BigMacGyver

I haven't heard anything about this, but it sounds interesting. What is it? Ray Barnsbury It's music for DisneySea Tokyo's 5th Anniversary live show. A CD was released with barely 29 minutes of music and portions of dialogue. Glen Ballard did the lyrics for a song that is used throughout the performance. When you erase the dialogue, there is about 16 minutes worth of Silvestri's score (not counting the ending song): http://www.alan-silvestri.com/discography/...dofmythica.html There is no reason to believe that Silvestri will do a mediocre score for a film like A Night At The Museum that offers such a wealth of opportunities. The film is a colourful mixture of fantasy, comedy and adventure elements and it's like a history lesson coming alive. There is plenty of room for big moments and all these different historical figures and places will inspire a very varied score. We have cowboys, we have attila, roosevelt, a t-rex (at least the bones) and egyptian mummies. All of these exhibits brings it's own sound. Imagine western music ala BTTF 3 for the cowboys, furious jungle percussion for the rex, oriental mayhem ala The Mummy Returns, asian influences for attila. Now tell me again that this is going to be boring.

He was far from being inactive in 2006. The Wild and The Sea Legend Of Mythica were both scored by him during this year and Night At The Museum promises to become a powerful ending to a great Silvestri year which also offered some great releases of his earlier scores.

Not JW related but nevertheless worth mentioning: Alan Silvestri was expected to score the film when Stephen Sommers was still attached to it as director. When Sommers left, John Ottman was announced for the scoring job but now, Ottman is out and Silvestri returns to compose the music. That's what Soundtrack.net reports in their upcoming projects section. The film opens december 26th.

My favourites so far are the two Silvestri's of the year: The Wild and The Sea Legend Of Mythica (at least the part of it that wasn't covered with dialogue). Powell's X-3 was very good. Apart from that, disappointment dominated the year for me but that's great because that makes it possible for me to keep up with all those new releases of older scores.

So... maybe that is the mysterious new project he was working on?

Hook has considerable chances to receive such a release with the album being OOP and the score being owned by sony as it seems. Varese is recently giving us a rush of CD Club releases from the sony vault even the more recent ones, so just keep crossing your fingers. A expanded 2-CD set is not too unrealistic in this case.

Two marvelous Imax scores by composer Alan Silvestri exist. The first is from 1999 for the odd bio Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box. This score is best described as a Silvestri concert. Everything that makes his music great can be found in this score. It's big, it's epic, it's colourful, it's Silvestri. Two bootlegs exist of this score: The first one only carries this score (51 minutes) and the end credits song "Grand Illusion" arranged by Alan Silvestri and performed by Dennis DeYoung. The other bootleg pairs his score for Siegfried & Roy with What Women Want but dropped the end credits song. There is another silvestri-score for an Imax project called The Luxor Ride from 1993 which is an attraction at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Maybe not as rich as the music from Siegfried & Roy, it's a very short one (barely 20 minutes) and the sound quality of the bootleg is really bad but the adventurous theme is one of the best Alan Silvestri ever did. The score features the first silvestri choral music that actually has vocals (all his choral music before was vocal less). There is also a funny spoof on the jaws theme in the first track. Both scores would fit together on one CD and such a pairing would be one of my holy grail releases.

It was formerly released on LP, so this is just a straight LP to CD re-issue. Thats the reason for the low price and why this is not a limited edition.

I guess this is a rethorical question because the answer should be known to everyone here.

I already knew about CHiPs long before but Diamond Head is definitely a big surprise. Cool news!

I always do all sorts of tinkering with my favourite scores. Re-editing, making suites of my favourite moments, ripping stuff from DVDs, making my own compilations, playing around with the sound of cues and trying to improve it etc. All these things. I enjoy it so much that I would almost call it a hobby.

It's rumoured to come out mid September.

No idea if Hellgi's story is true, but wasn't there some sort of interview earlier in 2006 where the interviewer stated that Williams is working on something? Anyways, whatever it might be, it is probably not a movie. I have never heard of an occasion where a big name composer was working in secret on a score. Such information usually goes public very quickly these days.

One more thing: If you want to become a JW completist, then you should focus on these discs: Limited editions: Amazing Stories - vol. 1: more than 2000 units out of 3000 are sold A Guide For the married man - Kendall said its a low quantity item Heartbeeps: earlier varese club CD and likely to go low anytime soon Home Alone 2: same here OOP regular releases: The River - OOP but still available at the regular outlets Superman: The Movie (rhino 2-CD edition) - OOP but still available Sleepers - OOP but sealed copies still exist JFK - long OOP but used copies still go for reasonable prices You guys can extend that list of titles that are OOP but can still be found in (online) stores.

