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GALAXY'S EDGE - New John Williams composition (2018)


tranders65

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Just now, Nick Parker said:

 

Where do you hear that?, I ask out of curiosity.

Well, to be fair, there is more clarity than there is anything particularly new.

Still, the string and percussion figure at the start fits in quite nicely with the brass for me.  In general, I feel the percussion is used quite tastefully.

 

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To be fair the music is being taken out of context here. As mentioned previously it may have been scored for some form of pre-show for one of the rides, given the sound it could well be for some type of "galactic news" thing that would feature in the queueline - anyone who's visited Disney will know this is exactly the kind of thing they would do. :)

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29 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

It reminded me of The Mission and Great Performances more than anything.

 

"The Mission" I sort of get, but "Great Performances"? That basically sounds like "Masterpiece Theatre 2", if anything. Cello heavy, broad stuff that doesn't really sound anything like this.

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45 minutes ago, The Psycho Pianist said:

To be fair the music is being taken out of context here. As mentioned previously it may have been scored for some form of pre-show for one of the rides, given the sound it could well be for some type of "galactic news" thing that would feature in the queueline - anyone who's visited Disney will know this is exactly the kind of thing they would do. :)

 

The fact that the title on the sheet music is simply "Galaxy's Edge" is interesting - I would think there'd be a more descriptive cue title. Otherwise I'd be very much thinking the same thing.

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A whole new score?

 

The park will open at the end of autumn 2019, so, we'll have two new SW scores next year???

 

So at final... We'll have 10 Star Wars scores written by JW?

 

Nice!

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18 minutes ago, Bespin said:

A whole new score?

 

The park will open at the end of autumn 2019, so, we'll have two new SW scores next year???

 

So at final... We'll have 10 Star Wars scores written by JW?

 

Nice!

 

Well, he's clearly scoring some stuff for the land, but I doubt it'll amount to 2+ hours of music like a Star Wars film score might. My guess - and it's only that - is that he's providing this theme, score for the Millennium Falcon ride, score for the Resistance ride, and not much else. I'm imagining queue music, area loops, and so forth being taken care of by other composers. Could be totally wrong though.

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4 hours ago, Taikomochi said:

I think it's awesome, but I do hear the edit @Holko mentions.  I bet this piece was longer as Williams wrote it and was perhaps cut for the video.

I can't hear the edit. My ears must not be as tuned as yours for such things. Is it just me?

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4 hours ago, Datameister said:

I'm seriously so excited right now. I've come to accept that I'm never going to enjoy Williams' more recent output quite as much as his classics, but new Williams is new Williams. Plus I've been wanting to hear what he would come up with for a theme park setting for ages. This piece is a cool start - again, nothing that I would say rivals his best work, but I still really like it.

 

Thank you so much for sharing the link!

 

Have you ever though that his most recent music cannot be classic already because... it is new. Only time will tell, I love all of them. 

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The video is almost exactly two minutes long, which is probably some kind of limit mandated by EW’s web editors to increase its viral potential. (Wouldn’t want the rubes to get bored...) I’m betting there’s more to it than this. 

 

 

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If we're talkin' Disney era, new Star Wars theme presentation concert arrangements, my personal ranking I just made up off the dome:

 

1. Rey's Theme

2. The Rebellion is Reborn

3. March of the Resistance

4. The Adventures of Han

5. The Jedi Steps

5. Galaxy's Edge theme, or whatever it's called

 

Far from bad, of course.  I'm sure it'll grow on me.

 

(before someone says something, I purposely did not include "The Jedi Steps & Finale."  I meant pieces which presented only new themes, with no reprisals of old stuff.)

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1 minute ago, Steve McQueen said:

You forgot the Adagio.

 

No official recording yet!  If it is not the Jedi Archive, it does not exist!

 

Sidenote:

 

Do I love The Rebellion is Reborn more than most here?  I don't have a good sense of the opinion on that.  I love The Rebellion is Reborn.

