Saxman717
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Posts posted by Saxman717
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The Meij version of Gollum is awesome!!! Soprano sax solo the whole time!!!! (I am a sax player
) You should really look into it if you haven't heard it.It's got a really catchy melody, and is very fitting to portray the creature Gollum.
As for the poll....hmmmm..tough choice, but I like the way Gollum's song fits with him so well, and especially the way it works to end the movie The Two Towers. Genius. For Always is great too....very tough call. Argh, I'll think about it awhile
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Arrrrrrgh
, I'm not saying that the entire score (or majority of it even) of HPCOS is exactly like AOTC. What I am saying is that a few significant cues from HPCOS are. The Lord Malfoy low-note theme may be an example of Williams utilizing a similar stlye for the bad guys in two different movies, but the Chase Through Coruscant vs. Quiddich Match music comparison is completely different, in that it is the EXACT same music, altered ever-so-slightly.
This isn't a matter of a composer's similar style coming out. It's not Williams writing two action scenes in a similar way. It clearly is Williams pulling out his score from AOTC, taking about 40-60 measures from it, altering a few runs and rhythms here and there to make it sound at least slightly different, and then passing it off as an original work for HPCOS.
How can this be called irrelevant? Here is an analogy.....a stretch of an analogy, but as good of one as I can think of right now: What if a president served 2 terms and dealt with 2 similar wars in each term. What if he read the exact same speech (modified just slightly, maybe a few words here or there) on the eve of the 2nd war as he had read on the eve of the 1st war? Do you think the troops would be as motivated? Do you think the public/press would be happy? Would it really be appreciated and effective?
Sorry to get a little arguementative near the end, but I'm a little irked at all these comments about not understanding music, not truly appreciating Williams and his music etc. etc. I'm one of his biggest fans here, just as big as all of you.l I also have listened to countless numbers of soundtracks and are very well-versed in what is similar and what is clearly copied.
Only one person has said that he actually listened to the scene I'm talking about (tpigeon), and he completely agreed that it's the exact same music, altered ever-so-slightly so that it wasn't completely tracked. This is an important and alarming discovery.....instead of bashing the messenger and calling him musically/soundtrack-inept, why not go listen to it and see what I'm talking about? It really is relevant here......I love Williams, but I never really thought he'd succumb to this.
I'll sit down sometime soon and find out what part of Chase Through Coruscant is copied, but for starters, you'll probably be able to hear it right away anyway by just watching the Quiddich match scene in HPCOS and listening to the music. The most apparent part comes when HP and Malfoy are flying under the stands, dodging wooden beams and trying not to get hit by the "rogue bludger".
Again, I'll say that this isn't Williams utilizing a similar style, this is an exact copy of from an old score, modified only slightly! I wish it never happened, so I didn't feel compelled to report it on here and get feedback....Williams is my musical idol, he's the best. But you just don't do this
.......similarities between scores is one thing, but no, you can't pull music directly from AOTC and put it in HPCOS (especially if it's illegal to pull music from The Phantom Menace and put it in 30 minutes of AOTC!!). Please try to ease up on the musical-experience/Williams-music-knowledge bashing.....at least, ease up until you listen to the parts I'm talking about and find absolutely no comparison.
-Steve
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Happy Father's Day everyone!
I'm not a Dad (I'm 21, so I have a few more years
) but I'm sure we have some Dads on this board.Maybe this is common knowledge on this board, but......does JW have a wife and kids? Anyone have details on this?
-Steve
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Holy cow, there are some aggressive people on this board!
"This whole thing about Williams copying himself is just stupid, and it goes to show how little some people know about music"
"When you say that he makes HPCOS sound "exactly like" AOTC, I can only react by saying that statement is completely absurd"
Wow........
So yeah, did you even go back to HPCOS and listen to the music during the Quiddich match scene? Like tpigeon said earlier:
"Watch the Quidditch match, especially near the end when Harry and Malfoy are flying underneath the stands I guess it is, dodging all the wood pillars keeping the place together. It's practically identical, but the music is not tracked."
Listen to the scene! It's the exact same music from Chase Through Coruscant, just with a few minor little things tweaked and changed around.
