pthompso

"the question you're really asking is this: Are ballads better than fast songs? And that's a question for the ages." that's not the question I'm asking at all. I'm sorry I can't think of better examples. I'm trying to distinguish melody driven vs. rhythm driven not saying they are mutually exclusive. I understand rhythm is inseparable. I'll try to give a better example. Two fast pieces. One with more emphasis on melody and one with more rhythm at the forefront. On the one hand Almost any of the action scene music from War of the worlds vs. the TIE fighter attack from A new hope. Both are fast, but certainly TIE fighter attack is more melodic no? Or even another "fast" melodic piece would from the 2:00 mark in Clash of the lightsabers where it plays an uptempo version of Han and Leia's theme and Yoda's theme. Certainly more melodic than WoTW which is more dissonant and rhythm heavy. It's not ballad vs. fast songs. You can most certainly have melody in a faster song.

I hear what you're saying with the cake argument. I still would have to agree with the other poster that Melody would be the sugar that is more amazing on its own than flour or some other ingredient. However... I guess maybe what I should have said is "aren't melody driven songs more enjoyable to listen to than rhythm driven songs?" Cuz I'm definitely in that boat. I'd rather listen to songs that it is clear the songwriter spent time crafting an interesting melody to weave over the rhythm and instrumentation than a song that is more about the rhythm. Again all my favorite john williams pieces are like this. For example I prefer the "Anakin/Padme theme" in Episode II to the the more rhythm driven "general grievous" track in Episode III. Sorry I can't think of a better example. But you can usually tell which of Williams pieces are more melody driven and which aren't. Also speaking as a musican, I feel like that writing a really good melody is insanely hard to do, so I'm always really impressed that John Williams is continually able to do this in any genre he wants. I feel like writing a rhythm heavy song is not as hard to do (for me personally).

"You seem to be defining arranging as the retention of a melody and the modification of rhythm, tempo, orchestration, and the other surrounding elements. This is generally what arranging is; however, it isn't applicable to your argument. It isn't fair to say that a rhythmically driven piece like "Dennis Steals the Embryo" can't be effectively arranged because arranging means altering the rhythm. Consider this: how much music can you make out of the rhythm and instrumentation from "Dennis," rejecting the five-note melody? A lot." I don't think you've understood what I'm trying to say. Of course you could make infinite permutations with any given song. My point is how many of them will be pleasing to the ear. I'm just saying I don't think it's any coincidence Yesterday has one of the greatest melodies of all time and it is the most covered song of all time. How many people are covering "dennis steals the embryo"? Ok so dennis steals embryo is rhythm driven. How bout a song that's melody driven but not that good of a melody? Like Blink 182's "whats my age again". A trite melody that you already know what he's going to sing before he sings it. It is catchy yes but I would say more of an empty kind of catchy. A melody that is annoying after a while. 2 melody driven songs. 1 with an amazing melody (yesterday) another with a trite predictable one (whats my age). You could permutate "whats my age again" 100 different ways and most of them would be just as lame as the original. The opposite is true of yesterday, you could flub the rhythm and the instrumentation or just play it on a solo instrument and it out of 100 different ways most of them would be pleasing to listen to. I guess bottom line what makes a good melody is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. And songs with great melodies almost always are more likable by more people than songs without them. And all my favorite songs of all time that I can think of among other things have kickass melodies. I dont' consider "dennis steals the embryo" a bad piece, just not as breathtaking as some of Williams' more melodic stuff. And as for whether John Williams himself would say melody is the the most important aspect, maybe not phrased exactly that way but I believe so yes. I seem to recall him saying in interviews that the melody is the hardest part for him and once he gets that the rest is easier, because then he has the core theme and then it's a matter of arranging the theme in various ways. So even if he didn't directly say "melody is most important" he seems to structure his compositional process by first starting with the core (central , most important part, foundation) theme and working out from there.

First of all. Sorry for calling 'escape-chase-goodbye' a song. Moving on... I see what you guys are saying. However I think many of you mistook my initial post a little. I guess I'm just arguing that melody's relative weight in the mix of all the things that make up a composition is more than any other element. And yes you could of course speed up or slow down "yesterday" and make permutations of it that do not work (someone mentioned a marching band). But I would still argue because of it's overwhelmingly great melody the song could be rearranged into more good-sounding permutations than a song without a good melody. How many pleasing arrangments coudl you do of "Dennis steals the embryos" or some background-esque music? And by the way "Yesterday" would work as an instrumental and does sound good as just arpeggios as someone mentioned. I've heard cover versions that do that and they sound just dandy. And some posters said stuff like 'well its the stuff going on around the melody'. Yes I agree. Certainly ET is made better by not just it's great melodies but countermelodies instrumentation etc. But like I say. If you had to pick ONE element of music to weight higher than the rest it's gotta be melody. Rhythm is a close second (for me). Finally, Yes i acknowledge that War of the worlds film required a different score than ET did. Obviously. The point I was making was that one score is more pleasing to listen to (for the average listener) because it has better melodies. You might get your jollies from WoTW and dissonant scores. I would argue you are in the minority though judging from Polls conducted on this site. Just rank your favorite John williams scores and you'll probably agree with me. ET / star wars IV & V / superman / potter / jurassic park usually top people's favorite lists because they have good melodies and good everything else. Then in the middle you might have scores like Far and away / catch me if you can / terminal / schindler's list / AoTC ..... I dunno what people like. Point is scores that have decent melodies but the rest of the elements aren't as.... good. Then at the bottom you have scores like Minority Report / War Of The Worlds / Stepmom whatever. Scores that don't really have any memorable melodies. BTW the last paragraph is sure to cause massive disagreement but you can maybe see my point? And yes it could be argued that they are you favorite scores for other reasons.....I'm still convinced the strength of the melodies dictate the strength of the score.

