Hellgi
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Posts posted by Hellgi
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Yes, Conrad is already working on Indy IV. Don't know if he's the only one.
As some of you pointed out, "orchestrating" for JW is merely taking notes from the sketches and moving them to the right staves on a full score. Although, knowing JW, he wouldn't trust just anyone to do this; so since they've been working together for about 15 years, we can safely assume Conrad Pope is one the best orchestrator in the business (which he actually is, by the way - he worked with us on the 79th oscars and he was just amazing).
H.
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He didn't say
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I saw Conrad Pope last night at a screening and he told me John Williams will record Indiana Jones IV in Los Angeles, at the Sony scoring stage (as JW apparently usually does).
I believe I heard him say that the recording would be some time in February but I'm not 100% sure.
Just thought you guys would like to know
Hellgi
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You'll have to explain to me in what way did Williams disappoint you? I don't get it
or, maybe, that Bill had access to these scores and/or sketches and he imitated Williams' style (as he was supposed to do).That would be realistic.He could take a certain passage he wants his cue to sound like,then just switches the themes.But I based my theories on the basis he didn't have access to anything else than HPSS.If he had the whole JW library in front of him...
KM.
Bill told me once this story: he was looking for a specific cue and called John. (Don't remember from which movie). John replied "Oh, I don't know where it could be... let me look in my attic..." and a few hours later he received a phone call from John saying he found the score Bill was looking for. Bill managed to get a copy in the end.
Even though JW is (really) not fond of sharing his manuscripts.Besides, Bill has a huge library with a lot of manuscripts (full scores or sketches)... and he got many of them through "unofficial" channels... like many people here...
Bill told me yesterday, after looking at some sketches from The Cowboys (which he also has in his library), that JW has been sketching the same "way" for 30 years... same sketch paper, same shortcuts, same notation, etc.
You know, Bill in his 20's and 30's was completely into JW... he made four hand reductions and wrote orchestral transcription of Star Wars, just for himself... just to learn how the master does it... Bill got into this business in part because of JW's music. *And* Bill is a great composer and a great orchestrator (IMHO). His problem is that he doesn't get the projects he deserves. It's partly his fault of course... (but that probably belongs to another thread
)H.
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or, maybe, that Bill had access to these scores and/or sketches and he imitated Williams' style (as he was supposed to do).
.the theory now is that William Ross is JW's clone.K.M.
Well, the copy can't be better than the original... Isn't it?
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Whoever is interested, PM me.
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Ok, so I have the answer regarding Reunion of Friends. We were watching the end of the movie with Bill last night and he answered a couple of questions for me...
1/ The whole cue was sketched by him (but that I already knew);
2/ The whole first part is just Ross playing around with the "Friends / Reunion" theme.
3/ There's a short passage in the film, right after Hagrid talks to Harry and people starts applauding, which was replaced after the recording. Complete temp-love from the producers. It's a short passage from a HP1 cue. It doesn't make any sense dramatically or musically but you know how it goes.
4/ After that, it goes back to the Reunion theme
5/ The whole ending after that is 100% new material by Ross. When watching it Bill suddenly told me, "It's me, it's me!"
There *is* new material in CoS... Bill told me that kind of stuff happened at some other places throughout the movie. He would write a new ending or a bridge to join various themes for example.
Jerome
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My replies are based on what I learn about CoS, not on things I wish or things I'd like to be... ie. if I'm vague it's because I don't know more at this point. Sorry.
H.
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Well... I was talking to Bill last night about the scoring process for Potter and at one point he mentioned how working on the Quidditch game was especially hard. I asked him why and he said that besides the start of the cue, nothing was temped with music from HP1...
So I asked what it was temped with and Bill told me Pete Myles put some music from the recent Star Wars - TPM and AotC in there.
So we can safely assume that some other cues in CoS were temped with those two movies as well!
Hellgi
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But why bother, anyway, with a film score which is quite mediocre, regardless of who-wrote-what??
(...) the music sounded perfunctory and Hollywood-standardish for kiddie fantasy fare.
Hmmm... maybe because your opinion is not shared by all the members of this board?
