Wow I wasn't aware of this feature in Logic. The more you know...

Errikos, since this discussion has just about run it's course can I just say that my blood pressure rises a little every time I read your signature? I think I understand the way that you mean it - I'm imagining it directed at the omnisphere knob twiddlers already discussed at length in this thread. But you do realize that if someone takes it literally they have no choice but to conclude you're shitting on 10,000+ years of non literate aurally transferred music?

Dude you totally missed Messiaen writing and performing Quartet for the End of Time in a POW camp! That'd be the highlight for me

If I had a couple million lying around I would commission a film about Satie, Cocteau and Picasso. Those three had enough personality for a 20 part miniseries. And just a general biopic on Satie would be great (well, if it were done well, obviously).

What's this about a Bruckner film? Haven't heard of it

It's not at all unprofessional to disagree with a director, and in fact I would find it more unprofessional for a composer to act as a Yes-Man. And experience has little to do with it - before "Phantom Menace," Lucas had only directed American Graffiti, THX and A New Hope, and he had been out of practice in the directing world for 22 years (and it shows). Williams was infinitely more experienced than Lucas, and if Lucas had any sense he would have trusted Williams 100% of the way (which, for all we know, he did).  If Lucas had insisted on that particular tone of the music to the point where Williams, had he disagreed, felt that he had better leave the project, well, that would have been professional of Williams as well. Of course we're talking entirely hypothetically here, who really knows what was going on. But there's a good argument to be made that the disaster that was "Phantom Menace" was entirely the result of George surrounding himself with Yes-Men - whether or not Williams was one, well, who knows. It's not really the point, the point is that a composer as famous and rich as Williams is 100% responsible for any music he writes in a film, no question, regardless of whose idea it was, unless the director I guess played tricks during the editing or the mixing. Given the standard to which Williams clearly holds himself to, I'm sure he would agree with me. At that level, a director may be the boss, but the composer is not his slave. 

Anyway, you didn't really respond to anything I said - we're in agreement that "Duel of the Fates" is well made music, but you didn't address anything I brought up re: it being a pretty close replay of Orff, or more importantly the pretension of a musical style that was made to encapsualte huge ideas like Fate and Luck being the score for a movie about space wizards. 

As for the new things you brought up, it's true that what Williams wrote is very impressive for a 70 year old, and it's also true that it's less vital than Star Wars/Raiders/Close Encounters/Superman era Williams. If you want to pinpoint where the spark died down, I'd go way back actually. I don't even find his 90s work (yes, even Schindler's List) to be the same standard as his 70s and 80s stuff

It's not at all unprofessional to disagree with a director, and in fact I would find it more unprofessional for a composer to act as a Yes-Man. And experience has little to do with it - before "Phantom Menace," Lucas had only directed American Graffiti, THX and A New Hope, and he had been out of practice in the directing world for 22 years (and it shows). Williams was infinitely more experienced than Lucas, and if Lucas had any sense he would have trusted Williams 100% of the way (which, for all we know, he did).  If Lucas had insisted on that particular tone of the music to the point where Williams, had he disagreed, felt that he had better leave the project, well, that would have been professional of Williams as well. Of course we're talking entirely hypothetically here, who really knows what was going on. But there's a good argument to be made that the disaster that was "Phantom Menace" was entirely the result of George surrounding himself with Yes-Men - whether or not Williams was one, well, who knows. It's not really the point, the point is that a composer as famous and rich as Williams is 100% responsible for any music he writes in a film, no question, regardless of whose idea it was, unless the director I guess played tricks during the editing or the mixing. Given the standard to which Williams clearly holds himself to, I'm sure he would agree with me. At that level, a director may be the boss, but the composer is not his slave. 

Anyway, you didn't really respond to anything I said - we're in agreement that "Duel of the Fates" is well made music, but you didn't address anything I brought up re: it being a pretty close replay of Orff, or more importantly the pretension of music that was made to encapsualte huge ideas being the score for a movie about space wizards. 