The other day I was trying to think of what is the common thread that runs in all of my favorite music. And in analyzing my favorites I came to the conclusion that the melody is by far the most important part of music. That is not to say that Rhythm, Arrangment, and other aspects of a musical work are not important at all. Just if you had to pick one to be the most important. For example, if you take a song like Yesterday by the beatles and played it in 100 different styles (salsa, reggae, punk, accapella, orchestra, sax solo, whatever) it will still be a great song because the melody is so good. You can interchange the Rhythm, instrumentation, Tempo anything you wanted and I believe the song would still be good. Even an instrumental only version would be good, because the melody is THAT good to carry the song even if you took out lyrics. Yes it helps that the lyrics are good and the arrangement chosen by the Beatles is also good but at the core of the song is a great melody. Or think of a band like Radiohead. I have no idea what he is saying in Karma police or Fake Plastic trees but the melody carries the song and makes it great Same thing goes with John Williams. I was trying to figure out why I love Williams more than any other Film Composer. And again, his melodies are better than any other composers. Yes yes he is also good at chosing the right instrumentation and everything to fit the movies of course. But again you can play the star wars force theme in 100 permutations and it would still kick ass. John Williams uncanny nack for leitmotif and for melody surpasses that of every other film composer out there today. Hell didn't the disco version of the star wars theme top the charts? The melody is that good. Another John Williams example. Why do you think a score like Memoirs of A Geisha or Munich or Harry Potter is on your playlist more than War of the worlds/Minority Report? I argue it's because his melodies are better in the former three. ET "escape-chase-goodbye" is arguably considered Williams best song in arguably his best score. I don't think it's any coincidence the melodies he writes there are amazing. Ideally of course you want songs that have a great melody, great lyrics, great arrangement, great instrumentation, but I still think if you had to pick one Melody would always be the most important. Your Thoughts?

A while ago on this site somebody posted the videos for when John Williams made an appearance speaking at USC for all the film composer graduate students. He fielded questions and there was a 6 part video I downloaded. One of the guys sitting in the audience was the audio editor or mixer for ET and he makes a comment saying "I remember there was a piece that was very difficult to play on piano and you came up and played it on stage. You are the only composer I know who could both compose and play the material you composed." So I guess that doesn't directly answer the question but it seems to imply John williams played this difficult piece from ET on the soundstage at least. So that leads me to believe it is him on the recording.

Hey sorry if this is already been a thread before, but I was just curious what DVDs have special feature interviews with john williams. I've seen one for ET and star wars had some but I wasn't sure about many others.

ok like in duel of the fates at the 3 minute mark. sorry i can't be more specific i don't speak sanskrit

3 part question: 1) What is the musical term, if any, for that epic or dramatic choir sound used in tracks like Carmina burana, LOTR: Fellowship track "flight to the ford", and duel of the fates when it's like "DA da DA da DA da DA da" ( you know what i mean). 2) Who pioneered this sound in film. I only ask cuz I've seen it pop up in a lot of films most recently X3. (sort of how alot of movies now use "moaning woman" vocals). 3) What is the best example in film of this type of choral sound?

The really emotional song from pleasantville always gets me. I believe it's played when jeff daniels character is painting a color mural. A very beautiful song.

A friend of my father's from work is Greg Bonnan, he came up with the show "baywatch" and he recently sold the rights to baywatch to spielberg. It sounds really strange i know.... but anyways so he claims spielberg is going to make a feature, although i suppose he could just as easily sell the rights to someone else. So perhaps william's next project is baywatch!?!?!?

try the planet krypton one again i just moved it over sorry thanks, I just got my ebow yesterday and it makes everything sound so spacey I couldn't help but record a force theme

Suite to Pleasantville by Randy Newman that one song when he paints the mural. It's used on every romantic movie trailer ever but it's still awesome

I did these two recordings of some john williams stuff and put em on the website for one of my classes. Follow the link below and then right click and save target as the forcetheme and the planetkrypton links towards the botom to hear some john williams goodness. The forcetheme.mp3 is a bit better I used an ebow, phaser, and delay pedals. The planetkrypton is on clean guitar but i had fun figuring out the multiple parts. www-scf.usc.edu/~pthompso/ Also on the page is some original compositions I have done using Finale in style of John Williams. Enjoy! PS yeah I know there's some musicians thread but I'm to lazy to find it

yeah that really bugged me they took it out, probably ben burtt's idea.... and ironically on the documentary empire of dreams one of the clips they show where williams is conducting the orchestra with the movie playing behind them is that exact scene.