Sharkissimo

Main Title (AKA Scherzo for Spambots) for Daxophone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb23PNogJ0M

Main Title (AKA Scherzo for Spambots) for Daxophone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb23PNogJ0M

If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the synthetic power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of synth libraries to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it.
These synth wizards were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

I think this is the wisest avenue to pursue.

Forgive me, but... these points strike me as a tad clinical. Why can't contrapuntal lines jump? Why must modulation be not jarring? Why must there be intrinsic harmonic connection? It seems like you're judging these things based on guidelines for an exercise in a university harmony textbook.
Precisely - that's part of the whole operatic principle. Of course, one could argue that silence might be better, but....

Ah yes, that I agree with, that his natural habitat is a different kind of score. But, I don't see this foray into opulent Hollywood scoring as a compromise or a sort of fluke. I think it was a stroke of fortune, and wouldn't in retrospect choose any other composer to replace him. The sound world that he created utterly embodies Middle-Earth in my mind, in a way that no one else could have, and that's not an indictment of the skill of any of his colleagues. It's an assertion that the filmmakers knew exactly what they wanted, and that Shore was the person to best deliver it.
It's unique, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Horner and Williams are seasoned blockbuster composers but that's precisely the point - Shore delivered something new that they likely wouldn't have.

The Wolverine:

Everything felt tired, old and joyless. Meh ... It made me wonder if the X-Men franchise can at all be saved. Good luck, Singer! 4/10
Alex

What a wonderful man.

i'm sorry but that really sounds like elitist nonsense. So you saying because it can't be played in a concert hall it's Not music ? Weather you like it or not...Hans Zimmer is one of the biggest film composers that has ever lived. He has literally revolutionised the film score. He is now without doubt the most copied composer out there. His influence is enormous. I think you totally misunderstand him and his music. The first mistake you seem to be making is he writes the kind of music he does because he is incapable of writing anything else. This is an enormous fallacy. Do you not think that someone who is focused and smart enough to build a musical empire that stretches an entire block and employs upwards of 100 people wouldn't write traditional concert music in depth if he felt he had too. He has obviously decided that to get noticed he needed to do something else. His career started in the eighties when pop film scores where common place . Hans seems to have taken traditional diatonic pop harmonies and dressed them up in epic settings. Again weather you like it or not this resonates with an enormous number of people . In fact the biggest criticism i think you can lay at his door is that because his music at is heart IS so simple it's easy to copy !
but that would be totally missing the point. His german heritage and age is an obvious starting point for examining his musical choices. At 57 he would have grown up during the heyday of "krautrock" . Bands like Neu, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Popul Vuh would be a big influence on him. The german youth after the war spent a lot of effort creating their own sound. In sharp contrast to the rest of europe who where obsessed with elvis ! Simplicity and repetition where the order of the day. Music was much more about texture and design. As much as Hans likes Wagner i suspect he spends more time at the alter of Ralph Hutter ! It is obvious listening to his scores that he strives for simplicity and minimalism in his melodies and motifs. Much more "autobahn" than "tristian ".......but THIS is a CHOICE ...not something forced on him by inability .
Remote Control are more of a sonic Bauhaus . Again the fact that he is open to collaborate and help upcoming composers is twisted into a negative. Claims that he can't write the music without help. What other Hollywood composers have help launched so many career's as Hans ? Yes it's a shame that many of these people write watered down Zimmer....but that really is their fault...not his.
The other mistake that you are making is to take the music he writes out of context. His job is to use music to help the drama. In many instances that would not translate to the concert hall at all. But that is not a failing of the music. It's not it's job. It's job is to serve the picture. And in most cases it does that very very well.
T

If that's true, then forget all I've said about Tauriel. It's a good thing she's in the film then, cause this just might end up being my favourite theme in the new trilogy I'm now a Tauriel fan!
I LOVE YOU TAURIEL!!!!!

I've spent the last two weeks checking the internet approximately every three minutes to see if these samples were out yet. I feel quite relieved now that I can put that period behind me, and get on with the more serious business of checking the internet every three minutes to see if the entire score is online yet.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/11/15/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-soundtrack/
Actually samples!

Zimmer's genius is in his orchestration - but not orchestration in the traditional sense. Like Jerry Goldsmith, he's a master at unusual and startling timbres - both acoustic and electronic. Like Bernard Herrmann, he creates bizarre ensembles (8 pedal steel guitars, 4 tubas etc.) that a concert orchestra would never be able to afford, that are purely cinematic in nature.

Zimmer's genius is in his orchestration - but not orchestration in the traditional sense. Like Jerry Goldsmith, he's a master at unusual and startling timbres - both acoustic and electronic. Like Bernard Herrmann, he creates bizarre ensembles (8 pedal steel guitars, 4 tubas etc.) that a concert orchestra would never be able to afford, that are purely cinematic in nature.

Harrison Ford conducts the Raiders March on Spanish TV.

The Shelob underscore reminds me of Shore's THE BROOD. Wonderfully expressionist.

The Shelob underscore reminds me of Shore's THE BROOD. Wonderfully expressionist.

Harrison Ford conducts the Raiders March on Spanish TV.

A John Williams score always take quite a while to fully sink in. Some of them I may like almost immediatly, but I can never get a full grasp of the score after a couple of days and a few listens. In a few weeks I will give a more definitive opinion. I like what I hear very much. But I want to get a full grasp. Sleepers, although it is a much different kind of score, did very little for me after the first 5 or 6 first listens. Now it's probably my favorite JW score

Over-produced? How so? Too much melody? Too much orchestra? Too memorable? Too much effort made?
How someone can rank this Sheeran garbage over any LotR song ... It may be "catchy", but so is my alarm clock.

Great in "Leon"; not so great in "Ep. III".

I loved her in West Side Story.

Darn, Williams is winning 3-2. Gotta dig up some more dirt.

Exactly (although as Mari demonstrates, the opinion is mixed). It's fair to say that many, or even most, critics are pretentious and less than knowledgeable about orchestral program music; but I don't think that means we can simply dismiss their opinion. To the extent they reflect the contemporary zeitgeist, it matters cinematically if Williams's music isn't communicating what it needs to communicate.

More relevant now than ever.
http://www.malonedigital.com/starwars.pdf

Jane Eyre, anyone? And let's see... a Rossini pastiche; Mos Eisley big band outtakes; old hat Williams soaring strings flying music; lots of disjointed, anonymous sounding action cues, including a fugue that goes nowhere and disintegrates into an inert mess worthy of "Jango's Escape."
I suppose the ticking clock counts as new in the Williams canon.