Don McGlashan, Dean Spanley & Macs
A couple of months ago, I saw the Toa Fraser film Dean Spanley. Fraser had previously written the play No. 2, then directed the resulting movie, set in Auckland. Toa Fraser is a New Zealand-Fijian; he directed Dean Spanley in Britain.
Dean Spanley (2008), as a movie, is a completely different kettle of fish. Completely different! It’s set in Edwardian England for a start, and the story is frankly kooky. At first sight, you’d be forgiven for imagining the story might be, well, a bit stupid, but it’s far from. It’s beautifully mannered, well acted and nicely directed. Even the sometimes wooden Australian actor Bryan Brown is a pleasure to see.
Some of the movie’s considerably charm comes from the warm and engaging soundtrack. It’s by Don McGlashan.
I won’t tell you any more about Dean Spanley, which also stars the incomparable Peter O’Toole, our Sam Neil and British actor Jeremy Northam, save to say it’s a nice way to spend an evening if you don’t feel like car chases and explosions, you’re willing to immerse yourself in some fine British story telling and particularly if you appreciate fine wines and dogs. Say no more.
But when Don McGlashan asked me for some Mac advice, I quizzed him on his musical life, the Macs in his life, and how he used them to create the Dean Spanley soundtrack.
Don learned cello, piano, percussion and brass instruments from about age 7, playing euphonium and snare drum in a brass band when he was 11 or so.
“I went on to French horn at about 14, and at the same time started playing in rock bands (the first band I was in had a residency, illegally, at a night club when we were all 15 – we played Bowie and Yes covers). Then I studied horn at Auckland University, eventually playing in the Auckland Symphonia (now the Auckland Philharmonia) for a few years. I was in a band called The Plague, playing horn, then Blam Blam Blam, playing drums. The Blams had had a string of top 20 singles and an album Luxury Length, which went to number four nationally. My song Don’t Fight it, Marsha, It’s Bigger Than Both Of Us won Song of the Year in the 1982 NZ Recording Industry Awards.
“After a year in New York as a drummer with avant-garde dance company Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, I returned to New Zealand and started The Front Lawn with Harry Sinclair. We toured all over Australasia, Europe and America from 1985-90.
“In 1990 I wrote the score for Jane Campion’s An Angel At My Table. From 1991 to 2002 I was singer and main songwriter in The Mutton Birds, releasing four NZ top ten albums (two platinum) and two top five singles, including one No. 1 single The Heater. My song Anchor Me won the APRA Silver Scroll in 1994. In 1995 the Mutton Birds signed to Virgin Records UK, and lived in London until 1999, touring all over the world. Our third album, Envy Of Angels (1997), made the UK Sunday Times ten best records of the year list.
“Returning to New Zealand in 1999, I released my first solo album, Warm Hand, while also writing for film, TV and the theatre. I was honoured as an Arts Foundation Laureate in 2002, and won the Auckland University English Department Literary fellowship in the same year.
“In 2006 my score for Toa Fraser’s No. 2 won Best Original Music in that year’s NZ Film Awards, and my song Bathe In The River won me a second Silver Scroll.“In 2008 I composed the music for both the new Toa Fraser film Dean Spanley and Anthony McCarten’s Show Of Hands. I also toured the USA and Europe with Crowded House as the opening act and guest musician within the band.
"In 2009 and this year I’ve been working on scores for Michael Bennett’s feature film Matariki, and the upcoming TV drama This Is Not My Life, as well as touring solo, with my band The Seven Sisters, and side project The Bell Birds. I also released my second solo album Marvellous Year.”
(Left: Don McGlashan by Greta Anderson.)
macnz: What was your first experience of a computer?
“I started using a computer around the time of An Angel At My Table in 1990. I used a Mac 512k with Performer software on a floppy disk. A bit later I went up to a Mac Plus, then a Mac Classic.
"I’ve never used a PC. They creep me out."
macnz: Why did you start using a Mac?
“My friend Wayne Laird was starting to use a computer for music making, and I took over bits of his old gear as he upgraded. I remember the day he got an SE30 and I secretly thought ‘he’s gone too far – why would anyone ever need that much power?’ ”
macnz: What do you use it for besides music?
“Now? Emails, Internet, archives, photos. I’m starting to use Skype, too. That’s great when I’m touring, for keeping in touch with family."
macnz: How do you use it in music making?
