so much freedom, so much room to develop and present ourselves. Consider that in the first ten minutes there’s not a single line of dialogue. The fact that Michael Mann gives us ten whole minutes and says, ‘Get started’ - that was incredible. No dialogue, no bringing the music down or pushing it into the background. Instead, image and music are on equal footing right from the start. We can even hold our own against the sound of drilling, because our noises or sounds can exist in parallel with that. Then there are sequences with no music at all, which amazes me. This incredibly long dialogue where he approaches Jessie and more or less places life at her feet with this ‘picture disc’ and says, ‘You’d fit in here. This could be you.’, which is incredible. The fact that someone would make advances like that was meant to reveal this person’s character. Of course, at first we thought, ‘We need some grand romantic music here, extensive synth pads, something very sentimental.’ But Michael Mann wanted none of that. It’s simply quiet. Really fascinating. Only at the very end, when they take each other’s hand and she sheds a few tears, there are a few little cues, little strings we added. Just a bit of - I don’t know - emotion, nothing more. For Michael to allow for music without dialogue and to say, ‘As loud as possible,’ and elsewhere to say, ‘You have no business here’ - that was incredibly fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it.
“I should mention that Tangerine Dream’s style in the ‘70s, tended toward improvisation. We didn’t necessarily use classical structures. Instead, we had patterns of sound or sequences running in different rhythms, for example. There were synth pads sometimes in the form of noise. And we wanted to maintain this principle of improvisation in the score for Thief. So for the atmospheric music - for example, during the break-ins - we worked in such a way that the 16- track machine had different tracks for the rhythmic sequences, or heartbeat-like pulsating sequences. Then there were noise pads, some menacing, some processed with filter sweeps, to illustrate certain emotions the thieves are experiencing in the scene. Then there were also pure noises, produced with the Mellotron, that came across as very mystical. Some sequences were composed by mixing the different tracks on the board. And when Michael Mann was in the studio, which he was on occasion, we’d ask him to sit down with us. And he’d enjoy seeing his images and moving the faders, whose function we’d explained to him. I won’t say he was ‘composing’ to his own images, but he was feeling his music and mixing it. I think it was an amazing experience for him that he could to some extent create his own music. We didn’t do that extensively, but for the atmospheric sequences you can assume that certain mixes were created by Michael Mann.
“Also important was an album from when I wasn’t yet in the group, which came out in the summer of 1979 - Force Majeure. Michael Mann brought that up later and played us certain tracks that really interested him, specifically one called ‘Thru Metamorphic Rocks,’ to give us a good idea of what he wanted. Besides the improvisational style I described - composing at the mixer by moving faders up and down - Michael Mann also wanted some quite conventional pieces that I, as keyboardist, played, where we actually wrote down notes.
“For example, we wrote the ‘Beach Theme,’ which occurs after the big break-in in Los Angeles, the big diamond heist, when the film cuts to Malibu Beach, I think. In any case, you can see the ocean. Something conventional was called for there, of course, the kind of music you’d expect in a scene like that. So I played notes, which we then worked with on electronic instruments, and on a Fender Rhodes as well, and developed melodies. And Edgar played a beautiful guitar solo over it, perhaps foreshadowing the ending sequence a bit, which was to sound more like Pink Floyd.
“As an example for the shootout scene, he brought us a piece from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I think The Wall had just come out. It was this gorgeous, incredible track called ‘Comfortably Numb,’ with an insane guitar solo by David Gilmour. For him that was the music for the ending, the shootout. We knew, of course, that the atmospheric parts wouldn’t be too hard for us, or the emotional sequences either. But for the ending, we knew it would be all but impossible to match the incredible sense of drama Gilmour puts into his solo, and, of course, the composition by Pink Floyd. We certainly could have created music for the ending, and of course we did. But I think Michael Mann wasn’t happy with it and ended up looking elsewhere.
