Leaderboard

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens. Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb. Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it. Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level. Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there. Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity. The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to. Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.) "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy. For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen. A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience. Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself. Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music. Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining. Decently performed live music > amazingly performed recording. Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic. Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time. Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good. Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet. Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you. Don't carry around more than a dozen albums. One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention. If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone. Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music. Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room. There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you. Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more. If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick. Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this. While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before. Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds.

@9:08. This is the first time in the saga and the only time in the film that the theme's first phrase ends with this particular major chord (the Neapolitan, or flat-II). Instead of having the usual chord (major IV, which has a raised note) to sound optimistic the way most Force theme statements do, this one (which has a lowered note) is infused with a feeling of tragedy even though it's a major chord - something that normally sounds positive. And what a time for it to be used - just as Vader tosses the Emperor to his death, in turn sacrificing himself as well. It wonderfully captures how this act of heroism is carried out unexpectedly by the villain. This harmonization of the theme becomes a regular facet of ROTS, where it has the reverse effect because of Anakin's status as a "good guy" - it suggests his darkening deeds as he plunges towards the Dark Side.

Hi Folks, Many probably know about this already from the FSM board, Facebook etc. but I am in the middle of an Indiegogo campaign to raise money to make a sci-fi short film (which will, incidentally, be scored by Ron Jones of ST:TNG and Family Guy)—my new career as a filmmaker! I am offering a wide variety of CDs, coupon codes (at Intrada, La-La Land and BuySoundtrax, anywhere from 10% to 30% off), blu rays and other items (all kindly donated to me by the labels and manufacturers). For example, La-La Land's 15CD ST:TOS box set and 50th Anniversary Collection 4CD set are available together with free shipping for $199. Please visit the campaign and view the video: http://igg.me/at/skyfighter Thank you! Lukas Kendall

I know I'm trudging well-tilled earth, but is the desire for complete releases driven by a fear of missing something, that idea of knowing there's more than what you have? I'm curious to know. For example, when "Bad Dates" was added to the Raiders album a decade ago, were people genuinely excited to have that track available for listening? Or is it more the psychological factor of having everything?

When asked which classical composer he is lined up to play, Arnold Schwarzenegger replied "I'll be Bach".

Good call! I take back what I've said.

I've been picking up these remasters in a haphazard way, some I've purchased such as the prequels, others I've downloaded still deciding whether it's worth purchasing them. Just listened to Empire... ...what happened? It just sounds so off, so distant and dare I say it, old. I spent a majority of last week on my commute to university listening to the 2004 Sony 2 disc edition and that has heft, it has a punch and prominence to it - it's by no means perfect or the best sounding of the three, but it sounds bright and forefront and still feels powerful. The biggest grievance I have with this 'remaster' is the complete degradation of one of my favourite musical sequences, The Battle of Hoth, with many amazing individual passages that are just buried in the mix, or buried by reverb and white noise fuzz - something best described as a ghost orgy, where it sounds dated and the opposite of a remaster. Hearing this remastered set pains me that it's 2018 and we're getting sub-par re-releases instead of fully-fledged deluxe archival editions that pay respect to the originals, provide all of the available recordings and most importantly deliver them sounding as good as is currently possible. I don't understand how these sets have been handled when we have other examples of Shawn Murphy's work which demonstrates a great ability to mix a good sounding score. Was it a bad transfer, were the tapes damaged, was this rushed out for Star Wars Day, is this a placeholder for future releases just for Disney to flex their commercial powers to try and rid people's conscience of the sony sets? Who knows?

It’s almost as if the film was playing with the shades of grey of leadership roles in a deliberate attempt to highlight the characters’ various flaws. The point wasn’t that either Poe or Holdo were right, it was that their respective prejudices towards each other prevented them from communicating effectively and finding the right solution. Unfortuantely we we live in a very partisan society so a lot of this subtlety was really lost in translation.

Variety reports Spielberg held secret table read for Leonard Bernstein biopic, possibly to shoot after Indy 5 instead of West Side Story.

