The Quick Question Thread

[filmmusic 1,826]

Ok, today most of my posts are related to funk music. hehe

So, I wanted to ask, does anyone know of any book that helps you compose in this idiom?

 

[Faleel 5,346]

1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

Ok, today most of my posts are related to funk music. hehe

So, I wanted to ask, does anyone know of any book that helps you compose in this idiom?

 

Some would say using a book is how you DON'T write in that idiom, you go by feel and ear.

 

Nevertheless this is what I found:

 

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/funk-music-guide

 

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-One-First-Guide-Funk/dp/1541256603/ref=asc_df_1541256603/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=316578622005&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15976796954995622390&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9017433&hvtargid=pla-669059122946&psc=1

 

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Funk-Studies-Creative-Patterns/dp/0825825539/ref=asc_df_0825825539/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312050264297&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15976796954995622390&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9017433&hvtargid=pla-450185292669&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316180559&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312050264297&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15976796954995622390&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9017433&hvtargid=pla-450185292669

 

 

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

Ok, today most of my posts are related to funk music. hehe

So, I wanted to ask, does anyone know of any book that helps you compose in this idiom?

 

My advice would be to listen to funk records, and to learn how they sound.

[filmmusic 1,826]

4 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

 

My advice would be to listen to funk records, and to learn how they sound.

Can you write a symphony when you have listened to 100 symphonies?

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

No, but you can study those 100 symphonies, analyse the composers' individual styles, and then synthesize your own. Isn't that what film composers do?

[Faleel 5,346]

4 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Can you write a symphony when you have listened to 100 symphonies?

I mean, it had to have started somewhere, yes?

[filmmusic 1,826]

2 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

No, but you can study those 100 symphonies, analyse the composers' individual styles, and then synthesize your own. Isn't that what film composers do?

OK, I'm with you.

Then I need some funk music in full score sheet music to analyse. 

I wonder if there is any...

[Faleel 5,346]

[filmmusic 1,826]

9 minutes ago, A Farewell to Kings said:

 

I'm afraid this is just a lead sheet music. No full score.

https://www.halleonard.com/product/196728/jazz-funk-play-along

 

edit: I was thinking something like this:

https://musescore.com/user/17046511/scores/3478481

(if you hit play, it plays!that comes handy!)

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

There is some music that I can well imagine being written down. Others, such as funk, I imagine more as a "feeling", an intuition. Whatever you read as sheet music, will not totally relate to what you hear, on record.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

Does anyone know what JW's shortest and longest film scores are?

Asking for a friend.

[filmmusic 1,826]

11 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Does anyone know what JW's shortest and longest film scores are?

Asking for a friend.

The shortest must be Pete 'n' Tillie.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

The Screaming Woman is shorter. If memory serves he only composed music for the credits but I might be wrong. Don't know which score is the longest in film but I would say The Last Jedi giving the length of the movie and the almost non-stop use of music.

TROS is supposed to be the one for which he composed the more music but most of it is unused.

[filmmusic 1,826]

9 minutes ago, May the Force be with You said:

The Screaming Woman is shorter. If memory serves he only composed music for the credits but I might be wrong.

Yes, he did, but for some reason I don't consider this film as part of John Williams's filmography, just because it's one cue and the rest is library (?) music..

[Jay 37,351]

The longest score of his career is The Rise of Skywalker.  210 minutes of music recorded.

 

The shortest depends entirely on what parameters you want to go by.

Dear Basketball is 6 minutes long, but so is the film.  A Timeless call is 7 minutes, The Katherine Reed Story is 15 minutes, The Unfinished Journey is 21 minutes, etc.

 

The Screaming Woman cue is 90 seconds, but he didn't score the entire film, he just did that one cue (that we don't technically even know if he wrote for the film or wrote it for something else and it got repurposed there)

 

Pete N Tillie on the Varese DE of Stanley and Iris is about 19 minutes, and I believe is everything recorded

 

The Fabelmans has 23 minutes of original score in the final cut, but we don't know how much was recorded (there's music on the OST not in the film and sheet music seen in the featurette that reveals more alternates)

Conrack and The Paper Chase are both very short but I don't know if we definitively know how much was recorded for either

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

Thanks, all.

