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Which original album do you find the least representative of the score?


Bespin

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8 hours ago, TownerFan said:

Williams is usually very good at arranging his OSTs. Of course there are exceptions, so some albums are less successful than others. As for leaving out some killer cue (the above mentioned Final Duel from ROTJ, The Helicopter Sequence from Superman, David and the Specialist from A.I., Father and Son from Jaws come to mind), my hunch is that it's mostly because he probably thinks the cue is not "interesting enough". We know the man is very humble and self-deprecating when it comes to his own stuff :)

 

One must wonder what made him think that presenting the mysterious stuff like Orellana's Cradle was worth a full listen but The Jungle Chase? Nah, we'll just edit that shit out.

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On 17.6.2016 at 2:58 PM, Jay said:

 

God no!  No one wants film edits!

 

How has it taken you decades to realize this?

 

I understand the words, but I don't really understand the massive difference between a film edit and a regular C&C presentation in terms of your camp's preference. In both cases, there's all the music in the sequence of the film's plot. In both cases, it's the music as it appears in the film. The only difference -- from what I understand -- is that certain tracks of the film edit version have been slightly micro-edited after the recordings. But from where I stand, both are basically "the film without images and sound effects". So  yeah -- I sorta understand it, but then again not. In either case -- for me, both of these are 'un-musical' presentations.

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One of those two is "as recorded and intended", while the other is "as further adapted to fit the film".

In an ideal world, those two should be near-identical. But that is often not the case, with the music being butchered to fit the film.

That means "sticking music where it doesn't belong", "cutting sections out", "looping other sections", "removing music altogether", etc.

Because of this, actual film edits tend to make for an atrociously jarring listening experience and are decidedly not complete.

 

The music "as recorded and intended" cannot possibly be an "un-musical presentation, can it?

Unless you actually get the recording sessions, with dozens of separate takes and alternates in sequence and with leading/trailing silences, etc.

 

My preferred presentations are as complete as possible and in chronological film order, as originally intended.

But with shorter tracks combined into longer ones where that improves the listening experience.

I am also OK with changing the order of the tracks a bit if that happens to make musical sense, such as:

"No Man's Land" from War Horse, "Hook-Napped" & "You Are the Pan" from Hook and "Finn's Confession" from The Force Awakens.

If any music is particularly uninteresting, I also don't mind that being left out.

 

As for alternates, I only care about ones that are really substantially different.

And if those can fit into the "main program" somewhere instead of in the "bonus section", then all the better.

So basically I like a presentation that is similar to C&C, except in those spots where the listening experience is notably improved by it not being so.

And of course this doesn't necessarily need to fit on 1 CD; especially for John Williams that is often quite impossible.

 

More important than anything else though is that all good content is available in the presentation.

This is very often not the case, which is probably the main reason why people decry many of the "album presentations".

Because there is often uninteresting stuff included at the expense of unreleased sections that are quite fantastic.

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21 minutes ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

Because there is often uninteresting stuff included at the expense of unreleased sections that are quite fantastic.

 

This is where Thor essentially becomes like talking to a brick wall as he strongly feels that those omitted fantastic sections are unworthy of being heard because the album producer decided not to include them.

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I prefer being my own judge of what music is fantastic or not.

"Ollivanders' Wand Shop" and "Good-bye, Old Friend" are fantastic in my book and no silly album producer will convince me otherwise. :P

Same goes for the officially unreleased sections of " Anakin's Betrayal" and "Anakin's Dark Deeds".

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1 hour ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

One of those two is "as recorded and intended", while the other is "as further adapted to fit the film".

In an ideal world, those two should be near-identical. But that is often not the case, with the music being butchered to fit the film.

That means "sticking music where it doesn't belong", "cutting sections out", "looping other sections", "removing music altogether", etc.

Because of this, actual film edits tend to make for an atrociously jarring listening experience and are decidedly not complete.

 

How are they any more jarring than the original recordings? In both cases, choices have been made to fit the onscreen action.

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5 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

How are they any more jarring than the original recordings? In both cases, choices have been made to fit the onscreen action.

 

Well, no one was calling for the final film version of Alien. They wanted the score that Goldsmith intended for the film.

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16 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

How are they any more jarring than the original recordings? In both cases, choices have been made to fit the onscreen action.

Because the original recording was written on purpose by the composer to fit the onscreen action in a musical way.

A film edit does not reflect the composer's intent. In some cases, such as the Phantom Menace, quite badly so.

The worst film edits truly make for a jarring an un-musical experience indeed! But a good original recording usually does not.

 

The best film music can stand alone as a musical listening experience.

And when placed in a film, that same music exactly as written then happens to fit well together with the visuals, sound effects and dialogue.

That may sound near-impossible and indeed I am certain that it is no easy feat to accomplish all those things with the same piece of music.

But some composers can do it very well. With John Williams probably being #1.

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34 minutes ago, Thor said:

How are they any more jarring than the original recordings? In both cases, choices have been made to fit the onscreen action.