For a score and movie I love as much as Raiders, yes I was excited to have that track available for listening. I turn it up loud and luxuriate in the sound of it.

He's a strong indo-pendent raptor!

I'll never quite understand why people get pissed at a label for not including something that cannot be found. And this is reference to this forum, just others where people were bitching. lol

Indoraptor is a weird name...yeah it comes from indominous...but abridged it just means raptor from India...so it could be a normal dinosaur name...nothing scary about it

Chagrined I am to say I haven’t seen that one—and I love Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. But I will check it out now.

I only said that because you made it sound like the Nazis sprang up in Europe in the thirties, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. Somebody was financing them, supporting them, mentoring them, pursuing their own nefarious agendas. It's already too late.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017 remake) For every pro I find in this film, I seem to find two cons. Much of the otherwise talented cast is underutilized, and don't make much of an impression at all. The cinematography is good, even breathtaking at times, but often muddled in fake-looking digital effects and greenscreen. Branagh's portrayal of Poirot is wonderful, though. One of the few glowing highlights in an often dull film. ** and 1/2 out of ***** Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb An absolute classic. The entire film is just brilliant, in that it has this wild and over-the-top comedic force, but is combined with solid authenticity of structure and focus on human weakness, especially male weakness. It's obvious that Kubrick really hated these characters, and it's eerie how relevant the film remains today. ***** out of *****

Any haziness in the political state of the galaxy didn't affect the movie experience for me - isn't important. The story is important. Characters learn lessons over the backdrop of good guys doing X and bad guys doing Y. If you keep up with the secondary tier stuff (novelizations, visual dictionaries, Poe comics, Bloodline) the worldbuilding stuff is very clear. Doesn't mean that it matters.

Don't let the LEGO put you off: That video makes a hilariously valid point!

I thought you don’t care.

I FOUND IT! Something I finally agree with you on. CHEN! Right. The Resistance is not the New Republic. They are Leia's scrappy offshoot because the republic didn't view the First Order as a threat, and refused to militarize. The New Republic's capital world and several others all popped out of existence mid-TFA.

What a pretty woman!

Sure! Haven't you seen The Producers or To Be or Not to Be?

The Lost Boys is another Goonies. Basically on insta repeat for loads of kids back in the day. Years ago I even edited two soundtrack cues together and shared them to YouTube.

I just hope they at least try something new visually. The photography needn't be consistent with the films, especially not the fucking Hobbits.

Often those different preferences are "make it louder" influenced by tin ears and no taste. I've sought out old, first press CD releases just because it's less likely the sound has been tampered with.

I need to see some of her movies, but wow they made women better back then. They were snappy, cool, sophisticated, knew how to talk back with finesse. Or was that the scriptwriters?

Look, the new Solo is being released this upcoming week!

Cooper/Spielberg's version won the music rights from the Bernstein estate, which means the Gyllenhaal/Fukunaga film won't be able to use his music at all and will apparently focus on his conducting career instead. Lol. Hollywood is weird.

We just kind of, work through them - all the decisions are made purely on a give-take basis on the moment. As we both write together we don't usually have that process of being responsible for certain cues etc, although on occasion we have tried delegating "motifs" to be written individually then brought into the joint writing. This didn't really change the process though - usually you end up with something that sounds better than what you came up with originally!

Why? I thought the First Order was a handful of terrorist fanatics from the Unknown Region who showed up and attacked the New Republic. The New Republic blew up their Death Star and blew up their Dreadnaught. How are we supposed to believe the New Republic, with all its unlimited resources, can still only field a pathetic resistance force against the might of the unstoppable juggernaut that is the First Order? That don’t make a lick of sense.

On projects like this we work together for sure! We find that having two heads rather than one can help propel some ideas to something beyond what you might have come up with on your own. Of course, it does lead to the occasional moment where you feel like your own idea genuinely is better (!), but on the whole it probably also speeds up the process slightly - anything that may have been weird or on a tangent to the overall music arc has usually already been corrected at the source rather than much further on That's of course not to say that you don't occasionally end up with other scenarios though...

