#vagabon

MANTRAS —

supernatural s11e23 alpha and omega

spn with my music(al choices) #1: home soon by vagabon [bandcamp] #2: and so it continues by johnnes braumer, distant cowboy [spotify] #3: original music by jay gruska

posts where i talk about the score in supernatural (they are legion and filled with complaints)

i've made it no secret that the score for supernatural regularly doesn't work for me, and i think it often takes away the true emotional impact from the scenes. i'm not a composer, i just like music, and am pretty attuned to the musical score in media; so i thought it might be a fun project to try taking some moments that i thought were let down by the music. so this was my first attempt. since i was digging around this scene twice recently, and it has some gruska score i very much do not enjoy, it was the guinea pig.

i was browsing @chaparral-crown playlists she made for some of her fic, because i've gotten some very truly favorite songs and artists purely from the each according to its kind playlist. i kind of fell in love with home soon by vagabon, which appears in their beaks not yet turned red. the tone is more person of interest than supernatural i think (more likely to use modernish music and things with lyrics), but i did so much jiggering to get it to work with the scene (i chopped up the song to fit around the lyrics and dialogue) and i love the song so much, i'm putting it in! and the words. i give it all away but i'll be home soon. *crying into my cornflakes* recommend listening to the track at full volume, the very pretty and interesting instrumentation does get a little lost at the lower volume. the only thing i didn't like about how this came out is it sort of fades out on a saccharine note that isn't really in the song, just a trick of the section and duration i picked

the track and so it continues is more in line tonally, more or less, with the show - but still kind of outside what they usually use. and more traditional i'd say to this kind of emotional moment (compared to my other option)? i was thinking about using an earlier section of the song, but decided the slower, deeper strings fit them a little better. i still wanted it to swell a little in the hug though, so i tried. i originally found this song via distant cowboy's tiktok - i couldn't find anywhere to buy it, unfortunately. but at least it's on spotify

this was hard and scary to commit to something that i should go on record thinking is "better" than the original - i don't think it necessarily is, just more to my taste. the original is more complicated and like, i can see the moments and feelings it was going for, but i just dislike the music itself. maybe if it was performed with (actual) strings instead of (computer gen i presume) woodwinds or whatever that is? there's something about gruska's choices specifically that give me knee jerk "cheesy" reactions, especially. and i think it's often related to the instrument choices—or maybe just exacerbated by them.

BTS of #RWRBMovie: soundtrack

From Billboard:

Another cover that prominently features in the film is a fresh reimagining of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel classic “If I Loved You” performed by Vagabon. “I knew her voice and her sound, married to that classical music theater, was going to be the right match,” says Lopez, who describes himself as “a huge musical theater nerd.” When he approached Vagabon (Laetitia Tamko) with the idea, she wasn’t familiar with the song, which made him doubly sure of the decision. “It was great, because she had no associations,” he reasons. “It’s a new way of looking at it.” Having familiar songs with new voices was important to Lopez for this queer romcom. “This movie was always about, for me, new ways of doing old things — that was the ethos of the film, so I wanted to try and get a couple covers in there.” Another example of putting a new twist on something familiar came via Oliver Sim. The filmmakers asked the solo artist and The xx member for an original composition, but after he watched an early cut of the film, he told Lopez, “I think I’ve already written the song for the movie.” “It was his idea to take the song ‘Fruit’ from his most recent album and completely re-orchestrate it,” Lopez explains. “He said, ‘I made the acoustic version; now I want to make the cinematic version.’ He took something very delicate and blew it up to these epic proportions. It sounds so swoon-y and hopeful. That was a big win, for me, to get him to do that — I have my own bespoke version of an Oliver Sim song,” he adds with a smirk.

A stunning duet of an incredible Tim Hardin song. The song has been covered before by Rod Stewart and Ron Sexsmith.