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 Back To The Final Jerkoff Index PAGE 3 The Tracks 04. Elders Flashback 05. Main Theme From The Final Jerkoff 06. Not Exactly How We Planned Things 07. The Problem Is, You're Making These Art Videos 08. Production Begins In The Morning 09. They're Bowling 10. Not Even Doom Music 11. Friends In Trouble 12. Calculated Stupidity 13. Old Friends Reunite 14. JOEY BIGIO 15. Breaking In 16. Tracking Shot 17. Transformation Into Video 18. Theme From Shenmue IV 01. The Sabomontage 02. Brawler's Ball Although this isn't the first track on the soundtrack, it's the first one in the movie, and the first one I made, so it'd be dumb not to start with it. Mike sent me the footage of this scene and I began working on it at the same time I got my new orchestra sample libraries up and running, so it was primarily a way to explore the sounds I had. I actually wrote it entirely through with little to no thought about themes and grander ideas; I just wrote what I thought sounded cool. After I made it, I made some decisions regarding what would later reappear in the movie. After the first timpani roll, at 0:03 we hear the Santur playing a distortion of the "Gang Motif", which is the theme from DS1 and the melody that plays with every Gang Entertainment logo. I realized when I exported the soundtrack that this first cue seems really barren without the static sound of the television screen from the movie, but it seemed awkward to export that a long with the music, especially since you can hear that by watching the movie. In the credits, I very very loosely made a little melody for each person based off of them. Terry's melody at about 0:14 is sort of persistant, annoying; Mike's at about 0:23 was cinematic and like something out of Star Trek, Tyler's at 0:28 was "Diablo-like", and Joey's at 0:37 was Syrian sounding. At 0:51 we have the first appearance of what would become the Stalker Boy theme. At this point we've got our primary Eastern instrument, the Shamisen, playing the melody. I tried to use the Shamisen and Santur to intricately dance between eachother in counterpoint for every Stalker Boy scene, as a way to express his balance between an obsessed Shenmue fan and an actual terrorist/kidnapper. At 1:09 we've got flute and bassoon playing a passage in harmony, which seemed to re-emerge a lot in the soundtrack, for no conscious reason. At 1:32, during the re-education video of the history of The Gang, we've got the cello section playing the "Gang Motif". At 2:06, 2:08, and 2:11 we have the announcements of Mike, Terry, and Joey, respectively. They were originally all going to be dignified bells, but I decided to make Terry's a recording of an anvil being hit (which sounds more like a pot) and Joey's was more zany, just because of his facial expression. Just be happy none of them were that "whomp whaaaah" trombone sound. At 2:30 we've got a sonic flashback of the piano theme from Viral Video to compliment the video flashback of the movie. It's laid on a bed of reversed echoes of itself, along with a solo trumpet, which reminds me of something Elliot Goldenthal would have done to copy any number of older composers, scoring the first space movies. It just dawned on me right now as writing this that the flashbacks have nothing remotely to do with outer space, but yet I feel this very strong association with a dark, desolate expanse, or maybe the emptiness of a funeral dirge. 04. Elders Flashback: Nothing much to say about this. I included the entire version on the soundtrack so that it doesn't have the comedic value of the abrupt cut in the movie. I thought about doing a new version of the score, but it made more sense to actually reference the original recording, as it was an audience perspective flashback, as opposed to Tyler retelling the story in the Viral Video flashback. 05. Main Theme From The Final Jerkoff: This was originally written and delivered to Mike as part of the "Gang Is No More" cue. It begins with me playing a simple melody on an Irish whistle. I originally wanted to use a sampled Irish whistle, but I couldn't get it to sound right. It also didn't sound right with any breaths under the dialogue track, so I edited them out. An alto flute takes over the melody at 0:16. At 0:51 we've got what I call the "money sound". It's too abstract to really be called a motif, nor is it used to build any themes. It was made originally as a sort of sound effect for Tyler seeing the amount of money the Gang would be paid, and I brought it back for all the moments where they're shown the sheet of paper showing the amount. At 1:04 we've got our first appearance of the Shenmue theme. For a number of reasons, I wanted to reharmonize it, to make it my own. The original shenmue theme, to the best of my knowledge, would be something like Am, D7/A, Am, Am7, F, F/G, Asus4, Am (if transposed down a minor third into Am, the key of this cue.) So, I reharmonized