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Close Encounters of the Third Kind - La-La Land MUSIC Discussion


Jay

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It's a wild recording - "wild" means it was recorded without any footage running to sync to.  Its probably just to give Spielberg options of putting various different versions of the vision motif into various scenes if he wanted to.

 

And no, he didn't end up using it in the film.

 

And for this film, nothing was recorded specifically for the album.

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I really don't feel qualified to weigh in very much, I only got the release yesterday evening.  I did get to listen to disc 1, but I have to admit it was not a "pure" listening experience, I was listening to it while getting supper ready and parenting and all that.  But that said, I think I really liked the presentation.  I could easily see it becoming my preferred method of visiting this amazing score.  That first 2/3rds really did seem to have a nice flow to it.

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I don't think so, actually.  I want my next experience to be one where I block off 90 minutes to sit and listen to disc 1 with my 100% attention and a good pair of headphones.  Hopefully tonight after the kids are in bed.

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10 minutes ago, phbart said:

CE3K should have won the Oscar in 1978...

 

There, I said it!!!

 

I endorse this alternate universe as long as Empire wins the Oscar in 1981 over, sigh, Fame.  Historical wrongs must be righted!

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I agree with Disco Stu. :music:

 

But I also agree with MM on this one:

Quote

I don’t want to steal any thunder from E.T. but I’m very excited about this one. I’ve taken a bit of a gamble with it assembly-wise, but the Maestro cares a lot about this score and he really liked what I proposed and I hope that the fans will embrace how I approached it.

 

I mean... OMG, this release is amazing! The assembly, the extra stuff. AND, of course, the sound quality. Sounds like a modern recording. I wish Jaws was a Columbia Pictures production with the music recorded by John Neal in the same recording studio. I'm stunned, to say the least.

 

The ONLY things I still prefer in the 98 CD is how "Forming the Mountain" and "The Mountain" (CD1 tracks 09 and 11) were balanced. Not that it sounds bad here. Far from that! But I prefer those tracks as they sound in the 98 release. But for everything else, the LLL release is king!

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5 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

I endorse this alternate universe as long as Empire wins the Oscar in 1981 over, sigh, Fame.  Historical wrongs must be righted!

Then I insist on Mulan, The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Lost World winning the Oscars 1999, 2005 and 1998.

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3 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Lost World?  Sorry, Horner deserved his Oscar.

For other scores and not over The Lost World.

1 minute ago, Fal said:

2004 not 2005.

The film is 2004, so he wins the Oscar 2005.

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@Incanus Good review, makes me want to receive my set asap!

 

@Jay I’ve never seen you so keen on urging everyone on to listen to a disc presentation as is, and also curious about hearing people’s thoughts on the sequencing after the fact. Did you have a lot of input on the way the new album was assembled?

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The sequencing might seem a little odd at first, but once the music gets into you (and it will), you won't really care if CD1 is not "complete". What is great about this release is that you can easily put together a C&C presentation via playlist. It won't fit a single CD-R though (for those, like me, who still have a decent and above average CD player hooked to a equally decent and above average sound system with none of the modern connectivity like WIFI, DLNA, NAS...), but it won't be a "problem" for most of us, I guess.

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7 hours ago, rough cut said:

 

@Jay I’ve never seen you so keen on urging everyone on to listen to a disc presentation as is, and also curious about hearing people’s thoughts on the sequencing after the fact. Did you have a lot of input on the way the new album was assembled?

 

I had no input, it was all Mike (and JW). I never heard it until after JW had approved it.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, phbart said:

What is great about this release is that you can easily put together a C&C presentation via playlist. It won't fit a single CD-R though

 

If you remove The Dialogue, it fits! That's actually how I've been listening to the score lately, to mix it up.

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43 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I had no input, it was all Mike (and JW). I never heard it until after JW had approved it.

 

Ok! It’s very nice though, to read about the community asking users questions about their listening experience and thoughts!

 

I’m very curious about the sequencing myself!

 

43 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

If you remove The Dialogue, it fits! That's actually how I've been listening to the score lately, to mix it up.

 

For the C&C playlist, this is probably how I’d prefer it myself as well.

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Ok I've listened to the disc 1 presentation again with full attention this time.