As for the new things you brought up, it's true that what Williams wrote is very impressive for a 70 year old, and it's also true that it's less vital than Star Wars/Raiders/Close Encounters/Superman era Williams. If you want to pinpoint where the spark died down, I'd go way back actually. I don't even find that his 90s work (yes, even Schindler's List)

It's not at all unprofessional to disagree with a director, and in fact I would find it more unprofessional for a composer to act as a Yes-Man. And experience has little to do with it - before "Phantom Menace," Lucas had only directed American Graffiti, THX and A New Hope, and he had been out of practice in the directing world for 22 years (and it shows). Williams was infinitely more experienced than Lucas, and if Lucas had any sense he would have trusted Williams 100% of the way (which, for all we know, he did).  If Lucas had insisted on that particular tone of the music to the point where Williams, had he disagreed, felt that he had better leave the project, well, that would have been professional of Williams as well. Of course we're talking entirely hypothetically here, who really knows what was going on. But there's a good argument to be made that the disaster that was "Phantom Menace" was entirely the result of George surrounding himself with Yes-Men - whether or not Williams was one, well, who knows. It's not really the point, the point is that a composer as famous and rich as Williams is 100% responsible for any music he writes in a film, no question, regardless of whose idea it was, unless the director I guess played tricks during the editing or the mixing. Given the standard to which Williams clearly holds himself to, I'm sure he would agree with me. At that level, a director may be the boss, but the composer is not his slave. 

Anyway, you didn't really respond to anything I said - we're in agreement that "Duel of the Fates" is well made music, but you didn't address anything I brought up re: it being a pretty close replay of Orff, or more importantly the pretension of music that was made to encapsualte huge ideas being the score for a movie about space wizards. 

I know what you mean, cause I am also a very very big John Williams fan and apologist. But you have to agree it gets boring to repeat the same tried accusations over and over again against the Media Ventures horde, and even the best OG film composers aren't above scrutiny. 

Duel of the Fates is obviously very thoroughly made by an excellent craftsman, and I looved it as a kid, but even a very thoroughly made Orff rip off will never really be more than an Orff rip off. Yes, a lot of the music in "A New Hope" takes its cues from Holst and Bruckner and Stravinsky, but by a different order of magnitude imo - in other words,  maybe every great artist steals, but I would argue not to the extent that John Williams ripped off O Fortuna with "Duel of the Fates."  Or I guess with a title like that, you can call it an homage, but it's the same thing at the end of the day.

Which, honestly, would be fine except that to me the #1 criterion  of film music is not originality, but whether or not the music fits the movie, and helps the movie's identity. As far as problems with the Star Wars prequels as films, I think there are about a million you could get at before you touch the score, but that doesn't mean it's still not a big step back from the original trilogy. Star Wars at it's heart is a space fantasy film, a modern day Flash Gordon serial. It simply doesn't have the pathos to support a style of music that was originally conceived to try to encapsulate the nature of fate and luck - it seems pretentious as fuck, because you end up with movies about space cowboys and space wizards fighting each other to the tune of a piece called "Duel of the Fates," and that's going to be pretentious no matter how well written it is.  As we all know, when you follow this line of thought you end up in a cycle of dramatic and musical inflation where everything has to outdo what came before it in being "totally epic bro". If George insisted, well, it's still John's fault for not standing up to him - Lucas has notoriously bad taste (watch "Empire of Dreams" read between the lines to see how his ex-wife saved the original film through editing) and Williams would have absolutely had the clout to say "no bombastic choirs George, remember what film you're making here." 

Sorry I brought this so off topic :)

One of the good things you can say about video game music is that it (at least traditionally) is much more melodic than film trailer music - which was again true of the Inception trailer. 

What I like about the Inception score is the same thing I liked from the Dark Knight, the way that Zimmer was able to integrate narrative and music in a really clever way. See this youtube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM&feature=player_embedded

What I hated about the inception score was how present and over the top it was. I wasn't crazy about the movie in general, but the score I think did more than anything else to ruin it for me.

