Smidi Scores The Biggest Concert In History
Vice President Al Gore and Kevin Wall , of Live 8, asked us to create the broadcast theme music for Live Earth.
On 7/7/07 more than 150 of the world's top musicians, including The Police, Black Eyed Peas, Kanye West, Genesis, Alicia Keyes and Madonna joined for 24-hours of music from 9 concerts across all 7 continents to reach an audience of more than 2 billion people to promote awareness of the current climate crisis.
L.A.'s Global Music Village
July 7th 1857
Commanders aboard the merchant ship Gideon II, after spending months at sea stripping the English coast of its abundance of iron ore, find themselves in a great storm. Using Samuel F.B. Morse’s new communication tool they send out a distress call, SOS ( …- - -… ), and help save themselves from natural disaster.
July 7th, 2007
With a planet in environmental crisis, the Green movement, led by Al Gore and Kevin Wall, conceived and organized Live Earth and the biggest concert event in history to send an SOS to the world: “Save Our Selves: The Concert For A Planet In Crisis, which took place on 7/7/07.
An estimated 2 billion people watched Live Earth, which presented 124 live acts including Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Justin Timberlake, and Black Eyed Peas, in 9 cities on 7 continents. The 24-hour event was broadcast in HD and was sent out instantly through every form of media…live.
When Andre Mika, the executive in charge of production of Live Earth, needed the Live Earth broadcast theme created, he immediately thought of his old friend and college classmate, Michael “Smidi” Smith and Barton: Holt.
When my partner Sean Holt, Smidi, and I got off the phone with Andre we felt a little like Mike Meyers in Wayne’s World, “we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy.” But I believed, in fact, we were.
With the most famous artists in the world donating their time and energy towards this historic event, we knew Live Earth could have chosen any of the world’s top composers to create the broadcast theme. Yet, they chose us.
Once the initial shock wore off, we began a series of creative discussions with Andre Mika. He had the idea to use the Morse code message for help, SOS, as the building block for the piece. But using it as our motif (a short musical phrase) would prove tricky because it is an unmusical rhythm.
Smidi and Sean were able to come up with an idea that would support the SOS message compositionally. Like most good ideas it turned out to be simple. We would speed up the tempo of the dots and dashes that make up the Morse Code SOS, then slightly alter the rhythm, while still leaving it easily recognizable. The next thing we had to consider was how to support the SOS motif with a melodic theme that would represent the global impact of the climate crisis. To emphasize this point we decided the theme would be best expressed using instruments from all over the world.
As soon as we finished composing the theme, singers and musicians from all over the world began stepping forward. “I want to be part of it. How can I contribute?” they asked. For example, Bill Meyers, one of Los Angeles’ leading string arrangers, contributed his time to arrange and conduct a 40-piece string orchestra at the Warner Brothers Eastwood scoring stage. We had percussionists from Latin America, vocalists from Africa and Brazil, a sitar player from India, and numerous musicians from the Los Angeles music community on guitars, bass, drums, and strings, and then faced the challenge of composing, editing and mixing more than 200 tracks … in just 4 days. |
