The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-16
Movie Music
Should Blend
With Action
It's Best When Audience
Doesn't Notice II,
Directors Say.

HOLLYWOOD, April 1s-There.
- n more music than you'd CUES!
in the average photoplay. Abou
as much, in fact, as in the averag,
symphony.
Hollywood musical directors are
pleased, though, when fans don't
notice the background music in a
picture. That's an indication that
the melodies are truly in the mood
Such a defeatist attitude is pretty
painful, at first, to those who COM
pose the music and orchestrate the
scores for movies. But they get
over 1t. Carlo Alberto Colombo did
Colombo - Manhattan-b born Ital-
ian, one-time child prodigy, SYM
phony cellist, Broadway conductor
and arranger for Paul Whiteman-
is the RKO musical director. He
also Is enc OF the most prolific COM
posers in the world. Has to be.
After the action of a picture Is
filmed, they toss it over to him and
say: Score this, please--it is sched-
uled for release in 10 days. Vaya con
Dios"
So Colombo writes like mad. re-
cording by day what he has COM
posed and arranged the night be-
fore. He wrote 200 pages of music
for Seven Keys to Baldpate" in one
week.
Most OF his tune-ideas come to
him while he is driving his car, or
during the few hours he spends in
bed. He stops his car or springs
from the covers, as the case may be,
and 1ots them down.
Nearly All Original
Nearly every note of music in pic
lures these days is original, except
when trick arrangements are made
of very old tunes to help with the
recreation of some period.
One reason most of the music is
original is because it's cheaper to
hire a composer than to pay royal
ties on copyrighted stuff. For ex-
ample, a studio must pay royalty if
an actor whistles just snatch of
I'm the Good Old Summer Time"
Coiombo'S method of working is
to see a picture several times and
catch its mood and tempo. every
picture has tempo) He takes notes,
figures about what's needed, then
crouches over his piano and writes.
Music Fitted Into Intervals
When the musical theme is de-
veloped, he writes various chapters
which are to be fitted into specified
intervals in the picture.
knowing the tempo of the music,
and the number of bars, he can tell
to the second how long a piece will
run.
Everything IS orchestrated next,
and Colombo and his men retire to
the scoring room, where the or
chestra players watch him and he
watches the screen. Marks on the
side Of the film, visible on the screen,
tell him exactly when music should
begin and finish. They have to
record right on the dot, because Co.
lombo says some spectators can dis
Germ a mistake in synchronization of
one-eighth of a second.
Voices Are Dubbed In
There's often difficulty about dub
bling in a singing voice, because
spectators closely watch the lips of
a vocalist and feel they've been
fooled if note fingers an instant
after the singers lips are closed.
Colombo solves that by studying the
sound track and cutting little out
of the middle of the long notes.
Then he matches up the vibration
waves, pastes the film together, and
nobody could tell the difference.
Colombo did % pictures in 1885,
the equivalent of about 20 SYM
phonies. In his spare time he works
on a symphony of his own. Been
working on it for years, and it's
about half finished. i