The Ten Commandments (Overture) - Elmer Bernstein

The Ten Commandments (Overture) (1956) - Elmer Bernstein

As previously mentioned, the number of examples of non-ironically enjoyed music in my collection is minimal.  I pretty much stick to oddities, though here's an exception worth mentioning. In fact, I just bought this last weekend at Value Village and was pretty stoked to have found it. I'm a straight-up atheist and most people I know wouldn't think I'd be into Chuck Heston Bible movies. They would be wrong.  I love these old-school grand epics, and in this case primarily for the score.  Of course, seeing both Vincent Price and Edward G Robinson not only together on screen, but in a Bible story is just plain weird if you think about it.

Elmer Bernstein is a pretty interesting dude..  Amazingly, he's no relation at all to Leonard Bernstein, despite not only being contemporaries, but having more than a passing familial resemblance. What makes Elmer so particularly interesting as a film composer is the range of his work.  We're talking about a guy who did (among other classics) The Ten Commandments in full-on golden-era-style lush orchestration, and then 30-odd years later did music for Animal House, Ghostbusters, and even the incidental music in Michael Jackson's Thriller video.  I was pretty stunned when I first heard this, figuring that stylistically, never the twain shall meet.

Anyway, I haven't much to say about Bernstein other than to direct you to his Wiki.

Man, I *LOVE* this scoring work.

Tibetan Buddhism - Tantras of Gyuto: Sangwa Dupa

Tibetan Buddhism - Tantras of Gyuto: Sangwa Dupa (1975) - Monks Of The Monastery Of Gyuto, Tibet

This is the entire first side of the album (almost 25 mins) so kick back with the lights out and prepare to have the crap scared out of you!

Overtone Singing is known to a few different cultures, mostly across Asia, but also to the Inuit in North America. The Tibetan Buddhist chanting variant is practiced primarily as a meditative and religious rite. The example from this record is about 40 Buddhist Monks chanting A capella, but in practice the it is often accompanied by wind instruments, drums, bells, and the like.

The practice involves manipulating the shape of the vocal folds in the throat to accentuate certain harmonics over top the fundamental of the chanted note.  A bit about the science behind this here.

Typically, the accentuated harmonic is a major 3rd or perfect 5th, though it can venture all over the place, and result in some very interesting perceived intervals and chords within the drone texture.