1. Try to avoid musical terms; best to stick to descriptive, dramatic terms like, "floaty, menacing, intimate" or similar. One director with whom I worked can actually play piano sonatas and that kind of thing, so he does know what he's saying. But most are trying to recall details of long-ago, faint memories from beginning piano. "Please don't use a clarinet" could mean, upon further discussion, oboe, saxophone, or even some kind of fretted instrument. "This section should be fortissimo" might mean "intense and scary" or something actually altogether different, utterly unrelated to dynamics.
Yes, avoid musical terminology if at all possible. I did remember another horror story of mis-communication:
Thriller feature, final act. One character breaking into a house at night to get the macguffin, bad guy comes home and seven-minute hide-n-seek, cat-n-mouse game ensues. Needs big energy, big tension, big thrills. I built a crazy elaborate tempo and meter map that matched the picture exactly. Plenty of stops, starts, tempo ramps, a few bars of 7/8 or 5/4 here and there, the whole works. It was awesome. So I populated it with small, tense percussion and discordant brass swells, as one does. Played it for the producer, the "head of screen music" at one of the big studios (not an indie film).
He liked the approach, but said it felt too linear, too "loopy". So he said, "Here, I'll show you what I mean. Mute the score and play the scene from the top." Then he proceeded to play drums by slapping his hands on his thighs, doing off-kilter rhythms, odd time signatures, etc. After about 15 seconds I thought I had the gist of what he was trying to communicate, and I said, "Oh, okay, I think I see..." but he just....kept... going. At the one-minute mark I made eye contact with one of the producers from the studio, and she made this expression like, "I don't know what the hell he's doing either, just let him keep going." Dude played thigh-drums all the way through the entire scene - I thought maybe I should have recorded it in case he was actually dictating the precise rhythmic structure for the entire piece.
He plays a big build and flourish at the end of the scene, turns to us and says, "See? Like THAT."
Okay, cool.
So I go back to the lab and spent a few days making the tempo / meter map more elaborate and asymmetrical, and built out the most insane drum and percussion piece ever. Like, crazy shit - sticks on steel girders, big war toms, little electronic glitchy bits, the whole nine yards. Brought it back for another preview the following week. broken out into four stereo stems so we could dissect it and mute elements right there in the edit bay.
"What the hell is this? This isn't what I said!"
???????
"Okay, play me the first stem." (drums) "Hate it. Play me the second stem." (synth pulses) "Hate it. Play me the third stem." (discordant brass swells) "Hate it. Play me the fourth stem." (Hermann-esque staccato strings "chomps and whomps") "THERE it is. What is THAT instrument?!?"
"Uhhhhh.... that's the orchestra, sir. Specifically, strings."
"THAT'S what I want. Have that instrument play the rhythms from the drums."
So he had demonstrated that he wanted NO drums, and did so by playing a drum solo on his thighs. What he really wanted was a Hermann-esque, chomps+whomps style rhythmic piece played with staccato strings in a small ensemble, with NO DRUMS, and what I had brought in was a freaking drum solo of doom.
But he didn't even have the musical vocabulary to explain the difference between drums and strings, or even to identify that what he was hearing that he DID like was strings.
So I went back, removed 80% of the drums, kept the brass swells, and built out a crazy strings performance that mimicked the energy, pace, and asymmetrical feel of my drum solo. All was well, they loved it, job done. But it was a week lost going around the block with a truckload of drums.
Now, to be fair, it's not dude's job to tell me what instrument to use for what part - it's my job to interpret what he's saying and come up with a solution. But it was pretty comical to sit through a seven-minute thigh-drums performance from him, thinking he wanted a big drums piece, and then discover that it was supposed to be strings... and to never once hear the words, "No drums" or "I want strings only" - and to have him hear the strings and go, "THERE... what is THAT instrument?" when he finally heard the strings chomps that he liked.
The producer was apologetic: "He's kind of a maniac, sorry about that." but I was like, "Not a problem, that's what we're here for, sorry about the drum solo."
Moral of the story = musical terminology would not have helped in this discussion, and might have even muddied the waters and confused the issue even further. If I had said "Strings?" he'd have been like, "What's a string?" If I'd said, "You think odd time signatures maybe?" he'd have been like, "What's a time signature?"
I also learned that sitting quietly during his performance, making occasional eye contact with the beleaguered producer sitting behind dude, and biting my tongue didn't help. I should have started singing along with his thigh-drum solo, mimicking strings chomps in hopes that he'd say either "Shut up!" or "Hell yeah, like that!"
