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BloodBoal

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Professor Umbridge - Order of the Phoenix (Hooper)

Room of Requirement - Order of the Phoenix (Hooper)

Harry in Winter - Goblet of Fire (Doyle)

The Story Continues - Goblet of Fire (Doyle)

The Kiss - Order of the Phoenix (Hooper)

When Ginny Kissed Harry - Half Blood Prince (Hooper)

I think there's a lot to love in Order of the Phoenix. Goblet and HBP are good but not great.

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1. Hogwarts Hymn (Goblet of Fire) - Easily the best part of Patrick Doyle's GOF score, for me. Perhaps it's just the fact that it's completely absent of those shrill flutes, the high, whiny strings, or any other annoying choices in orchestration that are ever-present in the rest of the score. Lovely melody, and even though the orchestration is rather ordinary, I find it incredibly soothing. Shame it wasn't used in the film.

2. The Room of Requirement (Order of the Phoenix) - Whereas I think Nicholas Hooper's emotional pieces are rather generic and tend to go the "wall of sound" approach, I really enjoy a lot of his comedic work on the Potter films. They much better serve his sparse orchestrations, and he has less of a tendency to over-rely on the string section. Here, it's nice to hear an extended bassoon solo, I love the use of percussion and woodwinds, and I like the shape and structure of the overall piece. It's pretty clear that he was just following the film's montage, but I think it works rather well as a piece of music too. I also think it contains Hooper's most interesting melody, between his two HP scores.

3. The Slug Club (Half-Blood Prince) - Another comedic piece from Hooper. I think he's got a great musical sense of humor and it shows here. There's some really great timing, and I actually laughed in a few places the first time I heard it. It's rare for a piece of orchestral music to do that for me. Love the use of percussion, as well, very colorful.

4. Detonators (Deathly Hallows: Part 1) - What a fun piece! I love the geometric, almost robotic feel of it (typical of Alexandre Desplat's style, but it's particularly fitting here, given the title) and it has some beautiful orchestration work. Sounds like flute and pizzicato strings that's creating that popping, mechanical sound? Anyway, really inventive stuff.

5. Lovegood (Deathly Hallows: Part 1) - My favorite piece from Desplat's new score. I love the Eastern influence, creating a very different type of musical color than one might expect for the most lighthearted character in this particular story. The whimsy is downright unsettling here, which I find very fitting.

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5. Lovegood. Really an eerie track. Great new theme. Doesn't sound Potterish to me, though.

Seeing as Lovegood is an entirely new character (and a rather bizarre one, at that), I think that an entirely different color than we've heard before in the series is appropriate. I'll obviously have to see it used in the movie first, but I think it's comparable to how I felt when I first heard Williams' Knight Bus piece: it doesn't really fit with the established sound of the previous films, but it certainly fits the new element it was written for.

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Foreign Visitors Arrive

Golden Egg

Harry in Winter

GOF End Credits (the first 2 1/2 minutes)

Professor Umbridge

In Noctem

Yeah, it's six. Whatever. :-P

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"The Story Continues", "Foreign Visitors Arrive", and "Hogwarts' March" are my favorites from GOF. As for OOTP and HBP...I mostly just like scattered bits and pieces, but "Dumbledore's Army" is quite nice.

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4. Detonators (Deathly Hallows: Part 1)

5. Lovegood (Deathly Hallows: Part 1) - My favorite piece from Desplat's new score.

Wait... It's your favorite piece, yet you ranked Detonators above it? :D

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4. Detonators (Deathly Hallows: Part 1)

5. Lovegood (Deathly Hallows: Part 1) - My favorite piece from Desplat's new score.

Wait... It's your favorite piece, yet you ranked Detonators above it? :D

My list isn't ranked by preference. I just went through the non-Williams soundtracks in order, picked five I liked, and wrote about them. With DH:1, Detonators comes before Lovegood on the soundtrack, so that's the order I put it on my list.

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the first thing that came to mind was Hooper's Room of Requirements. Thats...thats about it really off the top of my head. I havent heard Desplat's score yet.

...neither have I: it's not released until the 15th. How are people hearing it so soon?

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  • 8 months later...

"Voldemort" - GOF. It's the centrepiece of the whole score, the various themes are beautifully intertwined by Doyle. I'm not a fan of the fanfare stuff in the rest of the score, but this is definitely the highlight.

"Possession" - OOTP. I really liked this scene in the film, and a lot of it has to do with Hooper's music. The climax is chilling.

"Dumbledore's Farewell" - HBP. I initially disliked this cue when I first saw the film, however after repeat viewings and listenings I came to appreciate it a lot more. It's quite stunning in the way it builds to the climax, but never reaches overly melodramatic heights. Its inclusion in the Snape sequence in DH2 elevates it even further.

"Destroying the Locket" - DH1. Wish it was longer. The highlight of the score for me.

"A New Beginning" - DH2. A beautiful and poignant way to end the film (before the Epilogue, and "Leaving Hogwarts" of course). It really reflects a very dignified and low-key victory, in the wake of so much death and destruction.

I just realised they were all from different films. There you go.

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I am still waiting for Williams to rescore all the films after POA so I don't have to choose.

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I'm waiting for the technology for traveling between multiverses to become available, so I can steal the scores Williams wrote for all of the Potter films from a parallel universe. Bonus if I find a universe where Alfonso Cuaron directed all of them after PoA.

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I am still waiting for Williams to rescore all the films after POA so I don't have to choose.

Thanks for that. Now we'll have a bloody "Will John Williams rescore Harry Potter?" thread every time a new home video release is announced.

It never ends!

