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Dixon Hill

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Everything posted by Dixon Hill

  1. Dixon Hill
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) What can I say about this film that hasn't been said already? Induces a deluge of college-days nostalgia for me. And Richard O'Brien has a weirdly beautiful voice.
  2. Dixon Hill
    Wow! More music, and a decent sounding recording. Take my money.
  3. Dixon Hill
    I must be the only person who didn't dislike that film. The score is fantastic though.
  4. Dixon Hill
    But, seriously, that is a very good question, for someone familiar with both. What is the difference between the two? What are their trademarks and styles? Do their fans say things like "classic Djawadi" or "this harmonic writing is so Jablonsky", or "this piano writing reminds me of..."? Karol I used to try and talk about those things but it became pointless here. Their styles are evident in their smaller projects. I couldn't discuss anything specific since I haven't heard nearly enough of either of their work, but there's certainly a difference. Most everyone who has come out of the RCP world is a fine composer in their own right, when they're allowed to be. It's not fair to equate studio/directorial pressures regarding "style" with lack of compositional individuality.
  5. Dixon Hill
    I think he should just go back to his woods. They could imply that the moth is a sort of emissary for him so he doesn't have to get involved. That would be the only reasonable thing to do.
  6. Dixon Hill
    That was to be expected. Now, how is the White Council going to lose it? Mmmm... Come in to play a lot more? Ugh... why do I feel that a needlessly dumb fate for Radagast is in the works? I know that's a leap, it's just where my mind went.
  7. Dixon Hill
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6gt5fBzjc
  8. Dixon Hill
    Wow, I had no idea the CR's were so hard to come by for a reasonable price now... I should put mine in a booby-trapped safe.
  9. Dixon Hill
    I listened to Ender's Game on a whim last night. I don't really know anything about it and won't see it, and the score wasn't really my cup of tea... but there are moments where it seems like Jablonsky manages to escape the ol' trailer-music sound, or more accurately, slip something good past the people with money who are in love with "epic" music.
  10. Dixon Hill
    Yeah, I thought it was really great fun. The first time I saw it all I could think was how disappointed I was to have missed the chance to see it in theaters, with a good rowdy crowd.
  11. Dixon Hill
    Yep. We had a fairly good idea of how things were going to be around the start of November. Hopefully schedules aren't so far behind that that changes this year. Although I wonder if Empire would even do a streaming score again. Seems like it may have only been due to the excitement of Middle-Earth returning. Now we're already back.
  12. Dixon Hill
    I see no reason why you should have forgot!
  13. Dixon Hill
    The 5th? Of November? December? What happens on the 5th? The 5th of November? Don't you remember, remember?
  14. Dixon Hill
    Lou Reed passed away today.
  15. Dixon Hill
    This is wonderful to see/hear. I'll echo Prometheus: superbly crafted music. Congratulations!
  16. Dixon Hill
    That guy couldn't write! Plus he stole all his ideas from JK Rowling!
  17. Dixon Hill
    I'm going to watch the extended edition tonight with some folks. Based on Jason's synopsis I expect it to feel slightly more full of "meh" humor, but with a notably larger amount of heart. I'm most looking forward to the stuff with Bilbo in Rivendell. I feel like that will really resonate.
  18. Dixon Hill
    I like the purple. Gives me a nice feeling. This is going to be a good one.
  19. Dixon Hill
    I have in mind a little musical gesture that seems to reappear in very similar contexts. Late 80's Jerry.
  20. Dixon Hill
    Yeah there is definitely an F in there. You could read it as a Gm7/Bb if you take into account the pulsing G pedal, but I usually block off harmonic regions based on color/instrumentation. Again I suppose it's that Persichetti influence. Incidentally, I've been mulling over starting a discussion about a little musical thread that's interested me for some time now, which runs from Mahler to Goldsmith to Zimmer. If I have the time to write something up I will; in the meantime, unless it's more superficial than I think, can anyone guess what it is I'm talking about?
  21. Dixon Hill
    It is frustrating. By the time it should have happened, I had a sizable group of family and friends attending those concerts and really digging them.
  22. Dixon Hill
    I think the fact that this is a technique that may have been largely cultivated in pop music is why it defies some analysis. It wasn't conceived with any stringent theory in mind, just by sound. If there's one quote about music I'll always hold to be a universal truth, it's what Debussy said about pleasure being the only law. I've always thought of this kind of sound-world, which appears in a lot of the "younger" composers' scores, as a kind of pandiatonicism, in that there's not much functional harmonic movement but rather modal progressions, with very free use of the predominating scale in more active voices (that flute ostinato, for example). In the case of the MOS excerpt, it's essentially picking one chord from a scale, and refracting it into different meanings by bass movements or other changing layers rather than using functional progressions. I like it. I'll admit though, my raw theory is rusty since I try to keep it in the back of my mind as more of a subconscious guide for when I write, so I defer to you two. Here's another good example I think, starting at 0:45. More of that ostinato over repeating modal progression thing. You've got Johnny Marr's guitar and the synths doing an ostinato outlining a Gmadd2 chord, while the strings crawl upwards. The harmonies are moving from Gm, Asus4-A, Bb, and then Asus4-A again with a nice crunch because of the C natural in the bass. You've also got a synth pulsing a 16th note G throughout. This passage also sounds a little Newmanish to me; I'm thinking of the chordal bit of the Stoic Theme from Shawshank that shows up again when Andy makes his escape. It's that very modern, pop-influenced harmony. Ok here's a little experiment. Scribbled out my interpretation of this, took a picture... this is fun! Make of that what you will if you care to decipher my penmanship.
  23. Dixon Hill
    I gave it a try that night, but the manuscript paper I usually use is too big. Feel like there's no space to think on smaller paper. I could break out some normal sized notebooks next time though.
  24. Dixon Hill
    I was at those concerts too! (they are where I met Doug Adams, Jim Ware, and John Takis in fact). Both were amazing concerts and I am so bummed ROTK is seemingly never happening. It's a real shame.
  25. Dixon Hill
    I think it makes sense. A pedal point's purpose, whether it's in the bass or otherwise, is to suspend a tonality and juxtapose it against another. I learned much of what I know about "contemporary" harmony from Vincent Persichetti's academic work, and his view was that pedal points don't just include single notes, but any structure that facilitates that kind of juxtaposition. He approached it as a form of passing polytonality. These ostinati have the same function, they're just not single, suspended tones. And I agree that it's a very American kind of technique, this repeating idea, over or under which you have shifting elements that change the "context" of said repeating ideas. Adams, Reich, etc. do it a lot, but I'd speculate it may have first come about in the pop music of the 60's/70's. Or maybe Copland though I can't point to anything specific offhand.
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