Jonny Greenwood

Jonny Greenwood talks at Abbey Road ahead of two screenings of There Will Be Blood at the Roundhouse, with the 50-piece London Contemporary Orchestra playing his score live.

Asked whether it makes a difference to hear a score played live, he says the gap is as large as between any recording and any performance. What makes it interesting is that things can go wrong, and that what happens is done for that room only. He remembers the high points of the original recording as sitting among the orchestra with the director while they played.

Some passages were played very loudly by the orchestra and then used very quietly in the finished film. On a mix that is straightforward; with the players in the room with the audience it is impossible.

When Paul Thomas Anderson uses music, Greenwood says, he really uses it, and will cut picture to it. His example is the sequence surveying the land for the pipeline, cut to music built from prepared strings.

He describes the ondes Martenot as an electric cello of sorts, its pitch controlled by a ring on the finger and its dynamics by a very sensitive button, and a 1920s idea of what the future would sound like.