Wojo

The best I can do is *gulp* set my VCR.

Marc, that is nifty. The posts I made were within a minute of each other, because I posted the second as a very quick afterthought to the first. That's a trick question.

Of course it is. "Good" is a purely relative and deeply personal adjective that varies from individual. And it must, for the survival of the species. I had a more appropriate comic up there before, but it had one of those copyright clauses watermarked into the comic, so I thought I better change it. EDIT: Does the Message board automatically detect when we make back-to-back posts, and combine them for us? If so, that's pretty cool, because it just happened.

No, it isn't. Just watch any of Jackson's TLOTR films. All the races have chain mail armor: humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs alike. If mithril were the same as mail, nobody would have ever died from shots to the abdomen. Only head shots, decapitations, blunt force trauma, explosion, magic, and massive bleeding from loss of limbs would have resulted in casualties. The only person in the movies who survived any kind of shot to the chest was Frodo. Why? Mithril. Mithril trumps iron chain mail. I said the films because they more clearly (and noisily) show chain mail armor than any of the books describe.

It's a show I want to watch, but I never make the time for.

Let's be honest here. Elijah Wood will be 50 and still look like any of us did at 18-21.

That's what an arrangement is! It's a refried rendition of somebody else's theme. If the original theme is totally unrecognizable, it is either a very bad arrangement, or an original composition stuck in the wrong category.

No, typing all of the track names by hand is too much work. Being online to rip CD information from CDDB is ok, but I'm on dialup so the connection to CDDB is intermittent, I don't like being online while ripping, and half the CDs I rip don't have CDDB information anyways. Mass converting WAV rips to MP3/FLAC and then batch grabbing information from text files (or CDDB after conversion) is pretty sweet. <Track 13>, by <Artist>. Released in <Year>, it is a calming piece indicative of all similar <Genre> songs, and is the standout track on the <Album> album.

The "He's a Pirate" theme is both simple and hummable. Or whistleable, or singable in a doot-doot-dah-dah-doot-doot kind of singing way. Complexity does not always make something good. Pirates is. Millions of people have bought Zimmer's albums, and I'm willing to bet more than 2/3 are not as well-versed or sophisticated of film score fans as the people you can find clustered around these composer-specific message boards. The casual fans certainly define a wide audience, especially when you hear music like from Pirates used during sporting events and other pop culture places. Therein lies the rub. The re-listen factor is not really there for back to back to back listens. But even any "good" music becomes torture when you listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I have the five Zimmer scores I mentioned because I liked how the music worked onscreen and on album enough to want to listen to it over and again. I have no interest in buying or researching other Zimmer scores, simply because there is enough other good music to listen to, whether I've seen the movies or not. That includes the new Batmans.

A blessing! A blessing from the Lord! God be praised!

10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever, it's immaterial. The last thing I wanted to do was start recording this thing as the announcer was fumbling through the introduction. It's easier to delete than it is to create. So I hit Record when the trumpets started playing as Biden came in, and I hit stop about 20 minutes later, after Obama had been sworn in. I have the same length of Williams song as everyone else, it's just book ended by procedure. If you wanted to, you could actually tape record your whole life. I just don't think you'd have time to listen to it all.

As do I. I actually enjoy listening to the POTC, Lion King, and even Gladiator scores from time to time. Thank you for being so proper when you correct me, kid.

I don't have access to my sound editing software; all I have is a 20 minute WAV file of the MSNBC recording. For now.

I'm not arguing with you. But sometimes people go their whole lives accepting some fallacy to be true, and never learn that they're wrong until they put that idea out on the table for all to hear, only to find somebody who can give them more information. If they never provided their thought for challenge, they would believe a lie to be true their whole lives, and people don't always second guess every single piece of information they pick up or they'd go crazy. Granted, if you're in the public media, it is nice to have all your facts straight before you go around re-educating people with your lies and fake truths, but it's always great to hear the other person correct them or call in later. In this case, hearing a song that you thought was 60 years old by one guy, and stating that's the truth, only to find that it was really written a century before that by somebody else. It happens all the time in rock and blues. Someone will hear a song and attribute it to one artist of today or the 70's, only to find it was written in the 50s or 60s, and just got covered by everyone and their brother.

I know you're being facetious, but that is, of course, entirely false. Probabilistically speaking, it would happen, yes, after many thousands of years, assuming that their motions were truly random. (Which they wouldn't be.) Practically speaking, one needs at least a little skill to be able to repeatedly write effective melodies. I'm only hammering this point because some members here seem to be under the impression that Zimmer and his cronies lack any skill whatsoever, which is patently false, regardless of their shortcomings. Thousands of years? I think not. This mere child accomplished such a feat today. He's definitely cuter than a monkey. I don't think it's fair to compare cognitive function. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW8tUvPKQ1I Hans Zimmer could take that kid's melody, add some synthesizers, and hammer out a Michael Bay love theme in minutes flat.

You're right, Smeagol. "Simple Gifts" was written in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett, almost 100 years before Copland arranged it into "Appalachian Spring." But do not confuse ignorance with idiocy. I always liked John P. Zdechlik's arrangement of "Simple Gifts" in "Chorale and Shaker Dance," a 1972 concert band staple. So John Williams really went back in time, to the music of antebellum America to find this piece.

In this situation, Williams did not "compose" an entirely new piece, and the introduction announces as much. It is an "arrangement" of a song that invokes the kinds of feelings that Obama and company wanted to invoke on this day. A totally original piece of music might have done the same trick, and gotten all the Williams fanboys even giddier, but there's nothing wrong with using a solid piece of Americana for this American event.

Quint's question does not ask if Zimmer writes a good melody EVERY time he sits down at his keyboard and computer to throw together a new score. He only asks if once or twice, he has successfully written a good melody, suggesting that he is indeed capable of such an accomplishment. Even a group of monkeys sitting down at a kid's piano can hammer together a good tune or two.

I think the "This Land" theme is quite lovely, because at its conclusion, it transcends statements from both "The Circle of Life" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." I'm not sure how much musical collaboration Zimmer and Elton John shared as they came up with the music, but Zimmer's credited with the score, and Elton with the songs.

He would not have looked cool standing there at all. The world wanted to see the faces of the musicians, not the backside of John Williams. It was quite enough that so many people had to turn around as it was to watch the musicians as it stood.

With only four performers, no conductor was needed.

Unfortunately, there was enough booing to be had this morning as it was. Some people just have no class. But then again, the whole thing was being celebrated and covered like it were a rock or sports event, so I guess that's what you get.

Saying that Hans Zimmer has never written a single good melody at all is as ludicrous as suggesting that every single one of John Williams' melodies is an absolute perfect gem.