Synesthetic Score Video: "Stand!" ft. The Bengsons

Описание:   / bibliosymphony  

Back in 2013, David Möschler was selected to be the Music Director for UnderCover Presents' 8th Tribute album and concert. He selected Sly & the Family Stone's "Stand!" to honor with an array of the Bay Area's finest bands. This opportunity arose in Awesöme Orchestra's first year as an organization, and I was grateful that David asked me to arrange and orchestrate the title track.

I envisioned a version that would begin with a drumroll, just as the original from 1969 did, but then immediately depart into a wistful, serene soundscape that floats and calls the listener into the ideals of the message. Stand for the things you know are right. It's a call to action, and frankly a message we need to hear. Inaction will not do in 2020, nor in any other year.

The speech in the middle of this arrangement is a direct quote from Sly Stone himself, from a show at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970: “People believe in a lot of different things—though our universal thoughts, in general… I mean, the people who believe that what’s up is up and down is down, simple things, you know. It’s very easy to be fair, and don’t kill nobody, and those things—hurts if you step on my toe: ‘Ouch.’ A lot of things happened in the sixties. A lot of people stood in the sixties. A lot of people went down in the sixties—for standing. That’s unfair.”

On the technical side, I spent a bit of time reducing this massive orchestration to a "short score" so that viewers can actually read all of the parts in landscape view. Writing the F horns in alto clef is a technique that film composer Bruce Broughton allegedly got from Sergei Prokofiev, and I find it a clever workaround for viewing concert pitch short scores.