Composers of Spider-Man Movies music lesson video replay
[00:00:00] Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Music in Our Homeschool podcast. Today we have something really fun. It's a replay of the music lesson I just taught this month to my Music in Our Homeschool Plus members, and it's all about music from Spider-Man movies. So we're talking about three different composers, and I think you'll find it really fun.
One thing you will have to do if you want to actually hear the music is head over to the accompanying blog post, and you can find that in the show notes or video description. Have fun!
Welcome to our next, music lesson. We're going to be talking about composers of Spider-Man movies. So three different composers today, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, and Daniel Pemberton. So grab your printable pack if you have it, and let's get started.
So these three composers wrote movie music for three different Spider-Man franchises, And the first one [00:01:00] we're going to talk about is Danny Elfman, and he was born in California in 1953. All three of these composers are still alive. Before he became a film composer, he was the lead singer and songwriter for a band called Oingo Boingo, and he became famous for creating memorable, dramatic film scores, and has collaborated frequently with director Tim Burton.
Elfman originally thought he wasn't qualified to compose movie scores, but his Batman theme ended up being one of the most recognizable superhero themes ever written. Some of the other famous movies that he's written music for include, like I said, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Spider-Man from 2002, and Spider-Man 2.
Let me tell you about all three of them first and before we listen, and then we'll come back to, , talking about [00:02:00] what is unique about the way each of them wrote.
Michael Giacchino was born in New Jersey in 1967, so he is younger than Danny Elfman, who's the oldest of the three composers we're talking about today.
When he was a child, he loved making movies and recording sounds. He began composing music for video games before he became one of Hollywood's most famous and successful film composers. Giacchino won an Academy Award for some music he wrote for the movie Up, and some of his other famous scores for movies include Up, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Jurassic World trilogy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the brand-new Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Coco, Inside Out 1 and 2, and Zootopia 1 and 2.
Then our [00:03:00] third composer is Daniel Pemberton, and he was born in England. So the first two composers are Americans, and Pemberton is English, and he's the youngest of these three. Unlike many film composers, he's largely self-taught.
He enjoys experimenting with unusual sounds (you'll definitely hear that in the music we're going to listen to) and combining different musical styles. His Spider-Verse score helped create a completely new sound for superhero movies. Some of his movie composing projects include Enola Holmes, Masters of the Universe, Project Hail Mary, which came out earlier this year, and Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse.
All right, now you will have all of this music in your Spotify playlist, so you can listen. Go ahead and grab your composer sheet now, and let's go through each of these and make sure that you got all the information for them. [00:04:00] Again, as always, you do have the answers in the back.
All right, so Danny Elfman, born Los Angeles, California, 1953 to the present, is when he lived. What kind of music did he compose or does he compose? Film scores, television music, orchestral music, and songs. His most famous piece is the theme from Batman from 1989. Other interesting facts, he was the lead singer for the band Oingo Boingo before becoming a film composer. He composed the theme for The Simpsons, which was a TV show. He frequently collaborates with director Tim Burton and wrote the music for Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.
And then the page for Michael Giacchino. He was born in Riverside Township, New Jersey. He lived 1967 to the present. He composes film scores, television, [00:05:00] and video game music.
His most famous piece is the score for Up from 2009, especially the music "Married Life." If you've seen the movie Up, that's the section where, they get married and Ellie and, , I forgot his name (Carl), get married, and then goes through their whole life . And it's really powerful because there's no talking through the whole thing. It's just seeing what happens, so the music is so important to that scene. He won an Academy Award for that. He began his career composing music for video games. He composed music for all three Tim Holland... Actually, I should say all four because the new one just came out Spider-Man films, and also wrote the music for Incredibles, Ratatouille, Rogue One, and Jurassic World.
And then Daniel Pemberton, born in England, specifically Sutton in the London area, the United Kingdom, 1977. He composes film [00:06:00] scores, television music, orchestral music, electronic music, and experimental music. His most famous piece is the score for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He's largely self-taught as a composer and is known for experimenting with new sounds rather than using a traditional orchestra.
All right, so you have this sheet here. It is a Venn diagram, so hopefully you know how that works, where anything that overlaps with another one, you're going to talk about what they have in common. So like for this section here, that's where you're going to put that Danny Elfman and Michael Giacchino are both Americans. For Daniel Pemberton, where my thumb is pointing right now, you could put he's an Englishman, because he's the only one that is that. So, for Daniel Pemberton, you could write electronic and experimental music, because the other two didn't do that.