“He promised us that for the premiere - I don’t recall when or where that was, but I think it was Los Angeles - he wanted the music really loud, and on eight channels, which was new at the time. No one was doing that back then. So we’re enormously indebted to Michael Mann for making our kind of music respectable in Los Angeles, and for introducing us and helping us get established there, leading us to assignments from Hollywood for years to come. I feel a deep sense of gratitude that I got to be a part of it. Though we later worked on lots of Hollywood films, I never experienced anything like it again. But that’s related to the idea that it’s always the first time we do something that moves us most and leaves the deepest impression.”
I really need an english translation. I want to know what's he says.
It's on my list to translate. Try the auto generated English subtitles in the meantime,
Ok, thanks !
In this 2013 interview, Johannes Schmoelling, formerly of the band Tangerine Dream, shares his memories of composing and recording the unforgettable score for Thief.
JS: “How do musicians and directors manage to come together? And how can a director express what he wants to hear musically from his composers or musicians? Michael Mann was very open and direct in that regard. He always made (it) clear, ‘I’d like to work with your group, because you have electronic equipment, you’re not classically oriented, you don’t work with an orchestra. I want the otherness of sound. I want the music to make my protagonist, who’s a professional thief - by means of violent, pulsing noises, pulsating sequences and hard sequencing - I want to make him come across even harder than he already does.’
“I believe it was November 1979 when I joined Tangerine Dream. I still recall the first time I went to the studio of Christopher Franke, a member of the group. The actual leader and founder of the group was Edgar Froese. Everything you could imagine at the time in terms of electronic equipment was set up there, with the addition of electronic instruments that had been custom- built for Tangerine Dream.
“Due to my training as a classical pianist and organist, my function, of course, involved keyboards. Christopher before he joined Tangerine Dream, I think in the early ‘70s, was the drummer for Agitation Free, and you could clearly tell that he was responsible for the percussive and rhythmic aspects. And of course Edgar’s contribution was his guitar, which was enormously important in Thief, because it created the pressure and the dimensionality we needed.
“One mustn’t forget that Tangerine Dream came out of the tradition of musique concrète, or at least we always invoked it. That’s a musical form developed in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that came from Stockhausen, for example, or Pierre Schaeffer in France. It initially tended to involve acoustic music with environmental sounds. We never saw ourselves as Kraftwerk, as a pop-oriented disco group that turned electronic music into dance music. That was never us. We were a more experimental group that always held noise and sound above all else and always looked for that.
“The advantage of us musicians working with noise is that in electronic music we can adapt them tonally. An orchestra isn’t capable of that. So our job was really not just to compose music, but also to develop a sound design, which at that time was a novelty. We basically broke into the phalanx of sound designers and integrated our noises musically into our music, perhaps taking work away from other people - I’m not sure.
“All this was new, and it all fascinated Michael Mann. And he made (it) clear to us, in a very open and friendly way, ‘This is what I want from you.’ And he used it that way. So in (the) summer or early fall of 1980 we began working on the soundtrack for Thief. Michael Mann gave us a VHS tape. It was a pretty good rough cut, so we were able to work with the film practically right from the start. I think he followed our process of composing the music not just from the outside, by listening to our demos, but also by coming to our studio in Berlin and getting directly involved. “For example, he had three important sequences or segments that he wanted illustrated with music. They were the break-in sequences, where he wanted music that was more atmospheric, music that resembled the drilling noises - very nerve-wracking, pulsating music, as well as hot or cold, to reflect the character played by James Caan. Second, there was the emotional element. This was focused on the sequences where Frank, the protagonist, contemplated his life or tried to shape it. This was the emotional aspect with Jessie. And the third important element was his failure. His life is destroyed, and he proceeds like an ice-cold killer in the end and destroys everything dear to him.
