DarthDementous

Just watched the finale. This was such a fantastic end to the season, MacFarlane is a genius. Not only was the plotting unexpectedly audacious and rip-roaring, but the brash and un-bogged down approach to what would normally be standard logistical issues (for anal fans) in shows like Star Trek, felt like the thrilling pulp antidote to it all here. Let's just say they took more of an Indiana Jones "making it up as they go" approach to sci-fi dilemma here than one would typically find instead in an episode of Star Trek.
 
And the set-pieces, the special effects! It was so much fun to see The Orville gang whizz through their own spectacular homage to the original Asteroid Field - with musical accompaniment that unabashedly locked its own sights on Williams' famous barnstormer but with a dialled up to 11 voice of its own, it was the stuff of pure feelgood cinema and I was loving it - yet this was actually made for the telly!
 
Any lover of dominant and swashbuckling symphonic scoring style owes a debt of gratitude to The Orville and Seth MacFarlane for keeping the dream of great, loud neo-romantic soundtrack scoring alive in 2019. For this show is the last bastion of its defence and its right to exist! Hyperbole? Sure, I'm having fun typing this shit, but I'm also serious when I say that once Star Wars is finished, we'll only have Joel McNeely left still doing that sort of thing with any sort of conviction. But I'm sure he'll be giving it absolute death whenever he does! Hats off to the guy as far as I'm concerned.
 
The Orville, when it really goes for it, when it's firing on all cylinders, I think it really comes together to make something pretty bloody special. When its expertly and lovingly crafted working parts are humming along during those lively highlights, during those funny and exciting high sci-fi adventure sequences, I think it's better than next gen Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy combined. It's cinematic TV magic.

The Orville 2x14 The Road Not Taken
 
WOW!!  What a terrific episode, talk about an extremely satisfying conclusion of a 2parter AND conclusion of the whole season.

It was so smart to show the stakes of the Kaylans via an alternate reality where they have taken over half the galaxy, really makes the threat feel more real in our main timeline.
 
It's also extremely interesting that if you look at last week's episode and take the final 20 seconds out, you have an very well done, kind of regular weekly non-connected episode that was extremely satisfying.  But with that ending included, that sets up this fantastic episode we got this week that acts as a completely logical continuation of the story, despite having a completely different pacing and tone and style.  The writing for this show is really on point!
 
Another hallmark of this being a good episode is that it sets up this alternate very well, so well that you could imagine so many more stories taking place in it.  I mean if you think about it, this almost feels like episode 5 of a 5-episode continuous story;  They could have done entire episodes that filled in the 7 year gap, showing Kelly's alternate life, showing the alternate losing to the Kaylans, etc etc etc.
 
The cameo by Hallston Sage as Alara was awesome!!   It was so brief, I wonder if they actually filmed it back when they were filming her 2 episodes for this season, before she left the show... or if she actually returned for filming way later, and it's possible they can use her next season somehow.  Interesting.
 
Joel McNeely's score was also very VERY good this week, one of the best scores of the whole show I think.  The heavy use of homage that ran through all of season 1 and most of season 2 was tapering off towards the end of the season I think (Unless I just wasn't noticing all the homages any more), and this one was the same with lots of great action music that seemed pretty original to me.... until they arrived on the sunken Orville, when we got some nice vibes on Horner's ALIENS, and then when they took off some more of Horner's Star Trek sound.  Good stuff.
 
Bring on a renewal!!!

Just watched Lasting Impressions. 
 
After every single episode I say that I cannot possibly love The Orville more than I do now. But then the next episode happens and I find myself falling head over heels in love with it past a point that isn't measurable. 
 
What a powerful episode this was. So full of heart. The character writing was sensational. The episodes that Seth writes are so personal, and this screams of a very personal experience he has had himself, because no one can get the nuances of a story like that without having lived something similar themselves. And as someone who has experienced something similar to what Gordon did (minus the holograms), I can say just how real and emotional this episode was. Just fantastic storytelling in a wonderful sci-fi setting. 
 
I say it every week, but here we go again...
 
 
I LOVE THE ORVILLE.

Yeah I don't really care about whether or not something is progressive or original, I rate being entertained far higher. Although as a straight up homage and love letter to something beloved, I would never have factored originality or "radicalness" into The Orville anyway, as it wouldn't make any sense. With that said, there's a certain irony present even here, considering the postmodern issues this show likes to handle (quite deftly, all things considered), which I know about because I've actually watched it. 