it to: Am, F#m7b5, Fmaj7, Em/B, C C/B, Bb(#11), Asus4, A. The original is played on an erhu, although I thought I once heard it played on a hichiriki, a double reeded japanese oboe incredibly similar to one of my main instruments, the duduk. The melody here is me playing a C duduk run through a distortion pedal to make the harmonics sound more like those of a hichiriki. I tried to arrange the strings in a much more proper way to make it sound a Japanese orchestra arrangement. There's also some gong hits and gong scrapes to add to the atmosphere. I'll never forget the moment during the premiere of the movie, when at 1:49, the screen went black and the audience was assaulted by the loud sound of bagpipes with the title of the movie fading in. It felt like such a "well, I guess they're really committing to this" moment. There's something so belligerent, so pigheaded, blunt, stubborn, and obnoxious about bagpipes, but yet also embodying the dignification of all of those things. It's something that seems to fall apart under explanation, but that I felt was inevitably the only thing that could be there, and it had the perfect effect for everybody I've observed watching the movie. At 2:13, in Danny Elfman tradition, I gave my name a little horn section crescendo. My way of saying "yes, this music, I made it." The wedding music I made, and then ran through a simulation to make it seem like it was coming from a single source in the real world, was very carefully put into a key (two sharps) and then detuned so that it would create a precise dissonance I had in mind when the string section playing high Am9 clusters usher in the next cue. This gives a really interesting morphing effect from cheesy, to sour, to serious. 06. Not Exactly How We Planned Things: At 0:19, the string section clusters release to a string quartet playing something very reminiscent of the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. I would maybe go so far as to say it is functioning as a parody of the usage of Beethoven's piece in classic cinema, as I originally had an idea that it'd be funny to use the real Beethoven piece there. At 0:58, we again hear the main theme of The Final Jerkoff, with Gamelan replacing the Shamisen. The Gamelan served as another fast decay harmonic instrument especially in situations where Stalker Boy was not involved and there was no need for the presence of Shamisen. A week or two before the premiere, all the music from about 0:17 to 1:39 was cut from the film after a focus group said there was too much music. If the movie is ever released again, I would have liked to see the music come back in at 0:58, as a number of people asked me why I didn't score that section, and even during the audio commentary, Tyler mentioned that the scene was supposed to be a lot more emotional. At 1:39 we've got another flashback to Viral Video. At 2:23 we have the Santur money sound effect. At 3:05 we have the main theme of The Final Jerkoff again, but with an alternate melody played by glockenspiel doubling flute and with a bassoon outlining the chords. I purposely left the last tonic resolution blank in the score, to be resolved in atonal comedy by the sound of the doorbell. I have yet to see anybody laugh at that joke, or find it amusing after I explain it to them. 07. The Problem Is, You're Making These Art Videos: With this cue, we really wanted to show the perverse place in which Joey ended up. I decided to score it as different from the rest of the soundtrack as possible. I ended up making a parody of Jon Brion's music, maybe closest to I <3 Huckabees. The cue is a waltz in 3/4, it's got acoustic bass, mellotrons, chamberlins, and celesta. Even the mandolin is mellotron mandolin. We also authorized Mike to cut in a number of record scratches in this section. The melody that appears at 0:08 played on the mellotron clarinet is the "Gang Theme" written backwards. Around 0:53 the cue fades out and at 0:56 a pit orchestra sounding arrangement emerges at the same time the on set audio fades out and is replaced by heavily reverbed voiceover of Terry to simulate the beginning of a musical number. I'd say about 50% of people get that joke. At 1:14 you can hear the Santur money sound implemented into the cue. At some point, probably relatively early on (possibly the day Mike got the cue) most of this cue was cut, and for good reason. I can barely stand it even being on the soundtrack and I'm assuming most everybody skips it. I resent Mike a version of the cue with the fade printed to audio but with the money sound still there in the same spot as a sound effect. 