For Danny Elfman, you can write that he sang in a band. For Michael Giacchino, [00:07:00] you can write that he won an Academy Award. All three of them wrote movie music for Spider-Man movies, so you could put that right in the middle.
So, and as we continue to talk about them today, you can add more stuff to this that you think of as well.
On this next page, it has a quote that applies to all three of these composers, I think, and it says, "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." You would not feel the same way watching these movies if the music weren't there or if the music didn't work, if they didn't write it as well as they did. So think about that as we're listening to the music.
Now it's time to listen to the music. So the first one is Danny Elfman. This is called the "Main Titles from Spider-Man." So listen to this one, and then we'll talk about a couple [00:08:00] of things that we hear in it.
Okay, what did we hear in that one? We heard a full orchestra. So you heard the string section, you heard the brass section playing those main themes. You heard lots of drums, but typical drums like, timpani drums, for an orchestra. You also heard singing. Did you hear the singing? The ahs?
And you know that the composer Danny Elfman was a singer, so he probably likes to include singing in his film scores. This one was very dramatic, had a lot of energy before it, and sounds like... A lot of people describe it as, classic , superhero sound. Just a classic sound.
Now we're going to listen to Michael Giacchino, who wrote for the Tim Holland movies like Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home, No Way Home, and Brand New Day. And we'll play about the first [00:09:00] three minutes of this one, because the whole thing is six minutes and 12 seconds long.
So this is "Spider-Man: Homecoming Suite."
Okay. How would you compare those two, the two pieces that we just heard? They both had some very bold moments. They both were using full orchestras, the strings, the brass, lots of drums. I kind of feel like the second one had a lot more playfulness to it. Did you feel that too? There was a little section that was just a lot more bouncy and playful. And maybe it was younger, more fun. This composer is younger than the other composer, so perhaps he just has a younger style to him.
All right, now we're moving on to Daniel Pemberton, and remember, he's the youngest of all, so he's, I think, 49 right now, and he likes to mix electronic music with the orchestra or unusual sounds.
So [00:10:00] listen to that for the "Spider-Verse Main Theme," and then we'll listen to "Spider-Man Loves You" also. Two of those pieces will be about three minutes total.
Did you hear the experimental music, the electronic sounds, the unusual sounds that he combined with orchestral music? So that was the Daniel Pemberton style. And I think it's much more modern because he's the youngest, but also if you have seen any of the movies, I'm not recommending them, I'm just saying if you have seen them, you know that the first two are live action with actual people playing Spider-Man. The third one, the Into the Spider-Verse movies are, , animation and a special, like modern, even different type of animation than something like the Pixar Up or Ratatouille.
Now what I want to do is play just a little bit of music from each of these composers that aren't the Spider-Man [00:11:00] music.
So for Danny Elfman, let's listen to a little of the Batman theme, the one that is his most famous piece.
Now let's listen to a little bit of, from Michael Giacchino, "Bundle of Joy" from Inside Out.
And this one is "Time Go Fishing" from Project Hail Mary by Daniel Pemberton.
So let's review what we've talked about today. We've talked about how composers write music for movies to fit in with the storyline, to help express the characters and whatever's going on in the story.
And they orchestrate it. They choose certain instruments to play to make it express what they want it to express. So that's what orchestration is. It's actually choosing the instruments. So you heard on this last piece, it was mostly just percussion, different types of drums or electronic sounds, or maybe using something unusual like metal hitting something. So that's the [00:12:00] way that Daniel Pemberton likes to compose. And we heard the other two pieces that fit in with the style of those composers too.
You have a couple more sheets in your packet. One is that you can design your own spider person and decide how you want your spider person to act like or be and what music, what type of music you would choose, what you would include, , would it have the electronic sound? Would it have the singers?
And then you've got a word find and a crossword puzzle at the end. So have fun with that. Next month, we are going to be talking about two also still alive composers who've written music for some pretty famous musicals. So I hope that you will join me in August for learning about Pasek and Paul. They wrote for musicals, like The Greatest Showman. we're gonna have fun with that one too. So thanks for joining me today, and I will see you soon in the next [00:13:00] lesson. Bye-bye.
Find links to all resources mentioned in this episode here: https://musicinourhomeschool.com/spider-man-movie-composers/