I just prefer the lighter tone of The Orville over something like later Star Trek, which I always saw as being quite drab and repetitive with its weekly moral/technical dilemmas. At least in The Orville the script is self aware with its own weekly quandaries, and it'll send them up for laughs. But not without applying a surprising degree of thoughtfulness first. I honestly think the way they strike a fine balance between drama and comedy is very clever, and not easily done. 
 
 
I'd have no particular interest in seeing MacFarlane take on more serious dramatic work, but I'll reiterate that I think his ability is perfectly fine here in this show. I like him, and I never find myself sitting there going tut tut over the quality of his performance. Also, I don't think Seth sees himself as Sir Patrick Stewart anyway. 

This is up to interpretation, of course (what is 'manly', anyway?), but I think maybe this non-film music composition might fit the bill:
 
 

On the whole, I agree that Lost World is his single most machismo score. But I use tracks like Desert Chase and Parade of the Slave Children as male enhancement daily.

Not sure about Rey's theme as the best example, but there are at least some obvious examples 
 
 
 
Who would've thought of something so major key and adventurous?
 

there is no more SW scores after this, so he better  write the most kickass variations of all SW themes 

Yes! And I bet there’ll be a big dramatic brass moment that will then be microedited on the OST, too! 

I think we can now safely assume that the TROS recording sessions have started - because that is very clearly the March of the Resistance theme! 😁
 
I’m so happy that this is really happening, 9 John Williams Star Wars scores.

It applies to all fields.  Someone who is great at what they do doesn't necessarily translate to being great at illuminating/communicating/educating others.  Our @Loert and @Ludwig are especially gifted at it but JW might not be.  The astronauts who walked on the moon were quite bad at describing what that experience was like.  Arguably the most articulate astronaut was Mike Collins (Apollo 11) who said he couldn't really describe what it was like to go to the moon.  "I think the view from 100,000 miles could be invaluable in getting people together to work out joint solutions, by causing them to realize that the planet we share unites us in a way far more basic and far more important than differences in skin color or religion or economic system.  The pity of it is that so far, the view from 100,000 miles has been the exclusive property of a handful of test pilots, rather than the world leaders who need this new perspective, or the poets who might communicate it to them." - Mike Collins, 1972.

It's interesting that you talk about Williams "masking" dissonances, as if Williams was trapped into employing dissonances which he then tried to cover up by choosing the right instruments (probably not what you meant, but it sounds that way!). Of course, the opposite is really true - Williams mixes in the dissonance himself. However, rather than drawing attention on those very dissonances (as, for example, Boulez might...or "concert" JW might) he tends to treat dissonance as something like musical seasoning; to spice up what would otherwise be fairly dull, consonant music. One of the ways he does this is to do what sounds like "covering up" dissonance using the orchestra, which I guess is what you allude to. But, of course, this is just an illusion really. Every note you hear comes from the composer's pen, whether or not in the end they sound as if they are appearing out of nowhere, or as an "accident".
 
So what is JW's favourite spice? When it comes to brass, It is undeniably the minor 2nd interval between the 7th and 8th degrees of the scale (i.e. B-C in C major). JW would sooner jump off a bridge than not use this dissonance in a fanfare. Listen to the one that plays when Yoda raises the ship in TESB, which is in E major:
 
 
Now, somebody with an "untrained ear" might be surprised to know that when they are listening to the above, they are also listening to this:
https://picosong.com/whnva
 
These are the 7th and 8th degrees of the E major scale: D#-E.
 
JW uses a lot of this sort of dissonance in the E.T. flying theme (in C major):
 
 
Listening to this, one might naively think that the accompanying horns at the start are playing simple major chords (C-E-G, or 1st, 3rd and 5th degrees). But in fact, they are playing "add2" chords, i.e. chords with the 2nd degree added (D), so there is a dissonance between the C-D and the D-E. Later on, JW employs his beloved 7th-8th dissonance, at 0:20 (F#-G) and 0:25 (G-Ab). These dissonances on their own sound like they belong to a horror movie, not a feel-good family movie (though I grant that E.T. does contain some horrifying bits...). But when played by the brass in a certain range, these dissonances take on more of a "colouring" function, and you might miss these dissonances if you don't pay attention. However, take away these dissonances, and you take away an integral part of the whole. This is what I mean by JW using dissonances as "seasoning".
 
