The Godzilla Thread (Contains spoilers)

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

Using what language of notation, squiggles?

MIDI piano roll.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

There is a part of me that finds piano roll notation immensely more useful than standard staves and noteheads.

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

It's biggest deficit is rhythm, I find.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Pretty sure it's Zimmer who can't read music or at least isn't classically trained in music.

He's not classically trained. At this point, it's hard to imagine that he doesn't have some facility with score reading at least, but no, it's not a part of how he works.

Using what language of notation, squiggles?

Using computers. If you can come up with ideas and play them, that's all you need to be able to do now. The ability to translate ideas into standard notation is made redundant by technology.

Sounds like the compositional equivalent to Auto Tune.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

It's not.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Sounds like it.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Really? How? By that logic, the written score is also the compositional equivalent of autotune.

A program that lets you bang on a keyboard randomly but adjusts everything you hit to follow a predetermined scheme, that would be what you're thinking of.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

A program that lets you bang on a keyboard randomly but adjusts everything you hit to follow a predetermined scheme, that would be what you're thinking of.

That's exactly how it sounds.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Look up how MIDI recording works then, because you're totally misunderstanding it.

Tor, maybe you can explain this more eloquently than I can?

[nightscape94 965]

I imagine Zimmer works something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sItU81eoQms

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Yes.

[nightscape94 965]

JNH can read/write music, but the idea is there.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Yeah. In his case, it's a time saver. In Zimmer's, it's his natural habitat.

The point to emphasize is that whether the music starts in your head and gets put onto a piece of paper, or starts in your head and is immediately turned into a mockup/MIDI notation file, it always starts in the head. One method is not more valid than the other.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Sure it is. The old fashioned way demonstrates advanced knowledge and skill. This new crop relies on crutches.

If Williams or the rest of the old guard were deprived of computers, they could still write with the most basic of tools. If the same thing happened to Zimmer and co, they'd be hopeless.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Ripe bullshit.

What if Williams or the rest of the old guard were deprived of hands, pencils, and paper? Technology is technology.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Hands are what you're born with. Williams could write with rocks and stones if push came to shove.

Computers are ephemeral.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Why am I not surprised that your response is JW-deifying nonsense?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

It is JWfan afterall.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

But do we really have to pretend that his way of working is utterly superior to all others? Doesn't the man's music provide enough reason for deification?

If you took away Miles Davis' instrument, he'd be hopeless. Same goes for Ravi Shankar. Or Pink Floyd.

The way in which the music gets from your head into the world does not matter. One method of doing it is as equal as another, regardless of the technical skill required, the technology used. Only the end result counts.

[KK 3,307]

Ripe bullshit.

What if Williams or the rest of the old guard were deprived of hands, pencils, and paper? Technology is technology.

In many ways, the whole midi roll/DAW process is a time-saver and can be efficient. But it can become definitely become a crutch for composers. And it can be pretty limiting. Of course for composers for Zimmer, it just becomes a completely different way to approach music, just one different from pencil, paper, etc.

I just started getting into the whole DAW system, and have been finding a bit of a learning curve (coming from pencil/paper/notation software), but there are definitely benefits. I'll get it eventually!

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

But how can it be a crutch, or limiting? Your mind is doing literally the same thing as it does with written notation, you're just using a mouse instead of a pencil, a computer screen instead of paper, and MIDI commands instead of notation symbols. Every single parameter of music that you could control with a written symbol can be controlled with a MIDI command.

It takes just as much technical understanding, of a totally different type, as handwriting a score does. If you have experience in one method, and try to pick up the other, the other always seems ridiculously convoluted comparatively. Which is why I don't often use MIDI. Too lengthy of a learning curve before I could do it efficiently, and more power to you for trying to master it.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

I know you weren't a REAL composer, TheGreyPilgrim.

[nightscape94 965]

But how can it be a crutch, or limiting? Your mind is doing literally the same thing as it does with written notation, you're just using a mouse instead of a pencil, a computer screen instead of paper, and MIDI commands instead of notation symbols. Every single parameter of music that you could control with a written symbol can be controlled with a MIDI command.

You're describing someone who understands music already and is just using the software/device to get their ideas down quicker/easier. For someone at home, this ease of utility can prevent them from truly understanding theory, relationships, harmony, counterpoint, etc, since you're not required to really "see" what you're doing, or study it in any serious way. This can, in a sense, stunt musical growth.

