Loert

One of my favourite pieces and recordings ever:

There's a case of something similar when Short Round almost falls into the river: It doesn't exactly follow the formula of long trumpet note + trombone interjection + noodling horns though, but at least the instruments come in the same order... Also, may be a bit random but those descending horns in the TPM excerpt are curiously reminiscent of the horns here from Schoenberg's Erwartung...(note the three long notes at the bottom)

Like him or hate him, there will likely never be another like him.

Well it's certainly a major 7th above the root. The chord itself is the minor major seventh chord, the version with the 7th in the bottom is the same chord, 3rd inversion.

I think this whole thing is a bit misleading - it could be that this is Williams, but what you actually hear in the background is a section from a cue looped three times. If that's the case then there's no real way of knowing what the "real" rhythm is. However, if it isn't looped, then there's nothing actually that "complex" about the rhythm. The accents suggest 3+3+3+3+2+2, but this adds up to 16, so there's nothing irregular about it. The whole thing is in 4/4 - as The Five Tones hinted, it's like a slowed down version of Zimmer's Mombasa. The Grievous excerpt has constantly changing meters - if you try tapping a regular beat to it (3/4 or 4/4), you can't do it very well. The same goes for The Falcon, the beginning of which is 2+2+2+2+3=11 so you can't fit it into 3/4 or 4/4. Similarly, this track by Jerry Goldsmith is 4/4+7/8. THESE are irregular patterns, but not the pattern in this TV spot, which is just 4/4 with some syncopation. Another way to think about it is that if you imagine someone conducting, they would have to keep changing their motions in the excerpts I listed in the paragraph above, but this wouldn't be the case for Mombasa nor this TV spot. Just wanted to highlight that there's nothing really linking Williams' past use of irregular meters (i.e. in his action music) with the rhythm in this TV spot.

This sounds more like it was written by someone who has just discovered that the diminished 7th chord is a thing and decided to use it everywhere. I think the music in that advert with the Falcon/hyperdrive is more likely to be by Williams than this.

The Sawallisch studio recording is still my favourite and still the one to beat, IMO. It is one of the best-mixed opera albums out there. My only issue with it is that the four tam-tams in the penultimate scene aren't brought out as well as in some other recordings (especially the Bohm). As for Tannhauser...my favourite is Sawallisch, again. 1962 live recording. Though I can't say I've listened to all the recordings out there and done an exact comparison!

Doesn't sound like Williams to me...

Wow, thank you for the compliment! I did the first third of the mockup some time in March, the rest took perhaps 20 hours or so to play in. The drum track was done separately and took me an evening because I had to transcribe it from the original recording. Cleaning up and smoothing out MIDI blemishes for the whole thing took up another evening as well.

Thanks! Pretty much all the orchestral stuff is Orchestral Tools. The drums are Abbey Road Modern Drums.

Has anybody mentioned the quote of Vader's theme at the end? (0:24-ish). rots_excerpt_1.mp3 Also, this excerpt is in Eb minor, the original Vader theme is in G minor. If you bisect the two notes you end up with F, which is the first letter of the word "fly" but also "French Horn", which is what Luke's theme was originally played on. I'm not sure what that means.

My favourite thing about the new music is the chord at 0:19 - Williams perfectly captured that "oh shit" feeling.

Here's my mockup of JW's arrangement of "Anything Goes", from the opening sequence of Temple of Doom; always wanted to hear what was going on behind all that tap dancing! Enjoy!