I have finished my first working mix of the main and introductory theme for my composition for a scene in the film ‘No Country for Old Men’.

The motif I am following for this work is proximity. In expanding on the directors’ intentions of causing the audience to be aware and listening throughout the film in long silent stretches, I am composing music around the idea of an almost eery and itchy collage of sound depicting tension and suspense. I want the audience to be thrown by my score. I want the audience to feel as if they are the protagonist, not as if they are watching the protagonist.

For the first theme, I wrote an electric guitar part, that resembles a low repetitive drone. Almost blues-like and almost dragging. Suspenseful but recognizable. I plugged my guitar directly into my UAD Arrow interface and used a Strymon Tape delay effects pedal and a Hudson electronics console preamp effects pedal with it to achieve my desired tone. Over this I layered an ambient guitar track; playing with harmony and string buzz. I also improvised a bass track on a Moog Subsequent 25 synthesizer and a cello drone on a digital mellotron synthesizer. I plugged the mellotron into a warm audio octave fuzz pedal for some extra hair as well.

The percussion was also important to me for this first theme, so I recorded a shaker track (large beans used inside) and I also recorded myself tapping a poorly homemade contact microphone to use as a low kick drum track. In a separate session, I recorded a series of brush strokes using two jazz-style drum brushes on a variety of surfaces to create a poly-rhythmic and dissonant-rhythmic track to blend in with the main theme. This picks up in the scene as Anton Chigurh approaches the motel where Llewelene is hiding out.

For microphones, I tracked the percussion with a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser MKH 418.