“I still generally start a song on paper – I keep a handwritten journal of bits and pieces of daily writing that becomes the compost out of which ideas grow. But I use my Macbook for working on songs once I’ve got them started – both lyrics (Microsoft Word) and music (Apple’s Garageband, or DigiDesign’s Protools – sometimes even Sibelius, although that really comes into its own for film and TV work).”
macnz: How were you approached to do the Dean Spanley soundtrack?
“I’d worked with director Toa Fraser on his film No. 2, and when he was hired to direct Dean Spanley he talked me up to the producers. It was quite a leap of faith for them, as I’d never done a fully orchestral film score at that time.
macnz: How did you approach writing the music for this feature film?
“I saw a rough cut of the film, then went away and wrote a bunch of themes inspired by what I’d seen. I’ve never done that before. Looming deadlines usually mean that you have to write everything ‘to picture’. But in this case; they hadn’t finished the film, and, as all the post production except for the music was happening in the UK, I had a month or so to think about it before I was allowed to see another screening.
“I approached the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, who gave me a good deal, as they’re keen to be involved in more film scores. We set the date for the orchestral recording, and I engaged a copyist (in Adelaide) and a conductor for the session, and an orchestration assistant. Around then I was asked to go on the road with Crowded House. I was worried that I might not be able to do both, but I figured I might as well be writing in dressing rooms and on buses as at home in my studio, so I took the plunge.”
macnz: Can you describe how you actually went about scoring the Dean Spanley soundtrack, how it got to the orchestra and how it was recorded?
“Once I got something approaching the fine cut, I had a series of ‘spotting sessions’ with the director and editor. That’s where you say: ‘OK, I reckon music starts when he gets up out of the chair, and continues over the car shot, stopping as they enter the building – and it should be buoyant and rhythmic.” And then someone else says: ‘No, I think it should start earlier, and be reflective and peaceful’ ... but eventually all of that stuff is negotiated. One of these early sessions was in London – the production flew me over for a few days, the week before the Crowded House tour started in the US.
“Once I was on the road in America with Crowded House, I wrote sketches on Sibelius – a scoring software that’s essentially music manuscript on the Mac screen, with the added feature of being able to press ‘go’ and hear an approximation of what you’ve just written.”
[Sibelious is available for Mac and Windows]
“I then attached stereo mixes of those sketches to lo-res QuickTime segments of the film, and uploaded them to an ftp site so that Toa, in London, could respond. Once Toa and I had agreed on the shape of each cue, I’d email the files to Gareth Farr, my orchestration assistant (who by this time was on his own tour – to Gallipoli, then New York). Gareth fleshed out the arrangements, and doubled parts so that nobody in the orchestra would feel left out!
“Once each cue was finalised, I’d email the file to my copyist in Adelaide, who’d format it so that it was easy to read, and the page turns were all in the right places. By the end of the month of touring and writing, the music files were ready to be emailed to the NZSO, who printed them out.
“Then we had two three-hour sessions in one day with the orchestra and conductor Marc Taddei, and another short session the following day with a smaller ensemble.
“That’s the way it is with orchestral film scores – months of writing, then suddenly the recording happens, and it’s all over! It was great to see and hear 80 superb musicians playing stuff I’d written on my MacBook on a tour bus on the New Jersey Turnpike, while the rest of the band were asleep in their bunks!”
macnz: Were you part of the process of fitting it to the film itself?
“The way I work (and I believe this is pretty standard in the industry) is that the music’s all written specifically in position in the film. In the actual final mix – when the dialogue, effects and music are all combined to make the film soundtrack – directors occasionally drop the odd music cue, or shift something around – but normally everything’s been agreed upon by that stage, so the main issues are of relative loudness, rather than position.”
macnz: What would you like your next Mac to be?
"Well, I really like my G5. I use two displays – a 17-inch and a 20-inch – so I can have the movie on one, and either Protools or Sibelius on the other, and I’m always swapping work back and forth between my MacBook and the G5. I’m relatively up to date with my software, so I guess the inevitable software upgrades will eventually necessitate hardware upgrades. But right now these two computers do everything I want them to do.
“As much as I get a thrill out of all I can achieve with them, I still love those moments when I can turn them both off – and go and pick up my guitar, a pencil, and some paper.”
[For more info about Don McGlashan is up to, see his site.]