08. Production Begins In The Morning: I think the very beginning of this cue is the first appearance of the Yayli Tambur functioning as a bass, sort of a narrative evolution combining qualities of both the Santur and the bowed acoustic bass section from the beginning of the movie. This cue is basically the Stalker Boy theme from the beginning of the movie with less of an open feel, driven by light percussion. It also has a men's choir behind it. After scoring the men's choir, I thought it sounded too nice, so I detuned all the tenors about 19 cents or so to make them sound like demon tenors. There's a guilty moment at 1:13 or so where I use a waterphone for an overnight scene dissolve. It was very fitting for the soundtrack though. At 1:18, the "Not Exactly How We Planned Things" theme shows up, with choir basses underneath it. At around 1:48 we've got some awkward ritardando going on, as I just used basic non-linear audio editing to simulate the ritardando of the actual audio from the first cue, which I was using to save time, instead of importing the MIDI and re-rendering the soft synths. At 1:52, the setting up montage begins. This actually is an erhu playing an abstraction of the Shenmue melody, along with the first appearance of the Koto. 09. They're Bowling: This was a fun/funny cue to make. With the re-appearance of the Elders in the movie, I wanted to break from the dark and gloomy antagonist music to something far grander and cinematic. To achieve this sort of cartoon villainy relief, I was thinking James Horner. Not much to say about the whole beginning part. It's all new temporary new themes to brighten up the movie at this point and they don't reappear anywhere. At 1:21 we've got an SATB choir version of the Council of Elders theme from Viral Video. A single bassoon plays the main synthesizer melody next to the choir. At 3:01 in the movie, the music cuts out and it goes to the corporate elders video about the Gang taking over the world. I thought about including the 1950s music I made for that video, but because it was actually a variation of 1950s music I made for a still unreleased project of my own, and because it wouldn't fit in any way, I took it out. For the Elders theme after this, the soprano and bass parts are out and we've got tenor, alto, and the bassoon to bring us to the end. 10. Not Even Doom Music: Technically this cue came before "They're Bowling" in the movie, but it works better for the flow of the soundtrack to have it here. I wrote this away from the footage on a piano at a church one day during production. Because of the reference to the "Not Even Doom Music Cat" in the scene, I thought it'd be funny if I made the instrumentation sound like Doom music, or more specifically, music from the videogame Doom. It's got a lot of synths, including a synth simulating a Fender Rhodes or a Wurlitzer, loops with some of those loops being sent through a gate with an extremely fast attack and release time, as well as the Yayli Tambur functioning as a bass. At 1:59 we've got the beginning of the Council of Elders theme (with original sounds) before the song changes keys for a little bit. At 2:37 we've got those "Psycho" staccatto string stabs, which was really the only thing that I went into writing this that I knew I'd have to do. At 2:40 we've got another cue, from the section in the movie where they ask Stalker Boy if they can go Bowling. It's very similar to the "Production Begins In The Morning" arrangement, but with some more drums, an evil synth, and louder choir. At 2:58 we've got a mashup of yet another small cue, from far earlier when they anger Stalker Boy in the basement while filming the lightsaber duel. 11. Friends In Trouble: The beginning of this is basically the main theme from The Final Jerkoff, with a trumpet playing the melody similar to the trumpet playing the flashbacks of Viral Video, as now their currrent movie has fallen apart in the same way. At 0:28, there's an inevitably slighly out of tune clarinet section that adds to the sourness to accentuate Terry smashing his cane. The original cue for this section fades out with some gamelan and violin harmonics. At 0:59, the next cue begins, which is mostly devoid of Stalker Boy instrumentation, as we're beginning to see his descent into cartoon villainy, which is much better addressed with symphonic sound such as low brass and sul ponticello tremolo strings (playing the bow so close to the bridge that only harmonics are able to be recreated.) At 1:17, we've got low brass playing the theme from Shenmue. At 1:22, we have a little Santur to remind us that he's still a dangerous terrorist, in addition to being a supervillain now. At 1:39 we've got some ambiguous and atonal harmonic suggestions to narrate Mike's thought process on screen. At 1:57, the cue crossfades into the orchestral cue from The Gang fully realizing the advice of the Council of Elders regarding the method to destroy production of Stalker Boy's movie. This was actually the first thing I wrote for the movie, on an acoustic guitar on the first day of shooting at UIC, while waiting in the hallway outside the room used to shoot the headquarters of the Council of Elders, amongst other things. I also wrote the reharmonization of the Shenmue theme at the same time. The harmony, defined with orchestral strings, cascades besides the melody, being played on the main synthesizer sound used to create the Council of Elders theme, to create building blocks of sorts, representing the coalescion of Elders and the Gang. At 2:37, we have a very small sonic hint of the sound used in a later cue to represent Stalker Boy's achilles heel of sorts, which was also used in the end of the Sabomontage. 