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  • From ELO, through 20 years... to ELO.

    21 Jul 2011
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    Having now written a short score for a Virgin Shorts submitted movie I have 'caught the bug'. I am wondering why, after all these years of playing guitar (about 20), I have never thought to learn more about classical composition. In the past 10 years I have tried to understand and appreciate classical music several times, although have never quite got there with it. But more recently I'm not so much listening to the melody, or how the piece makes me feel, but rather how the piece is put together. Or as my friend and musical mentor Ashley puts it, the 'nuts and bolts of composition'. And it's fascinating. How does the sound of an instrument cut through the other instruments. Or not. What is the tone of the instrument, and is it better suited for quieter parts of a composition, or for the parts with more impact? Does it have a fast attack and decay, or can the performer control and sustain the note?

    This all takes me back to what introduced me to music in the first place – ELO. The early Electric Light Orchestra albums had a much bigger representation of classical instruments than their later albums. A couple of 'cellos and violins live, and more (I assume layered) on the studio recordings. The latter also used brass etc. My uncle first got me into ELO as he was a bit of a fan. He had the Time album, and on it was a track called 'Here is the news'. I loved it. It's still an album I love, as well as Discovery and Eldorado, which in my opinion were their best.

    So anyway, I've never forgotten how amazing I find some of the material on Eldorado. I just love the arrangements. The intro and first song, 'Eldorado Overture / Can't get it out of my head' are my second favourite and well worth having a listen to if you've not before:

    But the best one for me is Boy Blue. I especially love the instrumental part from around 2:14 on the following video, especially the pizzicato part (which echoes the bass part from the main song). Note sure what the video is all about though! Anyway.

    So all I've done is gone from ELO to playing guitar to writing songs to arranging songs with multiple instruments to getting in interest in classical arrangement to remembering Jeff Lynne and co. were already doing all this before I was born. Hmm.

    Oh, and when ELO were the biggest band in the UK some Toy Story person wrote a song about them. Always worth a mention, and interestingly it includes a nice big arrangement.

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