Hellgi
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The question now is where is the non-Harry Potter material sketched by BR coming from?
Lucius's motif is a good example. It's there in the sketch but there's no indication of where it's coming from.
I looked into the spotting session notes compiled by the music editors (it's a HUGE book which I found in Bill's library). For 2m1, it says "BILL SUGGESTED USING MATERIAL FROM HP2 9m3"). Of course, 9m3 is the second cue where Lucius "motif" is played.
So it could mean that there was something already temped (or sketched?) for 9m3 when they spotted 2m1. But that doesn't say where that material is coming from.
Another thing to take into consideration: Pete Myles was music editor on both AotC and CoS. Bill has worked with him many times and I know he's often responsible for temping the movie. It's fairly realistic to think that he could have temped some cues of CoS with music from AotC. Nothing certain though - I'll ask him next time I talk to him.
Hellgi
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One problem seems to be that unless someone who knows the music in the movie and can read music sees the sketches, we don't know if these reflect what were recorded. It may be there are John Williams replacements of some of the cues originally penned by Ross. I do not think Hellgi really remembers or is familiar with how the music sounds. All these Ross cues may be unused alternates that Williams sent replacements for - and that would give your answer as to the new music in the mostly temped cues.
Did Wrobel see the exact pages that Hellgi sees. or was it from a different source?
It's very unlikely that there's another book of recorded sketches somewhere else. As I said before, the sketch collection I have is not Bill's personal collection but a master JoAnn Kane Music Service made *after* the session, as they always do. There's no point assembling a master book *before* the session, since Williams (or Ross, for that matter) read from the original manuscript sketch, which are taped to avoid any unwanted page turn noise during the recording. The book I have is spiral-bound.
These kind of books are basically archives of everything that was recorded and that is related to that specific project. So I highly doubt any other music for CoS was recorded.
Hellgi
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We have to know if the interview in your signature is true, because it says Williams did sent Ross sketches of actual film music. What hellgi has can the be complete score written (transcripted where aplicable) by Ross already implementing all the cues Williams sent him, along with the help of the orchestrators.
I wouldn't doubt the interview, as it was done by Ford Thaxton who's a good friend of Bill's and a reliable person.
What I have says it all to me: what is in JW's handwriting was sketched by JW, what is in BR's handwriting was sketched by BR... there's no reason why Bill would have taken a sketch sent by Williams and somehow re-sketch it.
Bill was recording 8 hour a day and I don't see him receiving sketches from John, sitting in front of the screen for 2 hours, conforming everything to picture, rewriting the sketches, sending it to the orchestrators, and then to the copyist. That's ridiculous and John knows better.
My personal opinion is that the new stuff that Bill said he received at the end of the recording session was *not* actual cues, but suites or stuff like the Dobbie CD Version. Things that were not "necessary" but JW decided to add because he found the time to do so. By the time they went to the recording sessions in London I have no doubt that the whole film was already scored and there were thus no reasons for John to sent more "cues".
Also - realistically, it couldn't have been long and difficult cues, as they had a specific schedule with the orchestra and adding that kind of music could have messed up the whole recording schedule.
Hellgi
ps. By the way, I don't think Williams can be criticized for doing what he said he would do. The filmmakers knew what they were going into, they had a choice to take someone else or work it out with JW. So in the end, instead of writing one little, probably meaningless 30" cue (which was anyway surely temped with music from the previous movie) he wrote a concert suite and you're pissed?
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Ok, it gets more interesting... man I love music.
I've looked at cue 9m3, titled "Lucius and Dumbledore / Dobby is Freed."
Right at the end of the cue, bar 75, sync point says "Angry Lucius." The same melody from bars 15 in 2m1B comes back! Same orchestration too: horns / trombones and low strings. Only for four bars this time (basically, just one statement). The expression marking says, as in 2m1B, "sinister".
So! The goal is now to find where that motif is coming from...
