karelm

Nice job! As a low brass player (bass trombone), I always appreciate this moment. I saw the 14 hour opera once and it was incredibly moving. The sheer spectacle and sense of occasion is hard to describe. It rewards the tremendous patience necessary to experience it in all its glory.

We haven't had anything posted here in some time. For anyone interested, this is the presto movement from my in progress eighth symphony (confusingly numbered 7 because one was unnumbered). The full work is nearly an hour long in four movements. kes72.mp3

Ok will try that, thanks!

I want to record a streaming radio broadcast from my computer tomorrow using Audacity but the recorded volume ends up being incredibly quiet. I can increase the volume of the input signal but then my computer is playing back that stream incredibly loud. Any suggestions why Audacity is recording the audio signal so quiet and what I need to do to fix this? Alternatively, any suggestions for a free program that is better at recording audio from a live stream?

John Corigliano's second opera, The Lord of Cries was just released. Fantastic composer, fans of Elliot Goldenthal should find much to enjoy here as well. Corigliano's three film scores are all fantastic being Altered States (1980),

For fans of vintage sci-fi, you might enjoy seeing these items for sale in auction. Yes, they're not cheap but it was exciting to see some of these items even exist to be owned. Maybe we should pool or money? Heritage Auctions Search, 2023 October 14 - 15 The Greg Jein Collection Hollywood Platinum Signature® Auction 7278 [53 793 794 791 792 2088 4294934714] (ha.com) Items we could own include: * Original scripts (and revisions) of Close Encounters * Star Wars X-Wing model (1977) * Lots of Star Wars and Star Trek costumes and props * Stuff from Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek Movies and shows, Tribbles, Shatner's TOS hairpiece It's fun to look through all these fantastic memorabilia.

Great example, Mark! Why do you think the music during the Battle of Syracuse feels so new? How is JW able to parlay these techniques over decades and still have them sound so fresh?

Totally agree. Very informative and enlightening discussion.

I'll be there! Looking forward to hearing your talk!

I understood The Land before Time was an idea from Lucas and Spielberg as a sort of sequel to Fantasia's superb dinosaur sequence, so Horner was to follow in the footsteps of Stravinsky. So, you can imagine lots of input from Lucas and Spielberg but maybe temped with Rite of Spring. Am I right on this or thinking of something else? There was originally not supposed to be any dialog like Fantasia. And Fantasia...and absolute masterpiece of style, form, music, and craft.

I quite like Something Wicked This Way Comes. Some very interesting music from Horner's early period but quite different from the other scores of this period like Star Trek, Krull, the Roger Corman films.

Really cool reduction! I love that work...and composer frankly.

The polar bears were part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments that included teleportation when certain events happened on the island like when the polar bear skeleton was found in Tunisia desert, it showed the island was moving and sometimes local events on the island resulted in teleportation outside the island. Parts of the island were in ice (that wheel that Ben turned) indicating the island had also once been in polar regions. The music score for the show was fantastic for it's time because it was probably the only primetime show using full orchestras each episode. Another noteworthy example was Bear McCreary's BSG but that was barely using orchestras (just the big budget episodes would get more than an ensemble) but virtually all other tv scores were synth at that time. Lost was also very thematic so not just acoustic instruments but a thematic score each week with some very big moments on the season finale and premiere episodes. Something like this was very, very rare:

A very fine choice! Also one of the kindest people!

It has good audio because it's a remaster so that alone should make it worth getting.

There is no try. Do or do not.

I wouldn't say that but they both went the Herrmann route. Young was doing gothic horror, more the stuff from the 1940's and 50's by way of Herrmann who frequently seemed to use dance rhythms (waltz) in his suspense and horror films. I think this Herrmann approach is what JW was asked to do in The Fury too since Brian DePalma worshipped Hitch and was channeling that vibe. I think if Herrmann were still alive, DePalma would have hired him to score The Fury and not JW. Johnny might have been hired for one very major reason...Hitch's last film (Family Plot, 1976) was scored by Williams so there might have been a presumption that JW was the heir apparent to Herrmann. In DePalma's Obsession, Herrmann wrote a main theme as a waltz. It's pretty clear, DePalma wanted Johnny to do that Herrmann thing in Fury.

