Marcus

Spielberg without John is Speilberg without Spielberg.
 
 
He'll retire

Parade of the Ewoks is great!

How is a six voice double fugue (magnificent, by the way) any different? 

Only manuscript.
8 staves for smaller cues, up to 20 for the busiest ones:

This is what I do too now.  It was fun to play with the gear for a while but unless you can really make it part of your process it's better to outsource that part of the work to those who can.  I'm just a few years too old to have the right stuff for the new approach.

I'm currently scoring a fairly big feature film, requiring 110-120 minutes of orchestral music, some of it highly complex.
 
I do all of my work in very detailed short-score with no additional orchestrators, sending each page off to only two people: An engraver providing orchestral parts, and an assistant providing mock-ups (and digital elements integral to the score, all of which I first notate and describe to the best of my ability).
 
It's a small team, but a very effective one. 
 
For my concert work, it's all manuscript, but most of it gets engraved courtesy of my publisher.

Guess I didn't post in this thread the first time around.
 
In short,  Michael Kahn is the best living editor in the world.

Mike Matessino updates us on John's social life, also Episode IX:
 
 
Does June seem a little late for John to start writing this score, considering the timelines for the last two sequels, the December release, and the score's likely runtime?
 
Maybe this is his way of reducing the plethora of rewrites TFA undertook, waiting until the film is properly assembled (sans VFX) rather than writing reel by reel.

Have you ever though that his most recent music cannot be classic already because... it is new. Only time will tell, I love all of them. 

I love the Keeping Up with the Joneses theme!

Serialism can most certainly express emotion.  But let's make sure we agree on terminology.  Serialism uses a "series" of either pitches, rhythms, dynamics,  Emotion in music is greatly dependent on tension and release.  Let's use the Fibonacci sequence as our series.  The Fibonacci sequence appears throughout nature from the microscopic to the grandest structures of the universe such as the below examples.  So this is a mathematical series.  If you equate these as pitches at various tempo you will hear tension and release and that is what we interpret as dramatic expression in music. 

 
There are many great examples of expressive serialist works.  Now what is a more complicated discussion is the range of emotions.  For example, I don't think there can be a serialist example of joy.  It tends to serve dark and neurosis thoughts best.  So it is basically a tool for the composer to use while they express an emotion.

I don't know about those, but it is certainly possible to imagine a piece of twelve-tone music which evokes "non-uncomfortable" emotions through the use of texture.
Consider Rzewski's Scratch Symphony, for instance:
 
 
The first notes in the double bass are:
Eb Bb B C# G F E A C Ab B E...
So you get 10 non-repeating tones at the beginning. In theory, there's no reason why it couldn't be 12 tones, and still convey the same general feel of the piece, which I find more on the relaxing/contemplative side than the horrifiying side.
 
(In fact, this piece in particular brings to my mind an image of somebody layed on the ground gazing at the night sky. Though, I have to say that when I saw the Milky Way with my own eyes for the first time, I felt more a sense of out-of-bodiness and silent awe rather than relaxation.)

Project description

Dear Pierre, 
 
Thank you for your sincere and heartwarming post. I think there's a deep lesson in it for everyone. 
 
To overcome one's struggles, and to find joy and gratitude in life.. Well, that seems to me just about as meaningful as life can get. 
 
Also, for what it's worth: There's true lyrical beauty in the piece that you posted, and true talent. May it serve you well, no matter what you pursue. 
 
Warmly, 
Marcus 

Hmm…
 
 

Depends on what you mean by "better".
 
If you mean better in terms of compositional technique, then the answer is no.
 
But if you mean better in terms of expressing raw emotion then the answer is also no.

Categorically no. He simply isn't. (Doesn't mean you're not entitled to prefer his music over Williams', which is merely a matter of taste) 

Categorically no. He simply isn't. (Doesn't mean you're not entitled to prefer his music over Williams', which is merely a matter of taste) 

Categorically no. He simply isn't. (Doesn't mean you're not entitled to prefer his music over Williams', which is merely a matter of taste) 

I will always thank people like John Williams and some other great film composers because they managed to partially invert that tendency. They showed that it is still possible to write music that is pleasant to listen to, while keeping to deliver a high-level artistic content. This feat alone is worth of an important place in the history of music.

Dubbing for non children's films is a mistake that should have been excised from history long ago. It ruins the movie, unless you have been conditioned from birth to accept it.
 
How can a person even be expected to judge an actors performance?

He doesn't really think there is any magic to this so is perplexed by the question and interest.  It is sort of like asking anyone who is at the master level of their craft to explain how do they do that "magic" and the answers are probably all the same.  Work their asses off, study, apply themselves.  The goal is not to be a great composer but to be better today than you were yesterday.  JW still studies music and still finds fascination in it.

I think The Adventures of Han is a delightfully fresh and fun piece that achieves quite a lot of different things at once, and in subtle ways. 
 
Connective tissue and seemingly throwaway moments actually hearken back (or is that forward?) to a lot of the action writing in the OT, but just in quick glimpses/foreshadowings.
 
It's a sort of in medio res piece, and might seem less tightly constructed than it actually is, which is a rather apt way of having form serve as a kind of characterization.
 
The piece is structurally who Han is as a character: Someone who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a (mis)adventure. On the surface, it's music of impulse, whim; it's designed to feel rhapsodic, even though, as has been pointed out, it's actually a kind of rondo. 
 
On the other hand, it's Williams also showcasing his less romantic, more modern style. The motivics are more concerned with rhythmic twists than long-lined lyricism. 
It's a less heroic, more haphazardous take on the elements that constitute Luke's theme. A sort of curveball Luke in minor mode. 
 
It's clever and catchy, and bridges the old and the new in a very elegant way. 

I think The Adventures of Han is a delightfully fresh and fun piece that achieves quite a lot of different things at once, and in subtle ways. 
 
Connective tissue and seemingly throwaway moments actually hearken back (or is that forward?) to a lot of the action writing in the OT, but just in quick glimpses/foreshadowings.
 
It's a sort of in medio res piece, and might seem less tightly constructed than it actually is, which is a rather apt way of having form serve as a kind of characterization.
 
The piece is structurally who Han is as a character: Someone who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a (mis)adventure. On the surface, it's music of impulse, whim; it's designed to feel rhapsodic, even though, as has been pointed out, it's actually a kind of rondo. 
 
On the other hand, it's Williams also showcasing his less romantic, more modern style. The motivics are more concerned with rhythmic twists than long-lined lyricism. 
It's a less heroic, more haphazardous take on the elements that constitute Luke's theme. A sort of curveball Luke in minor mode. 
 
It's clever and catchy, and bridges the old and the new in a very elegant way. 

I think The Adventures of Han is a delightfully fresh and fun piece that achieves quite a lot of different things at once, and in subtle ways. 
 
Connective tissue and seemingly throwaway moments actually hearken back (or is that forward?) to a lot of the action writing in the OT, but just in quick glimpses/foreshadowings.
 
It's a sort of in medio res piece, and might seem less tightly constructed than it actually is, which is a rather apt way of having form serve as a kind of characterization.
 
The piece is structurally who Han is as a character: Someone who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a (mis)adventure. On the surface, it's music of impulse, whim; it's designed to feel rhapsodic, even though, as has been pointed out, it's actually a kind of rondo. 
 
On the other hand, it's Williams also showcasing his less romantic, more modern style. The motivics are more concerned with rhythmic twists than long-lined lyricism. 
It's a less heroic, more haphazardous take on the elements that constitute Luke's theme. A sort of curveball Luke in minor mode. 
 
It's clever and catchy, and bridges the old and the new in a very elegant way.