This was definitely not Williams writing something similar to AOTC. This was Williams taking what he'd already written for AOTC and tweaking it a little and trying to mask the fact that 9/10 of it was straight from AOTC. There's absolutely no way that Williams managed to unintentionally write like almost the exact same rhythems, woodwind flourishes, and underlying percussive backgrounds for both Chase Through Coruscant and the Quiddich match. It's not just similar.......it is virtually the same thing!!! like 99%!
Honestly, I'm not about overanalyzing Williams' works here. You don't hear me nitpicking all his other works these days, do you? I'm just voicing my concern about this one thing here, 'cause it really is blatantly obvious.
Don't be so quick to bash peoples' observations, at least before you check out what he's talking about for real (watch the scene a number of times and listen to the music......or listen to a bootleg soundtrack rip with that track in there or something).
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I wouldn't be so up in arms here if star wars music were not involved. The star wars music is more important to me than any of the films......I was listening to the soundtracks from age 2-3 up and have all of them prettymuch memorized. They are my absolute favorite soundtracks (and favorite classical-style pieces, for that matter), and it's killing me to see what's happening to them as of late.
Williams wrote the original star wars trilogy in his prime, at a time when he could truly devote his full attention to a score. The results were brilliant......all 3 soundtracks were fantastic, especially Empire Strikes Back, where he just let loose entirely.
Now, 20-25 years later, JW is given the assignment of writing music for the first 3 films in that exact same trilogy. And what happens? Well......TPM score is pretty good......not as many catchy leitmotifs as the originals and not as epic in overall scale, but good nonetheless. And none of his other scores around that time really sounded similar to it.
Then came AOTC. Amazing love theme, but then he goes and makes Harry Potter sound exactly like it (thus, proving without a doubt that the AOTC music we have now is not completely and fully "Star Wars" music).
I'm sorry, Star Wars and Harry Potter are FAR different from one another in virtually all respects. They should be extremely distant from one another in terms of musicality as well.
Regarding the original star wars trilogy music, there has not been 1 other soundtrack to date that I can say reminded me of them completely(with the exception of Holst's Mars movement from The Planets). They are standalone masterpieces in themselves and nothing can compete with their grandiose scale and nothing has been made to sound truly similar.
This is what star wars music WAS all about. It was truly epic. Now, JW has taken his chance to create 3 more standalone masterpieces and blown at least one of those chances.
I love JW for what he wrote 20-25 years ago (and many more things he wrote since then). But he's giving a half-assed effort here for star wars.......it may not have been apparent when the Episode II soundtrack came out, but it's got to be apparent now that the Harry Potter 2 movie has come out and has music that is almost directly pulled from star wars.
Quality over quantity. That's what made Williams so amazingly successful 20-25 years ago. Come on, 5 films in the span of a year and a half? (I think that's what it was)............how can you expect to write masterpieces when under that pressure?
I wouldn't be POed if one of those movies crammed in there wasn't star wars episode II, but it was. JW needs time to sit back and finish up his 6-score masterpiece. For episode III, he can't take on 800 assignments and expect to produce a truly masterful score.
I know you all love JW, and half of you will fight to the death defending him, but please realize that I love him too. I've been a huge fan since like age 2. But open your eyes and see what's happening recently! There's no excuse for this! I mean, a line from Harry Potter clearly states something like "It's not the talents we have that shows who we truly are, but the choices we make". JW has the talent. 20-25 years ago he chose his assignments carefully and wowed us all with his masterpieces. Nowadays, JW has gotten lax in his choosing, and is going for quantity over quality, and it is showing.
And star wars is the victim.
And thus, I am sad :cry:
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Hey all, just got done watching Harry Potter 2 for the 2nd time, and now I'm sure of it. Our musical idol, John Williams, ran out of ideas and used the exact same musical themes/leitmotifs from Star Wars Episode 2 while he composed the music for Harry Potter 2.
I'm sure this has been covered before, but I just don't remember any of the arguements people made in defense of John Williams for this act.
I remember hearing stuff about how "different soundtracks written in a short period of time by the same composer always have similar characteristics and sounds". Then people went on to compare various movies that Williams composed music for in the past where these similarities were most apparent.