Williams went through all this trouble to compose themes that were barely used. But the Chamber of Secrets theme is not used effectively, and is hardly used at all. Same goes for Dobby. Again, I have to wonder if Williams had time for these concert suites, why did he not have time to actually score more of the movie itself? Editing aside, the amount of reused music in Chamber of Secrets is far greater than Attack of the Clones.To me the explanation could very well be that JW wrote the cues were the temp wasn't from HP:PS. He gave BR the job of working on the scenes which were temped with HP:PS' music.
Regarding the concert suite, believe it or not they are much easier (or at least take less time) to write, especially for someone like JW who has long mastered the art of writing concert suite based on his own material. You don't have to go back and forth with the movie, watch timings, make sure it doesn't conflict with dialogs, sound effects etc. The only thing you have to take care of is actual music. And with all due respect for JW's concerts suites, he's at the point where he can probably write those sitting on the toilet seat.
It could be interesting if you could write the complete cue lists of both scores, if they arent already posted here.Its always useful when doing DVD rips, covers or looking for unreleased music...No problem, will do tomorrow :cool:
Hellgi
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Good Lord, the last page it's actually gotten...interesting. Am I in the right thread?
Hellgi, along the same lines as KM's question about AotC in the Quidditch cue, could you dig up something with Lucious Malfoy's motif? It's in the first meeting with him in the bookshop (right after the Diagon Alley cue) and at the end when Dobby is freed. That motif is almost exactly the same as the Seperatist motif from AotC and I'm just curious what, if any, notes there are about it.
The cue you are referring to is 2m1B, "Harry Meets Lucius" (2:35, orchestrated by EK). At the start it says "Sim. to 3m5 EK".
So, I've looked into the original HP:SS's sketches from John Williams (which we also have here) and indeed the whole intro is similar to 3m5 (titled "Entry Into The Great Hall"). Williams indicated on that sketch that Malfoy was on screen at that moment: Bar 1, "Malfoy's Dial", bar 5, "On Malfoy", bar 14, "C.O. Malfoy's hands" (C.O. probably means "Cut On").
Ross' basically adapted those first 14 bars.
After that comes a one bar E.H. solo (sync is "... or very foollish"), and then it goes to a horn / tbn melody with low strings accompaniement for 8 bars (sync: Just After Cut on Lucius"). Then at bar 23 ("Just after Cut") it goes to a restatement of that melody with alto flute, clarinet and high strings until bar 30 ("Cut to Lucius"). Not sure where that stuff is coming from, but it's definitely not from HP:PS 3m5.
At bar 31 ("Malfoy: "Muggles..."") Bill wrote "As in bar 7" and, as such, it just goes back to the same kind of motive than at the beginning of the cue, pretty much until the end - of course adapted to fit in the necessary time frame and to allow overlap to the next cue, this time written by JW ("The Train Station").
That's all I can tell you for now... If what you were looking for were those 23 bars, I can't tell you much more at that point...
Hellgi
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Don't really know what "famous" means, but, amongst others:
I worked for / with : Bill Ross, John Frizzell, David Foster, Stephen "Doc" Kupka;
I met with: Michael Giacchino, John Powell, Klaus Badelt, Michael Giacchino, Ed Shearmur, Basil Poledouris, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Conrad Pope, Eddie Karam, Brad Bird, Pete Anthony, Chris Young, Marc Shaiman;
... and I talked over the phone to Alan Silvestri and Quincy Jones.
Hmmm, mostly music people... sorry
Hellgi
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It still comes from AotC.Ross didn't just dream this up out of thin air,and just by coincidence it's almost identicle to a cue Williams wrote the month before.
Why are you being so aggressive? I want to find out as much as you do. Tell me in which part it is so that I can look at the sketch and potentially get some kind of information from it (Sometimes Bill indicates from what original source a specific passage was being adapted).
Hellgi
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Ok, thanks!
Another quick one: so, according to what you're saying, I guess Bill Ross is still a "pencil & paper" guy. Is it correct? If so, big props to him!
Yes, at least that's how he was trained and that's what he's been doing for the past 25 years. My experience with him is that he would write a sketch first and then mock it up in Logic (or sometimes I mock it up
). But even though he would still sketch the whole cue "a la John Williams" (as a matter of fact, since working on CoS, Bill has been using the same sketch paper as JW).Of course, on synth-based projects, he does most of it directly in Logic, although I know he still sketches his ideas on paper when necessary.
