In overdue response toa friend’s groovy post soliciting favorite film and t.v. soundtracks and scores. I have a couple hundred and they serve as fuel to my writing. I am either writing in silence or with a score rolling. These are a lot of my heavy hitters with a heavy lean of Goldsmith, Williams, Elfman, Carpenter, Zimmer, North, Goblin and Junkie XL. A big oops for not putting in Ennio Morricone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” for Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti western epics.
Currently writing to the spooky chill of Lalo Schierin’s haunting masterpiece behind the original Amityville Horror with Basil Poledouris’ enthralling wizardry for the first Conan the Barbarian on deck. Wind is HOWLING outside the office window right now. The perfect ambience for creating horror.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Roads Lesser Traveled 
There is no better music to listen to when creating than Goldsmith’s avant garde score to Planet of the Apes!
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OMG, right? Goldsmith…ahhhhhh…. The man could be uber repetitive like Basic Instinct and the first Star Trek film, but he was almost always fire on any project and I also play the absolute hell out of The Mummy.
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That’s quite a collection. People always discount movie scores but there’s some brilliant music to be found there…
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Indeed!!! My writing thrives on scores and I am ALWAYS scouting the background music whenever I’m watching a flick.
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I can remember watching Out Of Africa in the theater and being brought to tears by the score. That’s powerful music.
❤️
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Oh yeah! It’s been ages since I saw that, but now that you bring it up, YES! I need a revisit.
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This makes me think of years ago, when my high-school-aged son lived in the lower level (basement). I was in is room one day using his computer, and he was watching “The Sixth Sense” for the umpteenth time. I hadn’t seen the movie yet, and I wasn’t looking at the TV, had no idea what was going on, and yet the music was freaking me out. Yes, a soundtrack can make or break a movie, IMO.
I recently recorded my trilogy of fiction (“Awakening”), and for the second book, “Vision,” we decided to add a soundtrack for the final couple of chapters. After many hours of recording, timing, revising, taking various clips and trying to fit them together, I realized what a monumental task it is to put a soundtrack with an audiobook, much less a movie, and have it flow naturally. Like anything else, if it’s done well, it sounds easy.
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