Now for something entirely different. Listen to the prologue music of HP1, when Dumbledore does...whatever he does:
 
 
Listen to that last chord at 1:15. Can you hear "it"? I made a mockup of this portion some years ago, where "it"'s clearer; listen to the high register from 0:17:
https://picosong.com/whnWd
 
Williams here is using the winds to apply a purely "colouristic" effect to the brass chord in the foreground.
This is what the wind chord sounds like on the piano:
https://picosong.com/whnvw
 
This is what the brass chord sounds like on the piano:
https://picosong.com/whnv3
 
By the way, Williams here is essentially recycling a technique he used in another film, TPM, where he used a similar wind chord. However, that time he used it in a much more dramatic manner, less as a purely colouristic effect (listen to the chord at 3:28 and pay attention to the high register):
 
 
Finally, I want to go off the track a bit (though I hope it's still relevant) and close with some music from another composer who was a master at "masking" dissonances via orchestration, a composer who greatly influenced Williams and other Hollywood composers - namely, Korngold. His opera "Das Wunder der Heliane" closes with the two lovers making their way into heaven through the pearly gates, being welcomed by the sound of singing angels. But if you listen to it, there's a distinctly bittersweet tone coming from the orchestra:
 
 
It's almost like the angels merely represent a "sheen" of something that is filled with sadness and sorrow. The reason is that the orchestral accompaniment is in fact full of dissonances - try playing some of those chords which fall on the downbeat. There are instances earlier in the opera where Korngold plays a major chord on top of a minor chord, though it's barely audible the way he orchestrates it.

Another part of the season premiere I liked was Ed's advice to the teacher, which was something like "women like a dope.  be a little wrong sometimes, be really wrong occasionally, never be perfect".  Surprisingly sound advice.

The Orville, without a shadow of a doubt.

I've been wondering...what are midi-files?

I just love the show because it gives me the same warm fuzzy that watching classic TNG and DS9 does. 

I like the optimism the show has too - seen too many pessimistic shows lately and its a welcome change.

I'm gonna bump this topic again (sorry if this is a no no) but I've managed to make a full soundtrack playlist for myself and I thought I'd post it to help anyone else looking to make a "definitive" listening experience to enjoy.
 
So, the game's soundtrack is a mess as I've before stated and I've been desperately trying to figure out what the extra music is that appears on Gordy's soundcloud page, and from what I can tell I guess it's music he's written for the game that the campaign developers...didn't want to use? Let me break down the tracks for you:
 
Encounters on the Battlefront seems to be a collection of music that is mainly used in the main menu, with a few out of place action cues thrown in the middle to balance out the calmness of the rest of the track. Cool.
 
Iden Versio-Into Combat is just a "concert arrangement" of Iden's theme, shows up almost exactly preserved in the End Credits Medley.
 
Prologue and the Escape is a severely cut up version of the same "Prologue" theme that was released with the rest of the ten minutes or so of campaign music way back when except with an action cue that surprisingly I've never heard played at all during the campaign. Very strange. I'll tell you what I did with this one once I get to the tracklist itself.
 
Home Planet, Vardos is half of a "concert arrangement" piece and half an actual score, with parts of it playing during the opening cutscene when the Corvus arrives over Vardos and Iden talking with her father. Some of it plays in a loop when you're on the ground exploring the planet. Either way this is one of the best arrangements IMO that he's done of his music.
 
The Battle Unfolds is an arrangement of the action cues from the soundtrack. It includes Falcon Flight, but I still include that as a standalone piece in the tracklist regardless of its appearance here.
 
Han's Kessel Run is Gordy's incredible piece written for the Solo update. The first half is the "Solo" theme that Gordy composed while the second half covers his music written for "Kessel". I almost enjoy this theme for Han more than William's and Powells and this is once again a stand out piece of scoring for Gordy.
 
Touring the Planets Montages--I'm including both here because it's redundant otherwise, but these are self explanatory. They cover the music for the planet loading screens. Without the John Williams, of course.
 
The Betrayal is a score piece and plays when Iden and Hask confront each other the first time on Vardos when Iden is trying to rescue the civilians from Operation Cinder.
 
Snoke and the Dreadnought. Here we reach a piece that I do not believe appears in the game AT ALL in ANY form. It's a brilliant piece though, and it gives us a First Order theme that is simiilar to Kylo Ren's theme from the films.
 
