SyncMan

Or, they want to brag to their other street friends and say, "Hey, I've been to 'the symphony', so that makes me a cultured motha fucka"

When one is working on analogue tape machines, it’s both. When you are increasing the speed of the analogue tape machine, the result would be a higher pitch (or 'key'). When you are decreasing the speed of the analogue tape machine, the result would be lower in pitch. Anyone who owns even a TASCAM home audio cassette machine with a (-/+) pitch knob can tell you that.

And no one stopped you for getting into the hall? A very covert approach. I like it.

@Omen II, that rehearsal you attended for JP, did the orchestra play along with the film's dialogue and sound effects track? Also, how did you get into that rehearsal?

@E-Wan,if this matters, the DVD and Blu Ray releases of 'Superman' have an ‘isolated music score’ audio track where the music is edited and sync’d with the film. Otherwise, what project are you working on that you have to do the sync’ing/edits yourself?

For me, it seems that the way he writes his music-cues for the action sequences of films in the ’70’s ‘80’s and ‘90’s has deteriorated in his film scores from the past decade like “Indy 4”, “Tin-Tin”, and the last three “Star Wars” films. Williams had a unique way of making his action-music from the 1970’s through the 1990’s so enjoyable to listen. He has this main melody or a motif-melody that recurs throughout an action sequence. Only this melody/motif-melody is not associated with a main character, supporting character, or even a thing (like the Ark, The Poseidon, the Force, or The Orca). It’s like this main melody is the central theme for this one sequence. Like all great composers, Williams varies this action scene’s main melody just like how he handles the marches from ‘Superman’ or ‘Raiders’--he introduces the main melody at the start and he does these things with it: Plays parts of the melody sparingly. In-between recurrences of the main melody, we hear these new passages that bridge them , giving the listener some time to be away from the main theme. Re-unites with the main melody towards the end. All this is done in a way that the listener doesn’t get tired of hearing the main melody before the sequence ends. In approaching an action sequence, it’s as if Williams writes like a ‘music composer’ first and then a ‘film composer’ second--the ‘composer’ part is when he goes nuts and comes-up with this great listening piece and the ‘film composer’ part is when he has to modify what he has written to conform to the demands of each frame in the sequence—timing, energy, speed, etc. Go and listen to these action music-cues. You’ll hear the main theme being repeated throughout the duration of the cue. I cued all these YouTube examples to the first appearance of the piece’s main melody. Tie Fighter Attack: https://youtu.be/WzU9UkVL1QA?t=123 Asteroid Field: https://youtu.be/5TbWJJMdLsY?t=137 Marketplace Fight: https://youtu.be/uhnwk5LDG5c?t=21 Motorcycle Scherzo https://youtu.be/1IFmRniWa0U?t=3 Now listen to Escape from Jakku and see if you can find that main melody. https://youtu.be/e8_2K7QNtpI?list=PLuR0quEHq9iuir7VbT4yq6eSAbU8Bp2p5 This is the sequence that really convinced me that the quality of Williams’ film-music writing is diminishing. Here, Williams is just being a ‘film composer’.

Yes, @Jay that is exactly what I wanted to know from that rehearsal video. I’m not familiar with this score so you have saved me the trouble of researching. Thanks for answering. Most orchestras that do these concerts get no more than 2 rehearsals. The last rehearsal before the show —the dress rehearsal—has the film’s audio track (the dialogue and sound effects track) turned on in the hall while the musicians play. They do that because the audio engineers need to get the balances between signals from the audio track and the orchestra for the hall's speakers. That leaves the one rehearsal before the dress rehearsal. It can go either way—whether to rehearse with the film’s audio track or not. I know that orchestras invite their donors to ‘open rehearsal' for concerts. I’ve never seen one for a L2P concert. It would be cool if, at least, one L2P concert rehearsal was done without the film's audio track and you just hear the music.

Experts on this score: help me out on this. Here’s a rehearsal video of the ‘Star Trek Beyond’ World Premiere live-to-projection concert by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra from MG’s Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/BIDVtsrgGuv/?hl=en The scene from the music that uses this music-cue, does it have any talking and sound effects on it? I tried asking this in the STB-L2P concert thread. No response, so I thought I would try here.

Mine is VS’s American 2CD release of ‘Jupiter Ascending’. Although it used the same album master as the WaterTower overseas release, VS had up’ed their game by including a booklet filled with notes by MG and recording session photos. Content wise, it is the only MG score that I've had repeated listens. I don't care for his music to the Star Trek reboots.

I caught this San Diego Symphony rehearsal video of ‘Star Trek Beyond’-L2P concert taken by Gia. https://www.instagram.com/p/BIDVtsrgGuv/?hl=en Question: Can anyone tell me whether the scene that uses this cue have any talking or sound-effects on it?

