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


Ollie

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - The Complete Recordings

All in glorious multi-channel surround sound.

Now listening to the The Lord of the Rings: The Rarities Archive. The Appendices, if you will. :D

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Even though there is not much "new" on this disc I actually enjoy it. The unused Emyn Muil bit is my favourite.

As for the rest of LOTR...

My thoughts always have been somewhat ambivalent. Yes, there is a lot of detail there and the work at large is very good. I also appreciate what the music has done to the popularization of film music. All these events with symphonies, music played live to the picture, complete recordings, the book etc. It's quite mind-boggling. I myself attended the live to projection performance of TTT last year and it was really a blast. Hearing the music come alive like this is amazing.

But there are also problems with these scores. There is too much tinkering and you can hear it on CR. As I said above, it is good Howard Shore decided to constantly rewrite, but there is so much he could do. The other problems is that there is also a lot of filler, where the music doesn't seem to go anywhere. Don't get me wrong: at their best it is one of the best scores in the past 30 years, but in between these highlights there is also... typical, ever-wandering Howard Shore' music.

Karol

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - The Complete Recordings

All in glorious multi-channel surround sound.

Now listening to the The Lord of the Rings: The Rarities Archive. The Appendices, if you will. ;)

Wow Marc, I wish I had that kind of time!

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I'm just giving John Debney's Predators my first thorough listen. As a huge fan of Silvestri's original I'm pretty happy with Debney's work, I think he accomplished a fair "crossover" between 1987's original and his own new music. I'm not completely through yet, but I enjoyed the first half very much. True, there are some not so satisfactory moments (e.g. all electric guitar(s) parts could've been left out for all I care), but otherwise, good stuff.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - The Complete Recordings

All in glorious multi-channel surround sound.

Now listening to the The Lord of the Rings: The Rarities Archive. The Appendices, if you will. ;)

Wow Marc, I wish I had that kind of time!

In all fairness, I listened to FotR yesterday. I just continued with TTT this mornin and had the CR DVD's playing all day.

Currently listening to my lovely new copy of Lost: The Last Episodes while importing the discs into iTunes. Quite fun to hear how the music's progressed since season 1 while still staying in the same vein.

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I decided to pick up in the middle of The Lost World: Jurassic Park while getting some work done. "Rescuing Sarah" is amazing...one of my favorite tracks on the OST. The ending also reminds me a little of "You Are the Pan"...not because of how it sounds, but because both are instances of Williams writing music that strikes me as over-the-top and cheesy in the context of the film, but delights me on the album simply because the music itself is so good. "You Are the Pan" is the worse offender of the two, though.

On the whole, TLW is definitely a far better score than I used to give it credit for. The original is still the best, but considering the film he was given to score, Williams definitely took the best approach possible with TLW.

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Y'know, I really haven't delved into the unreleased music from TLW at all. One of these days I should rip the DVD and get to work on an edit. Bah, I just wish that the conductor's scores had leaked...

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I never paid any attention to the score until I delved into the unreleased music. I had the album, but I never really listened to it. I went and rewatched the film, and was shocked when I heard how good the missing "Rescuing Sarah" was. I immediately got out the album, and was extremely, extremely disappointed to see it just skipped over that. This exclusion makes me think... Mr. Williams, you are an idiot.

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What a unique and great entry The Lost World is to JWs discography. He hasn't do such a score before or since. It has some stylistic traits in common with JP but for the most part Williams deviates from the sound of the previous film and composes a wonderful and powerful jungle adventure score. The score album was the first CD I ever got so there is a certain amount of nostalgia coloring my opinion but I still think the new main theme is amoung the best and rousing adventure themes I know conjuring such colorful sense of travel, excitement and even danger. The action music is dynamic and fierce, the underscore for the dinosaurs is creatively atmospheric and relies on textural ideas more than outright themes but it works very effectively on disc and in film. The motifs of the score, the new main theme and the new carnivore motif provide the needed thematic backbone that makes it all feel like a great progression from first ominous appearance of the carnivore motif in The Island Prologue to the frenzied finale of the Visitor in San Diego. I would buy a complete score in a heartbeat if such was ever released as there are some thrilling unreleased bits beyond the awesome Rescuing Sarah.

Oh and Datameister You Are the Pan in Hook is supposed to be so "over the top" and come to the fore as it is actually celebrating the rebirth of this near mythological figure, Peter Pan. Williams captured the spiritual essence of this idea in his music marvellously. In general there are very few who can tap so readily into this kind of underlying poignant human emotion like Williams does. Another good example of this is his score for the Empire of the Sun.

Rescuing Sarah's final moments are indeed very melodramatic but it works just brilliantly on its own on the album as you say. JW scored the feeling of being rescued in a rather unabashed manner, near triumphant when the scene itself did not lend itself to such overt emotion. But at least you can hear he was very inspired by it.