I understand that composers may write movie scores in a similar style if they have projects crammed really close together, but this still does not explain what JW did in this circumstance.
I mean, no, they are not the exact same notes completely. During the Quiddich match, what he did was take an exact chunk of music from the Chase through Coruscant in Star Wars, alter a few of the runs and alter some of the quasi-melody lines in slight ways, and then submit it as an original idea. There were segments of the match that had the exact same musical idea from Star Wars, just with a few altered notes. If I'm not mistaken, when Potter (or is it Malvoy? pardon the spelling) crashes, it's almost the exact same music used when Anakin crashes with the speeder he's been holding onto.
There were a number of other instances where I heard exact snippets from Attack of the Clones.......as if Williams were sitting at a computer, using old music clips and pasting them into his works whenever he needed a bridge.
And then during one of the final scenes, where Lord Malvoy is confronting Potter, the "galactic conflict" theme, or sometimes the "mystery" theme, and the theme sometimes applied to Count Dooku (the theme with all the low notes played by a tuba or something) is heard almost entirely intact. If it's not the exact same thing, then it's some extreeeeeeeeeemely and all too similar.
Honestly, guys, this is unacceptable. Yes, much of the music in the movie is wonderful (I especially love the way he wraps things up in the grandiose style in the final scene), but just as it totally made me sick when The Phantom Menace music was used for like 30-40 minutes of Attack of the Clones, this blatantly apparent reuse of musical ideas by JW makes me even more sick.
JW is legendary. His music is wonderful. However, he's been showing troubling signs recently. I don't know what to make of this. Anyway, I could probably write more, but have to go. I'll stop here.
Any thoughts anyone? -
They always use music from other movies in trailers.
BTW I was REALLY psyched last night when I finally heard Michael Giachhino's "Medal of Honor" score being used in fron of the trailer of that upcoming horse racing flick "Seabiscuit".
Perhaps Hollywood is finally taking notice of this guy? LETS HOPE!
Hey.............ummmmm.........I saw this rumor on another site, a medal of honor site, actually, and then went and watched the trailer myself. I really don't think there's any medal of honor music in the Seabiscuit trailer. What you hear is the main theme to the movie "Rudy", which has a few rhythems and intervals that make it sound like the medal of honor theme.
Sorry to burst your bubble 8O
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The difference between Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Geoge Lucas's **POST 1983** Star Wars series..............COMMERCIALISM.
Sure Jackson might pull a few commercial tricks.....like a normal DVD in August, followed by a 4 DVD Extended Edition in November, and then finally a 5 DVD special set. But even so, these 4 DVD and 5 DVD sets have so much crammed into them........new scenes, perfectly done, and new music composed just for them to seamlessly merge with the rest of the soundtrack, and countless hours of real, quality bonus coverage.
But Lucas and his modern day Star Wars empire...........it is really enough to make a normal Star Wars fan sick. Everything they do is commercial. They hold back music for commercial purposes (and how about the "Bonus track" Target store scam???), they now withhold some fun deleted scenes from the DVD release, just to entice people to sign up for a *pay* commercial website, the list goes on and on.
Oh yes, and then there are the ad campaigns like "Yoda da Man" or whatever. Star Wars has become a joke. A commercialized, completely little-kid-oriented joke. Every thought that crosses the minds of the people at Lucasfilm these days is "How can we entice little kids to give more money to us?"
I strongly advise people to steer clear of this "opportunity" starwars.com is offering...........for your own dignity, don't sign up! Read a free spoiler website!
OK, enough ranting
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haha, yeah no kidding!
Another thing that I'm noticing is that there's a big difference between writing some music to paint a picture or tell a story and writing some music to accompany a picture or story.
I wrote mine to paint the picture in an orchestral way, with different instruments and rhythms representing various characters/actions etc. and went for a more thematic approach.
seems like most everyone these days has moved away from that and really likes the more modern approach of scoring, with some techno mixed in and lots of brass crescendos, like how david arnold scores the bond films.