Here is a post by RF on FSM back in May 2020 regarding the status of 'Willow'. https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=2&threadID=140317&archive=0

Postponed. https://www.citylightconcerts.ch/event/dances-with-wolves-kkl-luzern/

@Oomoog the Ecstatic, As Jay has mentioned, there were different arrangements of that cue. The one you have referenced in that YouTube video is the album arrangement that ends on a (IMO) somber tone by the woodwinds. And then there was the arrangement used in the final film-edit, where the cues ends abruptly. Note that this cue is shorter is running time than the one you've referenced above. And to further complicate your mind, there is another version of this cue for the 'L2P' (or 'movie with live orchestra') concerts. The same as the film version, but the ending is very triumphant by the entire orchestra. This cues ends Act One of the L2P concert.

A comment from Citi Light Concerts in their October 18, 2020 post of their Facebook page, confirms that this concert version will have no live voices, but the 'choir' will be coming from a synthesizer.

From the Citi Lights Concerts’ Facebook page, a comment is made about the lack of choir in the ‘Raiders’ concert version. A rep from the orchestra made this response: "Yes, the choir would have had a prominent role in this sequence. But besides of this particular scene, the choir is only heard about two more times within the whole score. In total only around 5 minutes with a choir. There is one passage in the score that does sound like a choir would sing, but it's actually an Ondes Martenot playing (according to the conductor's score). Because of these very brief choir moments, John Williams himself decided to exclude the choir score parts for this live-to-projection production (according to the production team) and have it performed on synthesizer. But we sure hope to have a choir featured within one of our next concerts again!"

Looks like this LTP concert in Switzerland will go on tonight with full-orchestra and no audience-capacity limit, but patrons are required to wear masks at the hall. City Lights Symphony Orchestra at the KKL Luzern https://www.citylightconcerts.ch/event/indiana-jones-kkl-luzern/ Concert Dress Rehearsal Video: No LTP concerts are happening in the USA right now or towards the end of the year.

For the film’s LTP concerts, the music-cues ‘Barry is Kidnapped’ and ‘Arrival of the Mothership’ were performed live in its entirety. You are right @Holko, in that these said cues, would not fit the film’s final edit as they were originally recorded on the scoring stage. According to a Steven Spielberg interview that appeared on the 1990 CE3K-Criterion Laserdisc release and Cinefx magazine, Columbia Pictures wanted the film released 4 weeks earlier than planned, so, everyone in the crew had to double their efforts in wrapping-up the film. JW was no exception. Because the VFX shots were still being created during the scoring process, JW would receive working reels of the film with ‘blank leaders’ that substituted for the VFX shots (these were the days before pre-visualization where CGI mock-up shots of VFX shots would be inserted into the working reels to help the music composer give a sense of a scene’s timing). By the time production came to the sound-dubbing process, the final VFX shots had arrived and inserted into the final-edit (???). If the recorded music didn’t fit the scenes with the VFX shots, portions of the music would be left out. Mike M., who works on these LTP concerts as a ‘technical advisor’ prepared these said cues using a digital audio workstation with a duration-altering plug-in to stretch or speed-up audio files. When that was done, Mike M’s music edits were transcribed to hard-copy score pages and a synchronizing-version of the film, with click-tracks and streamers, was created for the conductor and musicians to use at these concerts.

I just found a much belated love song based on that show's 4-note theme.

Your guess is as good as mine. If you look at that orchestra's Facebook page, you'll find that among the JW works for the CD will be Harry Potter and SW:TFA. Here's a video of them doing SW:TFA for that CD:

Select John Williams film scores are the features in this debut CD of the City Lights Symphony Orchestra from the Prospero Classical label to be released this winter. https://www.facebook.com/CityLightConcerts/ They are the orchestra that will present the world premiere ‘Superman’ L2P concert In Switzerland this January.

Rescheduled for January 15, 2021. Only KKL is doing one show instead of the 2 that was originally scheduled for May 2020. https://www.citylightconcerts.ch/event/superman-in-concert-kklluzern/

I think that this is a case of comparing apples to oranges. In that video, the person used a digital audio workstation with a 'stretch/shrink' function that changes the duration of an audio file without changing the pitch in order to sync the intended 'main-title' cue with this main title sequence. Heck, the free software, Audacity, has that function (go to Effect-->Change Tempo). In the sound-mix for the film, the music editor used analogue technically to make the music fit the said sequence. Those techniques included trimming-off bits of music and changing the speed of a portion of music that resulted in that high-pitch sound. Also, during the post-production process, Warner Bros was paying for the completion of the film. My conjecture is that since so much money was spent on this film already, their thinking is that spending even more money on having JW and his crew come in and fix one sequence would not be necessary. Also, not many average mover-goers would notice a pitch-change. I do agree that this version sounds good over the main titles. That video was made 12 years ago, so I hope that Mike M. and 'Film Concert Live' use that version for the L2P concert version for the flying-credits, instead of duplicating the edit in the film-version.

Cancelled!

Postponed!

Postponed!