karelm

Based on this quote, does anyone know what Ravi Shankar album Crosby gave Harrison? I'd really love to hear it. "David Crosby was friends with George Harrison, and he also helped change the trajectory of his music career and life. He gave Harrison a Ravi Shankar album. Harrison and Shankar would go on to have a fruitful musical and spiritual relationship. Crosby didn’t realize the importance of this at the time, but Harrison told him that he made a significant impact on his life with his gift."

Damn that trailer as lots of fun in a vintage Indy way. Hopefully it's not just two hours of fan service. I can't believe how great he looks. He hasn't changed at all since Raiders. Can't wait to see it.

Looks like an innovative and fun program! Do let us know your review.

It's not that it sounds terrible, it is very inconsistent. Some are great, some are poor. That's an ugly stepbrother of the Hemsworth that just doesn't fit in with the rest.

Tell me one library where your statement doesn't apply.

I don't know. I immediately don't like it. It sounds so synthy to me. It doesn't sound like the next level but rather more of what others are doing. Don't get me wrong, sounds good for synth but we should be beyond that. We've been there for years.

I was 5 when ANH came out and vividly remember it. The music was the first impression and I still remember that shattering Bb blast that came after complete silence. I also remember the excitement of the original audience. People were literally shushing each other to complete silence during "A long time ago..." then erupted to thunderous applause after that opening blast. My mom wouldn't let me see it with my older brothers when it first opened fearing it was too intense for 5 year old me with space monsters, gun fights, and scary villains. The whole family convinced her and we all saw it together maybe a week later. I constantly had to hear how amazing it was and wait for what felt like a lifetime so see it. It's all anyone at the playground was talking about and I felt like the only person on earth who hadn't yet seen it. Ads were on tv constantly especially with cross promotional things such as "buy a burger, get a star wars cup" type of thing. It did not disappoint. I think it was my first cinematic experience if not the first film I remember as a cinematic experience. I was glued from the first frame till the last. I thought there would never be another. I don't think we had the concept of sequel at the time. Clearly there were films like Godfather 2, but I think it predated me or was beyond my awareness. Then maybe a year or so later, we heard there was a sequel. I had the SW baseball cards and they started teasing concept art of the sequel. It was so imaginative and evocative showing these strange new worlds yet unseen. I had in my head an entire plot line based on those images that I would later learn were Ralph McQuarrie concept art. It felt like we had to wait an eternity for ESB. I was a much more mature 8 year old when it came out...a seasoned pro who knew everything about SW and was deeply obsessed with JW and his scores already. The OST was released one week before the theatrical release, and I listened to it so many times before seeing the film. Unusually, the movie opened on Wednesday, May 21, and of course I had to wait forever for the weekend to see it. I so clearly remember the long line around the theater and the excitement from everyone. This was the biggest event of my life and I waited so, so long thinking this day would never happen. Again, was immediately immersed and so invested in the story. I remember thinking it was so overwhelmingly dark and emotional at the time and the father reveal was devastating as was what felt like Hans' death. It was probably one of the darkest films I had yet seen if not the darkest. The ending felt so anti-climactic in comparison to SW but also clearly had the sense of setting up another sequel. I also remember the soundtrack being way, way more excellent than the OST. Basically, the thrill of the Asteroid Field with the visuals was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. The emotion of the carbon freeze and desperate tone of the last duel.... the strangeness of Dagobah and the romance of Han and Leia. Everything was so amped up to 11 on the emotional scale. Hearing the OST again, allowed me to revisit that experience but I immediately noticed so much of my favorite musical sequences were missing. I tried so hard to find the Carbon Freeze sequence in the double LP but thought I heard it but eventually realized it was not released till the 1993 compilation. A holy grail disc for me. I can't overstate how impactful this film and score were to me. With ROTJ, similar memories but my eldest brothers were now in college so didn't have the family link the other films had. I was now 11 and coolest was starting to get important. I was already a collector of JW scores because if you grew up at that time, these were massive cultural hits (Jaws, Superman, CEOTTK, Raiders, E.T. whatever I forgot) so not only defined the film but my childhood and the most significant theatrical experiences. I recall not thinking much of the ewok theme finding it a bit too "cute" for 11 year old me. I was also surprised the land speeder chase was unscored because I thought it could benefit from "Here They Come!" and "Asteroid Belt" set piece treatment. The magnificence of the score was the climactic duel with Vader and Luke where finally, after 6 years, a good guy momentarily defeats Vader. That was a very cathartic moment. The score was great but didn't achieve the heights of its predecessors. Like @Tallguy pointed out, it's like saying it's the ugliest Hemsworth. It's very nice to relive the experience I had as a kid of watching these films for the very first time with a packed audience and my family plus how significant these were to me in my youth. Remember, we didn't have cable or VHS yet. Maybe those came around at this same time, but you had to relive the film through the OST and your memories for years. Here is a very crazy thought I just now realized. 2023 is the 40th anniversary of ROTJ. But it is also the 100th anniversary of the discovery of other galaxies and the Big Bang Theory. Etched on the photo plate dated October 6, 1923, one hundred years ago this year, astronomer Edwin Hubble photographed the Andromeda Nebula, a fuzzy object in the sky previously thought to be in our galaxy. He identified this nebula had a cepheid variable (where he wrote in red "Var!" in the upper right of his photo plate). Cepheid Variables are novas with a constant brightness and from measuring the known brightness against the observed brightness, astronomers can determine an object's distance. We learned that the Andromeda Nebula was in fact a distant galaxy. The first identified. By the 1950's we identified hundreds of galaxies. By the 1970's we knew there were millions. Only 60 years after we learned there were galaxies, Star Wars took us to "a galaxy far, far away..." By the way, I don't know if you fully get how large this object is in the sky. Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest deep sky objects just barely visible with the unaided eye in a dark sky but if the entire galaxy were bright enough, it would be five to six times larger than the full moon in the night sky! On the image on the left, the full moon would be about half the size of the image (roughly the bright core. On the right, it would be maybe a quarter of the size of the picture.

