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The Adventures of Tintin MUSIC Discussion thread


Jay

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There's one thing, though: it feels incomplete, as if all the ideas presented needed more breathing space and are somewhat cut off before they could get their moment in the sun.

Yeah I think that's where I'm getting at. It remains to be seen if microedits and album presentation are at fault

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There's one thing, though: it feels incomplete, as if all the ideas presented needed more breathing space and are somewhat cut off before they could get their moment in the sun.

That I agree with. As an album it's lacking a satisfying arc. As I said earlier though - I tend to cherry-pick what I want with these things and on that account I can say I'm very pleased with it.

Of course, I'm sure Thor will say the ost presentation is PERFECT.

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Don't worry guys, i will make a complete report Sunday after i have seen the film.

Is it out throughout Europe on Sunday? If it is I'm there.

Only here in Belgium i guess.

It's the Flemish version though. But they don't show the English version in the morning.

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Of course, I'm sure Thor will say the ost presentation is PERFECT.

Well, since specially trained experts with with decades of experience in the scholarly field of 'Soundtrack Album Producing' have confected it, how couldn't it be?

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Great analysis, Incanus! It really shows that you already spent much time digging into the depths of the score :)

One thing I think I can add is a hidden foreshadowing of Haddock's theme in track 5 ("Marlinspike Hall"). Starting at roughly 2:40, there are several statements of a melodic idea (first on celesta, then on strings) with a familiar rythmic structure, that seems to be closely related to the theme. Here is the original Haddock theme, stepwise transformed into this melodic idea:

haddock-all.png

Interestingly, this idea also bears close resemblance to the final phrase of the original theme, with the two descending groups of 3 exchanged, and with a similar (filled in) motion from dominant (a) to tonic (d):

haddock-end.png

(Click on the images for midi samples)

I guess that this disguised variation hints at a (later to be revealed) connection between the Hall and Haddock :)

(Of course, I could be wrong, no way to know until seeing the film ;))

Disclaimer: Notation samples are not necesserily in the same key as the recording.

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Can't wait for Sunday!!

BTW, I thought the movie opened on Wednesday. How do you get to see it on Sunday?

EDIT: Posted before I saw you had already answered

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In a way I hope all the good music is on the OST

Because I suspect what was left off will never, ever be released

I fully expect lots of it to show up on the menus and special features of the DVD, like with KOCS.

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In a way I hope all the good music is on the OST

Because I suspect what was left off will never, ever be released

I fully expect lots of it to show up on the menus and special features of the DVD, like with KOCS.

Yes I hope there is a collection of animatic sequences with their original unedited score and no SFXs. ;)

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(i will be sitting in the middle of the theater).

I had to edit the rest of your post. You can't talk about that on the main board, man!

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Great analysis, Incanus! It really shows that you already spent much time digging into the depths of the score :)

One thing I think I can add is a hidden foreshadowing of Haddock's theme in track 5 ("Marlinspike Hall"). Starting at roughly 2:40, there are several statements of a melodic idea (first on celesta, then on strings) with a familiar rythmic structure, that seems to be closely related to the theme. Here is the original Haddock theme, stepwise transformed into this melodic idea:

haddock-all.png

Interestingly, this idea also bears close resemblance to the final phrase of the original theme, with the two descending groups of 3 exchanged, and with a similar (filled in) motion from dominant (a) to tonic (d):

haddock-end.png

(Click on the images for midi samples)

I guess that this disguised variation hints at a (later to be revealed) connection between the Hall and Haddock :)

(Of course, I could be wrong, no way to know until seeing the film ;))

Disclaimer: Notation samples are not necesserily in the same key as the recording.

Holy hell man! That's amazing! You're awesome for discovering that, and Williams is a genius for doing that! Wow!

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A really great find Chris! :) Yet another thread connected through the score! I thougth that unique passage sounded familiar.