Hellgi
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And while we're consulting you, Hellgi, can you explain who put together the theme suites, like Fawkes the Phoenix, The Chamber of Secrets, Gilderoy Lockhart, and Dobby the House Elf. For a while, I thought it was Williams who had written the concert suites, since the building styles seem very much like Williams. But if it was Williams who fleshed them out in concert suite form, one must wonder why he felt it necessary to do this rather than scoring more of the actual film. If it was Ross that wrote these suites, then I have no problem, I suppose. But if it was Williams, I severely question his methods for writing concert suites before music for scenes in the film.
Ted
"Dobbie" (±3:30), "Fawkes the Phoenix" and "The Chamber of Secrets" (3:39) are three cues that appear at the end of the roster. They don't have a cue number. All three were composed by Williams (orchestrated by CP).
"Dobbie" is subtitled (CD Version) on the sketch. "The Chamber of Secrets" is subtitled (Theme Extension Material for "Three Note Loop"). Not sure what that means.
All of them are definitely "orchestral suites" (or at least weren't written for a specific scene); they have no time code or sync points indications and are not numbered as cues.
"Gilderoy Lockhart" (2:00, also composed by JW but orchestrated by EK) has a SMPTE start, there are sync point references, and the cue is properly numbered (2m10). So this one was written for the picture.
Hellgi
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Hellgi, just one thing I'm curious about: did Ross orchestrate his cues for CoS or did Williams' orchestrators help too?
According to the cue roster, most of the cues were orchestrated by Conrad Pope ("CP") and Eddie Karam ("EK"). A few cues have "TT" and "HH" as orchestrators - not sure who these are.
Hellgi
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so he was allowed to use the score to Attack of the Clones to write the Quidditch cue?
There are four parts to the Quidditch cue (numbered 4m1), all sketched by Ross:
Pt.1 Quidditch's Stadium (1:47)
Pt.2 Bludger Attack (1:21)
Pt.3 Chasing the Snitch (2:17)
Pt.4 Harry Catches the Snitch (1:02)
(FYI, parts 1-3 were orchestrated by Conrad Pope; part 4 was orchestrated by Eddie Karam.)
If you can tell me which part you're interested in, I can probably scan it for you, they're about 5 pages each.
Hellgi
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But sure, we already agreed on that: if writing music is not composing, then you're right. Bill Ross probably didn't compose a lot (if anything at all) on CoS.
Hellgi
So JW composed the music, BR just figured out what instruments play when and where and stuff?
indy4 - who doesn't really care, as long as Fawkes the Phoenix, Chamber of Secrets, and Gilderoy Lockhart are by JW.
I'm just saying that if - according to KM's vocabulary - composing isn't arranging or adapting, then Ross didn't compose much in CoS. According to that same definition, actual "composing" in CoS would probably be limited to JW's 15-20 cues.
And Fawkes the Phoenix, Chamber of Secrets, and Gilderoy Lockhart are definitely JW's
Hellgi
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I know there's been a lot of discussion about that but I've always stated that Bill never mentioned it. The only score he told me about were older ones, like Superman.
I'll look tomorrow and check if he did indeed write that specific cue, and if he did, maybe if you'd like I could scan some parts of that cue for you.
Hellgi
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But the material he wrote is based on music previously composed by John Williams for HP:SS, correct?
He did not compose any new material of his own?
I think someone knowing HP:SS better than me would need to go over the 50+ cues Ross composed ("adapted"?) to make sure of that.
What I gathered from my discussion with him is that while he adapted most of the score from the previous Harry Potter, he also drew extensively from other JW's scores, at least in terms of chord progression, orchestration, etc. But only checking the score would confirm that (or not).
Hellgi
Indiana Jones IV to be recorded in Los Angeles
in General Discussion
Posted
You're debating with yourself... I never said Conrad Pope was JW's main orchestrator.
Hellgi