Nick Parker

Don't deny us our Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker alternate scores!

Who are you talking to?

Your point about the narrative elements throughout the score is valid, but I like the standalone quality a lot of BFG's tracks have, almost like a "normal" album. As for bangers? https://open.spotify.com/track/3DaR5SUVfmN9lLUl00Y16B?si=qrk1biWkRhq-fr78B0wajw And this? https://open.spotify.com/track/3kgBlHlZ3469aCYhSfc3QQ?si=fWGnc-yUTjGaevHRj0_5Tg Holy @#$%.

I like Force Awakens, but compared to BFG it's so flat and monochrome. I'm shocked by how I slept on this one for four years.

There's no excuse for moments like this! (not mentioning the mickey mouse moment like 15 seconds before this) Get the hell outta here, John! I've come to terms, after years of fighting it, that The Last Jedi is one of my least favorite John Williams scores, ever. All the Escapes and Canto Bights just can't redeem it in the end. The Post roasts this score alive like a porg......And after listening to BFG for the first time these past few days, it kicks Force Awakens' ass, too. What happened on these first two sequel scores?

Paging Mr. Marshall! Mr. Marshall, you have a telephone call at the front desk.

To answer the thread title, all the Mickey Mousing and cutesiness in The Last Jedi.

Don't you bring your Mel Gibson crap into this now!

What's the latest Williams score you've listened to, Mattris?

Yeahhhh it's best to stay away from those. Even Cubase, robust as its score editor is, is clunky as all get out. Best to get used to piano roll notation, then convert it to a MIDI file or something to import into a real notation program.

That I can agree with. It's a very good and powerful DAW--and the fact that it's now free is absolutely nuts. But there are decisions they made that can be nonplussing. ( I hate how you have to create MIDI events for example. In a lot of other DAWs all you have to do is take a pencil and draw any number of bars that you want to fill in. Boom, that's it.) Unfortunately, since the company that now owns it basically brought it back from the dead, they seem content to keep it basically in cryogenic status...I'm not sure how much they intend to update it as Sonar did before they collapsed.

I tried to make my post last night as succint and thorough as possible, addressing this at depth. Was there anything in it that confused you?

I mean people like him get the rare luxury of having an orchestra play his material almost instantaneously. Maybe this isn't exactly what you mean, but we've seen numerous recording session footage where Williams--and others such as Goldsmith--make changes on the podium. Did you have a chance to try out that stuff I mentioned last time?

I thought you wanted to talk to me!

Speaking of the not worst captains: https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/cbs-reportedly-plans-bringback-star-trek-deep-space-nines-captain-sisko/

I think what you're referring to is more of a MIDI thing than a Cakewalk thing, if I'm understanding you. MIDI Velocity only refers to the velocity of the note when it's first played--it's just how the MIDI language was set up in the 80's. I haven't used East West, but any relatively modern, decent orchestral library should have the ability to change dynamics, well, dynamically by use of a MIDI Control Change (CC), most commonly CC1: Modulation. Most MIDI keyboards have a modulation wheel, almost always to the left of the keybed itself, that allows you to control this in real-time, while performing the notes themselves with the other hand. In most DAWs, you should have the ability to pull up a "lane" (as Cubase calls it) with the CC parameters you wish to manipulate; again, CC1 (modulation) in this case probably. From there, you should be able to use the DAW tools, usually a pencil, to draw an "envelope"--different levels of the parameter from 0-127, per MIDI standards, depending on however you want to affect the sound. So for example, say you have a trumpet note held for a 4/4 bar that you want soft for 3 beats, then make a loud and dramatic crescendo on the final beat. In the CC1 lane, you might want it from beats 1-3 to start at a lower number, like 50, depending on how your particular virtual instrument corresponds with the CC information. Then, on the fourth beat, you use your DAW's drawing tool and draw a ramp from that first number to a much higher one--if you want to go all the way, draw that ramp all the way up there to 127!

Awww, shame, I know it's been around forever and was the standard for MIDI back in the day. The different pencil tools et cetera don't do it for you? Functionally speaking you won't find tools in other DAWs to be much different.

What DAW do you use? And what OS are you on?

Thanks for the retrospective! I wish someone had told me this when I started. It's harder to think of a case where you're so riddled with self-doubt and insecurity than when a group plays something you wrote for the first time--or several--and you can't even tell what the music is. I learnt several things during that process: one, sometimes the best players in the world can't make something you wrote work the way you think if you didn't write it that way. For example, wanting a piece to sound soft and light at a section when you crammed the music into so many different instruments in mid-low registers. Two, learning to stop being so overwhelmed by the disappointment of that first time, accept it, and objectively analyzing what it is in front of you and work from there to bridge the gap between your mind's ear and where the musicians are at.

Would you just shut up, you fucking weirdo whose academic work on the music of Star Wars was chosen by renowned and legendary journalist Alex Ross to share and discuss with John Williams himself!? Jesus talk about grasping for straws.

I've become disenchanted! The name stays!

What a coincidence!, 'cause after reading this thread, like Short Round, I just took someone's razor!

And here I thought you were the one stranded in the Delta Quadrant! I was just getting used to my role as the Undisputed Nick!

In an interview around the time of TFA, with our boy Tim Greiving, Williams mentioned that it was of prime importance of him to keep the score "Star Warsian", and specifically elaborated to mean things such as harmonies and intervals.

As someone who thinks AI is one of the best extended pieces of music ever written, I've had to do the same, and your first post I quoted is one of the reasons I love the OST. Mecha World is such a hell of an album opener, it was an absolutely genius move on Williams' part. Combine that with the second punch of Abandoned in the Woods, and you're immediately and deeply sucked into this dark, fantastical world that Williams has constructed. Film music should be seen, not heard!