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"Voldemort" from Goblet of Fire

"Dumbledore's Army" from Order of the Phoenix

"Obliviate" from Deathly Hallows Part 1

"Destroying the Locket" from Deathly Hallows Part 1

"Dragon Flight" from Deathly Hallows Part 2

I chose the three from Deathly Hallows because they were the cues that really jumped out at me in the film. It's too bad the low mixing and dialling out got rid of some other good cues, i.e. "Ron Leaves," but these were the ones that should be congratulated for passing David Yates' blandness check... I guess.

Lily's theme is the sort of sprawling, emotional theme that should have been in the series all along. I mean, if they weren't going to use "Window to the Past," anyway.

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1) GoF: Neville's Waltz (Doyle)

2) GoF: Potter Waltz (Doyle)

3) DH1: The Elder Wand (Desplat)

4) DH1: My Love Is Always Here (Desplat)

5) DH1: Destroying the Locket (Desplat)

:)

I am still waiting for Williams to rescore all the films after POA so I don't have to choose.

:thumbup:

Still try to give the other scores a chance!

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Um... Desplat/Pope?

;) The pieces are good but rely heavily on the orchestrations, let's face it. Especially in the Desplat cues it's the orchestration I like.

Btw, I saw your picks only now, good ones :)

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But you might as well credit Doyle's and Hooper's orchestrators too. There is nothing to suggest that Desplat can't orchestrate, or isn't responsible for the overall sound of his scores.

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"Destroying the Locket" - DH1. Wish it was longer. The highlight of the score for me.

What's with all the love for that track ? Lots of people seem to like it. king mark said it's "decent", and that means a lot coming from him. But I don't find anything amazing about that track.

Same goes for Harry In Winter. It's been quoted a lot in this thread.

I just reread the previous posts, and I find it funny that there are more Hooper's cues than Doyle's cues in everyone's Top 5. In other Potter threads, it feels like people preferred Doyle's input to Hooper's, yet here it's the contrary. Weird indeed...

Destroying the Locket is excellent accompaniment to the scene and very effectively orchestrated. I couldn't imagine better music for this scene than this.

Harry in Winter never did anything to me, but I love the waltzes. I think the Hogwarts fanfare is a big minus to the GoF soundtrack as a whole.

But you might as well credit Doyle's and Hooper's orchestrators too. There is nothing to suggest that Desplat can't orchestrate, or isn't responsible for the overall sound of his scores.

I just hear a lot of Pope. My Love Is Always Here is written for choir entirely by Pope. Doyle and Hooper orchestrate the bulk of their music themselves. However I changed the credits in my post for you.

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Oh, I mean, who knows. I wouldn't recognize the Pope sound. Just saying that Desplat's not a keyboard composer without any knowledge of orchestration.

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Oh, I mean, who knows. I wouldn't recognize the Pope sound. Just saying that Desplat's not a keyboard composer without any knowledge of orchestration.

No of course he isn't, just wanted to credit the marvellous orchestrations in those pieces.

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It would have to be any 4 from Doyle (Harry In Winter, Foreign Visitors Arrive, and the climactic Voldemort track are all great), and "Possession" from Hooper's HBP.

Doyle's soundtrack was absolutely ripped to pieces when it first came out. But when you look back at all 5 post-Williams soundtracks... Doyle's has the most, and the most memorable, themes. With "Family Portrait," "Buckbeak's Flight" and "A Window To The Past" Williams was moving towards a more melancholy and serious Potter, and Doyle continues very competently with tracks like "Harry In Winter" and "Voldemort."

Hooper's two scores are usually mixed so low, and are so ambient, that they hardly make any impact (e.g. Dementors In The Underpass and much of the battle at the end of the fifth movie). When he does get thematic, with the Room Of Requirement, Flight Of The Order Of The Phoenix, Dolores Umbridge, Dumbledore's Army, Fireworks - all of these tracks have a sort of obnoxious obviousness and inappropriateness to them that makes them "pop out" of the film. "Possession" is one track that works very well. The building string lines and that beautiful bichord dissonance at the end, aptly communicate the emotion of the scene.

Desplat's scores have been, to my ears, almost entirely underscore. I saw Parts 1 & 2 back to back and when it was over I didn't really have a consciousness of any theme, except there was some vague choir music associated with Snape. There was a lot of Remote Control type music over the battle sequences - loud, energetic, very appropriate to the scenes, but absolutely nothing to make it stand out and say "This is Harry Potter and not Movie X."

Probably the best part of Part 2 was when they tracked "Leaving Hogwarts" over the epilogue. There was a feeling in the theater as if everyone had perked up and was listening with rapt attention. Despite the fact that music hadn't been in the movies for ten years... mostly everyone recognized it!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update after careful consideration:

1) GoF: Neville's Waltz (Doyle)

2) GoF: Potter Waltz (Doyle)

3) DH1: The Elder Wand (Desplat)

4) DH1: My Love Is Always Here (Desplat)

5) DH1: Destroying the Locket (Desplat)

6) HBP: Slughorn's Confession (Hooper)

7) HBP: The Book (Hooper)

8) HBP: Living Death (Hooper)

9) DH2: In the Chamber of Secrets (Desplat)

10) DH2: Dragon Flight (Desplat)

11) DH2: Courtyard Apocalypse (Desplat)

12) DH2: Voldemort's End (Desplat)

13) HBP: Dumbledore's Farewell (Hooper)

14) HBP: The Slug Club (Hooper)

15) OotP: Dumbledore's Army (Hooper)

16) DH1: Ron's Speech (Desplat)

17) OotP: Professor Umbridge (Hooper)

18) OotP: Loved Ones and Leaving (Hooper)

19) DH1: Lovegood (Desplat)

20) GoF: Voldemort (Doyle)

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  • 9 months later...

Obliviate is as good as any track in all of HP scores.

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