Some of us love that movie

Raising Cain Karol

This is some truly nice music.

You might have liked Eight Legged Freaks. I remember when its working title was Arac Attack, but they changed it because it sounded too much like "Iraq Attack".

I guarantee some people won't even notice the "April Fools" and will go to the thread just to see random pics of Jimmy Smits.

It's a vital part of the movie and a lot of fun. But eff this, I am not getting dragged into Arguing On the Internet about Last Jedi. Nooooooope. Done-ski

Idiots!

People don't understand The Last Jedi.

Everything I’ve heard points to an announcement of the Obi-Wan standalone shortly.

I'm still annoyed Lando hasn't been acknowledged in the ST so far.

FAKE! It's a suite from Rise of the Underminer! -Erik-

Yes

Considering the score's by Giacchino I'm sure we'll get plenty of statements of the Force theme.

Indeed. Sounds much more exciting than a WEST SIDE STORY remake.

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but today I was re-listening to Alien 3 after a very long time and I must say I had forgotten how great it is. The film may be uneven but the music is absolute perfection, and quite risky for an early 90's blockbuster. I don't know if this particular sound is cliche by today standards but I adore it nevertheless. It's freaking fantastic. I'm not adding anything new to the table but I just needed to share my love for this score. I dare to say it's the best score of the franchise.

The Burbs - Jerry Goldsmith Now on to one of my favourite Goldsmith scores, department 'horror/satirical'. While comedy is a tightrope genre in which Goldsmith's vigorous style sometimes did more harm than good (though he had some clear winners, too), this Joe Dante romp about neighbors from hell must have been conceived just to wrangle great Jerry Goldsmith music out of it. More genre piece than outright comedy, it joins gothic horror with an idyllic suburbia setting (really the Universal studio tour backlot), leavened with a baby version of gung-ho US military interventionism by way of a bumbling neighborhood watch. All these elements and some others, too, are mixed to perfection with the sly amusement of an old pro who has seen it all but still with a few tricks up his sleeve. By 1988, Goldsmith was hooked on synthesizers and it was an uneasy marriage. 'The Burbs' is one of those scores making good on the promise: here electronics are used in the most creative ways, giving depth to the satirical aspirations of the story and even inventing some eligible new horror clichés - i. e. the mysterious metallic wind chimes that open under an impressive pan from the Universal logo down to the eponymic small town street. Thematically it's one of the most diverse and fun things Goldsmith ever did (that's stiff competition for most other film composers), with sugarcoat 80's Amblin sprinkling driven to the hilt (an impossibly cute allegretto with an especially grating bark for an even more insufferable lap dog), two interconnected gothic tunes that continue the playful fugal approach of the unjustly maligned 'Link' 2 years prior (with electronic organ and e-guitars!) and a quite verbatim replay of the 'Patton' march that works like gangbusters in the movie (quite appropriately for Bruce Dern's demented vietnam vet). Probably on Dante's insistence, the growing determination of the overgrown boys to fill their boring life with a bit of dangerous excitement is scored with a characteristic 60's western tune that could have come right out of 'Rio Conchos' - a kind of frontiersmen/lone ranger spirit that erupts in one of the more remarkable images of film and music in the 80's: Tom Hanks stumbling out of a fireball that is the exploding house of his suspect neighbors to a riproaring version of said western tune (the moment stayed with me even in the early 90's when i couldn't even spell 'G-o-l-d-s-m-i-t-h). As sweet topping you get a witched black mass led by ominous drums, otherworldy soprano and scratchy violin for Hank's character about to be sacrificed to satan - appropriately on a human-sized barbecue grill. Take that, Danny Elfman! It all sounds very 'modern' and could have been written yesterday, which is one of the elusive Goldsmith gifts (at least when he wasn't allowed to go full synth). Bullseye, i say!

Total Recall, Rambo 2 and Baby. I haven't thought about the remaining 2. Goldsmith would probably still be a contender.

The second half is up there with the best action scores of all time. If there's a top 5 best action scores of all time, JG will be responsible for 3 of them.