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Jerry Goldsmith's Night Crossing - New Complete Edition from Intrada


Jay

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it's a bit confusing as some film score fans only care about how the music works in the film (associated with the images) vs how the music works by itself as pure music

It's probably the biggest divide when arguing with someone on the internet about a film score

It's easy to boil it down to this:

Yes, scores need to work with film. That's their purpose.

However, they are also MUSIC and can be judged as music. The Rite of Spring is never performed as ballet these days and yet nobody moans about it being stripped off meaning. Most classical music was either written to accompany someone's dinner. Or mass, or important event. And even then people often complained the music was too loud/complicated, hence they can't talk over it (Beethoven got a lot of hate for it, apparently). So yeah, all music, except modern pop (in the broad understanding of the word) was written to some specific context in mind. Which doesn't make it any worse without it. Good writing is good writing. Films, as Bernard Herrmann once put, don't need good music to work. But there's no excuse for poor craftsmanship, if you ask me.

Karol

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One must also hold in mind that once you've seen the film you will always connect the music with the images - which especially in Jerry Goldsmith's case often is more detriment than improvement. The new release sounds spectacular, btw.

One certainly affects the other—though I think I would disagree that a person will always connect the music with the images from its inspiring film. That's usually how it starts if you've seen the movie, but there does come a time when the music can stand on its own. Actually, it's very possible to bring other variables into the mix that will eventually cultivate an association with something completely different from the movie that inspired it. (This is especially true when we can find a better use for it than the crappy movies Jerry was so often called upon to save!)

For instance . . . there was a time when I was collecting scores and listening to them in order to inspire story and film ideas of my own. In some cases the association between a score an my stories grew stronger than that between the score and it's original film (even if I'd seen it).

I also used to "score" other stories (including some of my own written works) with music from a number of different movies. The largest project I undertook was to compile a musical score to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in their entirety—not the movies (this was back in the 90s), but the books themselves. I found a piece to fit with just about every scene and character of significance in the novels. It wound up being a collection of nine and a half hours of music, with an 80-page booklet of liner notes to go with it. It was purely for fun, but there was a time when (again) I had a stronger mental link between a piece of music and its accompanying scene in LOTR than with the original movie.

I think music most strongly associates itself with whatever context we teach our minds to use it with—whether that's the original movie, a "borrowed" usage, a personal event, or simply as a great composition in its own right.

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At least in NIGHT CROSSING's case, i am not able to shake off images of lethargic east german Wartburg cars crawling along the screen to Goldsmith's brutal and relentless brass/drum attacks that seem to score an unstoppable machine of bottomless malovelence - talk about lowering your expectations.

Upon revisiting this score it again figures that JG even used the danger theme before Horner did. And what's more, he just did it once!

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The new release sounds spectacular, btw.

Better than the old one? Because that sounded fine.

It is the cross polination of sound and image that works to a different degree in different films and scores and it most often dictates how much I consider the film inseparable part of the experience. Sometimes the film takes away from the experience and sometimes it uplifts the whole thing to another level neither could attain on its own.

There are times when it seems like a film must be great because of the music, and when you actually see it, it's not just a big disappointment, but also the music in certain scenes doesn't work nearly as well as you thought it would. And yet I don't think I've ever let that affect my enjoyment of the music on its own.

Rather, there are cases where the music seems to fulfil the potential of a film while the actual film fails. A good example for me is The Omen. It's a good film, I guess, but whenever I see it, I'm disappointed. Because in my mind it seems that the concept is so much more than the sum of the film's parts. And when listening to just the score, I get a glimpse of what it should have been.

Good writing is good writing. Films, as Bernard Herrmann once put, don't need good music to work. But there's no excuse for poor craftsmanship, if you ask me.

Indeed.

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I thought The Omen was scary

Did it live up to the score? ;)

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The new release sounds spectacular, btw.

Better than the old one? Because that sounded fine.

 

 

No real need to upgrade, just the brass is more piercing now and the ambience of the drums and snares seems beefed up. I like it.

 

A suite courtesy of me...listen before Di$ney strikes out.

 

 

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No real need to upgrade, just the brass is more piercing now and the ambience of the drums and snares seems beefed up. I like it.

I already ordered it anyway.

Now bring on Secret of NIMH. That one should sound amazing with a little remastering (the old release already sounds very good but has an awful lot of noise).

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I just got the album and am listening to it for the first time. I am just listening to the First Flight. Absolutely fantastic! This music truly soars! :)

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  • 2 years later...
10 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Perhaps one day we'll get another release with fixed audio. Although they never acknowledged the audio issues in the first place.

What audio issues? To my ears the Intrada disc sounded just fine.

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So come on Marian! Release us from this suspense! What is the sound issue?!!!

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23 hours ago, Jay said:

Are you talking about what they acknowledged right here, or something else?

 

No, no that. There's a periodic clicking noise every 10 or 20 seconds or so throughout at least many tracks, perhaps the entire disc (I've never listened to the whole thing concentrating on it, because I don't want to be even more aware of it than I already am). Probably not noticeable via speakers, but when listening to headphones, once you've heard it it's pretty hard to ignore. Doing a frequency analysis shows spikes where these pops occur.

 

I contacted Intrada about it when I got my disc, they said they couldn't confirm it but sent me a replacement disc in any case. The replacement has the same issue, which leads me to assume that every disc has it. I sent a friend a few clips and he confirmed it. He was going to try and clean them up, but never finished it, which in turn led me to forget about getting back to Intrada and notifying them that the issue persists. Apparently nobody else noticed it, so I didn't make too big a thing of it.