 I thought the trailer music, not written by zimmer, was pretty awesome. Which is funny cause trailer music is so awful most of the time.  It was way over the top and sounded more like it belonged in a video game, but if you judge it by the standards of video game music it pretty much kicks ass. 

You make an interesting point, and I think what's happened is that we're still living with the style and size of the gestures that Wagner invented, but not so much his harmonic language. I think for the most part, mainstream audiences have lost their taste for functional and expressive chromaticism in film music. 

Haha I kind of despise choirs of any kind in films these days because, like you say, they're so overplayed. They no longer mean what they used to, and instead just feel like an insincere and manipulative gesture 99% of the time. It's like the film and the composer don't really "earn" them -  or else it just feels tonally inappropriate (see: every movie trailer meant to feel "epic" - including harry fucking potter). Or another good example is comparing the original Star Wars trilogy score to the new prequel trilogy. Battles that used to be underscored by Stravinskyish/Holstish/early 20th century post romantic type cues with loads of chromaticism are now replaced with big surging Orff choirs singing long diatonic phrases, and even though Williams is really a very decent and thorough guy, it still feels lame and pretentious to me. I guess you can make an analog to how the gritty and functional production design and VFX of the original trilogy was replaced by clean and pristine CGI. 

But I'm also a huge hypocrite and philistine because I love the LotR score pretty much all the way through, although it's not quite interesting enough to listen to on it's own.  But Howard Shore is a real dude, and there're reasons why directors like Cronenberg, Scorcese and Fincher have used and continue to use him. 

ya know, those kind of chugging rhythms are always better in punk or postpunk. I sincerely don't know why anyone would waste time trying to create those effects in an orchestra, other than I guess it makes money and makes audiences feel that what is happening on screen is intense and important

but I think a good rule of thumb is that chugging always sounds like annoying portentous garbage if it's a traditional un-amplified orchestra. and even if it's not, sometimes...

Yeah, I feel like using Wagner in a modern Hollywood period piece would just feel ridiculously out of place, but I think that says more about the movies in question than it does about Wagner.

By the way BadOrange, how do you like McGill? I'm sending in my application on December 15th for their MM program :)

I've gotta say, I adore what they did for the "Joker" theme in the Dark Knight. I could care less about most of Zimmer's work, but the way they integrated narrative and character (playing the "theme" on a violin with a razor blade) into the music was just unbelievably character. 

 Do composers that use these techniques draw upon a vocabulary like composers do for tonality or is it more a situation where the composer sits at the piano and plays discords until the right colour is found ? 

I think this is a "different strokes for different folks" situation. I think it also depends a lot on what sort atonal language is being used (and there are a lot of different kinds, obviously). Some are definitely more ordered and some are more improvisatory  - Boulez wasn't thinking about color when he wrote "Structures", and neither was Cage in "Music of Changes", but it was very important to, lets say, late period Morton Feldman, whose work at the time was all about sonority. 

BadOrange, do you like the works of Henry Cowell? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND-ga_BrkCE

I feel like it would be impossible to study that score and not come away with a better knowledge of atonal color

Lon, as far as I can tell we were talking about themes in film music, which was good, and then we were talking about the state of the world, and now we're talking about my music? I really can barely keep up with you, why don't we just go back to what the thread is about, and if you'd still like to talk about my music, maybe I'll make a thread with some of it at some point?

I'm sorry, I can't really follow this post, so forgive me if I misinterpret you. But I hope that you didn't think I meant that we should ignore the bad things in the world. By all means, the world is a horrible fucked up place, but let me tell you, you've got your work cut out for you if you want to try to demonstrate that it's appreciably worse than it's been in the past.