It's cool, tho I must admit that I really miss the days when big, quality orchestral scores (Wagner-style) were being written for films (Star Wars Trilogy, Ben Hur, Indiana Jones etc.)......The LOrd of the Rings is one modern series upholding this style! And of course the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.
So yeah I don't know if I can really produce quality "atmospheric background" music for these competitions.......I'm more of a thematic orchestral scoring guy myself. Kinda wish you could see the actual score I wrote......the midi doesn't do it's complexity justice :cry:
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Hello! Here's a little "program note" as you could call it to describe the scene as I envisioned it with the music playing (This is "A Chance for Vengeance")
Intentional Symbolic Representations in the Music:
Police Presence/Prison Alarm ? The underlying driving marimba part
Crashes/Punches/Whacks/Sticks/General Fighting ? Timpani part, Claves, Woodblock etc.
Description of the Scene According to the Music:
- The music starts at the beginning of the riot.
- Around the 12-13 second mark is when more guys get involved in the riot, and you can hear various voices in there, especially a counterpoint melody in the clarinet playing with the trumpets, which are all different guys fighting and trying to distract the guards. Throughout the scene, the main melody, initially played by the trumpet(s) and then played by flute/violins, represents the main character trying to maneuver his way around the mayhem to find the guy he wants to kill.
- Around the 23 second mark, the main character spots the villain and the villain spots the main character coming after him. Time freezes for a good 3-5 seconds, and then the villain starts to bolt in the opposite direction.
- The main character follows after him and the chase resumes around the 30 second mark.
- The music ends right when 1 of 2 things happens:
1) the main character and the villain find themselves alone in some room or someplace, both able and ready for a final showdown.
OR
2) the main character knocks down the villain (or vice versa) and a tense scene (with more suspenseful, different music) is about to follow where one guy has a good chance to kill the other one while he?s knocked down.
There is almost a slight blues/jazz feel to some of the piece, even though it?s not swing at all, and this was done because it was depicting a prison scene?..jazz/blues-style works well with crime/prison/city etc. usually.
Hope that helps
And if you envisioned something different, please let me know! I'm always interested in hearing different interpretations. Great job with the rest of the pieces, too!! 8-) Good stuff
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Hey guys, what's the word on this? The deadline was Tuesday, right? We going to post the submitted clips and have a poll on them or something? Also, does anyone know about MIDI drivers, and whether installing different drivers will lead to more-realistic sounding instruments? I know that ever since installing Finale 2003 on my system, all the instruments sound much more realistic.
Steve-O
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I'd love to be able to show my score to the judges and whomever somehow, 'cause there are such things as timpani rolls (marked as trills that don't get heard in MIDI), horn glissandos, and crescendo/decrescendos that all don't get heard in the MIDI.
I just don't know a feasible way to post the whole score on here, aside from taking screenshots and emailing them to StrongBad.
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Haha, ok that simplifies things considerably
Can't wait to hear everyone else's compositions! -
Hey guys, any tips on how to capture screenshots of my score and where/how to post them?
I'm using Finale, and have a 25 part score, so is tough to capture the score as a whole such that all the details can be seen. Also, I have 5 pages of score.
Any advice here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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1 day! aah! must compose more! stupid 151 tempo
makes me have to write so much more to make a minute of music Up to 45 seconds........... -
yeah that too...........hmmmmmmmmm..............
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A question................what are we goign to do about like percussion rolls and certain dynamics, and like huge accents and things that we can't reeeeaaally simulate well using MIDIs? What if a certain section sounds like garbage just 'cause MIDI can't reproduce it, but in real life it'd sound brilliant?
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Yiiiiiiiikes, 1 week (6 days for me, now) is a really short amount of time to compose something, at least for a new composer like me :-P But I'll give it my best shot :-)
Can it be 1 minute plus or minus like 5-10 seconds????
Steve-O
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I'm glad you didn't name your child "Jim"
I am dredging this up again to ask if anyone received a cd from this contest?From the looks of their list of winners I think that Sony screwed this up big time and didn't send out ANY cds to people.
I know it was months ago, but I decided to send an e-mail about this topic to feedback@sonyclassical.com.
