tony69

HAHA who wantts Williams to score a tom cruise documentary? imagine the jumping the couch scene. wat kidna music do u think he'd write? gilderoy lockhartish? something more martial like darth vader? perhaps something like the death of jon kent?

Has anyone heard of this? ya i sent a message about 2 months ago. my friends aunt plays on every williams conducted recording, so she recently recorded some new stuff for nbc including a new football theme. but no one seemed to take note of it. heres the one i sent the message: http://jwfan.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&f...ghlight=#276450

i think its kinda sad that I to iv has become overly cliched to become romance. it was originally the transfiguration motif in the Ring. but then everyone loved it and began to overuse it. i wonder which composer was responsible for making that progression into the cliche it is now. prolly korngold.

very good analogy! the bow and arrow is great. i have to agree with you in that we must know our past in order to make better contributions. And i would like to say the point of music theory is not to analyze music. The point of music theory is to create the words from which you can shape the poetry. Theory is not about professors sitting in a room and argue that its a V7b5 chord instead of a V7#4, etcetc. Theory is the syntax of music. In English, we need to know that it is impossible to make a word like gthoijylk but this ont he other hand, gersang, may be an english word. Theory is the way we can create these words, with which the composers make art. So basically i disagree with u, 3.141592653 etc.

what do you need to know about asian music? i know a bit. sorry also what kind. gamelan? japanese? chinese? indian? etcetc.

There are Williams fans more snobbist then Alexcremers? Who are these people? no its not snobbery. its maturity; i've found this board has alot of immature sentiments. some people have continually proclaimed williams to be infallible when it is not the case; even williams himself does not think every single note he writes is perfect. its this single minded-bias i think that turned some people away fromt his board. i know someone who worked at joann kane copying place. she is a williams fan having done some inputting of the scores, but she is not on this board because she read some forums and found it quite boring, the whole williams is a god and no one else can compare attitude. sorry, thought i'd be the messenger. dont shoot me:p.

I must offer another point of view however. What are the chances that Debney had heard all the other scores and bothered to figure out the chord progressions and use almost hte same melody? What are the chances that most composers we accuse of plagiarism actually commit plagiarism? I would like to offer the theory (which many people seem to forget) that they independently came upon the same idea! WHOA! Yep that's right, they independently came up of the same idea. What are the chances that Debney listens to every single score by everyone else? very few. its just most of tonal music has 7 notes, and there are only so many permutations of them. if you plan to end on a dominant tonic relation, then chances are your melody ends with leading tone-tonic. etcetc. What is the proof? For one thing, Polar Express (2004) was written AFTER elf (2003). So shouldn't we be arguing that Alan Silvestri copied Debney?

its not that long ago. only 600 years ago:P. (btw greek modes are not the same in case u want to argue otherwise) But ya i didnt know norwegians thot it evil. i've always thot of the lydian as being very bright. theoretically, it is simply taking the tonic, and jumping up consecutive perfect 5ths. you will eventually arrive at the lydian. it is more natural than the ionian, which was formed as two tetrachords merged together. anyways, i have read the lectures. they are beautiful. bernstein was a very good teacher. as good as feynman was to physics. and one more thing. back to jw. so JW is one of the most unique composers i know because he doesnt have a signature style. his music is an amalgamation of so many other composers. You have all the romantic sounds from strauss, mahler and korngold. then you get the john adams sound in so many of his fanfares. the elgarian melodies etcetc. the more i think of it, the more i CANNOT identify something that makes JW JW other than the fact that the pieces are usually well constructed. anyone can offer any traits? and dont say boomtzzz:P.

ya yodas theme is very triadic. if u think about it, williams really loves the lydian now that we mention this.

when i meant the later stuff being more emotional, i meant it was less obvious than it would be back in the late 70s early 80s for williams. i guess i was using the wrong words. anyways, he would use similar ideas for love themes (han and princess vs. marions theme) or heroic themes (superman vs star wars). it was pretty obvious as to his intentions. more recently, i'm finding his stuff is getting more subtler and more refined. like the chairman's waltz is meant to be a love theme, but is not evident upon first listening. i guess others may disagree, but i prefer the more low key approach.

i wish sondheim himself would adapt it for the movie, like how bernstein did for his. one of the greatest musicals sweeney todd is.

i just saw SOAP. BEST MOVIE this year. WOW. so campily good. hahahahaha. i love how the score stops, sound effects disappear and they zoom in on sam jackson just before he says his line. HAHAHAHAHA.

i disagree with you on this point. i prefer the late williams. by now, he is much more mature than he was 30/40 years ago. his style is more mature and more emotional than in his early days. some may bash me for this, but i think his later stuff is more subtler than the mickey mousing he used in some of the earlier movies. its more psychological than much of the earlier stuff.

yes, perhaps we should have dark themes in entertainment for children. but lusting for someone (as in the Hellfire sequence) and IF he could not get her, then killing her? that is an entirely inappropriate thing to show to children. and perhaps its alright to have dark themes in older children novels, but for the target audience, the 5-8 group, these children do not have the mental capacity to understand these difficult issues. until they can actually deal with it, i feel it is completely inappropriate. remember the bambi sequence in which bambi's mother dies? that has been said to be one of the most traumatizing disney sequences and even she dies OFF screen..

yes, but a TERRIBLE kids movie. it is quite frightening. the bass chorale sounds scare the children. the lewd dancing by esmeraldo in the song that frollo sings is inappropriate. etcetc. if this was an adult film, it would be amazing. but by making it so mature, the disney crew screwed upt his movie big.

