Jilal

Another TOD transcription; this time, Short Round's theme!
 
 
Usually I would have made MIDI-based audio out of this piece, but I decided to take the plunge and multi-track it live...this is my first time, so please be kind!!! I hope the transcription itself is satisfactory, in any case. 
 
Also, I would like to arrange one more TOD piece to round off with a trilogy (in addition to Mine Car Chase and Short Round's theme). There are two pieces of music which I think would work fairly well on the piano:
 
1) Bug Tunnel/Death Trap
2) Slave Children's Crusade + Short Round Helps
 
Which one should I do?

Fabulous piece. 

Idiot!

For all those in dire need of a thread officially dedicated to their Strictly Non-Williams Favourite Short Musical Moments™, here it finally is, in all its undoubtedly long-awaited glory.
Here we go:
1:29
Horn section playing parallel major chords. Brilliant!

It's amazing to me how many times I can play dumb on that point and still get corrected.  I pretty much only continue doing it for scientific and statistical purposes at this point.

LIbraries like this one appear to me to be basically really expensive toys. It's the adult equivalent of a 3-year-old kid plonking about on the piano, being inspired and interested by what comes out but not actually understanding the underlying musical "setup", so to speak (this is literally what the guy in the video says: "You start playing and see what comes out" at 1:32). Of course, the difference is that with a physical piano, plonking about mindlessly will produce meaningless results, but with an intelligently designed sample library, all you need to do is hold down a few keys and what "comes out" actually sounds decent...on the surface.
 
Now, if you're not interested in music theory, but still want to produce something which sounds nice without requiring a lot of skill and long studying (only your ears and a shit-ton of money), then that's fine I suppose. And at the end of the day, what "comes out" does sound very well-recorded and realistic. But it's only the buyer's loss that they would dish out money on essentially what is a musical toy, rather than put the time into learning about all this stuff and experience the satisfaction of being able to create music from the ground up (like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams and Arvo Part did), with complete control and influence over all the musical elements involved.
 
But no, it's not just about satisfaction and self-gratification, but also about being an artist. Libraries like this have the horrible effect on many people of making them think that what they are creating is the music they want, when actually they have little to no understanding of what they are doing. At least John Cage understood that what he was doing was random. But this library is like a blockade to the inner musical voice, it lets the computer do 95% of the work. It claims that it will "realise" your string compositions, which is of course bull because all it really does it "realise" itself! Some people will use it in a more proper way, e.g. as a way of making their mockups more realistic, but many will also use it create music that they didn't actually create and then think that that's what composition is all about. Which is a damn shame.
 
But there's a deeper issue here. Suppose you're a director or producer, looking for a composer to score a decent sounding string soundtrack for your short film or Vimeo documentary. Who would you go for; the composer who will spend days sketching, thinking, and writing out all his ideas on paper from the ground up, then spend another few days mocking up that composition, which will not only sound unrealistic but might not even be what the direcor is looking for, and then might require that composition to be performed by studio musicians, which will cost money and time? Or, the composer who can, within seconds, conjure up pretty string textures on his computer so that the director can immediately go "Yep, that will be do"? Of course it will depend on the context...but I bet that most would go for the second option. And this skews the playing field, because it puts the composers, who work more over the music they are making, at a disadvantaged position to those who may not be as experienced musically but who have the better-sounding tools to produce faster, cheaper results which sound decent and satisfactory to the director but ultimately are very unlikely to be as profound. Products like this have the potential to create these sorts of unfair divides amongst budding media composers.
 
So, while I do believe that libraries like this ultimately can produce good music (after all, what is music other than the combination, morphing and sculpting of sound?), they are very likely to be abused by people and "trap" them into relying on these automated programs to make music they have little understanding of. And, it also unfairly causes composers who don't have tools like this, to be at a disadvantage in the media industry (unless you're already a well established composer with an excellent track record, who has been writing without the aid of computers for decades...)

Lol, MacHarmonium.
 
Yeah, this idea of using prerecorded loops isn't my bag.  Of course you can get fantastic sounding results from that, because, well, they're just recordings of actual musical phrases.  But to base actual compositions on using that, I dunno.  Imagine the flack that, ahem, Zimmer, for example, would get for using something like that. 
 
I'd rather have an extremely deeply sampled string library, where you can totally control divisis and section sizes and have 16 independent first violins if you want, with tons of round robins (even more than Spitfire usually has) to do this sort of style, since it's kind of common for me.

just go to page 10. Your missing the best part of beeing a JWfan .First hearing a glimpse of a new theme in the background in a bad sounding video

Big difference with TFA. I couldn't be sure Jedi Steps was a Williams composition until I heard it on the OST.
 