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Yea! I noted that passage as being a possible theme, but then it never popped up anywhere else so I dismissed it. I never noticed it was Haddock's Theme backwards!

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I'm going to love this discussion. Those few very vocal people crapping all over on the great Deathly Hallows Part 1 score for not approaching it like Williams - and now Williams is taking pretty much the same approach in Tintin.

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Tintin is EVERYTHING like Deathly Hallows Part 1. There's a plethora of themes, but all of them are popping up as motifs and variations all of the time, rather than as straightforward themes over several measures - and take some time to be properly recognized.

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All the TIntin themes are instantly recognizable and memorable.

I've seen DHpart1 twice and listened to the CD once and couldn't tell you what a single theme from the score sounded like

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All the TIntin themes are instantly recognizable and memorable.

I've seen DHpart1 twice and listened to the CD once and couldn't tell you what a single theme from the score sounded like

Yeah I can't say Desplat is in Williams' league when it comes to writing themes, very few are.

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All the TIntin themes are instantly recognizable and memorable.

I've seen DHpart1 twice and listened to the CD once and couldn't tell you what a single theme from the score sounded like

The motifs in both scores are equally recognizable. (But that's not even the point entirely, I was more talking about the approach.)

1) I have no problem identifying all the themes in Desplat's score, like many others here.

2) You've already forgotten how there were loads of members confused about what exactly the theme was in some of the Tintin samples. It's easy if you've got the sheet music a year beforehand. In the meantime you've got people complaining about some MV characteristics and about no concert arrangement and clear-cut thematic statements. Where have we heard that before :)

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They mean like a Captain America march that was lacking from that album. That kind of in-your-face arrangement.

That kind of thing that they later record for compilations.

Karol

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Anyone else noticing that the Unicorn theme and part of the beginning of Tintin's primary theme have a similarity? If I put them in the same key:

Unicorn: B, D, F#, G, F

Tintin: F#, B, F#, G, D

Especially the way they sound starting on the B of each phrase, a similar up and down. I immediately felt like there is an intentional correlation, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Just go by how they sound. It's like the Unicorn theme is a haunted version of Tintin's own theme.

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Do people think the changeover from "Introducing The Thompsons" to "Snowy's Chase" happens at 2:11 or 2:16?

Well it could be either way really. There could be that 5 second build up to the dramatic bad guy chords or it could start straight with them. I watched the clip quickly but will try to listen to it later with more time and diligence. There is too much dialogue etc. over it for me to spot the opening immeadiately.

Anyone else noticing that the Unicorn theme and part of the beginning of Tintin's primary theme have a similarity? If I put them in the same key:

Unicorn: B, D, F#, G, F

Tintin: F#, B, F#, G, D

Especially the way they sound starting on the B of each phrase, a similar up and down. I immediately felt like there is an intentional correlation, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Just go by how they sound. It's like the Unicorn theme is a haunted version of Tintin's own theme.

Yes that connection seems to be quite clearly there. I think some of us were mixing the two themes in the preview samples on various sites because they had chosen the clips so that you could hear only the most subtle Unicorn theme renditions which can be easily mistaken for Tintin's theme.

I would think that Williams very deliberately connects the hero and the McGuffin in a musical way here. It is almost like the Unicorn theme sparks the Tintin theme out of the protagonist because he goes after it. :)

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That's fair. I've certainly been disappointed on things on the first listen and grew to like them. I had assumed you had listened to it more than once by now

I had that with HP1... I now consider it a top 10 JW score. ;)

Not to hijack the discussion, but wow. No amount of listening could ever convince me that any of Williams's HP scores belong among his top 10. The underscore for the first Potter film in particular is among his most tedious for any action-adventure film, and, on the whole, the themes -- as many as there are -- pale in comparison not just with Golden Age Williams but with nearly anything he wrote between 1989 and 1993.