“I think we were fascinated by the fact (that) he’d given us so much freedom, so much room to develop and present ourselves. Consider that in the first ten minutes there’s not a single line of dialogue. The fact that Michael Mann gives us ten whole minutes and says, ‘Get started’ - that was incredible. No dialogue, no bringing the music down or pushing it into the background. Instead, image and music are on equal footing right from the start. We can even hold our own against the sound of drilling, because our noises or sounds can exist in parallel with that. Then there are sequences with no music at all, which amazes me. This incredibly long dialogue where he approaches Jessie and more or less places life at her feet with this ‘picture disc’ and says, ‘You’d fit in here. This could be you.’, which is incredible. The fact that someone would make advances like that was meant to reveal this person’s character. Of course, at first we thought, ‘We need some grand romantic music here, extensive synth pads, something very sentimental.’ But Michael Mann wanted none of that. It’s simply quiet. Really fascinating. Only at the very end, when they take each other’s hand and she sheds a few tears, there are a few little cues, little strings we added. Just a bit of - I don’t know - emotion, nothing more. For Michael to allow for music without dialogue and to say, ‘As loud as possible,’ and elsewhere to say, ‘You have no business here’ - that was incredibly fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it.
“I should mention that Tangerine Dream’s style in the ‘70s, tended toward improvisation. We didn’t necessarily use classical structures. Instead, we had patterns of sound or sequences running in different rhythms, for example. There were synth pads sometimes in the form of noise. And we wanted to maintain this principle of improvisation in the score for Thief. So for the atmospheric music - for example, during the break-ins - we worked in such a way that the 16- track machine had different tracks for the rhythmic sequences, or heartbeat-like pulsating sequences. Then there were noise pads, some menacing, some processed with filter sweeps, to illustrate certain emotions the thieves are experiencing in the scene. Then there were also pure noises, produced with the Mellotron, that came across as very mystical. Some sequences were composed by mixing the different tracks on the board. And when Michael Mann was in the studio, which he was on occasion, we’d ask him to sit down with us. And he’d enjoy seeing his images and moving the faders, whose function we’d explained to him. I won’t say he was ‘composing’ to his own images, but he was feeling his music and mixing it. I think it was an amazing experience for him that he could to some extent create his own music. We didn’t do that extensively, but for the atmospheric sequences you can assume that certain mixes were created by Michael Mann.
“Also important was an album from when I wasn’t yet in the group, which came out in the summer of 1979 - Force Majeure. Michael Mann brought that up later and played us certain tracks that really interested him, specifically one called ‘Thru Metamorphic Rocks,’ to give us a good idea of what he wanted. Besides the improvisational style I described - composing at the mixer by moving faders up and down - Michael Mann also wanted some quite conventional pieces that I, as keyboardist, played, where we actually wrote down notes.
“For example, we wrote the ‘Beach Theme,’ which occurs after the big break-in in Los Angeles, the big diamond heist, when the film cuts to Malibu Beach, I think. In any case, you can see the ocean. Something conventional was called for there, of course, the kind of music you’d expect in a scene like that. So I played notes, which we then worked with on electronic instruments, and on a Fender Rhodes as well, and developed melodies. And Edgar played a beautiful guitar solo over it, perhaps foreshadowing the ending sequence a bit, which was to sound more like Pink Floyd.
“As an example for the shootout scene, he brought us a piece from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I think The Wall had just come out. It was this gorgeous, incredible track called ‘Comfortably Numb,’ with an insane guitar solo by David Gilmour. For him that was the music for the ending, the shootout. We knew, of course, that the atmospheric parts wouldn’t be too hard for us, or the emotional sequences either. But for the ending, we knew it would be all but impossible to match the incredible sense of drama Gilmour puts into his solo, and, of course, the composition by Pink Floyd. We certainly could have created music for the ending, and of course we did. But I think Michael Mann wasn’t happy with it and ended up looking elsewhere.
“He promised us that for the premiere - I don’t recall when or where that was, but I think it was Los Angeles - he wanted the music really loud, and on eight channels, which was new at the time. No one was doing that back then. So we’re enormously indebted to Michael Mann for making our kind of music respectable in Los Angeles, and for introducing us and helping us get established there, leading us to assignments from Hollywood for years to come. I feel a deep sense of gratitude that I got to be a part of it. Though we later worked on lots of Hollywood films, I never experienced anything like it again. But that’s related to the idea that it’s always the first time we do something that moves us most and leaves the deepest impression.”