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It's quite possible that TLW is a better score than its predecessor. It's a shame the film's score was a precursor to the DOTF syndrome.

Someone fell in love with TLW theme and decided to plaster it all over the film, and track other music instead of letting Williams' original compositions shine.

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I'll never consider TLW the superior score, but it's certainly far better than I initially thought. That's a quality it shares with Hook, which I'm now listening to. I'm glad I warmed up to this one, as well, and I hope it gets the rumored complete treatment before too long. I must admit, a lot of the quiet, peaceful underscore bores me a little bit, as lovely as it is, but whenever Williams does anything louder in this score, it has such fun energy to it. Definitely classic Williams.

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Well, warming up to the OST didn't take long at all. As in, I pretty much loved it as soon as I started listening to it. But just hearing samples here and there in the years prior to that didn't get me too excited, for some reason...and the film has so many problems that I got sorta turned off. Buying the OST is a decision I'm very happy I made. Without the film to taint it, the score stands on its own as a very exciting, sentimental, goofy, heartfelt experience.

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I don't think the movie taints the music at all. But then, I saw it in the theater when I was 4 and completely loved it. Somehow, I still remember first hearing the music when Pan and Hook fight on the docks and being absolutely mesmerized to the end, and at the edge of my seat when the croc collapses onto Hook. So this was some of my earliest exposure to JW and even Spielberg. Hell, movies. Evolution of a JW and Spielberg fan. He made a movie for kids and he succeeded as far as I'm concerned.

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I'll never consider TLW the superior score, but it's certainly far better than I initially thought.

The two biggest problems with an otherwise good score are the lifeless recording quality and the boring performance by the orchestra.

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Fair enough ROTFLMAO

I personally think it sounds like a disinterested orchestra going through the motions. I think it lacks power, I hear very little depth. In that respect, it reminds me of parts of The Last Crusade.

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I mean, it certainly lacks the ridiculous enthusiasm you hear in, say, LSO recordings from the late 70s and early 80s, but I'd say it's about on par with the original Jurassic Park. And I love the way the bass rumbles through my headphones...feels like standing next to a real orchestral bass drum. ROTFLMAO

EDIT: But I certainly agree that TLW suffers from this problem in a big way. I'd probably like the score more if the orchestra and recording setup had been more similar to either of its predecessors.

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The problem with TLW audio is the problem with the older Last Crusade and the Attack of the Clones OST. The orchestra is never able to project, even during the bigger moments. It sounds flat.

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The problem with TLW audio is the problem with the older Last Crusade and the Attack of the Clones OST. The orchestra is never able to project, even during the bigger moments. It sounds flat.

I've never heard a problem with AOTC either, at least compared to other Williams recordings of the 2000s. There are plenty of moments that sound and feel big, moments that "project." TLC sounds a million times worse than both of these.

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?

ROTJ sounds fine on the anthology and even better on the original album. You need to stop listening to the 2 disc version. Everyone knows it sounds weird. But it's not representative of the original recording quality. Why does a modern score like AOTC sound so bad?

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speaking of ROTJ quality i came accross a fans remaster of the whole trilogy, sounded very good, then after that he even went to ESB and spent all of his energy into what he called the "Audiophile Edition"

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ROTJ sounds fine on the anthology and even better on the original album. You need to stop listening to the 2 disc version. Everyone knows it sounds weird. But it's not representative of the original recording quality. Why does a modern score like AOTC sound so bad?

It sounds okay-ish on the anthology. I wouldn't know how it sounds on the OST, because that'd be an even bigger waste of my time. The RCA release doesn't sound weird, it sounds horrible...but at least it's not missing amazing music.

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I've heard that edition Faleel and it's okay I guess.

I had success with an automatic setting in Sound Forge where I remastered all three of my OT scores and they sound better, especially ROTJ. It even sounded better than that "audiophile" edition.

Of course for my edits I used better sources where I could for natural mixes (especially for Jedi!).

I'm sorta optimistic we may end up getting properly remastered and remixed versions of the OT scores and the intended Prequels next year to tie into the Blu-Ray release of the films.

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Don't blow it out of proportion, it does not sound horrible. Clearly, it can sound much better, but it's completely listenable. Horrible would be like DVD rear channel rips or all the shit-ass bootlegs like Hook and Last Crusade. You're obviously a fool if you think the ROTJ album is a waste of time. That version of Into the Trap is a staple of my Saturday morning routine. Little do my enraged neighbors know, that is simply the best that track will ever sound. How could I not play it at max volume?

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The Audiophile Edition is the only version I listen to. Magnificent. I think the first disc of Jedi is ok. The second disc is really rough in spots. Almost no clarity. For the most part, I listen to the anthology tracks from Jedi.

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