With this BFG theme I KNOW INSTANTLY it's by Williams

Hi! I can share my experience of meeting the maestro, I don’t know if it will help you or not, but I hope it will I went from Hungary to Texas just for the concert, and still can’t really believe it today. I had my aunt in the orchestra, but the organizers were strict about not letting anyone near him, so I had no real hope. But my aunt had her Hungarian virtue shine through and simply went to his room, the organizers weren’t gonna let her in, but Williams said to them that he doesn’t mind, so she told him my story and asked him directly, and he himself was the one who let me come backstage after the practice, and when I met him, he even called me by my name like “Ah, you must be Peter from Hungary” and he seemed genuinely humbled that someone came from that far just to see him. It was one of the best experiences of my life, so if you have even a remote chance to meet him, take it! As you can see, sometimes all that it takes is one question. I don’t know Tanglewood per se, and the protocols there, but I’m rooting for you

For Fort Worth, after the last practice, when the organizers wanted him to leave, he stayed and started to sign a bit more (there was a complete line of people hoping for it). Even after the main concert, he stayed and almost every musician queued to have a photo with him or an autograph.

Yes, it's happened a few times.
 
The Star Wars one you mentioned is probably the most famous.
 
Another famous one is Superman.  The track called "Theme From Superman" on the original 1978 LP is not a true concert arrangement at all, but actually a edit combining the opening of the original, unused prologue with most of the End Credits.  But its become a concert staple ever since.
 
"The March From 1941" on the 1979 LP is actually just a shortened edit of "The Finale" from the same LP; This edit of it then became a concert staple.
 
"My Friend, The Brachiosaurus" on the Jurassic Park OST is actually an edit combining the music for the triceratops scene with the brachiosauraus scene, and that was re-recorded by Williams for the "Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores" CD.
 
 
Also it seems that Duel of the Fates from TPM is actually a crazy edit of a bunch of smaller pieces, but we don't know for sure until the sheet music leaks.

Check out the various Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra-/Scherzo for X-Wings-esque figures throughout the third movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No.9:
 
 

None (in the form of legal hard copies, that is ). When it comes to Williams's film scores, I vastly prefer to study the actual full scores or sketches prepared for the films themselves as 1) they contain a lot more interesting, intricate material than the Signature Editions which solely present the most concert hall friendly pieces and 2) the orchestration as presented on the SE scores is often altered, e.g. 4.3.3.1 brass instead of the usual 6.4.4.1. Aside from that, they're rather expensive. I'd love to own some of his concert pieces in SE form, however.

Hello everyone,
So we have received all of the entries for the Composers Challenge, now it's time to vote. All the composers have received an email from me with a link to a Youtube playlist.
 
The composers have one week to vote on and rank the other composers' entries. After that the rankings will be compiled and the winner will be announced. Again, if you are a composer for this challenge, please check your email (or junk mail) for my email.
 
For those who just want to review the entries, here is the link (but your votes will not be counted).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLShjA9iqcZ2eFYfABesvD9Xgd4krY2rvD
 
Again, The composers have until May 17th to cast your votes.
 
If anyone is curious about the next composers challenge, I have an action scene in mind from a popular epic science-fiction video game.
 
Thanks to everyone for their support.
 
Kevin

Film music.
Seriously. Any day of the week, pretty much any time of day. Which film music? Any of it. I don't subscribe to any notions of requisite moods or settings—although the right choice can sometimes enhance both of those elements, to be sure. But I can't imagine expending mental effort on making so specific a choice. I let the music take me where it's going, not the other way around.
Of course, even that gets its stimulation from variety. I don't think there's any single score I could listen to every single day for years and not eventually tire of it. (That's really what did in the Star Wars main title for me. Too many hearings dulled it for me, so that it's become probably my most-avoided piece of JW music over the last 10 or 15 years.) There are some that have shown remarkable durability—Superman, for instance—but I need a break from even the best of themes and scores after a while.
That's what made the advent of playlists and the shuffle option so magnificent. I used to have a set of 3x5 cards with lists of all my scores printed on them (this is back in the day when my collection was still solidly encamped in 2-figure totals). I knew most of the music so well that I could "play" it in my head at will. I would carry those cards and set of dice with me. I had a whole system set up to determine what results led to which scores. At odd moments, when I needed to occupy my mind with something, I would roll the dice to randomly select a score, and I would choose a piece to start replaying in my head. It was the closest thing I had back in those Stone-Age days to a shuffle option. I could put together randomly assembled lists on cassette or (eventually) CD, of course, but I was the one putting it together so I knew what the order would be, and eventually I'd learn the order anyway and it wouldn't work any more. I dreamed of a time when technology would do it for me. And like flight, space travel, and measles vaccination, one day my dreams became reality.
I do have certain playlists for certain activities or arenas—you can't write to distracting action music, and each major composer has his own collection of best-ofs—but for the most part, I let the collection go where it will and enjoy not knowing what's coming next. And it never gets old for me.