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That's fair. I've certainly been disappointed on things on the first listen and grew to like them. I had assumed you had listened to it more than once by now

I had that with HP1... I now consider it a top 10 JW score. ;)

Not to hijack the discussion, but wow. No amount of listening could ever convince me that any of Williams's HP scores belong among his top 10. The underscore for the first Potter film in particular is among his most tedious for any action-adventure film, and, on the whole, the themes -- as many as there are -- pale in comparison not just with Golden Age Williams but with nearly anything he wrote between 1989 and 1993.

Well, it's at number 10. ;)

1. Star Wars

2. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

3. Schindler's List

4. Raiders Of The Lost Ark

5. Superman The Movie

6. The Empire Strikes Back

7. Jaws

8. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

9. Jurassic Park

10. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone

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Do people think the changeover from "Introducing The Thompsons" to "Snowy's Chase" happens at 2:11 or 2:16?

Well it could be either way really. There could be that 5 second builp up to the dramatic bad guy chords or it could start straight with them. I watched the clip quickly but will try to listen to it later with more time and diligence. There is too much dialogue etc. over it for me to spot the opening immeadiately.

Anyone else noticing that the Unicorn theme and part of the beginning of Tintin's primary theme have a similarity? If I put them in the same key:

Unicorn: B, D, F#, G, F

Tintin: F#, B, F#, G, D

Especially the way they sound starting on the B of each phrase, a similar up and down. I immediately felt like there is an intentional correlation, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Just go by how they sound. It's like the Unicorn theme is a haunted version of Tintin's own theme.

Yes that connection seems to be quite clearly there. I think some of us were mixing the two themes in the preview samples on various sites because they had chosen the clips so that you could hear only the most subtle Unicorn theme renditions which can be easily mistaken for Tintin's theme.

I would think that Williams very deliberately connects the hero and the McGuffin in a musical way here. It is almost like the Unicorn theme sparks the Tintin theme out of the protagonist because he goes after it. :)

It's even more obvious if you listen to the beginning of "The Return to Marlinspike Hall and Finale" when the two themes are back to back.

I haven't been following any of the discussion of the themes and didn't hear the score until today, so I'm sorry if this particular theme relationship was already pointed out. It's all new to me, I'm just trying to get caught up.

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True. Have you noted the secondary Tintin idea that seems to pop on some tracks which both Jason and I mention in our analysis and listing? The B theme for Tintin? It is also alluded to in The Adventures of Tintin track quite few times but only expanded in the underscore.

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True. Have you noted the secondary Tintin idea that seems to pop on some tracks which both Jason and I mention in our analysis and listing? The B theme for Tintin? It is also alluded to in The Adventures of Tintin track quite few times but only expanded in the underscore.

I first noticed it after hearing tracks 5 and 6 because it was fresh in my mind. The first quote in track 5 was slow, so I had time to soak it in, then it's the first thing to come up in track 6, this time with some speed and flight. I didnt initially associate it with Tintin though since I didnt look at the track titles, and don't know the story that well.

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True. Have you noted the secondary Tintin idea that seems to pop on some tracks which both Jason and I mention in our analysis and listing? The B theme for Tintin? It is also alluded to in The Adventures of Tintin track quite few times but only expanded in the underscore.

I first noticed it after hearing tracks 5 and 6 because it was fresh in my mind. The first quote in track 5 was slow, so I had time to soak it in, then it's the first thing to come up in track 6, this time with some speed and flight. I didnt initially associate it with Tintin though since I didnt look at the track titles, and don't know the story that well.

Yes I did not link it with Tintin either until I listened to the 1st track a couple of more times and realized it was repeated in fragments there.

And yes there is a lot to catch up since we have been discussing the themes and the score for a surprisingly long time now, the album confirming some speculation and rebuffing the other. But it is always fun to spot the connections and interrelations between musical ideas and how they might relate to the story telling. This music is again strong enough to carry on its own and it tells its own tale very vividly. Williams ideas are on the album so solid that you can by only rudimentary knowledge of the film or its plot to chart the course of the film pretty accurately.