[KK 3,307]

But how can it be a crutch, or limiting? Your mind is doing literally the same thing as it does with written notation, you're just using a mouse instead of a pencil, a computer screen instead of paper, and MIDI commands instead of notation symbols. Every single parameter of music that you could control with a written symbol can be controlled with a MIDI command.

It takes just as much technical understanding, of a totally different type, as handwriting a score does. If you have experience in one method, and try to pick up the other, the other always seems ridiculously convoluted comparatively. Which is why I don't often use MIDI. Too lengthy of a learning curve before I could do it efficiently, and more power to you for trying to master it.

I agree. But it depends on the kind of composer. Some people, with much less of a theoretical foundation than yourself just use DAWs to emulate what they can play on a piano and what trends they've heard. In that way, the whole DAW path doesn't really let you grow beyond that, it becomes a shortcut to bypass a lot of the process behind writing music. Pencil and paper gives you little choice other than to go the full way. I also find that there's a lot more you can do with pencil and paper than you can do with the DAW. It depends on what background you're coming from. I think this kind of approach can lead to tunnel vision, if you get what I mean.

I've been recently trying to learn how to use DAWs because I'd like to increase the quality of my mockups. VSTs reading off notation don't give you much room to play with a mockup dynamically to make it sound more real. And with some bigger (higher-end) scoring projects coming up, it became clear that I'd eventually have to learn how to do all the MIDI stuff. But I can't lie, I am struggling with it. It's tough stuff.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

But how can it be a crutch, or limiting? Your mind is doing literally the same thing as it does with written notation, you're just using a mouse instead of a pencil, a computer screen instead of paper, and MIDI commands instead of notation symbols. Every single parameter of music that you could control with a written symbol can be controlled with a MIDI command.

You're describing someone who understands music already and is just using the software/device to get their ideas down quicker/easier. For someone at home, this ease of utility can prevent them from truly understanding theory, relationships, harmony, counterpoint, etc, since you're not required to really "see" what you're doing, or study it in any serious way. This can, in a sense, stunt musical growth.

This is human error though, not the fault of the process. You do "see" what you're doing, and you can study it. It just looks different than a traditional score.

And you can "understand" music free from any theory. I really believe that.

But how can it be a crutch, or limiting? Your mind is doing literally the same thing as it does with written notation, you're just using a mouse instead of a pencil, a computer screen instead of paper, and MIDI commands instead of notation symbols. Every single parameter of music that you could control with a written symbol can be controlled with a MIDI command.

It takes just as much technical understanding, of a totally different type, as handwriting a score does. If you have experience in one method, and try to pick up the other, the other always seems ridiculously convoluted comparatively. Which is why I don't often use MIDI. Too lengthy of a learning curve before I could do it efficiently, and more power to you for trying to master it.

I agree. But it depends on the kind of composer. Some people, with much less of a theoretical foundation than yourself just use DAWs to emulate what they can play on a piano and what trends they've heard. In that way, the whole DAW path doesn't really let you grow beyond that, it becomes a shortcut to bypass a lot of the process behind writing music. Pencil and paper gives you little choice other than to go the full way. I also find that there's a lot more you can do with pencil and paper than you can do with the DAW. It depends on what background you're coming from. I think this kind of approach can lead to tunnel vision, if you get what I mean.

I've been recently trying to learn how to use DAWs because I'd like to increase the quality of my mockups. VSTs reading off notation don't give you much room to play with a mockup dynamically to make it sound more real. And with some bigger (higher-end) scoring projects coming up, it became clear that I'd eventually have to learn how to do all the MIDI stuff. But I can't lie, I am struggling with it. It's tough stuff.

Again, human error. You are just as prone to emulation/imitation on paper, regardless of theoretical foundation.

Learning how to do good mockups is difficult. But it can be really fun also.

[karelm 2,915]

A counter view which I agree with from Arthur Butterworth:

Allowing the computer to take over the creative process is an insidious situation, aided and abetted by manufacturers - who obviously want to sell their sophisticated wares. Yes! The computer is fine for the finished product, but it is NOT a substitute for the immediacy of inspiration and invention at the point of a pencil on music paper. Rather is it to be compared with the atomic-energy laboratory workers need to be at a safe distance from his lethal materials by using a robot hand and arm to operate for him through the safely of a shielding glass panel. It lacks that split-nano-second immediacy of putting ones thoughts - the written notes of music - on paper. The agency of the computer, for all its incredible sophistication is not a means of composing, although it beguiles so many innocent musicians into believing that they too, by manipulating a few keys can become composers. It threatens to become just too easy. The sheer drudgery of really writing music is dispensed with, but it has ever been this drudgery that has caused generation upon generation of real composers to consider carefully and reflect just what they are doing; to self-question their motives and inspiration: Do I really mean to do that? The immense physical effort causes one to pause a while and ask whether what one is doing is useful anyway. The computer, by making such labour no longer a tiring task, is inclined to over-simplify the whole notion of creativity.

