Musical Themes
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Composer Hal Foxton Beckett provides background music to create a certain mood and creates several distinct musical themes that add to the drama. Some of these musical themes recur throughout the series to signify certain persons or emotions. These themes may not always be clear when watching a particular episode for the first time yet make themselves more apparent on subsequent viewing. Beckett draws upon his orchestral resources to create interesting and emotionally moving melodies. Some of these themes are rather short and concise, while others are longer and have more "depth." On the table below you will find a list of episode titles and the musical themes that are found within them. These musical themes are listed in order of appearance and are linked to short explanations and commentary below. Please understand that this structured and purposely thematic conception of Beckett's music is simply my own belief. I provide my evidence in the commentaries below.
Hal Foxton Beckett (Composer)
Hal has been writing music for 25 years, starting with compositions for his high school stage band. He then toured Western Canada with the R&B band Burning Ground backing up such acts as Little Richard and Heart. While studying music composition at the University of British Columbia, Hal was the recording engineer for all the music performances. This led him to work with Ralph Dyck, one of MIDI electronics' pioneers who designed the first music sequencer for the Roland Corporation. To further his burgeoning interest in electronic music, Hal studied at the world renowned Sonic Research Lab at Simon Fraser University with computer music specialist Barry Truax. During this period, Hal was the Music Director and Conductor for the Musical Society and wrote music for live theatre and experimental films.
Moving to CBC Radio as a classical music recording engineer, Hal wrote music for the French radio show, Jazz en Liberté, winning 1st prize in the CFMI Talent Search. Hal then built his own recording studio, designing a hybrid mixing console using vintage tube pre-amps with Mushroom Studios' Charlie Richmond. This facility became Studios West, one of the premier studios in Vancouver during the late 70's and early 80's. Here Hal honed his studio chops, producing more than 25 albums with such diverse artists as Elmer Gill and 'Lockjaw' Davis, Vancouver Chamber Choir and the first recordings of 54.40, as well as live broadcast recordings for Steve Hackett of Genesis, Headpins, and Rough Trade.
In 1983, Hal started a commercial music company, writing music for corporate films and advertising such as Shell Canada, General Motors and McDonalds. During Digicon '83, he worked with Fairlight Computer Music Instruments, assisting in the first satellite concert between Vancouver, Sydney and Tokyo with Jean Piché. Hal then scored a television special for the Disney Channel and several episodes of the CBC anthology series Lies from Lotusland. This led to long relationship with the Knowledge Network, with Hal scoring 8 television series for them.
As Vancouver's post-production industry started to expand in 1989, Hal took over a 48-track digital recording facility and added New England Digital Post-Pro's and Synclaviers, posting over 100 hours of television and 20 feature films. During this time, Hal scored the first season of Madison and was the music editor on Wes Craven's Nightmare Cafe. Hal then wrote and conducted the score for CineVu Films' feature 'Flinch' with Judd Nelson and Gina Gershon and 'Power of Attorney' with Danny Aiello.
In 1994, Hal sold his studio and worked with Keystone Pictures as their sound supervisor on 3 films. Hal set up the post production division at their new facility designing their edit suites as well as acting as music supervisor. This entailed negotiating contracts with their LA composers and placing source music with dozens of bands. During this time, Hal assisted the series Highlander with their source music needs. This developed into the music editor's position for season 4 and 5 with Hal writing additional cues as required. For season 6, Hal tracked the show with existing archive score and wrote 30% new music for the series.
Then Motion Works Group called on Hal to set up their new SGI/Digital Suites. This entailed designing 6 SGI workstations, 2 Discreet Logic mini-computers including a Flame suite and an integrated digital video sub-system. Motion Works was then contracted by 20th Century Fox Interactive to design the CD-ROM Game for the film Anastasia, and Hal was asked to arrange and orchestrate the 5 Oscar Nominated songs and write new orchestral music for the game play. This CD-ROM was one of the best selling games of 1998.
In 1999, Hal facilitated three ‘Hollywood’ film scores being recorded at Brian Adams studio in Vancouver. He supervised the contracting, recording and score preparation. He then worked with the renowned film composer, Bruce Broughton in recording the string orchestra of the Vancouver Symphony with some new works. Then Sat 1 in Germany in collaboration with Fireworks Entertainment asked Hal to score their feature Posion using a small orchestra and Latin band.
Hal then was asked to write for the television series Call of the Wild for CineVu Films and Animal Planet, their first foray into a live-action dramatic series. He was able to utilize a 50-piece orchestra for the Main Title and Pilot episode which was recorded again at Brian Adam’s studio. For this, he was nominated for both an Emmy and a Leo award.
Hal is presently writing music for the animated series Yvon of the Yukon for Studio B Productions and YTV as well as the music editor on The Chris Isaak Show for Paramount and Showtime.
- from Hollywords
Publicity
Click here to listen to the Emmy-nominated theme to Call of the Wild
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1-Forty Mile 2-Call of the Wild 3-Mush! 4-Emma 5-Winter Storm 6-Adventure |
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3-Mush! 7-Stealing the Gold / Miles Remembers the Curse 1-Forty Mile 2-Call of the Wild |
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8-Soapy's Gang 9-Reese 4-Emma |
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10-Sorrow 11-Buck 12-Adoley's Decision 2-Call of the Wild 13-Stanton 14-Miles' Generosity |
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1-Forty Mile |
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Rose |
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11-Buck |
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The Storm John and Adoley |
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Gypsies Ariella 4-Emma 2-Call of the Wild |
