Jilal

I especially love 0:40 - 0:47. It's just typical planing chords stuff, but it gets me everytime. I like how the bass line moves down an octave but lingers on the subtonic first.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6GKhVrsMP4SJYY4SO297Eg?si=ma_Mfyt9Tm2DAIPFGet-jQ&utm_source=native-share-menu 1:06-onward is very chilling. Reminds me of ET.

I'm totally with @Jay and the other 90.57% here. I've been returning to The Hunt/The Round Up a couple of times this week and eventually stumbled upon this thread. What I like most are the killer theme written specifically for this cue alone (reminds me of The Asteroid Field) and the badass rhythmic stuff underpinning it throughout (note the very Goldsmith-y changing meter in particular). Of course, the exotic percussion is a lot of fun. Also very cool are the bridges (not sure if this is acceptable terminology) at 0:11 and 0:58 (I especially love the clusters in the horn section) and the smaller one at 0:43 (there's something in the harmony that always gets me). The militaristic motif at 1:45 is really neat too, it's clearly reminiscent of other militaristic writing by John, but the changing meter freshens it up a little. Time stamps refer to this video. All in all, The Hunt is a heavily rhythm-based cue, but it is held together by the presence of an awesome theme. I'd definitely rank it among John's greatest ever cues for action sequences.

By the way, the Jabba’s palace cue runs from start (13m10s) to finish (15m19s) here, which I guess supports my opinion.

Is this a guess of yours, or is it mentioned somewhere in a film score magazine or liner notes? Definitely sounds like two different cues to me. The instrumentation of the two pieces seems to be a little different, for example. I hear an acoustic drum kit in the one performed at Jabba’s palace, whereas I hear some sort of drum machine in the one performed on the sail barge. Also, the synths used seem to be a little different.

I seem to have the same problem with Will's post at the top of this page. We're both linking to videos uploaded to "Name - Topic" type YT channels, so I suppose local copyright restrictions are involved. My post now links to an unofficial video, hope there are no copyright restrictions this time.

The writing for the horn section is sooo cool here. The strongly dissonant E-F#-G-A-B cluster building up and the flutter-tongueing really help to musically convey the aggression of the wargs on screen.

Why'd you delete most of your post, @Sharkissimo? I wish I'd replied a little earlier! As always, it was a very eloquent reminder of how little I actually know about music.

Might this be an Alex North reference at 0:34, @Sharkissimo? Sure sounds like it, never expected to hear quartal harmony in disco music

Did anyone ever attempt to reconstruct the scene with its original score, to some degree of accuracy?

Odd how the snare drum on the left of the soundstage seems to be off beat here and there in the Imperial March performance in the Finale. Sounds like the performance was a little rushed. In fact it sounds like the Imperial March was simply edited into the cue, it seems a little odd to have it begin with one of the falling patterns in the high woodwinds.

I couldn't stand the way they tinkered with that cue in the film, moving things all over the place. Not very professional.

I was surprised to hear the melancholy motif from AOTC's Return to Tatooine return in this film. As an aside, it's one of the bits of music in the prequel trilogy that reminds me a lot of the part of my childhood I spent playing Star Wars video games - I believe it's the background music for one of the often recurring menus in the ROTS video game.

I've been listening to Praise Ye from William Walton's cantata Belshazzar's Feast repeatedly this week. Can't get enough of it! There are lots of Williams, Horner and Goldsmith vibes throughout, intermingled with bits reminiscent of Walton's famous coronation march, Crown Imperial.

The orchestration is actually pretty straightforward here, you can find more of the same style in the more recent Tintin, for example. The whole string section is mainly playing rythmic eighth notes in the first part of the track (sort of a scherzo in 9/8, with a really cool rhythm here which I didn't really "get" until I had a look at the manuscript score). The low strings often double big low brass chords, the high strings double some of the high trumpet lines, there's a bit of high strings and woods playing the dazzling, whirling figures Williams likes to embellish action cues with, most of the strings double the aggressive low brass stabs later in the cue, etc. You might not realize this at first, but the whole thing would sound very empty if you'd take away the strings! They add a lot of color and substance to the whole ensemble.