I don't care if I get an extra cd or not, but folks if they run a contest and offer prizes they need to give them out. I would urge others to send e-mails as well. My letter is below:
Hi,
I was wondering about the Attack of the Clones Soundtrack Contest that you ran last spring.
A list of winners is posted online at
http://starwars.sonyclassical.com/contest/
Going through the name I find a curious listing:
Jim Kardel of Wichita, Kansas USA.
Well my name is Scott Kardel of Wichita, Kansas USA and as far as I know there are no other Kardels in the state of Kansas (other than my wife and daughter - non of whom are named Jim).
Is it possible that the entry is an error? Have cds been mailed to winners? I ask this because none of the people that I know who entered the contest won anything yet many have similar situations to mine as described above.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Scott Kardel
Wichita, Kansas
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Who's more foolish. the fool, or the fool that follows him.
TTT is the best score I have heard this year.
Stefancos-
Hehehehehe, I completely agree ;-) I must admit, I am a sucker for star wars scores, and would place Episode II above The Two Towers, but TTT is a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery close 2nd place. I'm addicted to listening to the soundtrack this week and most likely will become even more hooked after seeing the movie tonight.
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King Mark, on the surface, I would wholeheartedly agree with you that this is a John Williams messageboard and should therefore be centered around John Williams.
However, after thinking deeper about the issue, here is what I came up with:
This is a board with the title of "JWFan Messageboard: General Discussion". Consequently, it is a board that brings together dozens of big John Williams fans together to discuss just what the title suggests, "general" things.
You notice a great number of personal postings on this board not at all related to John Williams music. These posts, as well as such posts on other composers' soundtracks, other movies etc. are all appropriate because they are being discussed by John Williams fans.
We all have an initial base here.....1 common trait....that being the fact that we have been deeply moved by the works of John Williams at some point in our lives.
So with this common bond, and with no other specific posting area other than "General Discussions", I believe it is beneficial to discuss other things than just John Williams works. It expands the content of the board and provides the grounds for even more lively, interesting discussion.
One thing that I appreciate most about this board is the fact that when an OT post is created, it often is on a topic that I also like. This is hardly surprising because as John Williams fans, mannly of us tend to have similar tastes in music/movies etc. Being able to discuss these things freely among familiar company is very refreshing.
I would not be against the separation of the "General Discussion" board area into two different board areas, entitled "John Williams Discussion" and "Non-John Williams Discussion", but at the present time, I truely appreciate the freedom that this board area provides in terms of general conversation!
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Hey, now that the soundtrack has been out for a week and the movie has just premiered, what do you all think?? I personally started out last year having little interest in both the Fellowship of the Ring movie and even soundtrack. But slowly, over this past year, they have both grown on me to become two of my favorites!
Especially after listening to The Two Towers soundtrack, the main themes from FOTR have managed to hook me almost as much as some of the Star Wars themes and the new themes that Shore developed for TTT have also greatly excited me.
The Ring Theme.....so mysterious and almost deadly, so effective
The Fellowship Theme.....incredibly grand and catchy. I get excited everytime I hear it.
Hobbits Theme....very gentle, honorable, and playful....perfect for hobbits
Mordor Theme.....very percussive, war-like....not my absolute fav but effective nonetheless
And now for new Two Towers themes...
Gollum's Theme.........really really good......I haven't been able to really get into the main Gollum's Theme piece, with the singing and all, but the way his theme is used in the main movie score is amazing. The way it is used in tracks 2 and 18 (which I am guessing is the last scene of the movie) is so so so good. I'm especially in love with its appearance in Samwise the Brave (track 18).....the mysterious music is so cool.
And the theme written for, I'm guessing, generally the race of men, with its outdoorsy yet stately feel to it, is awesome.
And there are even more great-sounding new themes mixed in that I won't be able to pinpoint and label characters/races/events to until I see the film.
Whew, sorry for the scattered layout of this post, but I'm so excited about this music that I can't even coherently write about it!!
Any other thoughts???