@@AndyKing1963 Johannes offers a very revealing, artistic and humble point of view about his first experience composing music for a film.
I hope The Keep OST had the same good vibe and understanding between them and Michael Mann.
Thanks, Andy, for your effort in to bring us such detailed and precise translation.
Greetings from Barcelona, Spain !
Too bad I don’t speak German
You could try the auto generated subs, but I'm couldn't find English subs.
In this 2013 interview, Johannes Schmoelling, formerly of the band Tangerine Dream, shares his memories of composing and recording the unforgettable score for Thief.
JS: “How do musicians and directors manage to come together? And how can a director express what he wants to hear musically from his composers or musicians? Michael Mann was very open and direct in that regard. He always made (it) clear, ‘I’d like to work with your group, because you have electronic equipment, you’re not classically oriented, you don’t work with an orchestra. I want the otherness of sound. I want the music to make my protagonist, who’s a professional thief - by means of violent, pulsing noises, pulsating sequences and hard sequencing - I want to make him come across even harder than he already does.’
“I believe it was November 1979 when I joined Tangerine Dream. I still recall the first time I went to the studio of Christopher Franke, a member of the group. The actual leader and founder of the group was Edgar Froese. Everything you could imagine at the time in terms of electronic equipment was set up there, with the addition of electronic instruments that had been custom- built for Tangerine Dream.
“Due to my training as a classical pianist and organist, my function, of course, involved keyboards. Christopher before he joined Tangerine Dream, I think in the early ‘70s, was the drummer for Agitation Free, and you could clearly tell that he was responsible for the percussive and rhythmic aspects. And of course Edgar’s contribution was his guitar, which was enormously important in Thief, because it created the pressure and the dimensionality we needed.
“One mustn’t forget that Tangerine Dream came out of the tradition of musique concrète, or at least we always invoked it. That’s a musical form developed in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that came from Stockhausen, for example, or Pierre Schaeffer in France. It initially tended to involve acoustic music with environmental sounds. We never saw ourselves as Kraftwerk, as a pop-oriented disco group that turned electronic music into dance music. That was never us. We were a more experimental group that always held noise and sound above all else and always looked for that.
“The advantage of us musicians working with noise is that in electronic music we can adapt them tonally. An orchestra isn’t capable of that. So our job was really not just to compose music, but also to develop a sound design, which at that time was a novelty. We basically broke into the phalanx of sound designers and integrated our noises musically into our music, perhaps taking work away from other people - I’m not sure.
“All this was new, and it all fascinated Michael Mann. And he made (it) clear to us, in a very open and friendly way, ‘This is what I want from you.’ And he used it that way. So in (the) summer or early fall of 1980 we began working on the soundtrack for Thief. Michael Mann gave us a VHS tape. It was a pretty good rough cut, so we were able to work with the film practically right from the start. I think he followed our process of composing the music not just from the outside, by listening to our demos, but also by coming to our studio in Berlin and getting directly involved. “For example, he had three important sequences or segments that he wanted illustrated with music. They were the break-in sequences, where he wanted music that was more atmospheric, music that resembled the drilling noises - very nerve-wracking, pulsating music, as well as hot or cold, to reflect the character played by James Caan. Second, there was the emotional element. This was focused on the sequences where Frank, the protagonist, contemplated his life or tried to shape it. This was the emotional aspect with Jessie. And the third important element was his failure. His life is destroyed, and he proceeds like an ice-cold killer in the end and destroys everything dear to him.