 

It bothers me every time I play it via headphones, so I don't listen to it often. It's a shame, because it's one of the great Goldsmith scores, and in all other regards the release is great, and sounds better than the old one, except for the pops, obviously.

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Well,  if I were you I would have emailed them and said the replacement discs still had pops.  Maybe they accidentally mailed you a first pressing and not a repressing. 

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It didn't seem like my pops are the same issue that they discovered in the first pressing, and it would be quite odd if they sent me the wrong disc as a replacement. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though - could anyone send me or link me to a lossless clip of one track from this release? (And if that sounds fine, I'll just look around for a rip of the full album - should be cheaper for Intrada than if they'd sent me another replacement, too).

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Think I can hear what you're referring to. It might be just some studio noise, or something to do with master tapes. Maybe the new remaster just simply made it more apparent?

 

God, this is a great score, isn't it? This thread bump reminded ne of this album. It got somewhat lost in the flood of all those releases.

 

Karol

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It reoccurs throughout many tracks or the whole disc with a fixed interval, and it's not there on the old release. Certainly not a studio noise or anything actually recorded. It must be an artifact of the remastering or production process.

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This is what I hear in the track Plans. That's a screenshot that friend made for me two years ago when I first discovered the issue (I've never learned how to do that kind of stuff with Audacity, and don't have other tools). The very thin vertical lines match the clicks I get on both my original and replacement discs.

 

spectrum_analysis.jpg

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Well, I can certainly hear what you mean.

 

There's this one artifact in track 7 of The Adventures of Tintin that drives me mad. And it's not exclusive to my disc. ;)

 

Karol

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I am happy I can't hear this thing while listening to the disc on my stereo at least. :)

 

3 minutes ago, crocodile said:

Well, I can certainly hear what you mean.

 

There's this one artifact in track 7 of The Adventures of Tintin that drives me mad. And it's not exclusive to my disc. ;)

 

Karol

Isn't that a performance flub rather?

 

The Book Thief pressing also had an actual mistake in Learning to Write. Sloppy work.

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2 hours ago, crocodile said:

There's this one artifact in track 7 of The Adventures of Tintin that drives me mad. And it's not exclusive to my disc. ;)

 

If I've noticed it I can't remember it. But one-time artifacts or flubs are one thing. I even get used to them (I don't know if it was just my disc or the whole pressing, but one of the action tracks on the orginal Star Trek: The Final Frontier album had a pop. I still expect to hear that whenever I play the new release.

 

But recurring artifacts can drive me really mad.

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  • 1 year later...

Has anyone who has the newest Intrada release of Night Crossing noticed any audio problems when the loud parts set in? On my CD there are very quiet clicking(?) noises spread over tracks like First Flight. These noises are definitely not inherent in the recording and they are audible every now and then, but only during the loud parts whereas the quiet parts are fine.  I just want to know whether it's a problem of the pressing in general or whether it's just an issue with my copy.

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5 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

Has anyone who has the newest Intrada release of Night Crossing noticed any audio problems when the loud parts set in? On my CD there are very quiet clicking(?) noises spread over tracks like First Flight. These noises are definitely not inherent in the recording and they are audible every now and then, but only during the loud parts whereas the quiet parts are fine.  I just want to know whether it's a problem of the pressing in general or whether it's just an issue with my copy.

 

Like in The Post?

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4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Like in The Post?

I don't have that on CD. It's not the clicking of an instrument in the recording, it's seems to be a pressing error. "Clicking" is not the best word to describe it.

 

4 hours ago, crocodile said:

@Marian Schedenig is obsessed with those noises!

In this case, they're really conspicuous and annoying, because they appear very often.

 

It would be very kind, if someone who has the CD let me know whether the same issue occurs on his/her copy.

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4 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

Has anyone who has the newest Intrada release of Night Crossing noticed any audio problems when the loud parts set in? On my CD there are very quiet clicking(?) noises spread over tracks like First Flight. These noises are definitely not inherent in the recording and they are audible every now and then, but only during the loud parts whereas the quiet parts are fine.  I just want to know whether it's a problem of the pressing in general or whether it's just an issue with my copy.

 

They're spikes in regular intervals that show up clearly on the frequency spectrum. They were not on the previous CD release. Something must have happened to the audio files in the digital domain. I notified Intrada when I noticed, but even though they sent me a replacement copy just to be sure (which has exactly the same problems), they claimed everything is alright. I posted about it here back then, but except for a friend who analysed the audio files, nobody seemed to take notice. Sadly, I find the CD unlistenable with headphones.

4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Like in The Post?

 

What's in The Post? I remember there were complaints about noises, but I never noticed anything on my CD.

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So this means they are on every CD. :(

This is really sad. Except this issue the release is perfect, but this problem kind of spoils the experience when you turn up your stereo system.

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1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

What's in The Post? I remember there were complaints about noises, but I never noticed anything on my CD.

 

Very high frequency ticks. Beware - once you hear it, you cannot un-hear it.

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15 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Very high frequency ticks. Beware - once you hear it, you cannot un-hear it.

It's the same with Night Crossing.

 

A quote from Roger Feigelson at the FSM forum:

It's not a defect -- the clicks are on the previous release as well (all though not quite as noticeable because the new release has higher resolution). These are inherent in the recording and can't be removed

So nobody has to wait for an improvement, because there will be no improvement. Apart from that Night Crossing is one of the best sounding recordings ever.

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16 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

What's in The Post? I remember there were complaints about noises, but I never noticed anything on my CD.

I've spent hours pouring over the score, can't hear any of the clicks either.

 

It's a bummer these things persist today, it was probably something they couldn't detect until it was too late.

 

 

 

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