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I plan to rip everything.

I've recently revisited An Unexpected Journey, it's filled with so much, introducing new themes left, right and centre, it's full of life and creates a real of sense of history within the context of the series, becoming a clear cousin (or ancestor-in-retrospect) to the Rings scores. Axe or Sword? and Radagast the Brown are perhaps two of my favourite cues from the score that are richly layered with thematic material and the sound we have come to associate with Middle-earth - in the case of Axe or Sword?, you have Bilbo's themes, Smaug's theme, the doorway motif, themes for Erebor and Thorin, it's incredible how that cue segues from theme to theme like poetry.

Koray, please don't get this thread off-topic.

I thought this chart was interesting: A New Hope's original budget was 7 million but due to cost overruns, the final cost was 11 million (in 1977 dollars). Based on the above chart, the score and music budget was 100,000 in 1977 dollars which roughly translates to 250,000 today based on inflation calculator. That means that John Williams' fee plus orchestration, score prep, LSO, studios, editing, mixing, engineering were all within that $250,000 amount! Meanwhile, by 1980, the film had grossed $147,500,000 dollars! Wow, that is like the greatest bargain for a fantastic score ever! So I imagine JW received between 25,000 to 50,000 fee in 1977 for this masterpiece. My point? This shows what can be achieved by a very low budget. Quality doesn't demand high budget. If a filmmaker were to tell some up and coming composer the full music budget is 250,000 could they produce a score of the quality of ANH today?

Just when I thought this thread was becomming boring, because everyone seemed to agree. Jeez. Can they ship the CD already so we can discuss something meaningful, like the unreleased 20 seconds or whatever and how they transform the score.

Thanks for your valuable contribution to this thread.

John Williams-Heartwood

They will be performing (and recording) the oboe concerto this coming season.

Didn't that have a famous cast which is where alot of the money goes. I remember these disaster films were billed as "All star cast" and had posters with a bunch of head shots of the cast looking concerned like these: . So the famous cast was a big draw that sucked the budget up. I thought he also had a lot of feedback on editing - basically saw the disastrous early cuts and gave encouragement/feedback to Lucas that resulted in an entire re-edit which saved the film.

http://caldera-records.com/portfolio/sunrise/gallery/soundtracks/#prettyPhoto

Josh500 + technology + philosophyA hilarious combination!

He's a lot worse than Josh.

I wouldn't say there's an ongoing spat but gkgyver is often kind of toxic and so I tend to take a brusque tone with him which I'm not necessarily proud of. Fair play from him to keep it up then I'd say. I doubt either of us will lose sleep over it and in another attempt at positivity I will say this about gkgyver - he isn't Josh500.

Fun series of tweets courtesy of Jim Ware: It has been a while since I listened to AUJ, so I'm really enjoying listening to pieces from it each day as Jim mentions them! The Erebor theme at 5:51 is breath-taking! Such a magnificent tone, with a slightly mournful quality similar to the brass for Gondor in ROTK. Also, a fun little tidbit I noticed: at 23s Shore seems to sketching a piece for 02:12.02 with the annotation 'th stabs'. This would suggest the sheet music is for the ending of the film with Thorin stabbing something. But he's actually writing the notes for 1:32 of 'The Adventure Begins'. You can see the crosses above the bars don't line up with the time signatures (the first two bars have 4 crosses, but he is writing in 3/4). He must have just been writing out the piece on some spare manuscript paper for the camera!

Though one of Rozsa's lesser known historical epic scores, Julius Caesar features a tragic emotional theme for Brutus, and a triumphant imperious theme for the titular character himself (and also applied to Mark Antony later on), in one interesting bit of scoring, the dramatic finale bearing the title 'Caesar Now Be Still!', both themes are played simultaneously (playing in separate audio channels on the FSM CD, mixed more 'organically' on the Excalibur recording). In this fine recording the playing and tempi taken by Bruce Broughton (leading the Sinfonia of London and Chorus for Intrada's Excalibur collection line) seems to be quite tasteful, though the Overture seems a bit odd, and the Prelude a bit too slow to this listener, the recording sounds nice and spacious, and doesn't have the slight nasal sound of the Rozsa recordings made by Tadlow using the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. All in all another good score by Rozsa, but one that doesn't really feel like it quite gets a chance to develop and expand much even at a length of almost an hour due to relying mostly on only the Brutus and Caesar themes and featuring few source cues, however this still remains a recommended listen for Rozsa fans just on the strength of the Overture and Prelude alone. Rating: 4 1/5 out of 5 soliloquies

Not at problem, although it's Katherine who has done most of the ringing around and emailing.