 

I haven't yet listened to the complete score playlist so I don't have a good comparison point but I can definitely tell you that I prefer it to the '98 album presentation.  This score can be overwhelming but it's such a rewarding listen.  The final third ("Light Show" to the end) continues to be one of the absolute pinnacles of the medium.  A soulful, complex masterwork.

 

The middle third (after the kidnapping, before light show) is such an effective buildup to the climactic Devils Tower sequence, but boy you have to make yourself really like Dies Israe to enjoy it.  That theme feels near constant for that section!

 

Great stuff, I haven't even gotten to disc 2 yet.

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Yea, my favorite parts of the score are definitely the opening (the run of cues from Trucking through False Alarm), and the ending (Barnstorming to the end)

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4 hours ago, Jay said:

 

If you remove The Dialogue, it fits! That's actually how I've been listening to the score lately, to mix it up.

 

If you use a 800 MB CD R it even fits with the Dialogue and some source material! 

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Well, I wasn't talking about actually burning a physical CDR (its 2017 man, who needs to do that!?), I was talking about a playlist in WinAmp.

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I enjoy very much buying the physical CDs the specialty labels make of my favorite scores from the past.

 

For pop and rock music I basically just stream everything now though, yea.

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I have never bought music as a download.  I buy physical CDs or subscribe to a service that lets me stream them.  Buying mp3s seems odd to me, still.

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I buy music as a download, but only if it's download-exclusive, or if the original release is out of print and costly (Space Balls).  A lot of the time on film scores, that means just bonus tracks (like on Desplat's first Harry Potter or some of the earlier Gold Doctor Who releases).

 

Rock artists have been more download-heavy.  This Sufjan Stevens release from a few weeks ago is available only as a download or as a CASSETTE!

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It gives more money to the artist than streaming, which is a positive for me.  And you don't have to depend on data or wifi to listen to a paid download, which makes it easier to use while driving in areas of low coverage or at work, plus I can keep my data plan at the absolute lowest/cheapest tier (I basically just use my phone for messaging, web, Facebook, Twitter, and games).  So my maybe, at most, $50 in paid downloads beats paying $120/year for Spotify, and at least $120 extra data a year.

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I'm on wifi the majority of my life (home and work) so rarely use cell data for streaming music.  Most of the time I'm in my car, I'm listening to (already downloaded ahead of time) podcasts.


When Marcy and I are in the car together, we might stream Spotify or Sirius XM, but I get 5 gigs a month on my cell phone plan (~$40/month) and have not once gone over it.

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I don't remember what my bare bones data plan is, but I usually come pretty close to scraping the top of it in the ~7 months a year that I'm running and cycling outside w/ GPS tracking.  If we had wifi at work my world would be different in many wonderful ways.

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Yea if I couldn't stream music at work, I'd probably have a massive portable hard drive here full of rips of all my CDs or something.

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If I get the chance to listen to music of my own choice, I simply stream from YouTube or a similar free source. I will not install Spotify or log in using personal credentials. 

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

Well, I wasn't talking about actually burning a physical CDR (its 2017 man, who needs to do that!?), I was talking about a playlist in WinAmp.

 

Haha, wait, you chastise members burning CDRs because they’re not current, but yourself use winamp???

 

I could be totally out of sync with the PC community, but... Man! I’ve not used winamp since the end of the last millennium! :P

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1 hour ago, rough cut said:

 

Haha, wait, you chastise members burning CDRs because they’re not current, but yourself use winamp???

 

I could be totally out of sync with the PC community, but... Man! I’ve not used winamp since the end of the last millennium! :P

 

Winamp is awesome!

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Yea, what's wrong with winamp?  I don't understand.  It takes an audio file and sends it to my DAC, which outputs it to my speakers or headphones.  BFD?

 

That's just when I'm at my computer.  If I'm down in the living room, Plex takes it from the computer and sends it to my living room receiver.

 

On my phone, I use PowerAmp.

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Hey hey hey, now, settle down, I said I’d been out of the PC game for a while. Just that, for me, I haven’t heard the name Winamp in a loooooong time, I’m sure it works just fine. It just brought back a lot of memories of a time when mp3s and burning CDRs were new, which seemed to stand in contrast to your comment.

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I use iTunes, which a lot of people proclaimed dead some years ago - at least when it comes to listening to music - so, I guess I am in no position to judge.

 

I’m still gonna judge tho’.

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