Jacck

The entire cue "The Abduction" is fantastic, but especially the second half.

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*

 
It's my favourite cue from the score. You gotta love the Midway/AOTC references here and there, and the classic bVI chord at the end.

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*

BTW, it's great to have you posting again, Jack! Here's me thinking you'd stick to mysteriously 'liking' posts but never appearing. 
 
 

 
Good!
 
The only nom it wouldn't have deserved...

Yeah, the Star Destroyer environment for the TIE Fighter escape was especially well done. Never registered that some of those shots were entirely CG.
 
I think the Rathtars, Snoke, Maz, and some of the busier aerial fight/destruction shots were the only bits where it would really enter my mind that it was CG while watching it. They did a nice job overall keeping it simple, not trying too hard to impress or cram the frame, no gimmicky shit like the camera zooming up from the ground and inside an X-Wing or something, or giving you a ridiculous number of angles which reminds you that it's impossible. The TIE Fighter sinking into the desert, for example, there's something nicely restrained about that effect and how it just plays in two simple wide shots that look like cross coverage and giving a clear perspective, plus the natural environment...you know it's fake, but there's part of you like "Well, maybe they could have pulled it off...."  and things like the sound design added to the believability of stuff like that. 
 
Also the shot of Maz's castle destroying at 5:20 is one that I really appreciate. You get two shots of it, technically only one since they're both from the same POV (just intercut with Rey's reaction) and in the same shot you also get Kylo's ship arriving. Most blockbusters these days would have given you like a dozen shots of the destruction from various angles (high, low, interior etc) and then Kylo's ship would have had at least like 3 or 4 different angles on it. It's just overkill, whereas this creates an illusion of a HUGE shot that they had to capture the first time, with a clear perspective of how big and imposing Kylo's ship looks coming in. Visually it carries more weight. Also having Rey in the foreground keeps it entirely from her perspective so it's less impersonal than just throwing a bunch of cool VFX at you, same with Finn always in frame with the TIE Fighter. Good stuff!

THE FYC IS LOSSLESS.
 

We should be thankful that for the first time, the piano book of a Star Wars score isn't just the family-friendly concert suites, but contains really interesting stuff. Actual cues, with clusters! Shit, I'm getting emotional here.

OK, so the OST track Rey meets BB8:
 
First of all, it's clear that this OST track combines 2 cues from 2 different parts of the movie.
 
0:00-1:10 is the first and 1:10-end is the second.  Actually the final note of the first cue begins at 1:07 and fades out for a while, but at 1:10 the second cue begins while its fading.
 
The cue from 1:10-end is absolutely the cue I call "Informants".  It plays in the film in Maz's cantina, as a Resistance member and a First Order member each send a message out to their group that the droid has been spotted.  I am positive this isn't tracked, and this is the intended music for that scene, used properly in the film, and Williams chose to combine it with another cue for listening experience on the OST.
 
So, about the 0:00-1:10 part....  parts of it is used in both the scene where Rey and BB8 meet AND the scene at the very end of the movie when R2 wakes up and projects the map to the room.  Well after some careful analysis, I've decided its absolutely intended for that end scene, and was TRACKED into the Rey/BB8 meeting scene in the final cut of the film.
 
In that end scene, the bulk of the cue is used before it segues to "Rey's Trip", with some small changes.  What appears in the OST track from 0:29-0:34 is gone, replaced by different music that's a little longer.  If you grab the FYC track "Farewell and the Trip", you'll see 0:00-0:29 of each match each other, then 0:29-0:38 is the weird new music that replaced the OST section I just mentioned.  I say "weird" because it doesn't sound like a natural edit to me; I think this might not be a proper Williams Insert, but actually TRACKED music from somewhere else (ie some unreleased cue or unreleased version of some cue that we don't have).  It just sounds so weird on the FYC here (Of course, it could be a proper insert that just got edited weirdly, no way to really be sure).
 
Now, the scene where Rey meets BB8, well in that scene 0:24-1:00 of the OST track is used, before it segues to something else entirely (unreleased) as the movie transitions from Jakku back up to Ren's Star Destroyer.  WELL, I'm pretty sure that that ending music is the only remnant left of Williams' intended music for the scene, the rest of it having been replaced by that chunk of "R2 Shows The Map".  I think the filmmakers just really liked that Map music and felt it worked in the Rey/BB8 scene and that was that.
 
Now, as for why the track has that name on the OST:  Well, I think Williams liked the cue, but didn't like having it at the end of the album - as much as the music works in the film there, it really disrupts the generally somber and serious nature of the rest of the end of the score.  I think he combined it with the "Informants" music because it sounds good like that.  Perhaps the combined track originally had a different name, and appeared elsewhere in the program, but once the majority of the cue ended up tracked into the earlier scene, "Rey Meets BB8" was the name assigned to the OST track and it was placed roughly chronologically where that scene goes.  Who knows.
 
That's what I think, though.
 
The only thing I haven't figured out is 2:05-2:13 of the OST track "Farewell and the Trip".  It's clear that 0:00-2:05 is that track is one cue, what the FYC calls "The Journey Home", covering Chewie picking up Ren, them all leaving The Starkiller, it turning into a star, and them all arriving back at the Resistance base.  And that 2:13-end is "Farewell and the Trip", covering everything that happens in the final moments of the movie after the map scene (Rey and Chewie leaving the Resistance base and traveling to Luke's planet).  But the music from 2:05-2:13 isn't used in the film at all.  I definitely don't think its an unused ending of "The Journey Home"; That FYC seems to definitely have the true clean ending of that.  It could be an unused opening of "Rey's Trip".  Listening to the way the FYC track segues "R2 Shows The Map" to "Rey's Trip", it almost sounds like they looped a bit of the ending of the former, arriving later into the latter than originally intended.  Not sure.
 