How is what's happening today really worse than the salve trade, the pointless loss of life in World War I, genocide after genocide after genocide throughout the 20th century, European feudalism, European colonialism, the horrors of the early industrial revolution, the Cold War, the Mongol wars, the dark ages, apartheid, Iran Contra, the Great Depression, the dust bowl, the Spanish flu, the Spanish Inquisition the bubonic plague, Mao's "Great Leap Forward", Stalin's "five year plans," McCarthy, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the other times that the world has literally been on the brink of annihilation, general MacArthur literally wanting to nuke China during the Korean war, the exploitation of the American Irish during the U.S. civil war, the U.S. civil war in general, the U.S. south following the civil war and their culture of racism, the opium wars, the rise of American neoconservativism, the native american small pox epidemic, the total lack of rights for women in many parts of the world for most of recorded history, the conquistadors, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Japanese rape of nanking,Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hypocrisy of the gilded age, the wide spread human sacrifice in the Inca and Maya cultures,  etc. etc. etc. etc.

(I actually don't know what this has to do with film music themes, but you're the one that brought this up, so..)

Hi Lon,

First off, if you want me to narrow my list down to just those composed in the last 10 years, I would be happy to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzSjJ4qelcQ&feature=related - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Reinhold Heil (performed by the Berlin Phil!! Has the kind of deeply rich string writing that reminds me of Herrman's 451 score)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgAJ2P9ukzI&feature=related - Punch Drunk Love, by Jon Brion (I talked a lot about this music on Page 4 of this thread, I think)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LGJ7evrAg - Lord of the Rings, the Gondor Theme, by Howard Shore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbFLjx4H_sQ - A History of Violence by Howard Shore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_aQLvXK6ZE - The Incredibles, by Michael Giaccino 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg3k_nPFLw4&feature=related - A Serious Man, by Carter Burwell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAB-dQ7XyA0 - The Joker theme, by Hans Zimmer 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSuWb4f-yQ8&fmt=18 - The Prestige, by David Julyan 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-j07BRzq1g&feature=related - Memento, by David Julyan 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH0b2TooTxY - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK7qz34P-88 - Brick by Nathan Johnson 

These are all off the top of my head, and aren't even necessarily my absolute favorites, just ones that I thought of first. If you'd like a broader list, I can spend some more time and come up with one for you :) Most of these movies are very good, and I recommend them. Also, if you want me to replace the excellent Blue Velvet theme with an equally excellent and more recent Lynch/Badalamenti collaboration, here is the Mulholland Drive theme from, I think, 2002: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpP4nJtGvaE&feature=related

It's more subtle and less referential than Blue Velvet, but I think it's still very good. Also, I can do this excercise with any modern genre you want - there are things that I love everywhere. Mainstream film, underground film, rock music, folk, pop, "art" music, ragga jungle, whatever you want. I like a lot of it, and I can hopefully show you why someone would like it and find worth in it, even if you yourself may not. 

Secondly, I absolutely do not deny that there are terrible problems in the world today, both the world of music and the world at large. But that has always been the case, no? After all, how long ago was it that every person on Earth had to live in constant fear of the two imperial superpowers on the verge of annihilating everything for no reason? And of course, the more we look back through history, the more terror and inhumanity we see. How much worse are things actually today than they were then? I'm not trying to argue that history is the narrative of human progress - faaaaaarrrrr from it. But I also don't believe the sky is falling. 

