Music for Shiny, Hard Rocks
A while back I attended a Vivaldi concert where I was asked whether the music was the Diamond music. You know the one…the De Beers ones where black and white silouettes in love share a kiss over an overpriced rock. Here’s a Youtube video.
Sadly, I had to say, no, that is not Vivaldi.
And neither is this slight, less subtle reworking by the Family Guy.
The reason I knew the musical trivia was because I had purchased a CD a few years back called Diamond Music, which featured the works of one Karl Jenkins. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, co-founded jazz group Nucleus, joined prog band Soft Machine in the 1970s and later wrote the New Agey music known as Adiemus, co-written with Soft Machine member Mike Ratledge.
Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album (For B.O.) (mp3) - Soft Machine Buy
Adiemus (mp3) - Adiemus Buy
His Diamond Music is an actual work for string solists and string orchestra, an arrangement that does indeed conjure up Vivaldi. He calls the three movement work Palladio after a Renaissance architect. In the famous first movement, the soloists come in around 1:11, much like in a Vivaldi concerto.
The music’s main issue is that it never lets go of its tick tock rhythm that continues through the piece unabated. Even most good pop songs have a break somewhere just to give variety. But I’m reminded that we must judge music by its intention. And here the even tempo and consistent orchestration make it easy to chop up in Pro Tools. That way it can accomodate a 30 second, 60 second, even 3:47 minute trailer (which is the entire length). The coda of the movement, starting around 3:20, was uniformly the ending of each commercial, so skip there if you just want to hear yourself voiceover the most profitable catchphrase in all of marketing history, “A diamond is forever.”
Palladio first movement (mp3) - Karl Jenkins Buy