Some few years ago, a sixteen year old would-be composer presented me with a score to comment on in which the trombone parts were ridiculously inappropriate and uncharacteristic of the instrument. On being asked why he had done this, his answer was that since they more or less played the bass line it would be an easy matter for him merely to press a key on the key-pad which would simply duplicate what he had already written for the cellos and basses. This demonstrated the warped, undeveloped mentality of a composer who imagined that this constituted the art of composition and orchestration: depending on a machine to do the job for him. This is akin to those painting sets sold for children in which they are led to believe that filling in numbered bits of a white canvas with similarly numbered tiny pots of different coloured paints makes them believe they have become artists.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

MIDI is evil. It stiffles creativity,and limits the possibilities, sometimes without the "composer" ever realizing it.

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

I remember in a lecture I saw (online), John Corigliano commented on how MIDI sequencers are great tools, but tend to better suit the creation of a certain kind of music. Music that relies on a lot of repetition and a fairly constant pulse. That's to say, if you're like Philip Glass and have a raging hardon for come sopras, then good luck, but if you want to be the next Harrison Birtwhistle then it might not be the best option for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were part of the reason behind the homogeneity of so much 21st Century action music.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

A counter view which I agree with from Arthur Butterworth:

Allowing the computer to take over the creative process is an insidious situation, aided and abetted by manufacturers - who obviously want to sell their sophisticated wares. Yes! The computer is fine for the finished product, but it is NOT a substitute for the immediacy of inspiration and invention at the point of a pencil on music paper. Rather is it to be compared with the atomic-energy laboratory workers need to be at a safe distance from his lethal materials by using a robot hand and arm to operate for him through the safely of a shielding glass panel. It lacks that split-nano-second immediacy of putting ones thoughts - the written notes of music - on paper. The agency of the computer, for all its incredible sophistication is not a means of composing, although it beguiles so many innocent musicians into believing that they too, by manipulating a few keys can become composers. It threatens to become just too easy. The sheer drudgery of really writing music is dispensed with, but it has ever been this drudgery that has caused generation upon generation of real composers to consider carefully and reflect just what they are doing; to self-question their motives and inspiration: Do I really mean to do that? The immense physical effort causes one to pause a while and ask whether what one is doing is useful anyway. The computer, by making such labour no longer a tiring task, is inclined to over-simplify the whole notion of creativity.

Some few years ago, a sixteen year old would-be composer presented me with a score to comment on in which the trombone parts were ridiculously inappropriate and uncharacteristic of the instrument. On being asked why he had done this, his answer was that since they more or less played the bass line it would be an easy matter for him merely to press a key on the key-pad which would simply duplicate what he had already written for the cellos and basses. This demonstrated the warped, undeveloped mentality of a composer who imagined that this constituted the art of composition and orchestration: depending on a machine to do the job for him. This is akin to those painting sets sold for children in which they are led to believe that filling in numbered bits of a white canvas with similarly numbered tiny pots of different coloured paints makes them believe they have become artists.

I'm sorry, but I find this to be utterly wrong in where it places the blame. You could replace every reference to computers with paper and pencil and it would all still be true. Try it. People are the problem.

But I'm beating a dead horse now. I've made the points I want to make. Gotta stop trying to convince people of shit on the internet....

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

You cannot convince us of shit! Shit is bad! We don't want shit!

[Offline 29]

 

A counter view which I agree with from Arthur Butterworth:

Allowing the computer to take over the creative process is an insidious situation, aided and abetted by manufacturers - who obviously want to sell their sophisticated wares. Yes! The computer is fine for the finished product, but it is NOT a substitute for the immediacy of inspiration and invention at the point of a pencil on music paper. Rather is it to be compared with the atomic-energy laboratory workers need to be at a safe distance from his lethal materials by using a robot hand and arm to operate for him through the safely of a shielding glass panel. It lacks that split-nano-second immediacy of putting ones thoughts - the written notes of music - on paper. The agency of the computer, for all its incredible sophistication is not a means of composing, although it beguiles so many innocent musicians into believing that they too, by manipulating a few keys can become composers. It threatens to become just too easy. The sheer drudgery of really writing music is dispensed with, but it has ever been this drudgery that has caused generation upon generation of real composers to consider carefully and reflect just what they are doing; to self-question their motives and inspiration: Do I really mean to do that? The immense physical effort causes one to pause a while and ask whether what one is doing is useful anyway. The computer, by making such labour no longer a tiring task, is inclined to over-simplify the whole notion of creativity.

