Schilkeman

Yeah I’m also buying up all of Gardiner’s (I like Gardiner lol) Mozart opera recordings. I can get in to opera, but it is a commitment with the libretto and all. Not a fan of Wagner, though.

Mozart Piano Concertos 21-24. I'm slowly buying the complete set of concertos with Gardiner and Malcolm Bilson. It took me a long time to warm up to Mozart, but I think my mistake was looking too hard at the symphonies. The piano concertos really feel like his most personal and interesting works. I'm not knocking the symphonies, a number of them are truly great, but they often feel as though they have been written for someone instead of by someone, if that makes any sense.

I'd also love to hear from someone knowledgeable about this. It seems to me that older recordings were mic'd for the room, whereas new recording feel like they're being mic'd to the section. But I don't think that's a new technique, so it must be something with the mixing.

Yeah, I did a comparative listen to all nine opening notes. Obviously the prequals are all identical, or nearly so, I'm not sure if different takes were used from the PM sessions, or if its just the same recording. What struck me with the sequels, and especially 7 and 8, is how much louder the trumpets are in the mix, and how much more trombone is present on that opening note, and, I think most importantly, how much more of that perfect fourth interval is present in the trumpets. Usually that lower trumpet part is a lot less noticeable. To me, 4th intervals create a peculiar brand of openness and activate harmonics in a way other intervals don't seem to. In my opinion, this, combined with the mixing, creates that unusual opening note. It's nothing that hasn't been there before, we're just hearing it a different way.

I'll buy an Eb, but if that's a piccolo, that's the fattest piccolo I've ever heard, and I definitely don't think the whole section is using them in unison. Small trumpets don't really help to play high all that much, so I would imagine its done more for timbre, or a particular key that's easier on a certain trumpet. Pretty sure Murphy did all six Star Wars scores on Bb, so JW's nutso trumpet parts can certainly be played on bigger horns.

On that note, I watched Mortal Engines recently and found it a terrific film. It feels like a movie George Lucas would have produced in his experimental 80's era if the technology had been available.

I believe he did play on Sorcerer's Stone, but yes, while no one sounds like Murphy, the British style of orchestral trumpet playing is very different from the American style, and the commercial LA style in particular. I defo think the music is being mixed much more loudly than in the past, and the brass seems more prominent in the newer recordings, at least the LA performances, which gives it a harsher edge. It seems more like the brass is playing on top of the orchestra instead of through it. I hadn't noticed this before. On what JP tracks does he use piccolo trumpet?

Being a trumpet player, I've done a lot of listening and thinking on this very subject. To my ears, I hear very little difference in the timbre of sound coming from LA trumpet players from E.T. until today. They all possess a kind of "burnished steel" sound, dark, a lot of "core," and somewhat metallic. It's not really fair to compare to the LSO, nobody sounds like Maurice Murphy. But listen to T-Rex and Finale, and then The Conveyor Belt, that trumpet sound is remarkably similar. What is different is the mixing and reverb. Trumpets love a little reverb. I used to have all my lessons in a giant cathedral and I sounded amazing, then had to go and play in a 5x8 practice room, and I would sound very dry and harsh. I agree that striping is evil and should be banished, but otherwise, I think it's more to how they are being recorded and mixed, than how they are being played.

None of Scott’s other directors cuts look bad from what I remember. Considering the tumultuous effort to make that film, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was timed wrong. I don’t mind teal if that’s what the director wanted originally (like Batman ‘89) but I do dislike it if it’s been applied after the fact in an effort to make a film more “modern.”

I just bought Das Boot on superbit. I'm actually going the other way and replacing blurays with DVDs. Becoming aware of color issues on remastered blu-ray's is maybe the worst thing I could have done.

Yeah, there’s an element of “ok, sure,” that goes along with sci-fi and fantasy world building. The problems come if the creators aren’t being internally consistent with the world they’ve created. You tell me all the fauna on this planet have LAN connections? Sure I’ll buy that. But you can’t change the rules the next time out.

I think it was set up as trying to gain their trust and get them to move peacefully. There are certainly parallels to this in American history. I think the one truly original thing Avatar does, and this is more in concept than execution, is have Sully literally become a N'avi. Not just a member of the tribe, but a member of the species. I think it's a neat sci-fi idea that (somewhat, arguably, maybe) avoids the white savior trap of a lot of these stories. In any case, I agree with some here that I would much rather see one auteur's nine figure baby go up in flames than watch another production-line, low-stakes, ephemeral Marvel movie waste two hours of my life. At least he's trying, and who knows, maybe it'll be great.

I believe Copeland wrote something to the effect that there are four elements of music: Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Texture. Getting caught up on only one of those and ignoring the other three is going to keep you disappointed, because if melody is missing, or fragmentary, or just not memorable, your ears don't know what else to listen for. Personally, I would add Timbre and Form to this list. The reason, I think, that so many people can get into film scores, but not classical music, and why so many get caught up on sequential programing, is because the form follows the movie, and is therefore easier to understand. Classical music has form. Even atonal music has form, but if you don't know some basic forms (Sonata, Rondo, Binary, Ternary, Theme and Variations, Tone Row, etc) then you will always be trying to read a book out of order. You might be able to piece a few plot points together, but the story will not make much sense.

I like them all, honestly, but there is a muscle-y quality to the first one that I like. It feels very Flash Gordon, which is really what Star Wars was at that point, rather than fantasy. I've never been a big fan of the American Hollywood trumpet sound, or the American orchestral trumpet sound in general. Give me Bb's over C's any day.

You know, I had a jazz professor in collage who, in my freshman year, on the very first day, say to us we were going to be confronted with music that we may not always like, but to ask ourselves, "do I not like this, or do I not understand this?" The two are not mutually exclusive of course, but I try not to dismiss music that I may not understand as music I don't like. I can say, for instance, with some certainty, that I do not like Wagner, but I do not have a firm enough grasp of Lutoslawski to have an opinion one way or the other.