I've been particularly enamored with the second movement of Henri Duttileux's Symphony No. 1, lately. It's a piece which showcases both an extraordinary amount of energy and virtuosity and masterful orchestration, and it's written in a very colorful harmonic language with some lovely quartal bits here and there (cf. 11:40).
 
 

It may be that I didn't justify enough why I hear these relationships. Far from being merely random, the similar notes I point out actually have much in common:
 
1) They are all in the same key (which is especially significant in Williams, where keys of themes tend not to be consistent).
2) They all outline a descent through the same scale degrees, from 3 down to 7, with stepwise motion filling in most or all the gaps.
3) These scale degrees 3 and 7 form the high and low boundaries within their respective spans, making those notes more prominent than they would otherwise be.
 
And perhaps most importantly,
4) They all involve the flat 7 scale degree rather than the generally more typical raised 7, giving these themes the distinctive sound of the Aeolian mode rather than the more common sound of the harmonic minor.
 
These things considered together with the associations the various themes have only strengthens these connections. Now of course the connections I'm arguing for here are more difficult to hear than the others in these analyses, and that's primarily because they involve similarities in pitch structure rather than in rhythm or harmony, which are more common for film music themes. But just because a relationship may be hard to hear does not mean that we should dismiss it as not being there at all. After all, looser relationships do exist elsewhere in the Star Wars scores. Take the snippet after the Death Star explodes in ANH, from 8:38-8:45 below:
 
 
I would call this a transformed reference to the end of the Rebel Fanfare, the beginning of which then enters on its heels in its normal form. Or how about that theme that enters after Vader has frozen Han on Cloud City, what I've called "Vader Succeeding"? I'd call that a transformed reference to the Imperial March:
 
 
Or how about the similarities between Luke's theme and Across the Stars I point out in the part 5 of these analyses?:
 
http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/celebrating-star-wars-themes-part-5-of-6-across-the-stars/
 
What I'm advocating for is getting at a kind of subconscious connection between various themes rather than a more obvious leitmotivic kind of referencing.

I've been particularly enamored with the second movement of Henri Duttileux's Symphony No. 1, lately. It's a piece which showcases both an extraordinary amount of energy and virtuosity and masterful orchestration, and it's written in a very colorful harmonic language with some lovely quartal bits here and there (cf. 11:40).
 
 

I agree.  There are many Williams modes that just don't hold lasting interest for me.  But the ones that do, well... yeah.  The easiest example I can give is that I far, far prefer Treesong to the first violin concerto.  When it's the high romantics channeled through Williams, I'm just not too compelled.  When it's really Williams being Williams, jazzy, modern, neo-tonal, that's when my ears perk up.
 
As for Yoda's theme, surely you don't mind the tune itself, right?  But the "buh duh nah, nah nah nah..." woodwind thing, yeah, that never really worked for me.  And it's got one of those oddly unconvincing modulations I was talking about a while back.

I completely understand goofing off in an orchestra.  It's just what happens.  I spent years in the trombone section, and was often the root of the trouble there, which made me the root of the trouble ensemble-wide.  BUT... to actually be disrespectful to the conductor, or composer, or arranger, especially if they're present, is beyond the pale, and Williams was right to get fed up with it.  There's just no reason for that, it's common decency and musical fellowship.  Why be an ass?

In no particular order, and referring specifically to the concert arrangements:
 
1. Leia's Theme
2. Luke and Leia
3. Imperial March
4. Harry's Wondrous World
5. Duel of the Fates
6. Theme from Schindler's List
7. "Closing In" from "Catch me if you can"
8. Across the Stars
9. The Chamber of Secrets (4th movement from the suite)
10. Adventures on Earth
 

The two punchy descending chords at the end of the main melody were among the most memorable elements of this score when I first saw the film. It's a great theme, especially when delivered with the right energy and a decently fast tempo.

A small but important clarification: in Scott Murphy's notation of "MnM," the first M represents the tonic regardless of whether it is first or second in the progression. So the situation you're citing would actually be M8M, not M4M. Though this may seem pedantic, it is an important distinction because some relationships are much more common than others. The Vader riff, for example, or m8m (Gm-Ebm), is exceedingly common in film whereas its inverse, m4m (say, Gm-Bm, where G is tonic) is quite rare.
 
The brilliance of this notation is that the order of the chords in the music doesn't matter, only the tonic does, which is how we tend to hear triadic progressions after all.