[Thor 7,495]

Counting only theatrical feature film scores that are not musicals, my bet would be on CONRACK as the shortest. Wouldn't count THE SCREAMING WOMAN, as we don't yet know the source of the 90-second piece used at the end.

[filmmusic 1,826]

8 minutes ago, Thor said:

Counting only theatrical feature film scores that are not musicals, my bet would be on CONRACK as the shortest. Wouldn't count THE SCREAMING WOMAN, as we don't yet know the source of the 90-second piece used at the end.

You don't count Pete 'n' Tillie? That's the shortest full Williams score. Shorter than Conrack.

[Thor 7,495]

6 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

You don't count Pete 'n' Tillie? That's the shortest full Williams score. Shorter than Conrack.

 

OK. It was just a guess. I haven't counted the minutes in CONRACK, but it felt like 15 minutes or so in total.

[filmmusic 1,826]

15 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

OK. It was just a guess. I haven't counted the minutes in CONRACK, but it felt like 15 minutes or so in total.

It's around 19 minutes.

[Jay 37,351]

So is Pete N Tillie...

[filmmusic 1,826]

5 minutes ago, Jay said:

So is Pete N Tillie...

Really? I think I counted less in the cd..

[Jay 37,351]

 

that adds up to 18:36

[filmmusic 1,826]

43 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

that adds up to 18:36

Huh!   Conrack is 18.50, counting out the source cues that Williams wrote.

[Jay 37,351]

So you were right, it is shorter than Conrack

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

Again, thanks, all.

[Tom Guernsey 2,284]

At the risk of turning this into an endless series of "what's their longest score" threads, but the recent release of Hollow Man (1 hour 31) made me wonder if that's Jerry's longest movie score (thus excluding something like Masada or QB VII). However, having had a look through my collection, I see that Air Force One is longer (1 hour 35), but has several cues that he didn't compose, so could be excluded on that basis. His first and last Star Trek scores both clock in at a shade under 1 hour 25, although if you take into account the Fred Steiner cues, Nemesis ends up being longer. I guess Hollow Man probably does come out as the longest overall, if cues by others are excluded.

 

Most of his other longest scores clock in at around the 70 ish minutes mark. His average score length feels considerably shorter than JW's (or James Horner) - guess he appreciated the benefit of economy when it came to spotting movies!

[Jay 37,351]

When Intrada announced their Hollow Man expansion, Roger touted it as "what is probably Goldsmith's longest score"

 

Then Doug's Corner stated that "Hollow Man is quite possibly Goldsmith’s single longest film score ever"

 

And Roger's official blurb for it says "what is perhaps one of his longest scores"

 

 

 

So that's one "probably", one "possibly", and one "perhaps", but nothing definitive

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

In terms of music written, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE surely must be Jerry's longest score.

[Faleel 5,346]

IMHO, length should only be "horizontal" not "vertical"

 

Meaning alternates/inserts/revisions don't add to the tally.

 

...unless it's a case like the original longer opening of Empire Strikes Back, in which case the longer version is what is considered towards the overall length

[Thor 7,495]

29 minutes ago, Signals said:

IMHO, length should only be "horizontal" not "vertical"

 

Meaning alternates/inserts/revisions don't add to the tally.

 

Indeed.

[Tom Guernsey 2,284]

39 minutes ago, Signals said:

IMHO, length should only be "horizontal" not "vertical"

 

Meaning alternates/inserts/revisions don't add to the tally.

 

...unless it's a case like the original longer opening of Empire Strikes Back, in which case the longer version is what is considered towards the overall length

I would tend to agree. I don't mind counting music that was written but not used in the film, but wouldn't count alternate versions - else you end up with 12 minutes of The Enterprise (which, musically, is a wonderful thing of course) rather than 6. It's not an exact science, more just a fun "I wonder..." thing for me!

