SafeUnderHill

I've been listening to the wonderful AUJ this week as a matter of fact. Will probably give the other two a listen after, I tend to like listening to them sequentially.

But the second half of DOS has all the cool Smaug music!

You've heard Shore speaks dozens of times about the importance of instinct in his creative process. It was his instinct to shape the FOTR CR in this manner. That was the same clear-cut answer as it was 10 years ago, it's the same clear-cut answer that it'll be 10 years from now ... though by then, I'll be gumming my mash and yelling at clouds, so I'd advise you to believe me now.
 
I've always had issues with the "Complete Recordings" name -- which was obviously chosen to delineate the sets from the prior album releases -- yet I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better title. The Fellowship of the Ring: It's Like That Other One, But Now In Order and Essentially With All The Music, But Maybe Let's Don't Get Carried Away Splitting Hairs About That Last Part?
 
Catchy ...
 
EDIT: Oh and yeah, I know I have the word "comprehensive" in the subtitle of my book. So I guess I'm a little hypocritical once again!

The thing is, album presentation is like religion or politics -- everyone has their own opinion, and everyone thinks they're right.
 
I don't think you'll ever see the LOTR scores released in the current warehouse manner (complete score here, album presentation here, alternates here, etc.) It's simply not the aesthetic that the above-the-line creative people want. (Watch, now that I've said that, I'll get an email tomorrow: "Hey, guess what the new project is!!")
 
The warehouse approach also doesn't apply to these scores incredibly well because of the nature of their creation. You've all heard the stories of the rewrites, podium edits, etc. That process created dozens and dozens of alternates with differences of literally no more than one or two bars -- sometimes one or two notes. (And I'm taking about interstitial passages, not principal themes.) Releasing those is essentially the equivalent of releasing the film's dailies ... as in every single flubbed line, missed cue, and alternate reading. A few highlights are interesting, absolutely. (I hope that someday everyone can see the alternate opening of ROTK that began with the forging of Anduril. It didn't work, but it was interestingly different.) But speaking as the guy who sifted through all the score alternates to find the gold, you don't want everything. You really don't. It passes from listening to hoarding at a point. I know some people feel that they're entitled to make that decision themselves, but I'm not so sure that's the case. I don't want to go down some George Lucas rabbit hole, but don't artists have the right to shape their work as they see fit? Isn't that what art is? I don't know, maybe art does pass into the hands of the audience at some point, but those arguments generally come up in situations of revisionist history, etc. I don't think that's what is being discussed here. I don't know ... I'm not a philosopher!
 
Howard Shore has often told me that composing is actually a reductive process. You begin with everything, then you slowly remove things to find the art and beauty. His approach to album-creation is *somewhat* similar. Sometimes art is in prudence. 
 
But again, that's just one approach. As I say above, there are many ways to skin this cat. And I'll be honest, when these albums were being created and I was asked for my opinion, I can't remember ever asking for anything to be cut back or taken out. I was always advocating for including this passage or that. So maybe I'm more aligned with the collector mindset than I'm willing to admit to myself.
 
 

Well I think we can all agree the CR releases are wonderful, but with so much music recorded new sets more in line with the specialty label motif (complete score PLUS alternates afterwards) would be welcome, and purchased by many here. 

There is sure to be at least one more "blow-up" on this forum, once Doug's book comes out.  Ideally we'd see three more blow-ups in the form of Complete Recordings, too...

Well, the hashtag is "OneOfTheseDays"...
 
Also, note Jim Ware's tweet:
 

What is your top ten favorite themes from Lord of the Rings and what is your top ten favorite themes from The Hobbit? 

Well I always thought parts of The Last Goodbye to be reminiscent of The Breaking of the Fellowship (namely the 'over hill...' bit), so it sort of makes sense. Didn't Boyd say something about the writing being inspired by Shore's music to some extent?
 
They should have released these films every two years, it would have been best for all parties. I know it worked with LOTR but that was lightning in a bottle stuff (it also benefitted enormously from having a lengthy pre-production period with no major changes in crew).

Wow, some nice nuggets of information and anecdotes there, Doug!  Thanks for sharing!

Can't wait to purchase your upcoming book(s)!

Those of us who were close to the process don't avoid taking about it because of some deep, dark secret. We're just being polite and deferring to Howard. If he wants to go deeper into his decision-making process, that's his business not ours. 
 
In truth, there was no single event that prompted the decision anyway. The nutshell version is that the timing just didn't work out. Shore needed to be focused on composing, and there simply wasn't time to do this while tending to the lengthy recording and rewriting process. In this sense, the DOS doc really says it all. You've all heard how crazy these postproduction schedules were. They really, really were! The official channels aren't playing it up for drama. Even the liner notes were hard to pull off. (And I know, a multi-million dollar film production shouldn't be worried about the dork doing the liner notes anyway ... I'm just saying!) There was one time in mid-October of 2014 when I was having a late dinner with Howard. We kind of hung out until the wee hours chatting, then -- sometime well after midnight -- he politely got up and said, "Well, I need to go compose more Dol Guldur." I responded, "Yeah, I need to write something about it." We both laughed because he was composing music for unfinished scenes and I was trying to analyze unfinished music. We always fixed things up in revisions, but that was how things worked. A lot of the first draft material was pretty speculative. 
 
 
But again, I'm probably telling you things you already know.
 
Oh and yeah ... there was some discussion of Howard working on the song for the third Hobbit film. He actually was involved in a sort of supervisory capacity, and even had a song credit in the album notes for a little while. But he ultimately decided that his work wasn't worthy of a credit, and asked that they not award him one. (This is not implying that he ghostwrote the song or anything. The people credited on the album *are* the people who created this song. He just sort of checked in and leant an ear from time to time.) Again, I think the schedule just didn't allow anything more significant. Too much overlap in schedules. 
 
And as for Chicago weather .... the less said the better this time of year. I've been looking for my patio furniture most of the afternoon thank to gale force winds. Blech!

About the production? Isn't it all out there at this point? The DOS documentary did a good job of laying it all out. If you're looking for conspiratorial secrets, I'm afraid none exist. 
 
About this music? You're gonna have to wait on that one! (But hopefully not long.)

It's about to begin...
 
Can hear glimpses of the Ring theme in the warmup!

I think you read my post wrong.  I did not say that cue was the best cue of all time, I said the score as a whole might be the best score of all time.

According to Jon Burlingame's article:
 
http://variety.com/2016/film/spotlight/fantastic-beasts-bfg-john-williams-1201930763/
 
"He begins recording “Star Wars Episode VIII” in December and expects to record off and on through March or April 2017. "

Lol what a silly thread. Really goes to show a fundamental lack of understanding in different musical approaches at the time. And Steef was the most sensible poster on here!
 
Some of my favourite lines:
 
Accurate!
 
 
l o l
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 

He can safely fall asleep after bar 3 of Roots and Beginnings.