Datameister

In the wampa cave, too.

I would love to fly the LSO to California to record something at Sony, and then fly LA players to London to record something at Abbey Road. I think it would be very illuminating for all of us. Anyone got a few million dollars we could throw at this?

I believe only the space battle cue that consists of material from ANH was the only thing recorded at Olympic. All the other orchestral stuff should have been at Abbey Road, so that's not it. That being said, I do think the magic of Abbey Road has something to do with how good ROTJ sounds in non-SE releases. Something just went wrong with the SE album specifically. Which is unfortunate, because the program is so outstanding. There are many scores that I prefer to hear abridged. The Star Wars scores are not among them—especially not the first six.

Then I don't know what to tell you. The widely held opinion is that the sound on that one is godawful. I'm curious how ROTJ on the OST or Anthology sounds to you? Better? Worse? Just different? Not different at all?

@Bellosh Are you listening to the OST, the Anthology, or the SE? The ROTJ SE is missing the higher frequencies, resulting in a muffled sound. I don't know that a definitive, detailed explanation for this has ever been given.

Well, there's the composition, the performance, the recording techniques, the venue, and the various ways it's been transferred and mixed for albums and for the film. All play a role. Is there anything specifically you're referring to?

That's an extraordinary generalization. The reality is that Lucasfilm comprises people who live and breathe Star Wars, people with a casual appreciation for Star Wars, people who want to interrogate or deconstruct or reshape Star Wars, people who are in it to grow their existing wealth, people who are in it for fame and prestige, people who are just trying to put food on the table, etc., etc.—and people with multiple reasons for being there. Similar things could be said for the other groups you mentioned. People are complicated. The likelihood of a group of 10 people having identical motivations is low. For groups of hundreds or thousands, the likelihood is effectively zero, particularly when different people within the group were chosen for different reasons in the first place.

Setting the Trap, followed very closely by Quidditch, Third Year.

Great work in this thread. Aside from some subjective quibbles about punctuation, the only things I'd bring up are: Near the end of the Pirate Sequence, there are two discrepancies between the recording and the version in the script: In the recording, "Drinks are on Smee" is "Drinks are on me", and the last "There's the grave of Davy Jones" is "Near the grave of Davy Jones". Not sure whether you want to amend that or not, considering the version you've got is the official version. Agreed 100% about "No way Jose, never." I hear "the Never Sky is clear," not "then Never Sky is clear." But it's hard to be positive. "Showing the wonders mothers are" doesn't sound quite right. Maybe "Showing what wonders mothers are"? I hear a "t" sound in there. [EDIT: Oops, @QuartalHarmony already said that, sorry.] Thank you for this!

Yeah, TrueStrike is pretty good. It's usually my go-to for snares, mallets, and some toys.

I'd rather be a fly on the wall during the process than ask him about it. I suspect that if he could explain it any better, he would have by now. He's very eloquent but sometimes an artistic process defies description. He has said that it takes a lot of work to get a theme just right. Adjusting the rhythm a bit here, shifting a note up there, etc. And like most film composers (I gather), he maps out the tempos and time signatures of a cue before he starts writing. But how does he pick which note goes where? Mixture of raw talent, intense study, and decades of experience. If I had to guess.

Seriously. There are plenty of OST edits where I'm like, Okay, yeah, I prefer to have all the music, but I have to admit it flows better without. This is not one of those times. The entire missing section is superb, and it just gets superb-er with that Gothic passage with the chimes. Spine-tingling.

That's the only work of his I'm familiar with. It is indeed a very impressive amalgam of Elfman's themes and Williams's sound.

I thought Don Davis did a pretty great job of melding his style with JW's for JP III. It's a rare case where the direct quotes don't feel out of place to me, even if the work as a whole isn't indistinguishable from a genuine Williams score. Shearmur's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is also reminiscent. I often get more JW vibes from works that inspired him than works inspired by him. I hear hints of him in Stravinsky, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Steiner, Korngold, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, and others.

Interesting! I feel better about having swapped them for my own playlist, haha! (That being said, I'm of course still very glad to have both.)

Another P word comes to mind: pastiche. Or an H: homage. I suppose the lines between all of these are kinda blurry. In any case, considering JW worked with Dave Grusin at least once (The Long Goodbye), I wouldn't be surprised if there was a conversation with him. But that's pure speculation on my part.

The planing triads and jazzy chords in the middle are pretty JW, but it's still a big outlier for me. In a very different vein, Images is certainly unique. The Williams-isms are there, but not very conspicuously. For me, Banning Back Home is just JW doing a great Grusin impression, much like Aunt Marge's Waltz is just JW doing a great Rossini impression.

"Training Montage", anyone?

Yeah, like Thor said, his sound has absolutely changed over time, but there typically aren't clear demarcations between eras, and you can divvy those eras up in a lot of different ways. It's almost like a fractal. His middle years sound different from his early years … the 90s sound different from the 80s … the late 90s sound different from the early 90s … '92 sounds different from '91 … I would cite Jaws, Star Wars, SpaceCamp, Jurassic Park, KOTCS, and TFA as some scores where things seem to shift more suddenly, at least in retrospect. Your mileage may vary.

I gave both to TLJ. Both films disappointed me a lot at first; maybe DOD will grow on me with time like TLJ did. But that hasn't happened yet. DOD vs. TROS would be a tougher choice. Music-wise, both suffer from excessive reuse of existing material. Both also bring good new ideas to the table. At the moment, TLJ interests me more, but I'm also more familiar with it.

In all fairness, I have close to zero familiarity with Jane Eyre, so it's possible I might agree with you once properly educated. 😊

My gut reaction is Jaws / TFA. But of course, it's all a continuum. On a more generous day I might say The Cowboys / TFA; on a less generous day I might say Star Wars / ROTS. If we're talking about how much a score gets into the public consciousness, on the other hand, I'm with @QuartalHarmony.

I love "Banning Back Home." It's just JW doing his own version of Dave Grusin's "Mountain Dance." But if you have to do a pastiche of another artist's work, you might as well knock it out of the park like he did.

I really like The Prestige as a film. I consider the score pretty dull; I would never listen to it on its own. But in the context of the film, I start to get some positive feelings about it. Sorta. At the same time, yes, I'm sure a better score would further elevate the film. And I agree that a film's quality can never turn a shitty score into a great one, much like a score's quality can never turn a shitty film into a great one. The two things affect each other, but not that much.

A great score will elevate a mediocre film. A great film will elevate a mediocre score. Sometimes the effects are very significant. But I'm hard-pressed to think of a case where music has singlehandedly elevated a movie to being a classic. Home Alone is vastly enriched by the genuine warmth, the melancholy touches, and the clever mickey mousing that JW brought to the table. It's absolutely a better film for it. But it would still be entertaining with a lesser score. Star Wars reached mythic heights in '77 with the help of JW's exquisitely over-written score. It launched a love for movie music in countless viewers, myself included. But the film still would have been a hit with a small, non-descript score. And on the flip side, the prequels and sequels benefit enormously from JW's continuing excellence, but those films' flaws can never be truly masked by his writing.