Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra
Title: Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra - Grade 5
Composer: John Williams
Publisher: https://www.jwpepper.com/Scherzo-for-Motorcycle-and-Orchestra/10558266.item
Audio and Video Engineer: Tim Saeger / Saeger Studios
Instrument: Yamaha Xeno Artist "New York" Series C Trumpet
Indiana Jones, eat your heart out! This project was concieved as a result of a confluence of serendipitous events that took place earlier this year.
The 1st thing that happened was that I was in the market for a C trumpet and my teacher Tim Saeger happened to be friends and close colleagues with Christopher Smith who is the current principal trumpet player for the San Diego Symphony, and Tim knew Chris was selling his C trumpet. He connected us and I ended up purchasing said trumpet in May. Tim was able to get the horn for me but I never actually met Chris. However, during our transaction conversation I asked Chris if I could meet him sometime maybe at a future symphony performance and he graciously agreed.
A few months later, we saw that the Symphony was putting on a concert of all John Williams movie music so my wife got the whole family tickets for the show. I texted Chris ahead of time and he agreed to meet us after the performance. One of the things they played that night was the music from one of my favorite movie chase scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade called Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra. During intermission I texted Chris on stage if he would take a picture of his music and send it to me, and he did. Since I don't play with any local orchestras and this piece hasn't to my knowledge been transcribed for a wind band, I had never played it nor had I even seen the music before and it required a C trumpet to play it. I thought this was a perfect thing for me to play around with to work on my C trumpet chops. After the performance the family and I got to meet Chris and I thanked him for selling me such a great horn and taking the time to say hello.
It didn't take me long to think that I'd like to record myself playing this piece but I wanted to take it up a notch to make it special. I knew Tim regularly records his students for All-State and college auditions and had put together a number of videos with his pro colleagues on his own YouTube channelso I asked him if he could do the recording and marry it to the video I had been practicing along with. He agreed and this special project was born.
How the sausage is made:
The first thing to note is that the music that was written and performed by orchestras in a live concert is not the exact arrangement that was cut for the movie. The themes and melody are exactly the same but I'm sure additional parts are written to fit perfectly with the film. In any case, this is the orchestral concert version of the music.
After preparing the music for several weeks, fitting it in between all the music I am regularly performing, I was ready to do the recording. We managed to get it done in a single, 1-hour recording session. I played through it a number of times and then we went back and did some punch edits on specific sections that didn't come out perfectly on the full run throughs. After an hour, we had hit all the sections such that everything sounded seamless. We then had a second 1 hour session where I came in dressed as Indy and did three video takes of 3 different angles of me playing it again - although this time we weren't concerned with how it sounded - we were just trying to get the video and would later sync those shots up with my previous recording. Then Tim did his magic of cutting our video, our audio recording and shots of the orchestra I had been playing along with together to create the final cut.
This was not only a fun piece of music to play, but it was a fun tech project to be a part of. A great many thanks goes to Tim and his skill for putting it all together as well as Chris for the music and the horn and the inspiration that got me started down this path. I have a few other ideas for future special projects so be on the lookout for the next one hopefully sometime next year.
If you are interested in hearing the music as it was used in the film, it starts about 2 minutes into this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1KKVy-nki8