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HPSS is definitely top 10 Williams

Not a chance. I can name at least eight scores Williams produced between 1989 and 1993 that are far and away superior (and, yes, Far and Away is one of them).

I like HPSS more than Superman.

Second half of Superman, sure. First half, no way.

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I like HPSS more than Superman.

Second half of Superman, sure. First half, no way.

:up:

The thing with JW is that a lot of his output sounds like top 10, "masterpiece" material. But in a top 10 there's only room for 10!

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To bring it back to Tintin, based on what I've heard, I already know it's going to get a bunch more listens in my player than the first Potter soundtrack. It doesn't appear to have any knockout moments of melodic bliss, as HP1 admittedly does, but the underscore is far more consistently interesting and listenable.

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The Adventures of Tintin the Secret of the Unicorn – An analysis of the Original Soundtrack Album

...

Wow! :blink::thumbup:

Excellent!

I read people discussing how some of the themes blend into each other and feel similar. Unicorn's theme seems almost like an inversion of Tintin's own theme. I wonder why Williams chose to do that.

:lol: Again with the inversion!

Wasn't Voldemort's Theme an inversion of one of Harry's themes too?

Do people think the changeover from "Introducing The Thompsons" to "Snowy's Chase" happens at 2:11 or 2:16?

Does this video help at all?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFt8OpMTEnk

I am pretty sure, at 2:11. The short bit 2:11-2:16 perfectly captures the sense of a foggy, languid morning... until Snowy bursts onto the scene...

(But of course I could be wrong; I haven't seen the movie yet.)

Just a few words for now, as I have very little time--I hope to express more elaborate thoughts in a future post.

I'm totally jazzed about this score. I don't know if this is the result of three and a half years of absence from film scoring scene, but it's clear that Williams poured a lot of enthusiasm into this venture. There are very few composers who are able to give me the same sense of pure joy and excitement like Williams does and he succeded another time with me.

It's a delightful score, almost with a Mozart-ian touch in it, while being extremely well-crafted and thought-out at the same time. At 80 years old, Williams is still having a lot of fun at his job and this joy is clearly evident in every note. Even the usually great LA session players seem to give something more in their playing.

Any kind of comparison with the majority (if not the totality) of his contemporary peers into the film score world is absolutely useless--Williams plays into a league of his own and we should probably held him up along classical masters like Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Copland and Bernstein, or top film composers like Korngold, Rozsa, Herrmann, Waxman and Goldsmith.

I'll let to other more opinionated fellows express the marvel of single cues or the usual minutiae analysis.

All I will say for now is: Thank you Maestro. You're still the greatest.

Perfectly well said! I agree with you; I am totally in love with this score. This is JW in top form... and evidently Spielberg too, since his movie offers so many opportunies for JW's music to shine.

By the way, I really love Snowy's Theme (the track). I have given some thought to the up and down motif that represents Snowy, and at first I thought it was Snowy "jumping up and down" or even yipping (as Jason put it), but it might also represent Snowy just wagging his tail, excited about the adventure. This deceptively simple motif seems to express so much: cuteness, loyalty, slight clumsiness, overeagerness, etc. In the track, I am absolutely blown away by that short section 1:00-1:10, which has been adapted from the cue "Snowy's Chase": the careful use of the timpani (only 2 hits at the right strategic moments), the masterful interplay between strings and the piano. I must have listened to that alone 10 times already. What that section seems to say is, "Yes, Snowy is cute and slightly clumsy and all that, but when there's real danger, Snowy's more than up to meet the challange!" I just love how JW's music seems to tell entire little stories or anecdotes, even in such brief snippets; he sure does it better than anybody else.

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The theme at 01:56 to 1:08 from track 4 is a solving the mystery theme.

The Eastern theme is the theme for Rackham's Treasure.

Snowy's Chase indeed starts at 2:11 of track 4.

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