Hard Decisions and the Rescue Attempt appears in the game only once. The beginning part I know I've heard in the game somewhere before but I couldn't find it played during the campaign, while the "I Can Fly Anything" knock off in the second half of the piece plays when you're fighting on the Retribution in the Resurrection DLC.
 
Pillio Wasteland/Skirmish is an arrangement of a secondary theme that you hear all throughout the campaign and the Menu music. It mostly covers Dell's journey to Pillio.
 
Go. Survive. Live! is an alternate arrangement of sorts to "Iden Confronts Garrick" with a little bit of "Finale" thrown in (I think) at the end.
 
Iden and Dell is a love theme that I don't think is ever heard in game. It's very similar to "Han Solo and the Princess".
 
Last but not least we have Iden, Reborn, a part of which does play during the campaign after Leia confronts Iden on Naboo after the battle.
 
So there you have it. I've tried to do my best and I've poured over different gameplay of the campaign a million times to bring you this analysis of these tracks. Now onto the tracklist, which I'll post and then give a commentary for:
 
Beginning note: It's important to think of this as not just a "score" soundtrack. It's a soundtrack for all the music he has composed for the game put forward in a straightforward manner with the chronology of the story preserved as best as it could be while also allowing room for the arranged tracks as well. I'm also looking at INTENT. What did Gordy intend these tracks to represent? I think I did a fair job as far as that goes.
 
1. Prologue
2. The Escape (I kept the score version of the prologue for Track 1, took out the beginning portion of "Prologue and the Escape" and made it it's own thing. I think the action music here is supposed to represent her fight off the ship, but in the game this music was replaced with the Crait Loading Loop music and another action cue)
((The next three tracks are arrangements that I put here to fill out the blank space of non-score music. The Endor and Fondor missions are made up of mostly action cues and score from the first game))
3. Encounters on the Battlefront
4. Iden Versio - Into Combat
5. Touring the Planets - Montage 1
6. Pillio Wasteland
7. Home Planet, Vardos
8. The Betrayal
9. Hijacking the AT-AT
10. Iden and Dell (put here to represent the scene of Iden and Dell meditating on what to do next after Vardos. I thought this was a good place for it)
11. Iden, Reborn
12. Han's Kessel Run (once again, this doesn't actually appear in the campaign but since this track and Falcon Flight deal with Han Solo I thought it fitting that these two tracks are together)
13. Falcon Flight
((Again, I'm putting these next to tracks here to fill the void left by the borrowed score used for the next few missions. The incursion on Sullust and the Battle of Jakku missions use either Battlefront 1 score--the Sullust suite in the case of Sullust and random action cues in the case of the Battle of Jakku))
14. Touring the Planets - Montage 2
15. The Battle Unfolds
16. Fighting Hask
17. Iden Confronts Garrick
18. The War is Over (I retitled this from it's original title, "Finale")
19. Kylo Ren Arrives
((While these next two tracks don't appear in any concrete form in the game, I think the INTENT was that they appear frequently during the Resurrection DLC and they didn't. Their music reflects the soundscape and style of the Sequel Trilogy with The Rescue Attempt being a BLATANT, BLATANT knock-off of I Can Fly Anything and Snoke and the Dreadnought having notes of the feral Phasma fight in The Last Jedi))
20. Hard Decisions and the Rescue Attempt (even though parts of this track play while you're on the Star Destroyer, I put it here because I think the Rescue Attempt of the title is referring to the rescue of Zay on the planet Vardos)
21. Snoke and the Dreadnought
22. Go. Survive. Live! (the reason I put this here is that it has a lot of nice finality to it, seeing as it quotes the last two tracks in the campaign score.)
23. Credits
 
And that's it. The only unfortunate thing about the files I have in my library are that the story score tracks are 128 mp3s while the rest are beautiful WAV files, but hopefully one day I can run across score tracks that are at least higher quality MP3s. If anyone enjoys this music as much as I do and wants to use this as a tracklist, or if anyone has anything to add or criticize be my guest.

So, I wanted to revive this topic for a moment. I apologize up front for the novel I'm about to write.
 
Firstly, I want to gush. I figured out recently that ol' Gordy uploaded the Gordy Only tracks to his Soundcloud for the first Battlefront game and it's so beneficial to a positive listening experience. Having it just be his original themes is fantastic, especially if you were wondering about his melodic chops as a Williams-mimic. I think he does a fantastic job there. My favorite of his themes is the Resistance suite.
 