 

In the case of the UE, what your getting are awkward, unmusical choices to fit the music to the screen. It's the difference between a tailored suit and one that's been shrunk, stitched-up and cut-down to size by the buyer, with no considerations for the line of the jacket.

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I guess the thing I don't quite understand is how C&C fans place such great emphasis on the movie (they want the music to be presented on album exactly as it is in the movie, after all), yet it somehow becomes a big issue if some modifications have been made later on, to make the music fit the images and the film even more. I DO understand that you're losing some of the composer's original intent, and that this may be considered a loss, but I'd think the film relevance trumped that. The film being so important and everything.

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37 minutes ago, Thor said:

I guess the thing I don't quite understand is how C&C fans place such great emphasis on the movie (they want the music to be presented on album exactly as it is in the movie, after all)

As far as I understand it, the "C&C fans" want the music presented exactly as intended for the movie by the composer.

After all, that is how the music was meant to be used. But the actual film edits are something decidedly different.

 

The only reason why the film is important is because the music was written to fit that film and is meant to tell the same story in the same order that the film does.

If you have a purely musical symphony that deliberately tells a story, you also wouldn't change the order of the presentation, would you?

 

Imagine if the music for Harry Potter was written not to fit the film but inspired by the book. You would still want the music to tell that same story.

Putting the climax at the beginning, for example, would go against the flow of that story and would make for a questionable order at best.

At worst, substantially reordering the music can completely break any thematic development that the composer included in his work.

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

I guess the thing I don't quite understand is how C&C fans place such great emphasis on the movie (they want the music to be presented on album exactly as it is in the movie, after all), yet it somehow becomes a big issue if some modifications have been made later on, to make the music fit the images and the film even more. I DO understand that you're losing some of the composer's original intent, and that this may be considered a loss, but I'd think the film relevance trumped that. The film being so important and everything.

 

I think we need to break this down very simply.

 

1. Often the composer doesn't score the absolute final cut of the film before it's released. He doesn't necessarily know how the film will be edited after he's completed his score - he just scores what's given to him.

 

2. The composer completes the score. This is the version people want to hear. Complete and chronological as the composer intended, unmolested by further edits by the director or producer after this stage.

 

3. After the score is completed, the director or producer might make further edits to the film, which often necessarily results in microedits to the score, tracks placed in different parts of the film they weren't intended for, segments looped or replaced, etc. People do not want to hear this on CD or in any form, as this does not preserve the intended score in any scholarly or enjoyable way.

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On 6/17/2016 at 9:19 AM, Muad'Dib said:

 

One must wonder what made him think that presenting the mysterious stuff like Orellana's Cradle was worth a full listen but The Jungle Chase? Nah, we'll just edit that shit out.

 

The KOTCS album rightfully favors layers upon layers of dull and complex dissonance and atonality over the same old silly Mickey Mousing action music overloaded with xylophones and upper woodwinds.

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4 hours ago, Shatner's Rug said:

 

3. After the score is completed, the director or producer might make further edits to the film, which often necessarily results in microedits to the score, tracks placed in different parts of the film they weren't intended for, segments looped or replaced, etc. People do not want to hear this on CD or in any form, as this does not preserve the intended score in any scholarly or enjoyable way.

 

But isn't the finished film (with all the edits) the final intention here? If a filmmaker has felt the need to edit further (for whatever reason) after the composer has left the project, isn't the post-edited film the real end result? In this perspective, whatever the composer wrote before he left  is more or less relegated to the film's unfinished 'work edit', wouldn't you agree?

 

As I said, I do understand the difference between a composer's scoring of a scene, and tinkering (often done by others) with those compositions afterwards. But for a preference that puts the film in such high regard (and how it should inform album presentation), I find it a bit odd that this difference is SO major, and that film edits become THAT much of an issue.

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19 minutes ago, Thor said:

But isn't the finished film (with all the edits) the final intention here? If a filmmaker has felt the need to edit further (for whatever reason) after the composer has left the project, isn't the post-edited film the real end result? In this perspective, whatever the composer wrote before he left  is more or less relegated to the film's unfinished 'work edit', wouldn't you agree?

The intention of the editor and/or director, I suppose. Not the intention of the person who actually wrote the music.

And even then, I imagine it is more a necessary evil than a genuine intention.

 

Given the choice, I'm sure any good director would prefer to have the music rewritten and rerecorded so that it does make musical sense and still fits the final film edit.

That is how it was done many years ago, after all, because tweaking the film cut and sound was not as easy then as it is now.

 

21 minutes ago, Thor said:

As I said, I do understand the difference between a composer's scoring of a scene, and tinkering (often done by others) with those compositions afterwards. But for a preference that puts the film in such high regard (and how it should inform album presentation), I find it a bit odd that this difference is SO major, and that film edits become THAT much of an issue.

To put it very simply: Bad film edits sound like shit.

 

In the film you may not easily notice because you get distracted by the visuals, dialogue and sound effects.

