David Coscina

DAMN, I forgot Elfman's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. RATS RATS RATS.

I haven't counted much from 2000 on just because....I would have nominated Yared's TROY but I wanted to stay with official soundtrack releases. Most of the above, I love. Agnes of God has got some beautiful, moving pieces on it and I think is Delerue's finest achievement. Same with poledouris' Conan. But Prokofiev beats 'em all in the end. I'm sorry for exclusing Rosza, Newman (Alfred), and Tiomken along with North but I haven't heard enough of their output to nominated a specific score. Maybe I should have included Ben Hur....

Listening to Yared's TROY excerpts, this poll came to mind...Keep in mind most of these choices will be from that past 30 years.

thardevenport, I'm in the same boat this week. The only difference is that I'm doing an analysis on a specific score so I do have particular questions pertaining to said score that I can ask the composer. But it's my first time speaking with a fairly well known composer so I'm a little shall we say nervous.

Yep, it is sad when great themes and superb orchestration are at the mercy of tone-deaf focus groups...

Hey Mark, love the Godzilla pic in your avatar! Is that from Destroy all Monsters? Oh, try the othe poll out, there are more choices

I included more options in this version (mostly because I hit the submit button instead of the add options button before I could finish for that last post-sorry)

Okay, here are some more choices for the '90's. I probably missed a couple but these ones come to the forefront of my mind. Magnolia qualifies as an urban epic. I chose Mulan by Goldsmith. Even though it isn't overly long, the scoring of the picture sounded big and epic and there is a big battle scene...and I just felt like putting Jerry in there.

Yared's full TROY score is along the lines of Rosza's Ben Hur. It's the most amazing score I've heard in ages.

You do need a soundcard that has the WMF drivers or else you run into hideous latency (meaning if you hit a key on your MIDI keyboard, the sound plays a second later which is completely useless if you're doing realtime recording). M-Audio has decent yet inexpensive PCI sound cards. They are your best bet since USB external cards can be dicey with audio streaming. Firewire ones seem to be pretty solid mind you.

No disrespect to Shore, but I think Williams would have written fewer whole notes. After a while, it just turns me off. Mind you, Shore did get more contrapuntal for Return of the King. I like Shore's music, especially parts of the first score, but I don't think it's the brilliant masterpiece in film score history that it's been made out to be.

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Yep, here's a link to Sounds Online page featuring several. http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/detail...html?sku=EW-161 And here's a link to Motif Songs forum where I've posted some of my own pieces using this plug-in sample set: http://www.motifator.com/forums/showflat.p...sb=5&o=&fpart=1 http://www.motifator.com/forums/showflat.p...sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Well, I had to put him in because he's had the dumb luck to be involved in some epic films....sadly he didn't produce epic scores...

I use EWQLSO Silver Edition. I use it with Sonar as a Dxi plug-in. Works like a charm, but needs a lot of RAM (512 ain't enough for complex orchestral works that include a lot of key switching patches).

Yeah I gues but I had to include one John Williams score....I wish I could include NIXON or I guess I could have included Harry Potter but that's not really an epic....or Far and Away. That was an epic film. Maybe my next poll will be for the '90's. More nominees that way.

There's been a resurgence of the epic film in Hollywodd which has produced some epic scores. Which one is your favorite? I'm going with Yared's Troy. It's big, has variety in themes, and is plain fun to listen to.

Here are Lucas' liner notes from the Japanese CD release: John and I have been through a lot of terrain over the course of 6 films and the better part of 3 decades. The music he's created is some of the finest this planet has heard. I've been blessed with the good fortune of having John bail me out of tough spots in the first three films in particular. I confess that there's a little rust on my directorial skills and Johnny is the man whose music touch has buffed that rust to dust. I shudder when I think of the scenes with Jake Loydd without his wonderful and stoic music, or Jar Jar Binks' complete innane dialogue before John got to it and somewhat drowned it out with his score. I thank John not only for his friendship but his utter professionlism and, thankfully, his never ending patience that prevented him from being bludgeoning me to death by one of those large brass instruments in the orchestra. George Lucas, 2004 Here are Williams' sentiments Thank the heavens that I am no longer obligated to score this ridiculous franchise any longer. What started out as an honourable, fun spectacle, turned into a massive marketing ploy that duped so many people into believing it was a bonified cinematic gem. What was I thinking? Now it's over and I can finally spend time writing more concert works, taking quiet walks, see my grandchildren, and get back on track scoring films that will have some moral resonance years from now John Williams, 2004 Funny enough, Williams mixed up his liner notes with a letter to a close friend (maybe SPielberg) and thus the CD company printed said comments indescriminantly. I guess we now all know how he really feels about Star Wars.

Is it signed by Williams? Man you could get millions on ebay for it! Did you know that Meco has been asked to do a disco version of the entire 6 installments in a single 240 minute cut? Engineers are wondering how the heck they can transfer such a piece onto CD format. There are no breaks in the music because of the disco backbeat. What's really cool is that Meco is doing a bossa nova version of Boba Fett's theme. And he's hired ex-Tangerine Dreamer Christophe Franke to supervise the orchestral parts. Originally he wanted Don Davis but Davis wanted a co-composing credit on the album.

The choral music where Yoda wields his own little light sabre is great. But sadly not on the OST. Pity

Force yourself. Neil Hey that's not nice Neil. My comment to Luke was merely to continue using his imagination on this post, nothing disparaging at all. On a separate note, I wish I got the European CD to Episode 3. Sounds like some interesting banter in the commentary track. Maybe I'll order it from Amazon.UK. Or perhaps Williams will get Ian McKellan to provide a throaty narration amidst the tracks in the same fashion as Angela's Ashes a few years back. I could picture hearing McKellan soundbytes in between these amazing tracks.

I agree. For some reason, I do re-visit the Phantom Menace once in a while but haven't played AOTC since I bought it...

Use the force Luke

I'm not at all surprised. Yared is a very generous, humble person. He speaks of his abilities as a gift and has no ego at all. It makes sense that he'd be such good friends Mighella. And yes Stefan, I agree that most on the FSM board are complimentry of Yared's music. And justly so- he's a very talented composer.

Did anyone catch the Wookie Chorus that Williams had flown in to punctuate Chewie's theme? Talk about quarter tones from hell! I do know that Snoop Dog has sampled a section of that for his new CD entitled Gangsta Wookie Style. I think Snoop is filing to change his name to Wook Dog. Man, you gotta love the artistry of these guys...at least with their names.