A Few Mickey-Mousing Devices
A Few Mickey-Mousing Devices
I’ve been looking at the Home Alone scores and a number of other great scores with a lot of mickey-mousing.
The first device I used today (bar 1) is a typical surprise stab you’ve heard in a hundred scores, but it’s interesting to work out what’s really going on there. The way the bassoons come in slightly late, and simply noticing exactly what kind of chord it is was instructive.
Next up is a device where the bassoons are harmonised in major thirds during a meandering melody. This is from Home Alone – he uses that one a lot.
I don’t remember where the next one comes from (bar 4), but it’s a great device for those moments where you’re expecting something sudden to happen on screen but the wait seems eternal. Like turning a corner in anticipation. In this case you’re just outlining the fifth and root of a chord chromatically (while the root itself is held), by opposite motion.
The last one I discovered in McNeely’s Return to Neverland, where brash, playful statements are made in high woodwinds and xylophone, usually using distantly-related triads (in this case, a tritone away from eachother).
Professionally-engraved version generously copied by Jimmy Lockett:
Monday, 27 April 2009
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