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Hey all,
I'm hopign to pick up a copy of the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack sometime in the near future, but am not out to collect every FOTR soundtrack out there......just the best, most complete one. Is there a complete or at least expanded edition soundtrack coming out soon with the release of this new DVD? Should I wait for this one or buy the original soundtrack? I downloaded a few mp3s, and the sound quality seemed rather poor.......is the quality on the original soundtrack CD better than these mp3s? And is the music from the opening scene of the movie on the CD? (The track "The Prophecy" didn't seem to match that music, at least the part I heard.....). Thanks for the help! I am looking forward to getting this soundtrack!!
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All the sensible, non BS examples he gives about allusions, metaphors etc. come from the original trilogy..............except for the blood red skies and such in Episode II, everything else he said about TPM and AOTC was pure and utter over-analyzing BS. Reading much of this article, I felt like I was in my Freshman Writing Seminar class all over again listening to my feminist professor analyze the sexual/gender symbolism found in almost every episode of Star Trek........such as how probing the recently-collected alien specimen had underlying sexual meaning and how when an alien that had taken control of the ship finally leaves at the end, it "is like a baby leaving its mother's womb". I have been an avid star wars fan since the age of three, and have definitely taken the time to note countless mythological aspects of the original trilogy. If not mythological, then just really good story with curious, memorable dialogue, wonderful leitmotifs, and a fascinating plot interweaved among three movies. I have tried very hard to find true goodness in these new movies......I have found an entertainment enjoyment in Episode I, not as a continuation of the star wars series, but just as a standalone movie. I have found some decent parts to Episode II also, but as a whole, I have not found any way to appreciate it or see any real effort that George Lucas may have taken to create as special a story as his original trilogy. I firmly believe that 99% of what this author says with regard to George Lucas intentionally doing things the way he did in AOTC for deep, allegorical meaning is completely false. 99% of what he mentioned was done for PURELY COMMERCIAL reasons by George and his creative team in order to MAKE MONEY. C3P0 losing his head and fighting in the battle was not done for metaphorical reasons, that is utter BS. It was done to make the little 8 years olds in the audiance giggle with delight. Episode I was about 40% commercialized, and Episode II was probably 85% commercialized. Sorry, I'm at work and don't have time to fully critique this essay or organize my thoughts (so they are a bit scattered in this post), but really guys.........this may be a well-written article(for the most part....) but well-written does not equal smart, and I'll be surprised if any of you truely do believe in the stuff he wrote......
Here is my impression of the article, though I must admit there were probably 1 or 2 sections that I did appreciate:
:wow: LOL
Harry Potter 2 vs. Star Wars Episode II
in JOHN WILLIAMS
Posted
To Longbottoms:
You're saying that taking 40-60 or however many measures from an old score and pasting them into a brand new, completely different score is a common and accepted occurance?? Dvorak actually took old works and pulled exact sections out and used them in later pieces?
Mind you, if this was Star wars Episode III we were talking about here, the act would be slightly less shocking (take, for example, the use of The Phantom Menace music for much of the final battle of Episode II). But we are talking about using STAR WARS music in HARRY POTTER.
Listen to the music in the scene! It is not a reused pattern/theme/structure. It is reused full sections of a completely different score. Like I said before, it is far different from latching on to a good phrase or chord progression or something and using it in multiple works.
"Because here you get exactly to the point where music loses its message composers strive for. To entertain. Rather, it incenses you. I won't dare talk you out of your opinion; I just want to make it clear that I approach music in an utterly different way."
You think I don't listen to the music to be entertained? That's the main reason I listen to it! That's why this is so shocking.......Star Wars is Star Wars....Harry Potter is Harry Potter....>Star Wars is not Harry Potter. When I hear EXACT MUSIC from star wars in harry potter, I am not entertained, I am sick, because I know that Williams cut a big corner instead of writing new music to entertain us.
I dunno, you seem to be avoiding the fact that it is a direct cut of music from Star Wars Episode II, modified just ever-so-slightly. I'm getting the feeling you haven't listened to it yet.....You keep referring to the reuse of themes/structures. The scene I'm referring to is not thematic. It has little structure. It's a chaotic action cue written specifically for Chase Through Coruscant.
To Indysolo:
Thank you! I'm not going crazy!
-Steve (Still hoping others will listen to the scene and try to figure out what happened.....ie, try to put the troubling thought out of my mind that JW got lazy)