or Vorspiel:P. solti's set is alright for analog recording. Levines is equally good. both hte levine and solti are vying for the top and now with levine being re-release at a very cheap price, levine may take over solti's spot as the top selling ring.

yes i am going to shoot you. *bang* but really, why does goldsmith criticize zimmer? Because goldsmith uses it creatively, for more sounds whereas zimmer uses it as an orchestral replacement. Thus the whole thing is "Why are you using FAKE cello sounds when you can get REAL cellos?" this is the ultimate insult to the musician. zimmer uses Fake sounds/samplers for almost everything so also he doesnt ever need to notate, which is why many people question his musical talents. i've heard he cannot notate AT ALL. See goldsmith's comments regarding the role of the current day orchestrator and how important they are. that apparently applies to zimmer. hm... papillon? la confidential? are these universal? cuz the reason i'm gettng to see it is by going to their music headquarters. (maybe i can dig out that universal logo music ) but ya, i dont know what they have. they almost threw out the television scores but then people quit and all this beauracracy. now its baack so thats good. i dunno, i'm thinking of looking at planet of the apes. i dont know if they have it cuz i dont know the producing studios for any of these sort of things.

um if you're getting paid, you need to go through BMI. I believe jon williams is BMI, not ASCAP but someone can correct me on this.

i approve of most of those. its sad you couldnt include hindemith, schoenberg or bartok. these are all very influential composers, perhaps more influential than prokofiev or gershwin. with schoenberg, btw, you could have played verklarte nacht. that's accessible:).

Maybe your being to pentatonic... Anyway, tritone substitution is used mainly as an easy way to progress in a II-V7-I progression. So if you substitute a tritone away from the V7, it would be II-bII-I. This was mainly done to get away from the wide "secondary dominant" bass movements associated with a standard II-V7-I. In my experience, I don't think the neapolitan moved in such a way. the fact that williams used tritone substitution demonstrates his jazz background. in classical harmony, tritone substitution did not occur until rimsky-korsakov and his fellow russians became infatuated with symmetry, ie. octatonic scale. the ii-bII7-I progression is a very telling sign of williams jazz background.

You bring a good point. I've heard so many reputable composer say they hate the computer because some people write using it. (ex. steve reich, poul ruders) They claim that people that use the computer to compose are significantly worse than those that do without. I think the idea as someone mentioned in this forum is that writing with pencil takes more time. Thus, you have to think more than using a comp, where you can just play it on a keyboard that is hooked up up to the comp via a USB cable. They've told me it is annoying because they've had people show them scores they've written, but it turns out to be crap. Too many people rely on stuff like 'Finale 2006' or sequencers without any regards for proper acoustics, so they write impossible lines for the trumpet (say, high Bs in pianissimo). course it sounds alright on the comp, but for a real orch, it's impossible. also, often, there's too much layering which can happen with cubase, but in reality would muddy up the sound too much. etc. however, they also did say that there are people that compose with the aid of a computer, which is different. in that scenario, the composer is using the comp for simply notation or sound effects, not finale or cubase or watever.

omg, whens the release? what is the extra materials? i think they said there would be...

i dont think its academic. it seems like an incomprehensible, inconglomerate mess of unconnected ideas.

I disgree. Just because Williams' music doesn't always conform to 18th century classical structures and elementary freshman harmonic progressions doesn't mean it cannot be analysed. Trust me, music far more complex than that of John Williams is analysed every day by composers, theorists, and performers alike. We won't always find I-IV-V-I, but then you rarely find that in most "classical" music since 1870 anyway. Williams music can be analysed using extended harmonic techniques (chromatic third relationships and other distantly related tonal areas). Music theory and music composition go hand in hand. Theory is simply the art of discovering why a certain piece of music sounds the way it does, regardless of whether it fits into a pre-established mold. A very good answer. I must agree. Williams music does not conform to 18th century classical structures because *drumroll* he is not from the 18th century. To analyze his music, you have to look at it from a 20th century perspective. That means, you have to look at his music from various theoretical perspectives. for example, one reason his triads aren't exactly triads is his jazz background. in jazz, we voice things much different from classical harmonies, and you can see it in his voicings. Also, you need to understand the concept of pitch classes and symmetrical divisions which is very important in 20th century music. and on and on.

1. How many instruments do you play? (list if possible) piano, clarinet (and its variants), trumpet, trombone 2. Can you read standard music notation? yes. 3. Can you write music using standard music notation? yes. 4. Have you studied music theory? yes. 5. Do you understand the concepts of consonance, dissonance, and harmony ? yes. 6. Can you comprehend alto clef? yes. 7. Can you comprehend treble clef? yes. 8. Can you comprehend bass clef? yes. 9. Can you comprehend tenor clef? yes. 10. Can you sing? i can sing, but not well. 11. Do your ears have training/recognition ability? yes. can transcribe by ear. 12. Have you ever composed/created a musical piece lasting a minute or more? yes 13. Have you ever done professional musical work? yes. commissions. 14. Do you understand the concept of ryhthm? yes 15. Do you understand the concept of pitch? yes 16. Do you understand the concept of ryhthm? yes 17. Do you know the difference between monophony and homophony? yes 18. How many instruments can you identify by their sound? all standard orchestral instruments. a good number of percussion, but i'm not too good at african percussion. also can identify the pop sounds. 19. How musically inclined do you consider yourself? strongly. 20. Ever performed in an education/school related band or orchestra? yes i think this survey is kind of not too good. i think we should include: 21. Do you understand messaien's concept of modes of limited transposition? 22. Do you understand the concept of pitch classes? etc.