Woohoo! Return to Monkey Island nominated for GANG's Music of the Year!

I like it. Why was it rejected? It would be interesting to see it restored in the film. JNH's score is good but this sounds very beautiful too.

4 out of 5 of them are represented by Kraft-Engel. 3 out of 5 are USC scoring alumni.

Yes. It's the pinnacle of his golden era (1975-1984).

Congratulations to Steph Economou who made history yesterday by winning the very first grammy for a video game soundtrack! She won the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media award for Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Dawn of Ragnarok. It's crazy its taken so long to formally recognize game music as a category in the grammys. There is so much amazing music being written for games.

Oh wow, that's cool! I've performed there. It was the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel from 1921 to 1989 and was also the location where Ben (Dustin Hoffman) scored in The Graduate and sadly was where Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Today, it is an arts school, and the Cocoanut Grove is the auditorium at the school.

John Williams told my class, I really have no advice for how to make it now, things have changed so much since when I started, I doubt I would make it today. Yes.

I won't name the project even if I'm allowed to. I have no idea what future projects might exist.

I'll explain this scenario that soured me. I was hired a year ago to score an animated film and given a relatively nice package. The music would be challenging and I got to work on it right away not yet having seen any of the film because it was CGI animated/semi animated so what I would see were just green screens and concept art. I composed very good music (if I can say so) that I was proud of and saw a rough cut of the film (maybe 25% of the cgi/animation were in place. I then got word that the team had fallen in love with royalty free temp score that they edited to but wanted to retain me but now adapt the royalty free music. I said, but wait, I would charge you the contractually agreed fee regardless if they use my music or not because I created it even though they went the free route. I was now competing with generic free music and told I had to compose exactly like that music because it was approved already. So in what scenario would they pick my full price music that was already composed just for them but not like the generic royalty free music if they got what they needed for free music and any original music would have to follow the exact same rhythm, beat, style, of the temp? I did it for one cue and said screw this - it was zero joy just to write music exactly like what they were getting for free but mine would be the full price we agreed to. They would just say for each cue, we'll take the free one instead because mine would be just like the free one but cost alot more. I told them, I'll let them off the contract and let's go separate ways and the original music I composed is fully mine to do whatever I want with but this issue of having to compete with very generic royalty free music is becoming more and more common and far less creative or interesting for the composer. Something very similar happened to Davis on Matrix where DJ music was brought in replacing some of his music and he was told to merge his style to blend with them. At the very least, it was insulting, and he didn't take it well, plus very uninteresting to the composer. This sort of approach is more and more common now. There are some composers through various methods (maybe they have a music production team or are improvisors), but for those of us who want to sit at a desk and craft a well-conceived score that helps tell the story, it's frustrating and very unnerving that at any moment, even if they haven't heard the score, they might say the direction has changed and they're going with the generic free music. For some people who are fine with this being a business and they produce a product, it's probably not that big a deal but others actually love music and prefer working in settings that are more collaborative and supportive of that goal. I spent the rest of last year working on personal projects and very specific collaborations that were far more rewarding than doing the grind of writing music directly for directors then having it tossed for something easy to edit to or someone else had just gotten used to. I hope that explains the scenario better.

That's a major difference though, ghosting and orchestrating, your client is a composer. The composer is the one handling the business.

I don't think he got black listed, I think he just doesn't enjoy film scoring. Except for a handful, maybe just one person, it's really a business and that scene is not for everyone.

I'm thinking of getting No Man's Sky. Worth getting?

Well here is the Star Wars theme for String Quartet. This string quartet play the most thrilling version of Star Wars you could imagine - Classic FM There are tons and tons of arrangements for various ensembles. I've seen E.T., Jurassic Park, others for String Quartet. Have done some for brass quintet, lots of arrangements.

Wow, that looked great! Like a new TNG theatrical movie. I couldn't make it through S1 episode 1 but might have to start watching.

I think at this stage of his life, he doesn't have to think about it all because maybe 50 or 60 years ago he said "this sounds interesting...why is that interesting? What are the characteristics that make this work yet sound fresh?" By now it's probably automatic because he's been scratching his head over it for so many years. One doesn't get this point of it being natural or automatic without years and years of grunt work, head scratching, and challenging yourself to push deeper.

That's a really good point about M7. I think this harks back to his jazz history.

For those of you who've attended a Star Wars live to picture, how are the source cues handled? For example, in ANH, are the cantina band sequences played by the orchestra musicians?