Dunge_Onmaster

Can't understand why, given the huge demand, this hasn't simply been released digitally long ago... I would have bought it immediately. I'm simply no longer willing to pay at least 50 € including shipping to Germany for one or two polycarbonate frisbees and then the package might end up at customs and I have to pay more and wait even longer. Anyway, after all these years, the best cues have already been unearthed in one form or another, albeit a little less... officially That's quite enough for me.

The original recording is in some passages quite unsatisfactory from a musical point of view, as particularly the brass section of the Hungarian orchestra had problems with intonation and rhythm. For me it would be option 5 and 6. Lionheart is simply one of my favourite scores of all time and I am hoping for a re-recording as brilliant as Tadlow did for Conan and Destroyer a few years ago. Although I greatly appreciate Goldsmith's pure synth scores as works of art with deliberately reduced timbres, I think an orchestration of those ideas would be hugely exciting. A re-recording of the end credits from Rambo II as a bonus track would be the icing on the cake. And as a further mini addendum, I might suggest a newly recorded version Jerry's theme to the short-lived TV series H.E.L.P. (1990), which was never available before. Just an idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Xl0_1W-5s

Finally, two very obscure additions to my physical collection, which has grown only minimally in recent years. To be honest, I would have preferred to save myself the 15 € postage to Germany plus exactly 7.13 € customs duty if Buysoundtrax had offered their new releases separately as a purely digital purchase. A quick word about the music: Joe Kraemer's "Wonders of the Universe" is a nice compilation album of his audio drama scores for Big Finish's "Space: 1999" (2021-2022). Unfortunately, these are purely sample-based recordings, but you can hear the passion and inspiration Joe put into his extravagant orchestral compositions. The sample libraries used are of a very high quality and since I have been dealing with MIDI orchestration myself for many years, I probably have a certain guilty pleasure for this sound Musically, everything revolves around an ominous, minor-interval motif consisting of six notes not unlike Barry's "Black Hole", which gives the whole score a uniform melodic structure. "G-Savior" is a team effort by Louis Febre and his mentor at the time, John Debney, for a Canadian TV production from 1999. It's a kind of Power Rangers meets Starship Trooper meets sci-fi anime with an ultra-low budget. If my ears aren't completely deceiving me, this is one of those typical synth-orchestra scores from the late 90s that were recorded almost exclusively with the Gigasampler from Nemesys. But I could be wrong and at least some of the solo instruments were recorded live. For the aforementioned nostalgic reasons, I can personally overlook this very synthetic sound as long as the music itself is solid. And that is definitely the case here: The memorable heroic main theme is introduced in the first track and runs as a musical thread through the entire score.

Thank you. I'm glad you like my arrangement and thanks for the link. As you can imagine, I'm an ardent Wagner disciple myself. I visited Bayreuth for the first time this summer and was thrilled! Nice to learn there are obviously other Wagnerians here. However, Matthews' transcribed ultra-short version of the Ring doesn't work for me. The motifs have absolutely no time to unfold in any way let alone form a meaningful musical phrase and structure. If you really want to condense the Ring's most important motifs in a reasonable and artistic manner, you need at least a duration of 50-60 minutes, as in the Maazel version.

If I should ever release a tribute album, this would be the cover...

Hello there, some time ago I made a little piano arrangement of the powerful orchestral conclusion to Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold" (1869), the first of his four Ring operas. Here, several of the most important leitmotifs are musically interwoven in a sweeping triumphal march: the Valhalla motif in it's full glory, followed by the Ring motif in a somber interlude and finally a climactic coda over the motif for the Rainbow Bridge, which leads up to Valhalla itself, the mythical Castle of the Gods. Wagner is considered one if not THE the most influential precursors of Hollywood Golden and Silver Age film music. Not only because of his well-known leitmotif technique and choice of mythological sujets, but also because of the often very expansive harmonic structures with distant-third relationships all over the place and, of course, his modern-sounding, very brass-heavy instrumentation. Maybe here are some fellow "Wagnerians" who will enjoy this little hommage: For reasons not entirely unironic I like to play this every year at the welcoming ceremony for the new 5th graders at our school... Best regards, Dustin

Since I was asked for sheet music via PM: Hal Leonard has licensed my arrangement and is now offering it on Sheetmusic Direct. https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/686157/Product.aspx Sorry, I had no control over the price. Would have preferred to post it similar to Bandcamp with "name your price". Anyway, maybe one or the other wants to try it ;)

Thanks and yes, you're quite right. TNG was definitely the best series I've ever seen (not just Star Trek related, but in general). This refreshing mixture of research, politics, science, sociology plus humor, exciting settings, intelligent stories and above all: outstandingly good actors just wasn't existent before. The only drawback for me was the fact that Ron Jones was fired in the third season (his music was light years better than the boring string wallpapers of McCarthy and Chattaway) and that "only" seven seasons were produced.

Hi, last year I arranged Jerry Goldsmith's iconic main theme for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as a little jazz piano fantasy. Alexander Courage's opening fanfare for the original series from 1966 as well as some other well-known motifs (like the one for the Klingons) appear along the way. Hope you'll enjoy! Best regards, Dustin

Glad you like at least the music. It's a real shame that the camera is so shaky and there are so many avoidable editing errors. But you can tell that the whole thing was produced with a lot of heart and soul, which is why I put a lot of effort into the music as well. SilverTrumpet, thanks for the hint with LotJ. Fantastic production and at that time it was even more demanding! And the high degree of self-irony suites that pathologically nerdy genre quite well. Too bad that no original score was composed.