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2 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

No official recording yet!  If it is not the Jedi Archive, it does not exist!

 

Sidenote:

 

Do I love The Rebellion is Reborn more than most here?  I don't have a good sense of the opinion on that.  I love The Rebellion is Reborn.

Still in R2s memory banks, then?  

As for The Rebellion is Reborn, opinion here is divided generally along the lines of who liked TLJ or not.

I like it, but can't say I love it. 

For me, The Jedi Steps takes the top spot!

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9 minutes ago, Steve McQueen said:

Still in R2s memory banks, then?  

As for The Rebellion is Reborn, opinion here is divided generally along the lines of who liked TLJ or not.

I like it, but can't say I love it. 

For me, The Jedi Steps takes the top spot!

 

There should be a thumbs up reaction for posts.

 

:up:

 

11 minutes ago, King Mark said:

I love it too. It's my favorite "sequel" concert version

 

:up:

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1 hour ago, hornist said:

 

Have you ever though that his most recent music cannot be classic already because... it is new. Only time will tell, I love all of them. 

 

For sure. Some of my favorite music has taken years for me to start to appreciate, and I won't pretend to know what I'll think of Williams' current output in 30 years from now. I'm simply commenting that my particular brain at this particular moment in time gets more pleasure out of some of his old stuff than his new stuff. It's like comparing a delicious, familiar home-cooked favorite straight out of your childhood to an interesting new dish you try at a restaurant. One may be legitimately better than the other, but there's no avoiding the fact that our preferences are molded by the passage of time - and that early experiences can have a profound effect on what you enjoy later in life. I wonder, for example, what my musical tastes would be like now if not for the early exposure to Williams that I was fortunate enough to experience.

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It's pretty good. The main motif is ok, it reminds me a bit of Indiana Jones traveling across a desert and discovering ancient ruins or something. The orchestration is nice and bright but beyond a general "behold this awesome view!" feeling, it doesn't seem to express much.

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5 hours ago, Datameister said:

I'm also just gonna put this out there...I also vastly prefer the way the recording itself sounds over TLJ and especially TFA (even though ironically, I think TFA is Williams' strongest Star Wars work of the 2010s). It's of course a matter of personal taste, but for me, this is exactly why I wish the sequel scores could have been recorded with the LSO, even if it meant someone like Bill Ross conducting rather than Williams himself.

I couldn't agree more. It was the first thing I noticed, the recording...it sounds how I wish the sequel scores sounded.

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There was that article a few months ago that mentioned Williams would be writing the main theme and Giacchino would be doing some music for the park too.

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I think it got lost in all of the drama of reporting defective Dracula discs before ripping in EAC.

2 hours ago, Datameister said:

 

For sure. Some of my favorite music has taken years for me to start to appreciate, and I won't pretend to know what I'll think of Williams' current output in 30 years from now. I'm simply commenting that my particular brain at this particular moment in time gets more pleasure out of some of his old stuff than his new stuff. It's like comparing a delicious, familiar home-cooked favorite straight out of your childhood to an interesting new dish you try at a restaurant. One may be legitimately better than the other, but there's no avoiding the fact that our preferences are molded by the passage of time - and that early experiences can have a profound effect on what you enjoy later in life. I wonder, for example, what my musical tastes would be like now if not for the early exposure to Williams that I was fortunate enough to experience.

 

True, but I also think it's disingenuous for some here to either implicitly or explicitly devalue the perspectives of those who are not big fans of this new piece. There was a fair amount of Star Wars music from the last few years that I really got a kick out of when I heard it...this piece, not so much. Not to say my feelings can't change, but ultimately my feelings on this one are very much in line with how I feel about the middle stuff from the recent Star Wars scores. 

 

Like you, though, I do appreciate the sound of this one; I've been saying for months that with 2015 and 2017's scores, I can barely hear those great harmonies that John Williams has always spewed out like sweet nectar juice, it all sounds so...opaque...everything is so much more clear in this tune; I'm sure the recording plays a huge role.

