Forum - Week 1 - Martin Armiger's Career Choice Problems

Like a herd of pigs being fattened up for consumption, we
begin feeding on a second semester of the psychological
slops trough known as “Forum”. Sadly it was only half
a forum, with my old pal Dirty Harry
indisposed, perhaps polishing his .44 Magnum while reading
my blog from last semester. Nonetheless, guest presenter
Martin Armiger (1) kept us entertained and jealous. AFTRS
head of screen composition and screen composer
himself, Martin has the job most of us would wish we were
good enough for, which is why his aversion towards almost
everything in film music upset me. To roughly quote;
“There is a lot of shit”. Sorry Martin, I’ll try and do
better next time okay?

Apart from his industry gripe, and
after a pointless stab at any religious
people in the room about evolution,
he did have some interesting nuggets
of thought to share. An interesting
observation was that “Film is a
collision of many aesthetics”, for
which he listed about 15 components
which must work symbiotically to
achieve a pleasing and profitable
result. Another area covered was
human responses to certain
frequencies, epitomised in the “Psycho” shower scene in the
use of high pitched sounds to enhance panic and suspense.
He continued with this subject, stating “Music is a mechanism
for controlling behaviour”. Something clicked in my brain, and
I got flashbacks of Christian telling me how everybody in high
positions in the world are actually lizards. Could it be? Martin,
a lizard that can control behaviour? Hold on, didn’t Godzilla
have theme music!?

Of particular interest was the “7 functions of a movie score”,
regurgitated by Martin from a book by Claudia Gorbman
(Unheard Melodies). To re-regurgitate*: Invisible, Inaudible,
Cues emotions, Sense of place, Provides point-of-view,
Continuity, and Unity in repetition/variation. Considering
this, it is understandable that a composer in the industry
may be bitter, as there is much constriction on his/her
outcome, and composer’s tastes seem to carry little
weight on the process.

*Interestingly, ‘gurgitate’ does not actually mean eat.
You ‘ingest’ food then ‘regurgitate’ it. Kind of like putting
‘bread’ in a toaster and getting ‘toast’ back.


1. Martin Armiger. “The Problem with Film Music.” Lecture
presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide,
South Australia, 27/07/2006.


Picture: Claudia Gorbman. From The University Of Washington,
Tacoma website. http://www.tacoma.washington.edu/

NB. As I could not source a picture of Martin from the web,
I have borrowed the ever reliable Intangent's. In this process
I had to delete a copy of the picture, from which XP kindly
asked me, "Are you sure you want to send "Martin" to the
recycling bin?" Yes. Yes I do.