“I think we were fascinated by the fact (that) he’d given us so much freedom, so much room to develop and present ourselves. Consider that in the first ten minutes there’s not a single line of dialogue. The fact that Michael Mann gives us ten whole minutes and says, ‘Get started’ - that was incredible. No dialogue, no bringing the music down or pushing it into the background. Instead, image and music are on equal footing right from the start. We can even hold our own against the sound of drilling, because our noises or sounds can exist in parallel with that. Then there are sequences with no music at all, which amazes me. This incredibly long dialogue where he approaches Jessie and more or less places life at her feet with this ‘picture disc’ and says, ‘You’d fit in here. This could be you.’, which is incredible. The fact that someone would make advances like that was meant to reveal this person’s character. Of course, at first we thought, ‘We need some grand romantic music here, extensive synth pads, something very sentimental.’ But Michael Mann wanted none of that. It’s simply quiet. Really fascinating. Only at the very end, when they take each other’s hand and she sheds a few tears, there are a few little cues, little strings we added. Just a bit of - I don’t know - emotion, nothing more. For Michael to allow for music without dialogue and to say, ‘As loud as possible,’ and elsewhere to say, ‘You have no business here’ - that was incredibly fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it.
“I should mention that Tangerine Dream’s style in the ‘70s, tended toward improvisation. We didn’t necessarily use classical structures. Instead, we had patterns of sound or sequences running in different rhythms, for example. There were synth pads sometimes in the form of noise. And we wanted to maintain this principle of improvisation in the score for Thief. So for the atmospheric music - for example, during the break-ins - we worked in such a way that the 16- track machine had different tracks for the rhythmic sequences, or heartbeat-like pulsating sequences. Then there were noise pads, some menacing, some processed with filter sweeps, to illustrate certain emotions the thieves are experiencing in the scene. Then there were also pure noises, produced with the Mellotron, that came across as very mystical. Some sequences were composed by mixing the different tracks on the board. And when Michael Mann was in the studio, which he was on occasion, we’d ask him to sit down with us. And he’d enjoy seeing his images and moving the faders, whose function we’d explained to him. I won’t say he was ‘composing’ to his own images, but he was feeling his music and mixing it. I think it was an amazing experience for him that he could to some extent create his own music. We didn’t do that extensively, but for the atmospheric sequences you can assume that certain mixes were created by Michael Mann.
“Also important was an album from when I wasn’t yet in the group, which came out in the summer of 1979 - Force Majeure. Michael Mann brought that up later and played us certain tracks that really interested him, specifically one called ‘Thru Metamorphic Rocks,’ to give us a good idea of what he wanted. Besides the improvisational style I described - composing at the mixer by moving faders up and down - Michael Mann also wanted some quite conventional pieces that I, as keyboardist, played, where we actually wrote down notes.
“For example, we wrote the ‘Beach Theme,’ which occurs after the big break-in in Los Angeles, the big diamond heist, when the film cuts to Malibu Beach, I think. In any case, you can see the ocean. Something conventional was called for there, of course, the kind of music you’d expect in a scene like that. So I played notes, which we then worked with on electronic instruments, and on a Fender Rhodes as well, and developed melodies. And Edgar played a beautiful guitar solo over it, perhaps foreshadowing the ending sequence a bit, which was to sound more like Pink Floyd.
“As an example for the shootout scene, he brought us a piece from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I think The Wall had just come out. It was this gorgeous, incredible track called ‘Comfortably Numb,’ with an insane guitar solo by David Gilmour. For him that was the music for the ending, the shootout. We knew, of course, that the atmospheric parts wouldn’t be too hard for us, or the emotional sequences either. But for the ending, we knew it would be all but impossible to match the incredible sense of drama Gilmour puts into his solo, and, of course, the composition by Pink Floyd. We certainly could have created music for the ending, and of course we did. But I think Michael Mann wasn’t happy with it and ended up looking elsewhere.
“He promised us that for the premiere - I don’t recall when or where that was, but I think it was Los Angeles - he wanted the music really loud, and on eight channels, which was new at the time. No one was doing that back then. So we’re enormously indebted to Michael Mann for making our kind of music respectable in Los Angeles, and for introducing us and helping us get established there, leading us to assignments from Hollywood for years to come. I feel a deep sense of gratitude that I got to be a part of it. Though we later worked on lots of Hollywood films, I never experienced anything like it again. But that’s related to the idea that it’s always the first time we do something that moves us most and leaves the deepest impression.”