To maybe get back on topic, here are some popular themes from the last 25 or so years that I like a lot, and think are up there with the great movie themes of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDIdonK4XDQ&feature=related - Blue Velvet, by Angelo Badalamenti (the theme seems to me to be a Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock era reference/tribute)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzSjJ4qelcQ&feature=related - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Reinhold Heil (performed by the Berlin Phil!! Has the kind of deeply rich string writing that reminds me of Herrman's 451 score)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgAJ2P9ukzI&feature=related - Punch Drunk Love, by Jon Brion (I talked a lot about this music on Page 4 of this thread, I think)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LGJ7evrAg - Lord of the Rings, the Gondor Theme, by Howard Shore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed7tJE77MSY&translated=1 - Se7en by Howard Shore (not at all a traditional theme, but if you've seen the movie...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbFLjx4H_sQ - A History of Violence by Howard Shore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_aQLvXK6ZE - The Incredibles, by Michael Giaccino 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8eA9BuuyjY - Fargo, by Carter Burwell (based on a Scandinavian folk tune)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg3k_nPFLw4&feature=related - A Serious Man, by Carter Burwell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FrPQ61Jc0o - Adaptation, by Carter Burwell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvd8wBbpQ0s - The Untouchables by Ennio Morricone 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBLbH6vRwk8&feature=related - The Mission b y Ennio Morricone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26TkwXhSYbs - Porco Rosso by Joe Hisaishi 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAB-dQ7XyA0 - The Joker theme, by Hans Zimmer (I haaaaaaaaate Zimmer, but this theme is really really good and fits perfectly in the movie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSuWb4f-yQ8&fmt=18 - The Prestige, by David Julyan (Before Zimmer, Christopher Nolan used the much better David Julyan for his music. I think if Julyan had score Inception, I would have liked the movie a lot more. This theme is very subtle, and for those of you who haven't seen the movie you might argue that it doesn't even qualify. But the crazy polychord that this ambient piece is based on actually does reappear and develop throughout the movie, which makes it qualify as a theme to me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-j07BRzq1g&feature=related - Memento, by David Julyan 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCgeRv36lMM - Back to the Future, by Alan Silvestri (We all know this one, but this is the theme that made me want to write music in the first place :) cheesy, I know, but I grew up with this movie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH0b2TooTxY - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK7qz34P-88 - Brick by Nathan Johnson (These last two sound to me like very stripped down laid back versions of Morricone, which I think is kind of interesting) 

So what is the point of all these links? It's my opinion that themes never went out of style, they're still all around us (in addition to other kinds of music). 

Hi Lon, I did the best to follow your difficult post. My reponses to it are

1) Cage isn't really a revolutionary any more, is he? His ideas after all are pretty stale and, like most of modernism, now toothless and abandoned. 

2) Thanks, I'm glad you liked my piece! 

3) But no, I am not at all "boasting for cage revolutionary statements." I disagree with a lot of Cage, there's not a lot of his music that I like, and as I've mentioned before, the only pieces I love are the "Sonatas and Interludes For Prepared Piano." This isn't a particularly uncommon opinion to have these days - most of my friends share it, as does Richard Taruskin, who wrote a great article on Cage which I recommend, if you want to know exactly why his ideas are mostly harmless these days. 

Paul, I absolutely love your posts. They are like reading a surrealist novel. Please keep them coming. 

1) I don't think Herrmann would respect your hero worship for a second. Treat him like a human being, anyone can talk about him (this is where you can again accuse me of hero worship of John Cage, except, if you go back in this thread, you'll find I've done no such thing ever, and in fact disagree with a lot of his views and dislike a lot of his music). 

2) Through my school I was able to study several original Herrmann manuscripts. It was pretty cool. School is pretty cool, so maybe chill out a little bit and stop strawmanning me so much? 

Again I have no idea why you're so upset. Different pieces of music are more accessible than others (To use Beethoven as an example, I would say for instance that the 9th is more accessible than the Grosse Fugue), and these John Cage pieces are much more so than his other music.

When I'm recommending music to people who have had a bad experience with a composer in question, I don't immediately try to find the most complex and unfriendly pieces - I look for the ones that are the most fun to listen to and start there. These are often my favorite pieces as well, so it works out. That's all I meant by this post, but apparently you are determined to read quite a bit more into it, which seems to be a persistent problem in this thread. 

I'll post the links again because I do think it's important that people hear them (there aren't enough links to music in this thread in general, just words). I am again not a disciple of John Cage - these are some of the the only works of his that I really love: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYsx5Di3bso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUTXNxFvjDw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExUosomc8Uc     <- not from the same piece, but great nonetheless. John Cage being tonal! (well, "modal" strictly speaking)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bDy9KX7BuI

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