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

1 hour ago, Signals said:

...alternates/inserts/revisions don't add to the tally.

 

I would count all that, as it's written for the film.

What about music that is written for, but dialed out of, the film (the opening of TESB; the "earthquake" sequence, in SUPERMAN)?

 

Are we going by what's written for, or what's heard in, the film?

[Thor 7,495]

Well, you asked what the longest score was, not what was the film that had the most recorded music. So one needs to look at the finished film and count the minutes of music heard within.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

I would agree, @Thor, but there is always more music written, and recorded, than there is heard in the film.

I guess it's an impossible situation.

[Brónach 1,302]

2 hours ago, Signals said:

IMHO, length should only be "horizontal" not "vertical"

 

Meaning alternates/inserts/revisions don't add to the tally.

 

i would count minutes of music as written added up in two different numbers (final and alt) plus the sum total. so three numbers.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

2 hours ago, Signals said:

IMHO, length should only be "horizontal" not "vertical"

 

Ooh er, missus. Height vs. length.

It's a toughie 

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

3 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

I would count all that, as it's written for the film.

 

Then how do you count the different alternates of the Star Wars main theme?

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Then how do you count the different alternates of the Star Wars main theme?

 

You mean the five or so versions on the 1997 C&C?

I would say...

no, since they are different takes of the same piece.

It not like THE ENTERPRISE, where it's almost a different piece.

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

8 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

You mean the five or so versions on the 1997 C&C?

I would say...

no, since they are different takes of the same piece.

It not like THE ENTERPRISE, where it's almost a different piece.

 

They have slight compositional differences though. If you want to measure "everything written" for a film, I think it's very hard to draw the line between what counts and what doesn't.

[Jurassic Shark 12,066]

Just count the number of notes in the film.

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Just count the number of notes in the film.

 

The doubled notes Williams wrote, or the multiple notes his orchestrators turned them into?

[Edmilson 7,436]

I think that, in terms of "minutes of JW music" in a given movie, I think TLJ still wins as, according to the iso score, there are 140 minutes of music in that movie (which lasts for 152 minutes, including the credits).

 

Williams scored longer movies than that (The Patriot, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad) but they didn't have as much music in them as TLJ.

[Jurassic Shark 12,066]

53 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

The doubled notes Williams wrote, or the multiple notes his orchestrators turned them into?

 

Who are we kidding, Bill wrote everything.

[Groovygoth666 663]

Not sure where else to post this, but does anyone know of a personal music player that supports an 256gb micro sd card, resume play when turning on, gapless playback, that displays folders alphabetically and tracks in numerical order?

[bollemanneke 3,342]

I just discovered the Sorta app. It helps you rank stuff by asking you to choose one over the other. For instance: Would you rather watch Iron Man or Thor right now and then it gives you your entire MCU ranking. Would someone be interested to make a quiz with JW's entire filmography and/or per decade? For some reason you need a Mastodon account, but I figured it would be of interest to this place.

[karelm 2,913]

Does anyone know if Spielberg ever talked about his experience working with Sean Connery on TLC?  I heard that Connery was known to be difficult to work with and curious what if anything Spielberg has to say on this.

[Jurassic Shark 12,066]

He did kill the character...

[Naïve Old Fart 9,516]

27 minutes ago, karelm said:

Does anyone know if Spielberg ever talked about his experience working with Sean Connery on TLC?  I heard that Connery was known to be difficult to work with and curious what if anything Spielberg has to say on this.

 

Apparently, they got on well. If Spielberg does have anything to say about this, you can guarantee that he'll keep it to himself.

[karelm 2,913]

7 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

 

Apparently, they got on well. If Spielberg does have anything to say about this, you can guarantee that he'll keep it to himself.

 

Maybe Spielberg earned Connery's hard won respect for dealing very well with another prickly Scotsman, Robert Shaw.