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1 hour ago, Arpy said:

There was that article a few months ago that mentioned Williams would be writing the main theme and Giacchino would be doing some music for the park too.

 

Ah, totally forgot about that. So yep, I stand by what I said! :D

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8 hours ago, Holko said:

It's a bit like Gordy Haab's Battlefront - gets across the atmosphere but doesn't dig deeper into memorable melodies or have too much heart.

Which is funny, because Haab somehow evokes Williams style so well, especially Prequel-esque moments, and now this.

 

It's no Adventures of Han, but we just got another John Williams work and it was pretty well out of the blue. A great surprise and it's pretty good. Does sound a bit like a newsreel, but I think I like it. Looking forward to more material.

 

It really goes to show you how versatile JW is.

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5 Cat Studios - John Powell's studio - mixed this :)

 

It would be interesting if Williams is keeping the working relationship going with Powell, offering work to a tight-knit group of composers he trusts, along with Giacchino.

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Is it fair to say now that 2017-18 is the Year of the Major-Key Star Wars Theme?  Eighteen years since The Phantom Menace with nothing but a few seconds of Poe's Theme to tide us over, and now we get Rose, Solo, and Edge all in a row!

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1 hour ago, igger6 said:

Is it fair to say now that 2017-18 is the Year of the Major-Key Star Wars Theme?  Eighteen years since The Phantom Menace with nothing but a few seconds of Poe's Theme to tide us over, and now we get Rose, Solo, and Edge all in a row!

 

*pushes up glasses* Actually, Poe's theme, the new Solo themes, and much of today's Galaxy's Edge material are in minor keys. But technicalities aside, they certainly are more optimistic-sounding than a lot of the post-TPM material.

 

That being said, don't forget that (entirely unreleased) melody that Williams used for the arrivals on Coruscant and Utapau in ROTS - it's made up entirely of major chords!

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I recall reading an interview in the days of Episode I where Williams said he wrote an ALTERNATE Main Title to Ep I. Williams planned on giving the Prequel Trilogy it's own Theme and leaving the one we all know for the Original Trilogy. At the Ep I recording session it was played by the LSO for Lucas, who suggested re-using the original theme, only on the basis that the audience would expect to hear the original theme.

 

I often wondered if Williams "banked" that alternate theme and then withdrew it from the theme bank to use it for something else. Could this be it? Did it turn up somewhere else in the Prequel Trilogy? Or the new trilogy? Was it used for a non-SW project?

 

Mind boggled :) 

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It's hard to wrap my head around what he wrote. Theoretically he wrote something new as to avoid using Luke's Theme, given Luke wouldn't be in the trilogy until the final moments.

 

So then presumably he wrote a new Main Title using a prequel theme? But if so, which? Or was it just an entirely standalone theme with no relationship to anything else in the entire score? Seems unusual to me.

 

I'm sure if it was performed it was recorded, which means it might surface one day.

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Was it truly said by Williams himself? If not, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hoax. After all, SuperShadow (the early version of Mike Zeroh) was at his prime during that time, making up thousands of fake rumors regarding Episode 1, many of which were reported by the press.

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Does anyone find it odd that those original rumours had both Gia and Williams attached to write music, yet now Williams has been confirmed as composer but Gia is not mentioned anywhere?

 

Gotta wonder...

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

Does anyone find it odd that those original rumours had both Gia and Williams attached to write music, yet now Williams has been confirmed as composer but Gia is not mentioned anywhere?

 

Gotta wonder...

Not really. We knew that both were involved with Williams writing the main theme but only just now did they record his piece and share it. It seemed to me that the Williams piece was important as a stepping stone to sell the idea of the park along with visuals of it being constructed. 

 

As far as I'm concerned, Giacchino's, or whoever they go with, pieces will be recorded at a later date, when they have set rides and duration etc. 

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