ETMusic

There are WAY too many film/TV composers who insist on conducting their own scores, but due to their shoddy (at best) conducting abilities they actually hamper the recording of their music (or make it take WAY longer than it needs to); however, most of the professional musicians who record film scores are actually playing despite the conductor. That being said, there are plenty of good conductors (like Williams) out there. Personally, I think there are many composers who need to put their ego aside and let a professional conduct their music (JNH, Giacchino, et al).

Click the next track button and then go back to Download Helper. Rinse and repeat.

Every time I've seen the contrabass clarinet used it is on a fancy stand (even the bass clarinet is resting on a small 'spike'); however, supposedly it's a pretty uncommon instrument.

Just a note that in the recording studio, it doesn't matter what is 'standard' in an orchestra. Williams could have 18 piccolos if he wanted (I believe he had 6 on The Patriot). Herrmann called for 8 bass clarinets in one of his scores (I don't remember which one though). I would bet that Williams is calling for a synth celesta for control over intonation/tuning. Hell, Williams is one of the few guys who still records most (if not all) of the percussion with live players.

I've seen good music engineers hear ridiculous things (even on stereo recordings). I know one who did blind tests with three different premium microphone cables (ONLY the cable was different) and one of the participants was able to name which mic cable was which. I've even heard stories of one engineer who was able to hear the difference between different batteries (no idea how that's even humanly possible though).

Really? I never realized. Is it on the actor or the sound editors to make the voice sync up? Both. A lot of time spent in ADR is the actor doing retakes so what they're saying lines up.

If you're using Firefox, download the plugin "Download Helper;" it allows you to download Flash files (and some other streaming formats) to your computer. Also, thanks for pointing out this interview!

SW: Gold ESB: Silver RotJ: Bronze Probably due to the expanded 2-CD sets that were released in 1997.

Only featured viola that comes to mind is Danny Elfman's score to "Wolfman;" however, with the weirdness and chop-job that happened to his score I'm not sure that this will be terribly helpful.

You would end up some pretty funky key signatures sometimes (e.g. when you want the harp to play a pentatonic scale). Use the plug-in "Check Harp Pedalings" - I think it's under Plug-ins>Proofreading. You can set the notes you want and it will draw in a harp pedal diagram for you.

I'm surprised no one mentioned 'Angela's Ashes' as a contender (assuming you either disregard the narrator OR have the Oscar promo version). Personally, it's a toss-up between E.T. and Angela's Ashes.

My composition teacher claims that although harp tunings should be written in as a courtesy, a harpist will rarely follow them. They're pretty self sufficient people, after all. (When have you ever heard a bad harpist?) I think that depends on who the harpist is AND on the experience/abilities of the orchestrator. If you do the harp diagrams well, then most harpists that I've worked with appreciate it. However, most professional harpists also insist on getting the parts in advance so they can go through and double-check and/or change the harp tunings that there.

I don't think this is a fair question. The best music (in my not-so-humble opinion) is that which successful combines pitch, harmony, and rhythm into a cohesive and satisfactory whole. Sometimes a piece, movement, or cue relies more heavily on one or the other, but I find that music that touches me utilizes all three; however, I think it's also fair to say the majority of music does use all three. Of course, some composers have attempted to create music that does not (4'33" anyone?), but I find that most of that "music" is more appropriately described as performance art. There. I avoided your question entirely and brought up a totally different discussion. "You can about your business. Move along."

I used Finale for 10-11 years and swapped over to Sibelius 6 (about a year ago) because I was the only one NOT on Sibelius on this particular team. I am totally in love with Magnetic Layout; it does weird stuff sometimes, but most of the time it's fantastic. Fiery Angel, in Sibelius you need to use the keypad for the same sort of note entry that you're talking about. In fact, most orchestrators I know (who use Sibelius) use a separate keyboard with a numpad if they're working on a laptop. On an aside, I haven't found anything that I could not do in Sibelius, but sometimes I have to be a sneaky about it (same goes for Finale really). The biggest problem I have with Sibelius is that it doesn't handle staff formatting the same way as Finale (I miss my Staff Menu Options).

I think Goldsmith was a work-a-holic. He would rather be working on crap films and turning out tons of scores. JW seems to inclined to work on his own concert works (albeit very slowly) and play golf, than score tons of films. I'm pretty sure JG averaged 4-5 films a year while JW averages (averaged?) 1-2.