Well, that sounds like you know your stuff. Really, I don't have a lot more to add here. The lead character's piano theme sounds like a good idea and the motif for the violence is good too. Maybe, since the violence from the ghost seems to grow over the course of the story, you could provide snippets of a motif in the early parts of the film when the attacks are not that bad and later you could develop it into a full-fledged theme when the entire story about the house is reveiled to the main character (usually in this type of film, there is some sort of revelation scene). Maybe letting the motif grow with each attack.

As soon as Intrada announces the volume 3 of their amazing stories anthology... buy it! If you are a true Williams fan the chances are high that you won't regret your purchase.

Well, your tools seem to be pretty limited and that could be a problem because making good suspense/thriller music actually requires a lot of care and detail for orchestration. I don't know how familiar you are with the basics of scoring a film but your idea with the piano sounds quite good already. On the other hand, it can be tricky to create suspense with the piano. The instrument usually isn't associated with tension but if you want a good example for a score that actually uses a piano to create tension, watch fincher's The Game and listen to shore's score. Rhythmic figures can also create tension. If you have nervous wood blocks ticking and other such instruments it can create an unsettling feel, especially when you add reverb and echoes. Of course it depends on the scene if that kind of tension is appropriate because it feels and works very different from tension music coming from string layers. Its also possible to combine both. What others said before, I can only agree with. Less is more in this genre so don't go overboard because otherwise the music will cancel itself out and becomes useless. Hope that helps you a little. For more advice we would need a bit more info about story, characters, etc.

You are not telling me anything new here but you missed my point. You perfectly realized and summed up the problem but you are accepting it and that's my problem because with an attidude like yours, film music is already lost. I know, it's more easy to say hey, Hollywood is full of money-making bastards who violate art and creativity in favour of dollars but what can I do about it anyways, so I will just consume it and support them, instead of thinking about the problem and speaking up against it. Opportunism. Must be very comfortable. Instead, I say the solution can't be found within the extreme. You say I should watch indie movies but that's just the opposite extreme of Hollywood's commerce and both suffer from problems. Music for blockbuster films is pushed into mass production regions by producers while indie films don't have big music budgets which can also limit a composer in what he wants to achieve. The solution is to find a healthy middle way between commerce and art that is good enough for all involved. Right now, Hollywood continuously ignores to look for such a middle way. Of course they do so, because looking for it would mean experimentation, moving away from the success-concept, effort and risking box office dollars. On the other hand, box office results aren't that great either since a while apart from one or two films, so they really don't have much to loose.

Yeah, sorry. We forgot that the industry needs more business mans like Zimmer and his remote control company to compose popular mass ware by copying temp-tracks of their own work instead of artists who know their craft of actually supporting a film with unique musical accompaniment. We are such fools. Seriously, you tell us to blindly accept the consequences that temp-tracks and over-commericalized thinking in Hollywood causes. That's pure opportunism. That's like saying the purpose of a disease is to kill people so lets not do anything against it. The original purpose of a score is to support the picture, not to fill producer's pockets. That's the goal that should stand above anything else and that's the last bit of artistic value fans and professionals should defend instead of following the commerce nightmare. Elmer Bernstein defended it until his last minute, Jerry Goldsmith did it, Bernard Herrmann made it his crusade while Danny Elfman still defends it. These people spoke up against the temp-track practise and that's one important thing that makes them artists and not business mans.

Well, that's the gentle way of putting it, but sadly, in a lot of these cases the "difference" isn't that noticeable.

Good composers can cope with temp tracking. As long as everyone understands the temp track as a tool for communication regarding the direction the music has to take in a scene and not as the bible of all things. Problems come in whenever composers are forced (mostly by producers) to copy a temp track note by note.

Even though he completely missed my point?

Well, I also have the old one on CD-r and the DVD score and I really can't notice a difference in sound quality when I compare the CC re-issue to any of these. Some tracks of the CC even contain a very minor background hiss which I believe is identical to the other releases.

That's right. I guess it's just my view of things because I like to take everything into account when judging a score, even more so when it's an early one because these scores often mean a lot to composers because that's where they actually started. One could say that every debut score from good and successful composers is a reason to celebrate because it was the first step for a great artist in a very fruitful career. At least from that point of view, all debut scores are something good. Of course, one can always prefer one debut score over another but it's just that personal taste thing and looking beyond that is crucial for proper and fair judgement of a work.

Well, with the exception that it wasn't my question at all, BurgaFlippingMan posted it and he or everyone else has the right to ask anything, even if it is just for the purpose of starting a conversation and being social. Maybe you should actually read posts more carefully and try to be social at all? Sure, that costs some effort but believe me, its worth the result.