12. Calculated Stupidity: There was some miscommunication between myself and the production team when I sat down to score the sabotaged movie footage. The original idea was to show a montage of the making of the movie, which I dubbed the "sabomontage". What I made now exists as the first cue on the soundtrack, which I will explain later. After completing it, I sent it to Mike and he said it wasn't going to work and explained that it was supposed to the be the soundtrack for the movie they were submitting, which I either wasn't told or was told while I wasn't paying attention. So, Mike told me he wanted something that sounded like the Shenmue theme meets an immature version of Ampersand, one of my solo records. This cue took maybe two or three hours to complete. At 0:06, the real Shenmue IV cue fades into a mellotron cello tuned up about 15 or 20 cents, with the release time set to 0. There's some horrible digital electric piano and some bizarre percussion sounds along with a recording of me playing very very bad clarinet for an unreleased Grand Theft Marmot song. I think it worked pretty well. 13. Old Friends Reunite: This was a weird cue for a weird scene. This was definitely one of the problem moments in the narrative; how Mike was supposed to convince Terry to rejoin forces to save Joey. After it was shot, I struggled for a little bit, figuring out what direction to take it. Ultimately, I felt that I needed something silly to make the scene seem less silly. I had an image, where Terry catches the ball Mike is throwing against the wall, of some ancient warrior catching an arrow in midair, and some tribal reconciliation taking place. Nobody had any better ideas, so that's what I went with. The cue opens with a clarinet section playing a simplified version of the Gang Motif, which reminds me of Alan Silvestri for some reason. The arrow is caught at 0:10 and we're blasted with Uilleann pipes playing the Gang Motif, as well as a clarinet playing the Gang Motif at 0:16, parodying a canon without actually becoming one. There's also a Hurdy Gurdy doubling the Uilleann pipes, which adds a lot without making itself known. At 0:55, the main theme of The Final Jerkoff reappears, with sampled Irish whistle doubled by glockenspiel in front of a choir. At 1:31, the Uilleann pipes play the bagpipe melody from the opening credits, setting the stage for us. 14. JOEY BIGIO: We talked about Joey Bigio's "descent into madness" scene from the beginning of the production, and had a number of different ideas how to create it. One of the first ideas was to parody the beginning ape scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. We decided that this, along with the lightsaber fight and the sabotaged footage, would be the only things not scored to picture, so, they'd shoot it to fit whatever music I made. I'm not sure what I was parodying, but it turned out really amazing, and is one of everybody's favorite moments in the movie, for a variety of reasons. I put Joey's full name into the lyrics of the Booshe Fighters theme song as well, so I guess it'll have to work it's way into the next thing I do too. The cue starts with some very intensely voiced chords between the string section and a solo oboe. At 0:14, a boys choir appears, singing Joey's name. I've been asked many times how this was done, and while the short answer is "not easily", the longer answer is as follows. At the beginning of the project, I got a new set of orchestra samples, along with a set of choir samples. They contained 5 sections (soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and boy soprano) singing every vowel at every pitch (in a few different dynamic markings), as well as most every non-pitched consonant. Although there's a program that is set up to line up all the samples you need through a VSTi midi plugin, it still takes a very very long time. I also found out pretty early on that it sounded much better for the choirs to sing "Jo Wee" than "Jo Ee". While the choirs later on sounded pretty good on their own, it was very difficult to get the boys choir to sound intelligible, so the final product has a lot of mixing tricks to get the words to sound more intelligible than they actually are. While I scored the beginning in C minor because the piece and choir sounded best in that key, I wanted the main part of the piece to sound lower and I wanted a key change to indicate a new level of severity between the boys choir and the full choir. At 0:40, the piece modulates down to A minor. At 0:45, the basses set