As a union musician, I'd want the union to do whatever gets us the most money. Most record labels have the opportunity to make a VERY large profit and that is why they usually take all the risk; it's standard practice as far as I know (they have über-hits like Thriller and then a bunch of albums that tank). There's another issue besides the label and the composer. Many of the movie companies don't want to release the music separately (for some stupid and unfathomable reason). Obviously, bigger name composers have it in their contracts to have a soundtrack release, but that's not the case for "the little guys." Finally, I've worked for composers who don't necessarily want to release everything. There are some cues (sometimes many) that really are not all that great taken out of the film. Obviously that's subjective, but until the studios/labels/etc decide to pay on a per unit basis (which makes FAR more sense to me in the digital medium since it's so much easier to track and the investment cost is much smaller) we will continue to twiddle our thumbs and say, "Bah-hum-bug" to those who deny us our film score fix.

I believe that re-releasing from an LP to a CD is considered "new media" and therefore more dues are owed (even as a union musician I don't understand all the random shit that goes on...I just let the union figure it out and send me checks periodically). However, I think the larger issue is whether the label thinks they will sell much more than 3000 copies. They have to invest money into fees, pressing the CDs, storage, and marketing (although the marketing for film scores appears to be mostly emails at this point). The fan base for the majority of these limited pressings is not really that large (compared to other fields of music of course); obviously, there are exceptions to this, but I see an awful lot of limited pressings that I have zero interest in.

1. E.T. - never fails to move me 2. Schindler's List - shouldn't need a comment 3. Empire Strikes Back - just...bad ass 4. Raiders of the Lost Ark - also bad ass 5. Seven Years in Tibet - probably the 'odd' one to most people, but I've always loved this score E.T. is the score that always blows me away though (the score is absolutely perfect...just flawless).

I know two people who have iPads and everything EXCEPT iPhone apps have looked fantastic on it. However, I think you're going to run into the problem of screen real estate. For example, the staff paper that Herb Spencer used was about 11x21 (inches) and most pdfs have been scanned and scaled down to 11x17 (or smaller). I think it might be tough to follow dense orchestra scores on such a small screen that is scaling down the images, but I prefer using a 24 inch monitor in portrait orientation for following 11x17 scores and proofreading on a screen. The pixelation should only be an issue if the original file isn't scanned and saved at a high enough resolution, but I'm haven't seen how the iPad handles large PDFs (it might not like opening up 300 pages of 11x17 scores). While I admit that the iPad would be a cool and portable way to study scores, I still prefer to print those 11x17 pdfs onto Legal size paper and study it that way (which allows me to make markings and file the scores away for later...burns though the ink cartridges though).

Not to detract from the Ben Burtt thread hijacking here, but it sounds like a Didgeridoo (with some audio processing) to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo

Jo Ann Kane Music has A LOT of his scores (or copies of them at any rate) since they handle most (if not all) of his copyist work when he's recording in LA. However, you're not allowed to make copies and I think you can only get in to study some of his scores if you have permission.

I use Logic for mocking up my cues (I also use Digital Performer, but it depends who/what I'm working for/on), so I'm not really sure what's the best way to get a convincing timpani roll since I very, VERY rarely use the playback that is built into Sibelius.

What? I use both MIDI input and also the QWERTY keyboard for entering notes into Sibelius all the time. Also, I think you can setup the big time signatures to behave however you want in Sibelius, but I'll admit that once I got my personal template setup I haven't gone back to tinker with the settings.

His HT music is getting better and better. The episode they recorded this last week sounded REALLY good.

The E and G strings on a violin are the farthest apart so it's unlikely that a violinist would play a multi-stopped chord on those two strings. Multistops across 3 strings are usually a bit 'iffy' (for tuning and accuracy in performance), but if you're willing to have the chord in inversion that there are two logical options: 1) And 'open' voicing in inversion: G on the open string (lowest note), then E on the D string, and B on the A string; however, this means the violinist is playing a perfect 5th across the D and A strings (it's possible, but you'll be getting some dirty looks from the violinist). 2) A 'closed' voicing that would be higher: G on the D string, B on the A string, and then the open E string. Personally, I'd avoid using a 3 note chord on the violin. You'd be better off using (in my humble opinion) just writing a double stop using E and G (since the 5th is not as important). My two cents anyway.