Yes. At 90+ years old, he's an encyclopedia of these chords and scales he's obsessed over for 80+ years. I very much doubt scales and chords are something he has to put much thought into these days. Here is an analogy. Playing side by side with a professional level musician, they played a fiendishly exposed and difficult passage without breaking a sweat. I asked, didn't playing that even make you nervous a little bit? They said absolutely - but the items they were nervous about were no longer about hitting the right notes or rhythms. They worked that all out over decades. They were nervous about bringing something fresh and musical into something they had played thousands of times. So, a beginner might be fretting over the obvious items like hitting the right note. A mid level musician might focus just as much about tempo, phrasing, and dynamics but less worried they'll hit the right notes. A professional level player might play the same passage now worried about doing the passage artistic justice and giving it the dynamic flare it needs though they've played it a thousand times. At each level, the musician is stressing over the same passage and are working through issues but those aren't the same issues at all. As a beginner you might think, it's crazy to imagine the pro doesn't have to worry about hitting the right notes. They've moved past those obvious issues and are now focused on more nuanced challenges we might not even notice yet. That is the analogy I'm making with JW. He's at that point compositionally. I seriously doubt he scratches his head wondering what that chord was or how to spell it because he's been doing that already for decades and now knows if I need something for a scene with a specific feel, C#min7+#9+#11 would work great right there. Some would see this as it comes easy for him but it doesn't. He just spent many, many years already working through the basic issues. There are very few people in any capacity who will reach this level of accomplishment.

I think this point is worth exploring further. What does exceptional skill even look like? @michael_grig, you are ultimately asking does a master think of chords or harmony when crafting a theme? That's a question that only makes sense to a student. This is also the same question JW might have asked 60 years ago. So you can't ask that same question of a modern JW and have it make any real sense.

Very fine tonal contemporary music. If you like Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff, you will find much to enjoy here in this dramatic and epic symphony.

That's a really good point you made. To analyze harmony, you have to include melody otherwise you miss context of what's happening. How it goes from chord to chord does impact how you think of this contextually. Music exists in a multi-planal existence...it is multidimensional like time, space, gravity, mass, energy, etc. To understand melody, you need to keep harmony, melody, rhythm, and structure all in mind. To understand what is happening harmonically, you need to observe melody and rhythm too. Great point, Loert!

I have his email address. I should ask him what this was from.

Eheheh....Williams calls movie theaters "the cineplex". He probably calls iphones "telecommunication devices" and cars are "horseless carriages". I will confess to not knowing any of his 60's scores but loving his 50's jazzy albums. I know and love his tv scores like Lost in Space but there is much to discover from his early career.

Not true. There are many possible reasons to doubt it. One scenario I experienced firsthand; a young woman hired by a prominent composer used that opportunity to promote her own career - a big no no. While she was working for the composer, she presented herself and her music in secret instead of the composer she worked for just to get an in with the producers. She was fired on the spot when it was discovered. That isn't unusual. Opportunities are rare and people sometimes take a risk that can get them fired. It can be a cutthroat industry. Your teammate could say I have your back till it benefits them not to. Did you ever hear of her before this? I doubt it. I'm not saying if her allegations are true or false, just that you can't possibly claim her name and reputation were destroyed. She had no name and Elfman was a major name. That's the whole power imbalance. By the way, women can be guilty of this too! Read the massive thread by Jeremy Soule's accuser...women executives were at fault because they were part of the old boys club when they became executives. It's way, way more complex than you make it to be. I still think it's worth adding substance abuse and other topics because all of these happen at the same time and what someone might think is sexual assault might actually be something else. It can be very unclear. Here is another example...I dated a musician. During that time, I hired an orchestra for a score. I asked the contractor to hire my gf. He said that would not work well for her. The other musicians would banish her because she got "special treatment". So by my hiring her as my gf, I would harm her career. We then broke up. She claimed I hurt her career by limiting her opportunities. It's really tricky and your "no reason to doubt the story" is not true.

I agree with you that it's a bad situation either way and I haven't fully formulated my thoughts on the topic as this is a tricky and loaded topic. Some general thoughts I have though is the victim pretty much hates men. She's in a music composer forum I'm in and is almost always aggressive towards any opinion that doesn't align with her points as being example of patriarchy and demonstrating further examples of industry wide abuse towards women. The truth is this very same thing has happened to almost everyone in the industry, not just women. On the other side, it is very, very hard to imagine any scenario where Elfman would pay nearly a billion dollars and be completely innocent as he claims. My intuition is it is probably something in the middle like he probably did something inappropriate while under the influence, not that that excuses him, but might mean it isn't something in character and he might truly have no recollection yet did something very inappropriate too. Clearly, it's a male dominated industry and there are very few protections in place (there is no corporate HR to complain to for example). In my experiences, there have been near fist fights and blows during work sometimes between boss and staff and this happened to men and women. Lots of derogatory talk (they might tell you to go jack off for a bit in a room full of mixed audiences if they need to chat privately), naked pictures or porn sitting openly around, stuff like that. This was way before #METOO and I'll assume they've cleaned up their act quite a lot but the point is can be a generally abusive environment and sometimes that abusiveness is emotional, physical, sexual, or substance too and the lines can be blurry.