tony69
-
Posts
419 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by tony69
-
-
I ran across Williams' bio at the Songwriters Hall of Fame:Williams is the composer of the NBC News theme, "The Mission," "Liberty Fanfare," composed for the rededication of The Statue of Liberty; and themes for the Summer Olympic Games of 1984, 1988 and 1996. He is also the composer of the NFL Network Themes.
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
-
Lydian = Space, Flight, Magic
I to iv = Romance (especially with a iv add6 in 2nd inversion, eventually to a bIIMaj7 in 3rd inversion)
IMaj7 = American, Olympic, heroic, etc.
Octatonic = Action, scary
I to v = Exploration, slight mystery
It's a little oversimplified, but it's pretty much some of the basic rules of film music that Williams has further cemented during his career.
Jason
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.
-
"Theory" is simply a term for describing musical events, and an attempt to decipher music's inner logic. Fortunately, this has been going on for centuries and centuries, and we don't have to rely only on our instincts, inherent musicality and good ideas, but we can aid all of those with the experience of our predecessors, the experience of the great masters of this even greater art form!
Academia is one thing, but a theoretical/analytical awareness of music exists everywhere there's a deeper interest in music. Williams wouldn't, COULDN'T, be the composer he is today without the intense amount of studying, of devouring, music in the quantities that he has. He is such an impressive man; he will casually quote (I have heard him do this in person) the most obscure Mendelssohn quartet, or any piece by Takemitsu, or anything else for that matter- his knowledge of the repertoire is bordering on encyclopedic!, yet this vast, vast, vast knowledge hasn't clouded his vision, but promoted his individuality through "losing" himself in that which is greater than any one of us can be.
Yes, all great, true art, comes from ideally eliminating your ego so you become what your create, serve what you create, allow it to take a beauteous, lasting form. I think this is the secret of great craft.
Pi, I'm sorry you've experienced such bad teachers. I've experienced some of those myself, but I've also been blessed with truly amazing teachers,- artists who are not only some of the greatest and most inspiring practitioners of their craft, but who have a profound understanding of tradition, and who have realised that the only way to progress, is to know your past.
The analogy is this: A Bow and Arrow.
The farther you pull the bow-string, the farther the arrow will fly. The deeper we know our past, the history and technique of our craft, the longer will our contributions last, the more insight (and foresight) shall we be granted.
Bach knew this. Mozart knew this. Ravel knew this. Shostakovich knew this. Williams knows this. And you know this, too, I'm sure.
So pull that string, study those scores, and write and write and write and write and write. It hasn't failed yet!
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.
-
Now, many times, this boards ain't the right place. There are many serious collectors that aren't interested in being around here -- one can only wonder why...
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.
-
his cutthroat island was amazing, but nothing of his has really interested me. Yeah he does plagiarize alot off the top of my head I can say Elf sounds alot like the Polar Express, and Zathura sounds like Hook.
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?
-
Just to clarify, I realize the lydian mode dates back long before any film composer. I was referring more to the abuse of it.
Marcus, excellent ideas there. I didn't know about the connection to Norwegian musical lore.
Slightly off topic, have you ever read Leonard Bernstein's Harvard lectures?
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.
-
not bashing you, but more emotional, sorry thats not even close to being correct.
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.
-
With a few exceptions (Harry Potter), Williams musical style is of the 90's ad this decade is distinctly different then that of his Golden Age.
Frankly, most of the time it's not as good.
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.
-
I haven't seen this, but I wonder how drastically 'adult' it is for so many members here to deem it more or less inappropriate for children? I've always thought that we need more dark themes and subject matter in entertainment for children, and that Disney especially tends to underestimate their young audiences... Now, there are certain things, or certain way of presenting various issues, that children should be sheltered from, but scary sequences are fun! Looh at Roald Dahl's universe! And even Oscar Wilde's fairytales, not to mention Brothers Grimm!
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.
-
The Ride exists as two versions, the one most commonly know is the excerpt which is only orchestral. It is
for the most part a reduced orchestration. The part in the opera, which takes the place of the very
popular tradition of putting an orchestral piece at the beginning of the last act, also includes voices.
In my opinion, if you are at all interested in Wagner, or want to consider yourself Wagner wise, you need
only look as far as the Solti Vienna box set. Now almost 45 years old, it has never sounded so good.
There is also a book by the recording enginer, about the whole process. Its called Ring Resounding.
You could spend years studying these 4 operas. Wagner was questionable as a person, but his music
dramas, as he called them, were second to none!
...and we never call anything in Wagner, overture...he prefered Prelude
Have Fun
DHP
@()
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.
-
Someone's going to shoot me, but Goldsmith used electronic stuff in his music all the time, so why had he criticised Zimmer? Is it the composition style that differs between them, does Goldsmith just not like Zimmer's music, or what it is?
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.
Papillon is my favorite Goldsmith score still. It's amazing through and through. The spotting of it was also excellent. It takes 30 minutes to hear his first cue and it's shocking with its trumpet dissonance in the opening bars.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.
-
Tomorrow I start a new teaching position at a private school K-8. I will teach music appreciation, music theory, music history etc. I don't have much time to spend on the individual periods of music, but my 20th century curriculum will include five composers:
Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Copland, Gershwin, and John Williams.
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:).
-
Yes, very clear, it was just that you hadn't initially specified which chord you were replacing with your tritone! However, I don't believe you're quite correct when you say that a Neapolitan chord has to resolve to the dominant, although of course it usually does (and would almost certainly do so in music of the Classical period such as Mozart and even Beethoven). Even if it resolves straight to the tonic, it's still Neapolitan by virtue of its flattened supertonic! Therefore there's no inherent difference between the Neapolitan sixth and your "tritone substitution", aside from the addition of a seventh to the latter (as well as more options when it comes to the inversion). Also, if the Db VII chord in your example resolves outwards by step to C major, then really it's more of an augmented sixth chord than a dominant seventh, but now maybe I really am being too pedantic...
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.
-
The way people compose music in general like using a computer so that you can use MIDI keyboard or the old way like not using a computer at all. But Which is better. The output of it i mean. How would John Williams music turned out to be if he start composing music by using computers?
Even thought John Williams grew up at the time where there is no computers at that time but just thinking though...now that people are using computers do think there some how there is lacking in the process of composing music when using music notation on computers?
Not all are skilled like John Williams and the use computers and letting the computers doing the work is easier for them which is a negative thing about it. To me that just show how unskill or unknowedgeable the person who composing because the person who composing should be smart enough like John Williams to not use the computers. I just thinking that the hard way is a better output just like John Williams how he compose his music.
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...
-
Academic writing can be hard to penetrate, but I wonder if this guy has thought about the structural styles and frameworks that dictate his criticism of film scoring. I'm going to need to read it again, but I got the impression that this fellow thinks he stands outside the very criticisms he is dishing out. Tough to say though.
Ted
i dont think its academic. it seems like an incomprehensible, inconglomerate mess of unconnected ideas.
-
I don't want to kill this thread, but I will say this;
Williams mind works in a freewheeling way. He writes his music, then makes it fit within the boundaries of notation. His knowledge is so spectacular that he is able to do this in an extremely accurate way. ie what you hear is what he intended.
You can't break down his music into theory very well. It's too complex. Williams seldom even uses a single chord progression, it's always skewed in some way, with that brilliant touch.
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.
Why the 70's & 80's R clearly superior to the 90's &
in General Discussion
Posted
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?