Jacck

Nice recollection about TFA sessions:
 
http://www.jenniflute.com/news/star-wars-the-force-awakens/

Maybe you mean this little Hungarian minor figure? Like with the Prokofiev, the chromatic neighbour tones are the #4th and b6th.
 
           

WarHorse is a very fine movie, little old school but some very strong moments.

Rian Johnson is bringing Star Wars back to a human level!
 
We could all be Luke and Rey on LIDL's car park!

He basically filmed them so that they were as exciting as a cheap BBC period drama from the 90s.  God what I wouldn't have given for someone with the visual flair of Cuaron to bring some magic to those movies.  Anyway, all in the past now.  But for this new movie, it would have been great if they had given it to a new, more interesting director.

Truly one of the most ridiculous posters of my tenure here, it's turning out.  And no amount of posturing and faux-superiority/intellectualism and dismissals of "hype" can hide that.  No one takes issue with you not liking the theme.  But your "I'm defending my thesis" act, that's silly. 
 
Your arguments are flimsy, unconvincing, arrogant.  No one is reading your posts and nodding in agreement.  Whether you recognize this as indicative of faults in your thinking, or of the lower mental alacrity of everyone who isn't you, is up to you.  Though the latter choice makes it all the more entertaining for the rest of us. 

Thanks, here's the tweet:
 
 

Keep writing! Letting puzzles like this trigger your musical imagination is a wonderful exercise!
 
Williams "Kylo Ren" motifs are pretty tough to take on, though, as they're imbued with such an expert take on who that character is, and what he's about.
 
There's a very good reason why there's no fully fledged "big bad" Kylo Ren villain's march: Kylo Ren is a young, very conflicted character. The two motifs for him reflect both his ominous presence and the underlying tragedy of his transformation. 
 
The way we end up musically portraying characters and human characteristics has everything to do with our own sense of empathy, and our personal response, based on personal experience. 
 
Being a young composer, Kylo Ren very likely comes across as both "big" and "bad" to your mind, whereas Williams scores him the way he perceives him.

The first time Kylo Ren's theme plays over the theater speakers as his shuttle lands on Jakku is nothing short of amazing to me. I love how strong and clear his theme is. I get major ANH vibes from it. 

My arrangement of "March of the Resistance" for piano solo (from The Force Awakens):
 
 
Sheet music: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18637418/marchoftheresistance.pdf
 
Hope you all like it!

the later Potter films would make for a painfully dull live orchestra experience. 

 

Recording has started apparently!  
 
 

I really love the quirky action stuff from Follow Me / The Falcon. The 4/4 & 3/8 stuff (or whatever it is). To me, haromically and rhythmically it's markedly Goldsmithian. But with the character and Jazziness that Williams does so well. It feels so fresh and colourful to me. And clever. 
 
Also love Rey's Theme and have had it rattling around my head since I first heard it!
 
I'm not a huge fan of Scherzo for X-Wings in the concert cue, but the film presentation kind of opened me up to it. Very exciting. Also super fun to play. No one does those fluent, cool harmonic progressions amidst such kinetic activity quite like Williams manages. *swoon*

Yep nice!
 
Still amazed how much of the action is strings and brass for the most part. With very little of the usually piccolo runs, snares, xylophones etc.

 
There is almost no difference. They contain the same music and have almost same time length, except for the part with sustained strings right before the Force Theme horn solo, that is one second or less longer in the OST version.

I've been wondering if it's 4/4 & 3/8, or 3/4 & 5/8. Hard to tell maybe? 
 
One thought I had about the score overall is that Johnny baby seems to demonstrate an almost Mozartian restraint in his own personal way. Everything is just so, y'know? It does what it needs to without too much showing off or over-colouring/texturising (within the scope of SW). Herrmann would be proud!

 OMG! Where!?

The nature of Rey's theme, how there's a rhythmic identifier as well as a proper multi-sectioned theme which is adaptable to extreme differences in mood and settings, is my favorite part of the entire score.  That theme is what makes the score sound fresh and alive.

Examples like that are usually designed to work on a sub-conscious level. Through analysis we can appreciate this but its meant to subtly inform the emotion of the moment as its being watched.