up the ostinato for the piece by singing "G A N G", in the notes A, B, C, D, which continues through to the end. A lot of people have thought it's Mike singing this part, and while I agree that it sounds exactly like Mike, it is in fact the choir samples. At 0:52, the big piece starts. I wanted the choir to be singing "Joey Bigio" on the 1 and 2 of each measure here, instead of the 3 and 4, as the boys choir did, just to give it more immediacy. There's actually quite a lot of orchestral stuff going on under the choir to give it power and body, but it stays out of the way pretty nicely. At 1:08, the string basses split from the bass choir ostinato and begin playing F, G, A, E, F, E, D, C B, A, to break up the monotony. This gives us double stops A/F, B/G, C/A, D/E, A/F, B/E, C/D, D/C B, and A/A, creating the effective chord progression F, G, Am, Em7, F, Em, Dm7, Cadd9 /B, Am On the soundtrack, the JOEY BIGIO cue segues into the suiting up montage at 1:23. This is basically just a flushed out version of the opening credits march. At 2:00, the march dissolves into a boys choir, singing a little choir piece in jest that I'm sure I ripped off of something, although with no clearly defined melody, it'd be hard to pinpoint it. It was just too funny as a parody to make something original sounding. 15. Breaking In: This cue is basically a fully fleshed out and orchestrated version of the Not Even Doom Music cue. Putting sleighbells on the downbeats made a lot of this cue for me too, adding to the sneakiness of the scene. While the original version of the theme was in Dm modulating to Am (with the majority of the soundtrack), I raised this cue to Bm to parallel the identical thing I did on the Viral Video soundtrack for the "breaking in" scene. I also did it so that I could easily fall into Bm for the fight scene so that I could use the low open B on a 7 string guitar as the tonic and so that it elevated some of the mood of the movie (the same as I did on Viral Video.) At 0:43 we have a break in the theme to introduce music which indicates Stalker Boy's complete arrival as a cartoon supervillain, as he reveals a device to create physical incarnations of the Gang's previous villains. At 1:18, a string quartet with synth bass and koto plays the bridge from "Not Even Doom Music" as they release Joey. At 1:33, the main theme from The Final Jerkoff reappears for a short time before it's cut off by Ponce De Mike. 16. Tracking Shot: Just like in Viral Video, I put in a request for the fight scene not to be filmed last, and again, it was ignored, although I did have more than 30 hours to do it this time. The original idea for this was supposed to be nu-metal or something, maybe like something from The Matrix, but after starting with that idea, it made all the characters running around look silly. I decided instead to go with a sort of cross between Liquid Tension Experiment and Danny Elfman. At 0:13, we have the french horns playing the "Gang Motif". The rest consists of new melodies and ideas. There's surprisingly not a lot to say about this, given that it's probably my favorite cue. 17. Transformation Into Video: At some point, somebody suggested the current ending of the movie and I completely fell in love with it. At a later point, another ending to the movie was decided upon, one which was so stupid that we've all agreed not to speak of it again. For some reason, everybody but me was convinced that it was better than the ending we ultimately decided on, and I demanded that they at least film both endings or I wouldn't score them, or I'd quit, or I'd keep complaining, or something. Without music, nobody liked either ending, but as soon as I sent the music for the current one, everybody immediately started liking it. I guess sometimes music is important. Or complaining. The main goal of this cue was to introduce what would seem like a new theme, predicting a lot of thematic development to give the illusion that there was a huge section of the story being revealed. At 0:21, the sound from The Sabomontage and Friends In Trouble is revealed again, which for me was representing the harsh magnetic data on videotape, and Stalker Boy's existence on videotape. It was actually a lot of fun to create all the various ghost sounds starting at 0:46, which were used to illustrate the supernatural/paranormal qualities of the scene. At 1:00, the theme coalesces into string marcatto markings and rigid time, indicative of something like Lux Aeterna from Requiem For a Dream before it's immediately cut off by Terry pressing the eject button on the VCR. At 1:03, the cue cuts off, and we hear the music-box version of the "Gang Theme", from the last shot of the movie. 