Some few years ago, a sixteen year old would-be composer presented me with a score to comment on in which the trombone parts were ridiculously inappropriate and uncharacteristic of the instrument. On being asked why he had done this, his answer was that since they more or less played the bass line it would be an easy matter for him merely to press a key on the key-pad which would simply duplicate what he had already written for the cellos and basses. This demonstrated the warped, undeveloped mentality of a composer who imagined that this constituted the art of composition and orchestration: depending on a machine to do the job for him. This is akin to those painting sets sold for children in which they are led to believe that filling in numbered bits of a white canvas with similarly numbered tiny pots of different coloured paints makes them believe they have become artists.

I'm sorry, but I find this to be utterly wrong. You could replace every reference to computers with paper and pencil and it would all still be true. Try it. People are the problem.

 

 

I completely agree with you here. I have used both and it's literally the same thing...different language. Not everyone who uses MIDI just sits down, writes one thing, and repeats it, or whatever i've been hearing. You can truly think about expression and method and composition using Piano Roll / MIDI just as well as you can on Pencil and Paper. I make a point to NOT just copy and paste the bits of music to different parts or repeat the same things over and over unless that is the intention. Right now, I'm working on a project that involved writing a LOT of 8-bit music. That is repetitive and doesn't use a lot of expression because that is the intention. That is what it seems you guys view all usages of MIDI as. 

 

This is one of my compositions that is entirely MIDI / Piano Roll. I did some live performance (using a MIDI keyboard) in it, but it's still all done using the performance of the Piano Roll or MIDI. I put so much thought into expression, speed, where the themes should go and what instruments should do what. If you take the time to do it (just like with Pencil and Paper) it can be something great:

 

[Jay 37,373]

Bryan Cranston Agrees With You About His Godzilla Character

[BloodBoal 7,538]

How can he agree with me? He doesn't even know what I thought of his character.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

His character needed to get a life and marry someone else.

[nightscape94 965]

Though I loved the movie regardless, I do agree that the narrative anchor can't exit the narrative half way through. Whether your conscious of it or not, the audience in this type of movie needs a consistent emotional lifeline to keep you invested while crazy things are happening.

[Giftheck 917]

I loved Godzilla, but Cranston is right: his character should not have died 1/3 of the way into the movie. His suggestion the character should have died towards the end in a heroic act is what I would have imagined.

[Hurmm 91]

I didn't really think his character was that well written anyway, so whether he died or not didn't bother me. Cranston was even guilty of overacting in certain scenes.

Anyway did anyone see the massive explosions from Tianjin, China last week? Some of the videos look straight out of this movie or Cloverfield. Scary stuff.

https://youtu.be/79J51qaK7kU

https://youtu.be/nhsOXdomPNU

(Not sure how to embed a YouTube video here)

[Jay 37,373]

(Not sure how to embed a YouTube video here)

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=21160

[gkgyver 1,645]

I literally don't give a shit about any character in a Godzilla movie except Godzilla. That simple formula and secret is something that Hollywood film makers continue to ignore, and that's why their Godzilla films up until now are basically dull, and uninteresting. You can't make a Godzilla film with 5 minutes of screen time for Big G. It's ridiculous.

Human actors are just there to hold Godzilla's story together. Their story literally has no other purpose, so don't make it so freaking pretentious and extended, and pretend the audience gives a damn. Godzilla doesn't have a big fan base because of human drama, but because it's a freaking cool monster and kicks some cool monster ass.

It's so ironic, there are so many trash movies out there whose purpose is basically nothing but to show off effects and action, and Godzilla is beig treated like it's a super-meaningful metaphoric film.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Yeah!

[gkgyver 1,645]

If the moping chick in that film were at least pretty ...

The fallacy is that these film makers think you need human drama in these film to make the audience "connect". Utter bullshit. The audience doesn't want to "connect" with a Godzilla film, they want a deft, over the top film to smile and laugh at.

I'd rather watch Son Of Godzilla than Godzilla 2014.