Goldenthal: “When I get involved with my computer MIDI setup, I’ll begin to get different sounds in mind. In this case I work a lot with Richard Martinez, who’s very technically and musically talented. I’ll ask him, ‘Make me a homemade sample of a piano string bowed, or a golf ball bouncing off a piano string, and then I want to hear it down four octaves.’ I give Richard a list and then he takes from two weeks to a month to come up with results; but out of one hundred things, maybe one thing is really helpful for sonority. Richard helps me build an electronic music vocabulary for the film.”
How did you become a sound designer?
Back in 1969 I got my hands on a synthesizer, an ARP 2600, and I just locked myself in a room and went nuts. The room had no windows and there was only a light bulb. I would just push sliders and connect things up for hours, days, and weeks at a time until I got my next instrument. I’d also listen to Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Vangelis, and get psyched by that.
Who did you do your first sound design work for in a film?
Elliot was the first because all the sound designing I’d done before was for jazz artists and working as a player. After working with Elliot for many years I met Michael Small and now work with him as well. I’ve also done some work with Rachel Portman and a session on “Wolf” for Ennio Morricone.
How did you meet Elliot?
I met him through a mutual friend of ours: a young lady he’d known since he was in high school, Sylvia. She was a vocalist and loved what I did electronically. She kept saying to me, “I want you to meet my friend Elliot Goldenthal; he’s a real genius.” In this business you always say to yourself, ‘Yeah, O.K. Next?’ One night he showed up at a performance that I had arranged and produced for Elva. I shook his hand; he had real short hair and looked like a little kid, and said, “Nice to meet you.” About six months later he called me to meet Julie to work on a theater piece, “The Transposed Heads”, because he liked the way I played. That was our first project together.
Elliot also met Teese at the same time, while Robert Elhai and I met Elliot prior to Teese because Bob had done a lot of the grunt work for Elliot in the theater world. Back in the mid-eighties Elliot thought it would be really important to have a team to put things together with its effort. Electronics were a new world and computers were just shaping up, so Elliot putting the team together in his mind. He worked with Teese on “Pet Sematary”, whereas I worked with Elliot separately on “Drugstore Cowboy”. After this we all met and began working as a team on “Alien 3”. Besides “Pet Sematary”, the only film I haven’t worked on with Elliot is “Voices”.
Are there any of Elliot’s projects that stand out to you?
They all do in every way. It’s been the relationship with Elliot that’s been the thing that stands out. Everyone in his team is a close friend, so it’s not like any other relationship. It’s like a family, a community, so every project has its strength based on that. If one of his scores came to mind it would be the first one I worked on [“Drugstore Cowboy”] because it was such a shock to me. I tinkered around with being a sound designer for so many years, even working on my music in different realms, but it was all coming together and focusing on that project because Elliot would ask for something, I would give it to him, he would use it, and I would be like, ‘Wow, here’s ten years of a guy who just twirls knobs, pushes buttons, and plays keys having fun all the time; I hardly did anything for profit.’ So it had to be “Drugstore Cowboy” because it was like the beginning of a new era in my ability to understand what my natural talents and experiences were.
However, “Sphere” was extremely unique because there were some sounds that I’d created that, to my surprise, I found out later that Bob and Elliot had actually re-orchestrated, so the orchestra would play the sound almost exactly. Of course it had a different sonority and the orchestra couldn’t sound like a piano with strings being hit with a hammer, but at the same time it locked with it. It became a process for us to make sure that it was truly synched from the beginning the orchestra began to play to the end, so the sounds were intertwined.
What are Elliot’s strengths as a composer?
First off, it’s his understanding of music. Even though he has a classification that’s very classically-trained, he doesn’t stop there. He has a real true understanding of jazz; not only the artists, but the eras and how it works. He also has an ear for mixing all the colors together. It doesn’t matter because he’ll throw just about anything together and make it work. With every idea he can actually engineer something from it. It was perfect for me because I had training in jazz, classical, and pop, so there were no defined lines for me as well. Even though Elliot has a lot of training, it’s the music. He’ll hear the music, he’ll hear the concept, and he’ll just work it and it will somehow make sense, whatever style he chooses to work in and whatever instrumentation he chooses. It’s good because he likes to throw strange things together.
As Elliot’s electronic music producer, what are your responsibilities?
It’s evolved. In the beginning it was just as a programmer and managing the electronic computers and synthesizers. Because Teese had a lot of the similar abilities and talents, we’d take a chunk, like I’d do more electronics or he’d do more sound design or vice versa at the very beginning. Eventually it evolved into Teese handling more of the logistical stuff and I ended up doing more of the sound design. This also deals with making sure the computers and all the tools, archives, audio stuff, and everything was always functioning, working, and backed up. As a electronic music producer, now I handle some of the things that a normal producer handles, like booking sessions, grabbing the electronics, transforming it into paper, making sure the takedown people understand it, and all the organization behind that. I make sure it becomes a score as well as the electronics, which is a pretty complicated story within itself. I’ll do a sampling session with some sort of concept, getting hours of samples. You start to develop a sound, like pounding out steel or shaping metal. It will either start with an idea Elliot has or I have to find just the right thing. It’s always give and take with Elliot and he’s excellent at defining the concept. This is where I’ll go off and do a sampling session with this concept, getting hours of samples. When you’re finished, sometimes you hear something, sometimes you don’t. You can even listen to an hour’s worth of sampling and not hear a thing, but then you hear the tiniest little sound and it opens up a whole new world.
What have you learned by working with Elliot?
It’s what my strengths are as a musician, a designer, in the nuts and bolts of the business, that I could deal with it. I never thought that I could deal with it. I always felt that I was just going to be a player and just have fun. He helped as I watched him build his career; it’s a fluid thing. The music always came first and I realized that I had a part of me that was built like him, which made me appreciate what I can do. I think that was due to him.
Are you going to indefinitely work with Elliot?
It has always been that kind of relationship: very open and always moving forward. Yes, I would always work with him. I’m a composer myself, so I would have to say maybe my life might change, but somehow my life has always been happy working with people as well as doing my own thing. So, yes, indefinitely. I’ve been very happy working with Elliot.