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Mary Astor-Robert Ames-Ann Harding-Hedda Hopper-Creighton Hale-Edward Everett Horton "Holiday" 1930, de Edward H. Griffith.

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Helen Twelvetrees and Robert Ames in

Millie (1931) Director: John Francis Dillon

#Helen Twelvetrees #Robert Ames #Millie #1931 #John Francis Dillon #Black and White Films #RKO Radio Pictures #Pre-Code #1930s #Films made in the 1930s #American Films

Tree Synthesisers begins with a gentle fade-in, presenting a web of synthesizer trills which is led by a gently plucked solo electric guitar. Most of the synths flip between C and F, but each one speeds and slows at its own pace, giving no sense of a common tempo. Jonny initially plays straight quarter notes, but loops them and adds syncopated layers above them, adding to the sense of there being no dominant pulse. The guitar and synths are joined (0:24) by gentle high-pitched digital noise, which pans from right to left, adding the only “percussion” on the track (though it barely constitutes that).

Then the atmosphere is changed suddenly with the entrance of the rich polyphonic synthesizer which will dominate the rest of the track (0:57). While the initial “trill” synthesizers are all quite stable and clean, reminiscent of an old video game’s crispy square waves, the main poly-synth is incredibly rich, with its analog oscillators sliding in and out of tune with each-other and its timbre varied by slow, deep modulation. Part of why the poly-synth is able to take such dramatic command of the track is that, unlike the initial synths whose lowest note is still in the mid-frequencies, the sub-oscillator on the poly-synth’s bass voice reaches nearly to the bottom of the audible range.

A photo of Jonny playing his ondes Musicales Dierstein, from the 2015 performance by Jonny and the London Contemporary Orchestra in Dublin. Using the keyboard, the Martenot easily could have supplied at least a part of the track’s persistent trills.

The poly-synth’s homophonic part is iterated in two voices, with a treble that alternates between F and A three times before settling on E, and a bass that simultaneously alternates between D and F before landing on a C which is paired with a dissonant B after one measure to deny any sense of resolution. This initial progression forms the basis for the rest of the track, and rest of the synth’s playing consists exclusively of repeats or transpositions of it.

After a repetition of the progression (at 1:22), we get the synth progression transposed down a fifth (1:47). Next, we get a repeat of the original version the progression (2:11). It is followed again by a transposition down a fifth (2:36), but this time the treble voice plays an octave higher than before (up a forth from the original melody), giving a more brilliant version of the variation. It is followed by a new variation, this one transposed up fourth from the first transposition (3:00). The final progression (3:25) is a repeat of the first transposition, this one with a rich upper layer added to the treble part (3:32). Surprisingly, it cuts itself short, moving the its last note (A) after only two alternations of its first two notes.

A photo from the 2014 performance by Jonny and the London Contemporary Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in Manchester (mx-magpie).

The first string instrument to enter is a cello (presumably Oliver Coates), contributing A’s and D’s (0:46). More players join after after the main poly-synth enters (~1:04), and next a violin (presumably Galya Bisengalieva) joins the lower strings (1:09) and begins to play the sparse high notes which have become an essential characteristic of the more melancholiac tracks on Jonny’s recent scores. Total, there seem to be about four-to-six total string players. The two cellos are evident at 3:48, and a second violin panned alternate to the first trades notes with it. The occasional F’s of middling pitch might be played either by violas or by the violins. The strings serve only as an accompaniment on this track, but their sparse, delicate notes – best heard after the main synth delivers its final note (3:44) – provide a wistful edge to the track.

Each string player switches between only a few notes over the course of the piece, and they seem to do so without any clear pattern. Based on Jonny’s recent compositions, which make heavy use of aleatoric writing, it’s likely that each player is given a few options to choose from for each note. For example, the principal violin primarily plays D’s and G’s, but occasionally C’s and F’s are employed as well. It’s likely that Jonny offered all four notes as options, perhaps providing a choice of two for a given measure. This would explain why the violin sometimes leaps up to G from D, other times leaps down from G to D, and sometimes simply holds the high G for double the duration.

Both Robert Ames (viola and co-director, left) and Galya Bisengalieva (principal violin, right) are key players in the sound of this track, and the YWNRH soundtrack as a whole (photo by Isabel Thomas).

Instruments

As was already suggested by Jonny’s performances of Sandy’s Necklace (originally “Microtonal Shaker”) and other pieces with the LCO, the thick, rich “humbucker” timbres employed across the YWNRH soundtrack confirm that his primary guitars were his 70′s Gibson Led Paul Standard and his vintage Fender Starcaster. While Jonny’s old Telecaster Plus also offers a thick “humbucker” sound, its Lace Sensor pickups have a more even/neutral and slightly “compressed” sound compared to deep, punchy sound of Led Paul pickups, or to the open, chiming sound of Starcaster pickups. The brighter sound of the Starcaster seems to feature on the soundtrack’s more intricate songs, such as Tree Strings and Nina Through Glass, while the punchier Les Paul seems to feature on more aggressive tracks like Sandy’s Necklace and Dark Streets (Reprise). In the case of Tree Synthesisers, the Starcaster seems the more likely option.

Jonny’s Fender Starcaster (left) and Gibson Les Paul (right) have been his primary guitars for work outside of Radiohead since around 2011. Photo is from Jonny’s performance of Electric Counterpoint at the Barbican Center in 2014.

Unlike the guitar, it’s hard to gauge which synths Jonny may have used on this track. The initial trills could have been created with anything, even Jonny’s ondes Martenot or Ondomo. The later synth must be a rich analog synth of some kind, but this could be anything from a Dave Smith synth to a patch on Jonny’s modular. There’s definitely a sub-oscillator used for the bass voice, so the Dave Smith Tetra which Jonny had on the 2012 tour is a likely option. It offers a sub-oscillator per voice, and allows a unique patch per each of its four voices: that could explain why the sub-oscillator is only present on the bass voice. Of course, Jonny also could have multi-tracked the synth. The sound of its filter can best be heard when the extra higher voice joins in (3:32), and its resonance is noticeably different from the filter on Jonny’s Minimoog Model D, for example.

For the score of YWNRH, Jonny mentioned working both with a full orchestra, and with a smaller group of string players at Radiohead’s studio. One can hear a similarly sized ensemble on Playground (Bass Clarinet), particularly when the other sounds drop out near the end of the track, and YWNRH also features a fairly small ensemble (the extra definition of the small ensemble adds an extra edge to the dense orchestral writing on that track).

Jonny’s Dave Smith Instruments Tetra can be seen below and to the right of his laptop in this crop of a photo, which was taken by Jonny during Radiohead’s soundcheck for their 2012 performance in Taipei (deadairspace).