Recently in Life! there was an article about local film composer Ricky Ho, who had won a Golden Horse award for “Best Original Film Score” for the film “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”.
This was indeed a remarkable achievement, and the article basically chronicled his life and described how he got to where he is today.
I think being a film composer is a wonderful job, challenging as it may be.
In my younger days I’d always dreamed of being a film composer, although the chances of being a successful film composer are usually close to zero.
I even read up on a lot of books about film scoring and all that, and it’s a thoroughly fascinating subject.
However – and I’ve given this plenty of thought – ultimately I would take being a songwriter over being a film composer any day.
I would rather write one good four-minute song that most people would remember for the rest of their lives, than compose hours and hours of film score music that wins plenty of awards.
Simply put, I would rather be the Paul McCartney than the John Williams, if I really had to choose between the two.
Or I would rather be the Paul Simon than the Hans Zimmer.
That’s how much value I place over the power of a good song.
Honestly speaking, apart from the John Williams classics (e.g. “Star Wars”, “Indiana Jones”, “Jaws”) and the occasional modern-day hit (e.g. Klaus Badelt’s “Pirates” theme), how much of film music do we actually remember?
Most of the movies we watch nowadays – how many minutes of music do we actually remember?
Do we even remember the main motif?
Nope.
But that’s kinda the point of most film music isn’t it?
It’s supposed to serve the needs of the film, to heighten whatever emotion that needs to be heightened, but yet remain unobtrusive.
And if the main motif happens to be strong enough that people remember it, then it’s considered a bonus.
That’s not the kind of thing I’m after.
Call me vain or selfish or egotistical or whatever, but for me the ultimate goal of songwriting is so that people will (willingly and happily) remember the tune.
That, to me, is the final goal.
And that’s the thing that I always aim for whenever I attempt to write a song.
If my song happens to be lodged in someone’s memory, and it stays with him or her for a long time to come…then wow, there’s no greater feeling than that, really.
Have I had that happen to me before?
Thankfully, yes.
And I’m eternally grateful to be able to experience that.
Sometimes I’m a Cranberries concert or a Coldplay concert or a Jason Mraz concert and I see the entire stadium singing along to their songs, and I think to myself – do these artistes realise how absolutely lucky they are that they have an entire stadium singing along to a song they wrote?
It’s literally like being in songwriter’s heaven, don’t you think?
There’s no payoff than that for a songwriter, is there?
Cos if there is, I’d really like to know what it is.
I think music is also like “Beauty in the eyes of its beholder”, is subjective to each listener; one person might find a piece of music – a nice melody, might not be the same to the next person.
Different composers have their own talents and purposes (strengths and aims) in writing a piece of music, that why we have so many kinds of music to listen to which indeed a great blessing to the listeners who are so fortunate with many choices. And different kinds of music serve their roles in different ways too.
Personally, I strongly feel that a composer should not write with the aim to impress the listeners (if given a choice, for example, not working for a client or answering to a boss); but write a song which is first touched the composer’s heart. So in the end of the day, even nobody says a yes to this song; this song still meant something to its creator. Like a baby to its mother; no matter how people think of this baby; this baby is forever special and priceless in her eyes, because she had harboured this precious little one for a length of at least nine months time – is a labour of love (and hardship), nevertheless.