 
 
That's all I got for now!

Cues?  I think you mean songs, friend.

 
Since always, though an alarming number of people cannot tell somehow.

But that's actually how politics work!
People talking and lobbying endlessly trying to gain an upper hand over the "other side".
 
Politics isn't about taking action, it's about hedging bets, spinning webs. Revolution is usually the antithesis of politics.
 
Lucas got that very richt actually.
He just didn't make it very interesting.

Or one of his best ever love themes being written for one of the worst executed love stories in cinematic history. 

That's something I have considered.  In the prequels, Williams was compensating.  Now he is supporting.

I also love how 
 

Based on what I've been able to get from interviews with JW, JJ and others, as well as face-to-face conversations with people who would know, the process on TFA for JW was a departure from his usual way of scoring films, the result being there was never one DEFINITIVE version of the score written.  For one thing, he scored the movie one reel at a time, starting with reel 1 and progressing linearly through the film, which he never would otherwise do. 
 
Secondly, he rewrote cues to fit picture changes instead of having the music editor cut them to fit the film, at least until there simply wasn't time to write and record any more revisions.  So if JJ added fifteen seconds to a sequence, JW would look at the addition and perhaps completely rewrite the cue, or instead fashion an insert to cover the new material.  So, as he was doing reel 2 he'd also pick up any bits that needed to be revised for Reel 1.   As reel 3 was being recorded, he'd go back and revise r1 and r2.  etc.
 
Now, since there was recording being done right up to the last minute, my guess is that a lot of the OST would favor music recorded earlier in the process.  Something like the OST version of "Snoke" might be a cue written for an earlier version of the film that no longer really relates to the final Snoke scenes in the film.  Much like the conveyor belt cue from AOTC, which I believe was written, at best, to an animatic, and not to anything resembling a cut of the actual scene, there may be music on the OST that is impossible to reconcile with any scene shot-for-shot in the final film.
 
Now, the FYC, if JW has followed the Academy rules, must contain the film versions of cues, with no concert versions, suites or such.  It does not have to be COMPLETE, but it must match the movie with what it does contain, similiar to an isolated score track.  I have not been able to verify that it does, but as I said, it SHOULD.
 
(UPDATE: Since the making of this film and it's score was so fluid, it's possible JW wrote "Rey Meets BB8" for that scene, then as the editors were cutting the later reels, they were using music they had from earlier reels as temp.  So perhaps they partly tracked "Rey Meets BB8" into the R2 waking scene and Williams made a new cue using the same material for a number of bars or pages before taking it off in a different direction.  We see examples of this in his conductors score and sketches for AOTC and ROTS, where he literally cut-and-pasted Hal Leonard "Throne Room and End Titles" pages into the score, or instructed the orchestrator to copy measures from another cue or ver of a cue.)
 
In my opinion, if one is going to try to build a definitive, comprehensive cd of the score, it's going to be challenging because of the way the music was created for this film....
 

He's not exactly a celebrity, but I was not sure where else to put this; former LSO managing director and cellist Clive Gillinson talks about playing cello on the original Star Wars score:
 
http://www.carnegiehall.org/BlogPost.aspx?id=4295019067&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=starwars&sourceCode=22359
 
 
 

I am going to point out that around the point that Follow Me and The Falcon combine, there is wierd crossfade/layering going on
I am going to point out that around the point that Follow Me and The Falcon combine, there is wierd crossfade/layering going on

R2 showing the map is the first 1:10 of FYC 22 Farewell and The Trip
 
But there's debate if that music was intended for that scene, or intended for the scene where Rey meets BB8 and was tracked into the R2 map scene.
 
 
 
 
~
 
OK, I've put a simple comparison up in Spreadsheet form.  Note two tabs, one has color!
 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rDuRXT-67ETwF2cy4lNkgp5AV_QcIDivxUwCLtLOGfg/pubhtml
 
Hopefully at some point I'll have time to do a Detailed comparison showing where the differences are within each track, but I make no promises!

This should line everything up so you can look for the differences yourself pretty easily, though!

 
Funny, I saw this post last night right around when I was thinking of coming in and posting something similar.
 
Basically: I LOVE having these two cues combined here!  There's a drive and momentum that carries through when listened together (which is what Williams intended anyway).  Especially "The Falcon" part, by the time you get to the big action part of that you're just so invested in what's going on!

All this momentum is lost on the OST where Williams breaks it up with a slow, unrelated concert arrangement in between.  I dunno what he was thinking there.

Wonder if anyone's opinion about Follow Me/The Falcon has changed now that they can hear it as one cue.

It was Scherzo for X-Wings!
https://www.facebook.com/jbrausam/videos/10205368522355737/

ROTS is one of his weakest big blockbuster scores. Not by lack of trying, but by lack of having anything substantial to work with. KOCS was stodgy and dull for the most part.
TFA has far more life to it.
Yes the new themes aren't as hummable as the beloved old ones, but that's a criticism that's been leveled at JW since...The Lost World?
He doesn't write like that anymore with only some very rare exceptions. And it's more noticeable in these socalled "retrospective" works where he is required to mix old with new.