Tydirium

Heck, I hope to God that William Ross doesn't read the Tweets. Imagine writing so much music for a show like this, and yet seemingly everyone is praising a different composer for stuff you wrote... Ross should be getting way more credit than he is. Why is Holt getting virtually all the interviews? Where are the Ross interviews? Hardly anyone seems interested in actually highlighting him and his work for this; it's like he's just some guy whose name just happens to show up in the show's end credits and on a few tracks on the OST.

FYI, Apple Music incorrectly only lists Natalie Holt as the composer for "Dark Side Assault"; it should be Natalie Holt & John Williams (as in "Hangar Escape" and "No Further Use"), as she also uses his Obi-Wan theme in that track at 1:09.

Assuming this is her Obi theme at 0:41?

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but Apple Music interestingly lists John Williams as the sole composer of "The Journey Begins." Did JW write this cue himself, and Ross recorded it (like "End Credit")?

"First Rescue" is a great cue. Still puzzled by the title, though. Is it possible it was originally meant for the rooftop chase scene? Its placement on the album could seem to indicate. And as if there was any doubt, all the legacy themes referenced in the last episode were handled by Ross, not Holt.

Man, I just realized this soundtrack is less than an hour and a half long. I can't believe this. For Bad Batch, we got two volumes, and each one was two hours long.

Interesting. Tim Burden is pretty legit.

Is there any Holt music on the album that wasn't even in the show?

I thought so too, but now I'm not sure. The interview where I thought she was talking about two volumes for Kenobi, it was actually about Loki. Still doesn't make sense why this particular show would get one album, considering all the other recent shows' albums.

I'm struggling to understand why "First Rescue" refers to the rescue from Fortress Inquisitorius; wouldn't that be the second rescue? I thought the first rescue was when Obi-Wan rescued Leia from Daiyu a couple episodes earlier...

What's the official explanation for only offering one volume, anyways? Or for not offering way more music than this, in general? It's a digital-only release, so it's not like they had to worry about fitting it on CD. It just sort of blows my mind that a few mere months ago, when volume 1 of Boba Fett dropped, we got practically all the highlights thus far except for the catchy train conductor droid music—which was then rectified when it was released as a bonus track on volume 2. Why should a random show about Boba Fett hanging out on Tatooine get better/more soundtrack releases than the "Episode 3.5" show that features Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader? It makes no sense. Compared to this album, we were apparently really spoiled with what they gave us for Mando and Boba Fett. Heck, even season 1 of Bad Batch got two volumes...

Wait a minute… What about episode 3? Where’s the big Ross cue that covers Vader/Obi-Wan dueling, Tala/Leia running through the tunnels, and Reva searching for Leia??? Does this album really not include the music for when Obi-Wan and Vader first meet/duel again, after ten years?! I should note that this was also the first major cue that we figured out was Ross, aside from the standard variations on the Obi-Wan theme.

It sounds more like Deborah Chow was just too lazy to check whether it was fine to use his themes. That quote makes it sound like she just assumed they might not be allowed to use them.

But what they did in the franchise was still great... Also, you're assuming that "what they felt was best" would have been something other than maintaining thematic consistency—almost as though it were a chore for them to write in that style, and not something they wanted to do/felt would be good for the franchise.

It's not just about how Haab's writing sounds more like JW, though; why are almost all of the video game scores getting recorded with the LSO? Why should the orchestra in the Battlefront and Fallen Order games sound more like the orchestra of the OT and the PT (because it's literally the same one), than the orchestra that performed in Obi-Wan Kenobi—the show that is essentially Episode 3.5? It makes no sense to me.

So why do Haab's video game scores sound more like JW's Star Wars than any of these new live-action projects?

I thought the issue with Rogue One was that Giacchino had virtually copy-pasted large chunks of JW's pre-existing Star Wars music? The deal was that either Giacchino needed to rewrite that stuff, or JW would get a big composer credit (and a lot of money) with Giacchino getting an "adapted by" credit or something. Disney opted for just having him rewrite it, which might explain why we ended up with stuff like MG's Imperial theme which sounds like a rush job pastiche (to my ears), rather than the actual Imperial March. It all makes sense when you consider how rushed he was. Why would she assume that? Did Ludwig Göransson assume he would be working with John Williams? Did Kevin Kiner? Did Michael Giacchino? I'm not sure why she would just assume she would get to work with him. I don't think it's that JW an issue with his themes being used, period; I think it's that he had an issue with how MG was using them.

That's a possibility. IIRC, her story about how/when JW got involved has changed. First, it was like he called up and wanted to write a theme, but in a recent interview she acted like she always knew going in that he was going to be involved/that she was going to work with him.

Huh? There’s a reason he said “another” lie; this isn’t her first time.

A bit of a tangential question, but does anybody know why the track times can differ so much for a single release, from store to store? How does releasing an album work, anyways; does the label send the same files to all the different services/stores (and then those services add/remove time at the end of tracks?), or do some services get a different set of files than others? As an example, take the first 5 tracks from this album, German Opera Arias by Matthias Goerne from 2000: CD 1. 2:40 2. 2:30 3. 3:50 4. 4:42 5. 2:30 Apple Music/iTunes 1. 2:47 2. 2:35 3. 3:55 4. 4:47 5. 2:35 Qobuz 1. 2:46 2. 2:34 3. 3:54 4. 4:46 5. 2:34 Amazon 1. 2:43 2. 2:31 3. 3:51 4. 4:43 5. 2:32 Presto 1. 2:43 2. 2:31 3. 3:50 4. 4:42 5. 2:31 Obviously, the CD listed timings may be approximate and are not necessarily the accurate lengths of the tracks, but you'll notice that the timings between Apple and Qobuz are more or less the same (probably the same files with some rounding-up or rounding-down involved in the numbers), whereas the timings between Amazon and Presto are also more or less the same—albeit each about 3 or 4 seconds shorter than the Apple/Qobuz offerings... It's almost like there were two separate sets of files sent out by the label. Just trying to figure out if anybody knows what the cause of this is, and which is preferable. EDIT: Just checked another album and the track times were virtually the same across all those services. So it's not like what I described above applies to every album, but I'm still not sure what the explanation is. Yep, wanted to like HDTracks but there just wasn't a large enough catalogue for me.

I must admit that Presto is great for classical. The site is very easy to navigate, and it is easy to search for recordings of specific works, or that are in a specific series. My only gripe with 7Digital is that a fair number of the albums are only offered in MP3, not FLAC—even though those same albums are offered in FLAC on other sites. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Presto? Qobuz? 7digital? I have some experience with all three (and a few others), but I'd be curious to know which you prefer, and any pros/cons. In the past I've mainly used Presto for classical stuff, and Qobuz for most everything else. Debating whether or not to just switch over to Qobuz completely.

Or they told Ross, “Start from the end and work backwards.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he tackled a lot of the final episode first to try and help end the series on a good note, and then went back and handled other important moments he had time to work on, in earlier episodes.

Lol, I still think JW’s “I only want to write a theme for Benny” quote literally meant “I ONLY want to write a theme for Benny”—as in, they asked him to do way more/the whole show, and that’s all he was willing to do. That quote reeked of PR spin ever since I read it, imo. I honestly think that’s why they waited so long to announce her. They were seeing what else could be done (maybe like, how much stuff William Ross could rescore in a short amount of time) before committing to officially, publicly naming her as the composer. If Ross was able to write more than he ended up writing, I have little doubt that they would have just announced him as the main composer.

I don’t even know what to say…