There was a time where I’ve considered a career in classical music and compositions. But in the end, Comic won the day and there we are.
Still, I kept writing baroque tasting, fugues, and quartet for my own amusement (some examples later, for the daring) – But Once in a while, my composer side finds a way to cross art form boundaries and split over to my Comic work. I got all sorts of theories on written music and comic book storytelling parallel. Using panel border as Leitmotif and panel as beat and soooo much more (one day I’ll bore you to tears with my masterclass on that)
But in the case of Tom King’s BATMAN #69, I went further and infused our graphic storytelling with actual music writing! Half of Tom’s stories took place inside Batman’s delirium/dreamlike state in which he his dancing with Catwoman. Tom choose the fortunately copyright free (1910) song “ Some of these days”, check out the original Sophie Tucker version.
I wrote down the 2 first to bar of it….
And turn it into a BRUSH ( yeah , a other one! It’s a very specific, But it is available for Paying tier in the brush download section )
I remember asking Tom to switch page 1 of the original script just we could start with a Dream sequence and follow the musical Writing convention of beginning with G clef and ending with a Double bar. Btw, all those following pages are Colored by Nathan Fairbairn.
I can then use Panels as Notes/Chords
Or even Those 5 Scoring lines as Panel or Graphic elements:
I used the Score itself as Background, Panel Border, Decorative elements.
Man, these where Great times! Fun Fact, a lot of those Artist Proof pages are sold and I’ve notate extra music on some, like Elfman Batman Theme, That Nananananana from the Sixties and that minimalistic Giacchino’s creepy rhythmic drop from C to Ab of the last Batman film.
If you are curious about my actual musical Compostions, and dare listen to some:
String Quartet in C min (built on G, Ab, F#, G motif)
Swamp Thing #7 OST, creepo mood and some actions for Orchestra ( I need to remix it, sounds crushing)
A little Jazz Fugue for String Trio and Drum, One of hundred of fugues i wrote.
There’s more where all this come from, let me know if you want more in the comment, But i won’t torture you further, for now. Back To WORK!!
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Truly, You are the best.
-Y
This is super great.