18. Theme From Shenmue IV: I was going into this thinking Shemue theme meets the theme from Metal Gear Solid III (which was used as the intro video to the Gang's Shenmue III) meets John Williams. The cello part was the first thing I wrote, on a piece of paper while waiting around somewhere. The melody enters at 0:07 on french horn, with some very loose harmonic interpretations between the cello and string sections. The full orchestration and choir enter at 0:33. This follows the same chord progression as the previous incarnation in "Main Theme From The Final Jerkoff" but with one interesting difference. The electric guitar part playing palm muted power chords (root, fifth, octave) follows the root note of each chord, which creates some harmonic discrepancies. These appear on the F#m7b5 chord, playing a C# over what should be a C as the b5, creating a very inappropriate neighboring tone modulation (into A major) as well as an avoid-tone "no-fa" dissonance with the other instruments playing C (playing a note a half step above a chord tone), and on the Bb(#11) chord, creating a dissonance between the #11 (an E) and an F as the fifth of Bb. (The second incident does not create any illegal modulation, but does create an avoid-tone, as the harmonics of the fifth are high enough to be analyzed as a 12th.) Because power chords are so inherently powered by their fifth, it actually works and a lot of people might not have noticed anything. The alternate options were to play octaves (which sound totally different) or to play tritones, which not only lose their power but also sound like a mush of notes. Ultimately, the improper dissonances were the most acceptable sounding choice. The first full day of working on this cue resulted in everything but the choir, and the second full day went into creating the choir part for it, as well as mixing. Unlike the JOEY BIGIO cue, the choir in this section is actually standard SATB scoring that follows the harmonic structure of the song but still sounds like a melody. I thought of giving the choir latin lyrics to sing or something, and then thought maybe they should be pig-latin, but then I realized it'd probably be the funniest if they were just in English. The lyrics to the song are as follows: Sega, make another Shenmue Yu Suzuki, make another Shenmue For the next game you release, make Shenmue. We will buy it. 01. The Sabomontage: This is the original cue made for what would have been the sabomontage, a montage of outtakes and mischief on the set of Shenmue IV. I was looking at it mainly as a way to let loose and have fun with the main synth lead from the Council of Elders theme song from Viral Video, which you can hear enter at 0:03 and begin soloing at 0:48. The beginning would have originally been taking place during the realizations in their minds of people who annoyed/angered them. 02. Brawler's Ball: A fan of the movie approached me because a company he worked for was interested in purchasing licensing rights to some of my music, and one of the things he selected was "Tracking Shot" from The Final Jerkoff. He asked if I could make it about twice as long, so I spent a full day adding some extra sections, and while I was at it, I decided to change the main melody to a completely original melody for both copyright issues and because I wanted a new one for this track anyways. Ultimately, the company decided they weren't interested in buying licensing rights, so instead of all that work going to waste, you can enjoy the final product. After I wrote the section at 1:13, I felt like it needed rapping or something under it. I wasn't about to try to record myself rapping, so I took recordings from the movie. You can hear the lines from Terry: "I have trained-" "What have you done?" and "My mutant brothers." as well as Tyler saying: "You knew this was coming Ryo!" There's another one in there right before Tyler's line, but I forgot what it was and I can't make it out. Maybe you can. Also, to add more intensity to the ending, at 1:45, I copied in the scream that you can hear/see me do in the Brian Fife and Band: The Making Of A Record trailer, pitched it to the proper note, and copied it again and pitched it to a harmony part. Also, at 1:47 I copied in an explosion sound that I put in the Booshe Fighters Theme Song for a subliminal subsonic effect. It's a little louder here than in the Booshe Fighters song. Taking everything we all learned from Viral Video and applying it, all of us were able to make something that really dwarfed what we thought we were capable of. Once again, it was a total blast working with Mike, Terry, Tyler, and Joey, and even after taking me close to 2 years to get around to writing out these liner notes, I can remember this experience so clearly that it felt like something I did last month. I've found myself including these cuts in portfolio selections more than anything, retelling stories from this movie more than any other project, and listening to the soundtrack/watching this movie more than any other thing I've done in recent history. I hope you got some enjoyment out of the movie too, and most importantly, that you took something away from your interaction with it. 10.14.09 |