The fact that Maestro John Williams generously agreed to conduct his Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra and his Theme from Born On the Fourth of July and record both (the former of which has never been recorded with him conducting it) for release on CD, that private donors have generously contributed to this project, the fact that this has been a dream of Thomas Hooten to make this recording (and that he wants no financial gain from this), and that people are giving their time to make this project a reality makes this worth while.

1944*

When I listen to the Vienna stuff against what's out there now there is no comparison. I've gotten paid more thanks to that than any single other instrument or sample library.

Actually more than 5 hours! Many different and early versions of cues. Also pieces that weren't in the movie or that later on became cues.

Apparently a "multi-disc" 20th anniversary edition of The Thin Red Line by Zimmer has been mastered - could it be a LLL Black Friday title? Doesn't seem like Varese or intrada territory. From Nick Redman's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157785766912729&set=a.10150095006537729&type=3

Yea, it's largely why I haven't bothered upgrading yet. All in due time! You're just missing all the velvet furnishing!

Its deeply mediocre.

I've actually never encountered those, although I have heard about them. CD only really started going mainstream in my country from around 1987. The first releases arrived in blister packs with the front insert separated from and placed above the jewel case, so that the "rainbow" effect disc fronts could be seen for maximum sales impact - not sure if that practice was unique to my country or not. Some of my earliest CD Soundtrack purchases (apart from SW) were Cocoon (Polydor), Goldsmith's Legend (Up Art - with that dodgy looking semi-bootleg artwork), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Polydor) and Willow (my only soundtrack to ever arrive in a long box). My first batch of Varese purchases included The Black Cauldron, The Secret of NIMH and Masters of the Universe. My first Star Trek CD purchase was TMP. Such happy memories...

But the cellos in the Debney main title are soooo distant...

Oh, I missed that.

Anyone else checking this thread every five hours only to be disappointed that no one has received their copy yet?

A perfectly acceptable 1st buy, is ACTUALLY. Did you know, @JTWfan77, that the PSB wanted to call it JOLLYSIGHT, because they thought it was a "jolly sight" better, than PLEASE?

Sing with me: "There are No cats in America, and the streets are paved with OST....."

Yup, there might indeed be some degradation if a meteorite crashes right on your soundcard.

No matter how many tumbleweeds - keep posting when a new episode is released. I, for example, rarely log in here, but I would admittedly forget to check out the goldsmithodyssey, if you didn't remind me of every new episode. And even the interest of the JWFanners will increase, once you guys have reached the late 60s!

Is that a title on your resume?

@crocodile if you are still looking for a good stereo re-recording of the Christ theme from Ben-Hur, the Kunzel album "Three Choral Suites" has it.

(Resisting the urge to nitpick some of the “technical” posts above...)

From $17K out of $30K to over $22K out of $30K in just a few short hours... This is definitely going to be funded! Awesome!

I was expecting some power-anthem style theme for Living Football, seems quite tame.

I hope this one will have interstellar cockroaches disguised as asians in bad suits.

I thought--and there could be members that prove my memory wrong--that he had the ambition to record every concerto.

Yeah, remember when Leonard Slatkin's plans fizzled out after a few? I hope this would work out better.

That’s because it’s the better score.

You are listening to LP's in an airport?

Absurd statements about Zimmer's "lack of talent" aside, the FIFA piece in discussion is no less generic than the Morricone piece shared above, or even the kind of fanfare Williams might have provided for the affair. The execution just happens to be of a stylistic variety that is not to your preference. Besides, not sure why it's drawing so much discussion in the first place. It's a feel-good pop piece written for TV ads, not a frickin' Pulitzer Prize-winning tone poem. Some of you need to take this less seriously.

Yes, there are already several recordings of the trumpet concerto. If this had been for a proper recording of the clarinet concerto (or, in fact, any of his comlpetely unreleased works), it would have been another matter.

Funny how you think you have all the answers.

"Rey's Journey"

Thanks Karelm! That means a lot! Tried to score most of the film as one long musical sequence, and that hopefully gave that organic quality you mentioned. And I wanted to work with a small ensemble (a woodwind sextet of sorts, give or take some other colours) and see what I could get with just that. And yes, we had a little money for a session again! Which really helps, because you just have a lot more variables to work with using live musicians over a computer. And the film is doing the whole festival circuit right now (with some good buzz, if I may add). But here's a teaser, if you were curious!

Yes, it's a cringeworthy scene, but the stellar effects work and Brosnan's acting really sell it. You feel like you're there.

That's only 4 scores Richard. Try again.