 
This relates to a thought I had after my second viewing, which was whether or not Rey's Theme is distinctive enough as a hook, especially the first 6 notes standalone. For one thing, you only really get three big, loud statements of the full theme in the film (and one of them -- The Abduction -- is nearly buried under loads of explosions), plus some quieter statements, but otherwise a lot of its recognition rides on those first 6 notes. How much do they say by themselves, especially in "Ways of the Force"? When he starts spinning variations, of course WE know what we're listening for, but how many viewers will realize that this is Rey's theme for example?
 
 
 
 
It's a little unusual for this series. Normally, a Star Wars theme is pretty much always the same whenever it appears. There's nothing to figure out, it's instantly identifiable. But Rey's theme is treated with more flexibility than I can remember with the other core material in this franchise. That's appealing to me as an active listener, but I feel like this score required more investigation on my part than usual for Star Wars. What does that say? Is it clever or just confusing?
 
These subtle variations that are harder to pick up on...is it a good thing that we have to really strain to hear Han/Leia's theme in Torn Apart, or as a piece of film music should we have known it was there the instant Leia reacted? Or is it even important that we hear it?

The more complex or daring music is, or the more different it is from what you expect/want it to be, the more time it takes to understand and appreciate.  Familiarity breeds fondness.  I'm sure we all love some music that at first hearing made us raise our eyebrows.  I love that experience, it's very rewarding.  This also makes it very exciting to be a composer in the 21st century.  Write whatever you want, or improvise freely, and listen to it repeatedly.  What at first might seem like nonsense starts to make sense.  Part of that is good underlying musical instinct dictating even our "random" choices, but even more of it is just this weird thing that happens when even the strangest or most incoherent things suddenly take on great logic and meaning once you're exposed to them enough.  I suppose it's because beyond the actual scientific, physical reasons for the "sense" of tonality, there's no inherent meaning in sound, only what we put onto it ourselves.  And we can do that with any sounds, as long as we're familiar enough with them.
 
Incidentally, I think that's the current key to writing fresh and substantial music: being willing to grope along in the dark a little bit, not knowing where you're going or what the heck it's going to sound like exactly.  As familiar musical structures become more and more saturated with equally familiar rhetorical/dramatic/psychological meaning, you have to be open to the unfamiliar to say anything new or different.  Just as verbal language evolves and grows to fit new expressive needs, so does musical language.
 
As a fun experiment for anyone interested, consider this piece I just posted in the classical music thread.  I reckon it'll be at least "challenging" to anyone on a first listen.  But listen to it a number of times, even just small sections since it's long, and see if it doesn't start to make perfect sense.  Maybe it won't, and I'm full of shit, but let's find out definitively.
 
 
 

- The sickeningly awesome Lost World-esque trumpet statement at 1:25 of "I Can Fly Anything (FYC)" shortly followed by the triumphant statement of Poe's theme as the Tie Fighter escapes the inner workings of the Star Destroyer.

Every statement of Poe's theme. I Can Fly Anything as they blow up the laser cannons, The Resistance as he goes on a 10 kill streak, and The Journey Home as he flees the Starkiller with the rest of the Squad. Poe's theme is my favourite theme in the movie.
 
The first horn phrase when the Star Destroyer eclipses Jakku.
 
Rebel Fanfare at the Falcon reveal. The Rebel Fanfare is a great theme and it was used really well here.
 
The opening of The Resistance. My favourite scene with some great music.
 
Kylo's theme as he lands on Takodana.
 
The Abduction as Finn runs screaming "Rey! Rey!"
 
The first 1:20 of Ways of the Force on the FYC. Pretty much Scherzo for X-Wings but IMO better as it saves Luke's theme for some great moments. A great scene too as the X-Wings attack the trench. Poor Ello Atsy . . .
 
Kylo's second theme (6 notes, triplets I think, followed by a note a semitone below) as he shows up in the forest on Starkiller.
 
Han and Leia's theme at the end of The Journey Home. Honestly the only moment in the score that makes me tear up when listening to it.
 
 

Finn running toward Kylo kidnapping Rey. Great tracking shot with a powerful rendition of her theme.