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What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)


Ollie

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Well, it's certainly not the way Mike M would handle the release these days, and without a ridiculously short timeframe to prepare it all.

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Poor sound quality!

You audiophiles might cringe but I am quite used to the soundquality. It could be better but it certainly not as atrocious as many make it out to be. And I don't like to listen to the anthology if I am going for the completish presentation of these scores. I remember being scared out of my wits when one of JWs original Star Wars album edits suddenly jumped to a fanfare when I was so used to the way it ends in the film version.

If only some label had the rights to produce a 6 score box set of the OT and the Prequels with the best possible elements available.

Basic Instinct (Complete score) by Jerry Goldsmith: I have been listening to this all week. Brilliant stuff.

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Whether you're used to the poor sound quality is irrelevant. It's still muffled, especially in the second disc.

Although I still have the RCA, I've abandonded it as a listening option because I've since bought the Anthology and the OST, which are a more accurate representation of the film's score from 1983.

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Whether you're used to the poor sound quality is irrelevant. It's still muffled, especially in the second disc.

It is not irrelevant to me. It does not change the fact that soundquality could use improvements though but I can't be bothered to gobble up different releases and figure out what are the optimal versions to create some kind of ultimate listening experience.

Chris Malone's extensive write-up on the recording of the SW scores is an interesting read. I recommend it if you haven't already read it.

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I was never really bothered by that too much. They went with the 1997 versions of the films with the RCA versions of the soundtracks. Sure they are not perfect and do not have all the music (nor does the Anthology) but I am rather attached to them. They could have included the original Ewok Celebration though.

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A LITTLE PRINCESS - Patrick Doyle

 

Still one of Doyle's best, merging his broad romantic style with plucky indian orchestration. Theme-rich, unabashedly romantic, varied and musically confident It's a listening delight that i sadly have long since missed in listening to Doyle's music, the Branagh/Shakespeare stuff like AS YOU LIKE IT thankfully excepted. 

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I was never really bothered by that too much. They went with the 1997 versions of the films with the RCA versions of the soundtracks. Sure they are not perfect and do not have all the music (nor does the Anthology) but I am rather attached to them. They could have included the original Ewok Celebration though.

By that logic, they should have pasted Jabba's theme in Star Wars.

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I actually meant more the ROTJ set than the other two. And even then mostly by including the revised Ewok Celebration not following some crazy Ultimate edition "film edit with tracked music" logic. It seems I have to be very careful when talking about Star Wars scores here as my opinion on the RCA sets is obviously like declaration of war against all that is good and decent. But it is good to know people still care about JWs music. :)

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The RCA is also inferior because it omits and replaces two tracks previously available on the OST and Anthology.

In contrast to dozens of tracks omitted by the Anthology?

But the RCA replaces two existing tracks with new imposters.

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It's not just about missing tracks and sound quality. The sequencing of the Anthology makes for a perfect listening experience, including album arrangements (not all of which were retained). I enjoy the Trilogy most this way.

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You are wrong! Only the complete and chronological track order makes any musical sense. Do not go against the doctrine!

C&C forever!

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I never expected Incanus to debate Williams' profound wisdom. His original album arrangements for Star Wars and Empire are brilliant. Now, it's true that Empire doesn't retain all of the album arrangements (and the Main Title from the original Empire album with This is Not a Cave should be placed somewhere in there) and the Anthology put everything into a more chronological order, but it still worked. Of course, I could be biased since the Anthology was the first time I owned the Star Wars scores, replacing my Talkboy recordings from the early 90s FOX Video VHS tapes. However, I did acquire the Special Editions just a few years later when they were released in that booklet packaging that seemed designed to damage the discs. I remember thinking that Jedi and Empire sounded like crap even then. I also remember leaving disc 1 of Star Wars playing and freaking out when some guy started talking 10 minutes after the alternate Binary Sunset.

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Today, I'm going back in the 80s.

You know, the good old time when CDs featured only 35-40 minutes of music.

- Jaws, Original CD (featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- E.T., Original CD (featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- The Fury, Original album (from the 2013 release, featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- Star Wars, Original Polydor 2-CD

- Empire Strikes Back, Original Polydor CD

- Return of The Jedi, Original Polydor CD

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Today, I'm going back in the 80s.

You know, the good old time when CDs featured only 35-40 minutes of music.

- Jaws, Original CD (featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- E.T., Original CD (featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- The Fury, Original album (from the 2013 release, featuring concert arrangements based on the film's music)

- Star Wars, Original Polydor 2-CD

- Empire Strikes Back, Original Polydor CD

- Return of The Jedi, Original Polydor CD

I've been doing this lately too!

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There's a reason I have acquired all original album releases of Williams scores (in the case of Jaws and E.T., these were the first versions I acquired on CD in the early 90s at Universal Studios Florida gift shops). They are brilliant.

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Only a few JW OST"s have not been rendered completely obsolete by expanded Editions...basically Jaws and E.T.

there's no way a real JW fan could be happy with the RotJ and ToD original OST even back in 1984. I know I wasn't

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Jedi is necessary because it's the best that score has ever sounded.

Temple of Doom was all we had for a LONG time. I didn't even have the original album until around the year 2000 when Japanese imports were suddenly made available for $30 from the Star Wars Fan Club. That version is also sonically superior to the reissue.

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my first thought afterwards was...Where's the duel music between Luke and Vader

it may have been the first score where I really started to notice unreleased music

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It's easy for me to return to these old discs because we now have all that unreleased music, so I'm now interested in exploring how they flowed and what kind of musical narrative the album producer was trying to achieve.

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I listened to Interstellar again tonight, first the complete film version, then the box set album. It's a masterpiece and no other score of 2014 comes close to it in quality. And that's saying something looking back at last year's scores. It's also the best work that Zimmer has ever done, obviously coming from a deep, elemental place. It's interesting to look at what the score is and compare it to what I thought it would be over the years as the film came into being. There's not really much resemblance to anything I expected at the earliest stages, after first hearing about the project in 2006 and then reading Jonah's early draft for Spielberg. The most synth-based cues like Our World and What Happens Now? are probably most like what I figured the whole score would be. But instead they're subtle moments among a very different but even more appealing aesthetic which fuses elements of the minimalism of Glass, Reich, and Adams, soaring Wagnerian/Mahlerian romanticism, and progressive rock stylings (electronics, neo-baroque minor-moded organ lines/harmonies) with Zimmer's own unmistakable musical perspective, into something really special.

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I find Interstellar just as off putting as the other Zimmer scores I've managed to listen to without falling asleep

This composer definitely doesn't do much for me and at this point it'll probably never change.

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