As an aside I should mention that North by Northwest has an "Outback da Vinci" view of the world (Anyone here is capable of anything, therefore someone here can do it).  I explained that music orchestrating, scoring, and part extraction are specialties that take years to develop and even after years of working at them many people are still quite bad at it. In spite of my explanations, the first man on my team was Dave Earnest who was working at North by Northwest as an audio editor. Needless to say I was scared out of my wits. The idea that a randomly selected audio editor was to prepare my orchestral score was not a reassuring one.

      Dave and I hit it off right away. It turned out that he was a composer like myself who was doing work to get by because composing music is simply not that lucrative if you’re not on the top of the pile. I gave Dave one of my opera selections to input into Finale, a piece called Der Fremder (The Stranger). Finale is a computer program that prints out commercial quality music if you know enough about music to make it do that. He was a little rusty and it took him four days to complete one page of score. I estimated that the completed score would be about 300 pages long. so even with my limited math skills I could see that wasn’t going to work. But Dave had a calm optimism and insisted it would get better.  A week later he was whipping through several pages a day and getting faster all the time not to mention making useful suggestions ranging from better use of the orchestra to more effective methods of formatting the pages. In spite of the great respect I came to have for his abilities and the even greater respect I already had for my own, I had to admit that together we still couldn't fly.

     I asked Greg Short, a long time friend of mine, to orchestrate the basketball game and the closing credits. This would take some pressure off of Dave and me since Greg would deliver a completed score. With the addition of Roger Logan who would prepare the orchestral parts, we were set to meet our deadline.

     I would sketch a selection and fax it to Dave Earnest in Boise. Dave would input my sketches into the Finale program and e-mail this back to me. I would print that out, proof read it, make corrections and fax it back to him. He would enter the corrections and e-mail it back to me. I would proof it for the final time and e-mail it to Roger Logan who would extract all of the orchestra parts. Meanwhile Greg, over on Whidbey Island, would orchestrate my piano sketch for the section he was working on and e-mail that to me. I would make changes and requests (like please don’t use any more FFFF, two is enough). When I was satisfied with Greg’s work he would e-mail that to Dave for formatting. Dave would e-mail it to Roger for part extraction after final proofing. Roger would also catch mistakes that might hurt us in recording and would also suggest better ways to phrase certain passages, or a clearer manner of notation for specific instruments.

     Part extraction is certainly one of the most critical portions of the process. The instrumental parts are the interface between the composer and the players. If the parts are easy to read and free of mistakes it can make all the difference in how the session goes. The musicians will not get frustrated and tired (as quickly) and the quality of the recording will be much better. No valuable time will be spent making corrections. Roger’s part-work was impeccable.

     Meanwhile, Greg Short was organizing his studio to handle this project. Greg had a phenomenal knowledge of the orchestra, but fairly limited computer savvy. I spent a lot of time on the phone talking him through the technical aspects of e-mailing and faxing scores. He found this process very stressful. He was a perfectionist, as are most composers who haven't done production work. He would re-orchestrate a scene several times trying to squeeze every bit of useful nuance from every phrase. I tried to reassure him that his extra efforts would not have any impact on most of the movie-going audience. Still he wanted to get it just right. The scores I got from him were well-orchestrated. I was extremely impressed.

     By now I was starting my workday at 5:00 am. This was not by choice. I would wake up in terror that I wasn’t going to get this project finished on time. I had to get up and work. Alison, my muse, would bring me a superfood drink later in the morning, fresh pressed vegetable juice for lunch, and a large green salad for dinner. We would run around the block every two hours followed by handstands and backbends. Other than that, I worked without pausing until 10:00 p.m. at which time I force myself to stop. The fear of not finishing was always there. It was difficult to relax and go to sleep.

     People have expressed puzzlement over the idea that writing music could be stressful. Having been in a position to do other types of creative work including writing, editing, choreography, and production, it is easy for me to see and understand a difference. When writing music, the flow of ideas and the source of energy is mysterious and unknown. This is an example of a gift.  It is not self-generated. It can end at any time. Fear comes from the fact that there are 65 minutes of silence, of nothing, that must become 65 minutes of music. And not just any music. Music that makes the story work. There is nothing there when the day begins and something has to be there when the day is over. This produces anxiety.

     We plugged away. When we had 21 days left we began to check selections off the list as they were completed. We all felt we could finish if we didn’t stop. As the deadline approached our progress accelerated and it looked like we would just make it. I was worried about Greg though. He still had the entire second half of the game to orchestrate in one week. Whenever he called he was anxious but he always maintained his sense of humor, including clever jokes he sent with his e-mails. I was not going to finish early so I wouldn’t be able to help him. Two days into the final week Whidbey Island experienced a power outage which kept him from working for two days. He was kind enough not to tell me about it.

     Three days before our scheduled departure for Budapest Greg still had three large sections of the score to finish. By now he wasn’t sending any jokes with his scores. He was just getting them out as quickly as possible. The last one came with one day left, just enough time for Roger to extract the parts. It included an e-mail message, "Here it is…gotta run…late for class…gerg." It was the last e-mail message Greg ever sent. The day I left for Budapest I got a call from another friend of his on Whidbey Island who told me Greg had backed out of his driveway, had a massive heart attack, and died.

     We dedicated the movie and the completed CD to his memory.  Linda Siverts paraphrased an appropriate elegy. 
"When a person like that dies, it is like a library has burned to the ground."

     I left for Budapest shocked by the loss, and not without gratitude that Greg had finished it for me...on time.

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