Hello, a couple of friends from Austria have produced a small Star Wars-inspired fan-film. What the flick lacks in dialogues and dramaturgy is hopefully compensated by the excessive overuse of homicidal martial arts elements (All are passionate fencers.) Well, since John Williams unfortunately didn’t have the time, I had to step in for the music. Have fun, Dustin

I bought it digitally today. The quieter passages ("System Searching", "Possible Life", "Laura's Theme" etc.) are quite convincing and have a remarkable symphonic quality for a TV series. The unimaginatively crescendoing string clusters of Dennis McCarthy and other TNG composers (Ron Jones not included, of course) can't even come close to keeping up with The Oriville . The action scoring (e.g. in "Battle for Earth") is skillfully crafted, but does not leave a lasting impression. Nevertheless, the cleverly integrated quotes from the great sci-fi scores of the Silver Age are a nice treat; for example, the string ostinato in the finale of "Activating the Device", which is very strikingly reminiscent of "Snowspeeder Rescue". All in all, a great orchestral score for a series. However, nothing here really sweeps me off my feet in the long run. I can't get rid of the feeling that in the absence of new really excellent (genre) scores, pretty much everything with a big orchestra and a classical scoring approach is hyped here and on similar boards. Tough times for film music fans...

Received today: "Celluoid Heroes" by Nigel Westlake for the 1995 documentary series of the same name about the history of cinema in Australia, released in 2002 by 1M1 Records. The music's overall gesture is wonderfully reminiscent of John Williams during his glorious 80s phase, making full use of all the orchestra's timbres, especially those of the woodwinds. Luckily, the whole score was properly performed and recorded by the 90-piece Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which was in fact not a common practise in the mid-90s for the score of a rather small documentary. Track suggesstion (besides the heroic "The Invention of the Newsreel") is clearly the rousing main title, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qear4Ck_qiY

Thanks, Thor For those interested, here are some excerpts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xLfkcH70ao

Hello everyone, even though I've been secretly reading this forum for years, this is my first post and I'd like to start with a review of a quite recently released compilation of rather obscure film music, even for a long-time film music fan like myself. "The Film Music of Mark Isaacs Vol. 1" is a 2-disk set released by Australian soundtrack label 1M1-Records in April 2020. It is a compilation of four nowadays more or less unknown cartoon scores from the 80s. A short introduction to the composer, who is unfortunately rather unknown for most folks around here I'm afraid: Mark is both a trained jazz pianist as well a studied classical symphonist, and his concert works (including two symphonies) remarkably combine European compositional techniques of the late 19th century with subtle jazz elements, but there are also influences of New Music (especially free tonality, expressionism, etc.). For his relatively short excursion into the field of film music during the 80's and early 90's, however, Mark was mainly guided by classical golden age scores in the style of Korngold and Steiner. However, he has developed a refreshingly independent tonal language in which – despite the respective historical setting – a bit of jazz yglamour shines through... like some well-placed seventh chord or fanfares with swing-like ternary rhythms. Film music of this kind, although written children's films, is not something you find every day. Now to the four individual suites compiled by 1M1: A Tales of Two Cities: Mark's first film music ever is also his most avant-garde on this compilation. He uses a very large orchestra in all its timbres, including alternative playing techniques such as Col legno in the strings, pitch bending on the timpani, etc. Nevertheless, the music remains strongly influenced by leitmotifs, which helps attentive listening and gives the score in some parts even some Wagnerian moments. The passages for the courtly scenes, however, are more reminiscent of Elgar. Even though I do not want to understate the music in any way, this score is the least tangible of the four for me, personally. Perhaps this is also due to the rather dark/tragic setting of the Dickens story (Robespierre's reign of terror after 1793). The Adventures of Robin Hood: The music for this 1985 Errol Flyy-inspired animation is clearly based in the swashbuckling genre and, if it comes to me, is together with Ivanhoe the strongest of the four suites. The entire suite is dominated by a heroic theme reminiscent of Korngold. In 22 minutes, this easily delivers everything you could ask for from a swashbuckling adventure score about castles, knights and sword fights. Also pleasant are the quieter passages, which utilize flutes, lyres and hand drums (in the recording probably rather acoustic guitars) to create a pseudo-authentic medieval market feeling. Ivanhoe: Basically I like Ivanhoe as much as Robin Hood after listening to this score for the second time. Both suites glide wonderfully into each other. No wonder, since they share the same setting. wink This is most obvious in the track "Ivanhoe Meets Robin Hood", which quotes Robin's main motif from the previous score in a musically very interesting way. Hm, what could be the reason for this? For film music fanboys, the fanfare associated with King Richard with two quart jumps right at the beginning might sound a bit familiar, as it somehow creates a certain spaced-out feeling, like going on a Star Trek or something Rob Roy: Strictly speaking, this last suite is probably the weakest of the compilation, but considering the brilliant music here, that doesn't mean anything at all! There's a much smaller orchestra, rather entertaining humorous mini-cues strung together and more or less clichéd cartoon-like orchestrations. But because of the Irish-Celtic influences (actually it should be Scottish, I think big :D) especially in the accompaniment the whole thing gets a lively folkloric drive and climbs up to a majestic final fanfare with "Rob Roy Pardoned". A worthy finale! Conclusion: A very worthwhile album by former "part-time" film composer Mark Isaacs with great adventure-film music. Especially score enthusiasts, who like me have been "in business" for a while and urgently need new, previously unknown material, and who can hum all the main themes of the likes of Goldsmith, Williams or Horner in their sleep, should seize this opportunity. Even if you have to expect a delivery time of two to three months for orders from Australia, it's definitely worth the wait! Best regards from Germany, Dustin