Second, I want to throw a fit about the soundtrack to the second game. Originally, Haab had uploaded 8 or 9 tracks from the campaign (Prologue, Hijacking an AT-AT, Falcon Flight, etc.) that I guess has been wiped from the internet altogether. FilmScoreMedia (hi Manakin) no longer hosts them on his Youtube page and they damn sure aren't anywhere else on the internet to listen to. But then a little while ago he uploads another batch of fourteen or so tracks that I haven't been able to make sense of. From what I can tell not a lot of their content has shown up in the game. There's the suite "Iden Versio - Into Combat" which seems to just be a "concert arrangement" of her theme. There's "Prologue and The Escape" which has the same music from the earlier track "Prologue" with the very beginning cut off followed by some action music that I don't think is actually heard anywhere in game. There's "Snoke and the Dreadnought" which I would assume is a piece from the Resurrection DLC but I've played through the campaign enough times and I can't seem to recall any of the music in that theme showing up in the game.
 
Due to the nature of the second Battlefront I can understand it being a little more difficult to put forth some melodic content seeing as the game is mostly multiplayer focused and there are too many planets and maps for Gordy to repeat what he did in the first game, but this means that the only really consistent theme we get for the second game is Iden's theme. There's a lot of reuse of some of Battlefront 1's music as well and it doesn't seem to be reorchestrated, but just copypasted from the first game.
 
There is a hell of a lot of copypasting from every sort of different source for the actual Campaign soundtrack. You get little snippets from the movies (Panaka and the Queen's Protectors showing up in action sequences) or little tiddly-bits from the first game (a quote from the Death Star theme he wrote for the DS maps in the first game appropriately showing up during the Battle of Endor sequence) and then those splices of his original written music showing up from time to time (Falcon Flight, which is a particular favorite of mine). It's all kind of a mess to make sense of and I can't enjoy a listen of Battlefront II's music as much because I have a problem and I like consistency and chronology. Trying to piece together a vague idea of BFII's soundtrack is making me go nuts and I was wondering if anyone out there has made any sense of it.
 
Let me give an example. In the first level of the game, we begin with the piece "Prologue" which follows the first scene of the game--Iden's interrogation up to "You're right. The Empire's time has come." Then we switch over to some low end brass and woodwind, soft string piece I can't identify because I can't hear much of it, but I suspect it's a bit from one of the film soundtracks as I haven't been able to match it with any of the original music tracks. It plays while the Sullustan is hacking into Iden's droid. Then once she escapes we get the action sequence music, which is Panaka and the Queen's Protectors (which IMO is kind of ill-fitting because we are an Imperial killing good-guy Rebels and the selection just adds a dark irony to the proceedings) mixed with a little of the Crait A music, which is quite a fantastic war march that might also be a new favorite of the original tracks.
 
I guess what I'm trying to do is something similar to how Gordy has laid out the soundtrack to the first game and create a listening experience that follows BFII's campaign that only features Gordy's original music. It's a very daunting task and there are some random tracks I can't seem to locate or place from the films or even the past two games and it's driving me nuts. Does anyone have any insight or is anyone obsessing over this to the extent that I am?
 
EDIT: I'll also add that I can at least follow some of the chronology of the soundtrack with help from some Youtube videos who have added the tracks that cover the cinematics, but I am trying to include the original music that has been spliced into the the actual gameplay as well to see if I can make a nice, whole listening experience.

Agreed. 
 
Still, there's something almost profound in seeing another species perform a John Williams theme.
 
...Think if we put the seal in front of Williams' house and have it sing, Williams would come out and shake its flipper?

on the topic of scores, I found this lovely little suite from the Order of the Phoenix video-game. because the released soundtrack has been altered to remove any references to Hedwig's theme this was a pleasant find:
probably the best treatment of William's themes and integration I've ever heard (other than from Williams himself ofc :p).

Indiana Jones and the Tired Old Jokes About His Age When He's Really Not That Old.

Indiana Jones and the in his Bed because He's OLD!!
Indiana Jones and He Does Social Security Now 
Indiana Jones and the Giant Killer Bedsore from Lying Down All the Time in HIS BED 
Indiana Jones and the PENSION CHECK of Indiana Jones Who is Now Old