But when listened to aside from the film, they really do not hold up.

 

Worst examples I can think of are the entire climax of The Phantom Menace, "The Hunt" from The Lost World being replaced with the main title theme

and recently the "Burning Homestead" from Star Wars Episode IV put into Episode VII.

Those may vaguely work in their respective films, it was never intended like that with the original intentions being far more musical.

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On 6/16/2016 at 11:22 AM, Bespin said:

If I could turn back time (oh I've heard that before...)

 

Return of The Jedi - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

01 Main Title/Approaching the Death Star

02 The Return of The Jedi

03 The Emperor Arrives

04 The Death of Yoda

05 Parade of the Ewoks

06 Luke and Leia

07 The Forest Battle

08 Final Duel/Into The Death Star

09 Leia Breaks the News/Funeral Pyre for a Jedi

10 Ewok Celebration and Finale

 

Total Time : 45 minutes

 

Going back to earlier in the thread, beyond going down to a single disc album after the double-album releases for the first two, thus excluding essential music, my biggest problem with the ROTJ soundtrack is the awful, awful re-recording of the 'Yub Nub' Ewok Celebration cue.  The film version is so superior, and the album version is just embarrassing. I can't listen to it.  Thank goodness the film version was released on the 1993 box set.  It's the chipmunk vocalizations that bother me most in the album version.

 

This is so good! Why re-record it at all!

 

 

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On 6/19/2016 at 7:06 AM, Thor said:

I don't really understand the massive difference between a film edit and a regular C&C presentation in terms of your camp's preference. In both cases, there's all the music in the sequence of the film's plot. In both cases, it's the music as it appears in the film. The only difference -- from what I understand -- is that certain tracks of the film edit version have been slightly micro-edited after the recordings. But from where I stand, both are basically "the film without images and sound effects". So  yeah -- I sorta understand it, but then again not. In either case -- for me, both of these are 'un-musical' presentations.

 

It's really very, very simple and I don't know why you constantly get all up in your head and make it so complicated!

 

When the composer sits down and starts writing the music, he starts on bar 1 of a new composition and ends it where he ends it.  Moves on to another cue, writes that one, etc.


When they go to record, they record what he wrote (possibly making some changes on the podium for various reasons), with the same starting and stopping points for each cue.

 

THIS IS WHAT WE WANT ON CD.  The cues as the composer originally intended them to be heard.  You say its un-musical, but it couldn't be more musical; It's exactly what the composer wrote and intended to be heard, and in the order he intended them to be heard.

 

If, after the recording sessions, the director of the film went edit-happy and changed the film from the version the composer scored to, or start chopping up the composer's music and put bits of one cue here and bits of one cue there, etc, that's irrelevant.  There are of course exceptions, but for the most part, for most listeners, what we want is the full unedited cues as the composer originally wrote and recorded them.  Generally, liner notes explaining why the film version sounds different is nice, but actually HEARING those film edits are usually atrocious. In the olden days, this would be because they would have had to make the edits using analog means, which are very noticeable (now its all digital editing, which can be practically seamless).  But either way, its also because those edits are generally un-noticed in the film due to sound effects and your absorption into the on-screen action that can make your brain not notice them.  But as an isolated listen they can be terrible, and are generally not wanted at all.


This is why we love when the specialty labels hire a competent producer who takes the material recorded from the original sessions and uses that as a basis to create the new CD, and not when the final score as chopped up in the final cut of the film is pressed to plastic like the Phantom Menace UE Sony put out.  In the former case, they will combine cues together in one track only when intended by the composer, or when they are really short, or when they make musical sense, etc.  In the latter case, you could have the same exact music appear in multiple tracks because the director tracked it around, you can have music the composer wrote not included because it got dropped from the final cut, etc.


Hopefully you can understand the difference now.

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Yes, I obviously do understand the practical difference here (thanks for explaining nonetheless); I guess this is more a "bewilderment" about the spectrum of your preference.

 

I think a film edit presentation is awful, just like you guys, but to me it is no more or less awful than a straight-up C&C release. They're both basically two sides of the same coin -- two approaches that take their point-of-departure in the music as it appears in the film. Yes, one is more "original" than the other, but they're both within the general spectrum of your preference. Or so I thought. Apparently, they are FELT and evaluated very differently even within the C&C camp.

 

I know I probably sound dense, but it's difficult to get inside the minds of someone who think and feel very differently from oneself.

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6 minutes ago, Thor said:

They're both basically two sides of the same coin -- two approaches that take their point-of-departure in the music as it appears in the film.

Technically, yes they are. With one side of that coin being the "good" side and the other being the "bad".

The difference between both approaches is really distinct; almost "night and day", really.

 

Album edits can be pretty good too, of course; sometimes even better than a "C&C as intended" presentation.

But more often than not, that is not the case. Because the flow of intended thematic development is interrupted by changing stuff around without apparent need.

Or when fantastic music that was written is not included. Or when fantastic sections are edited out.

 

Basically, a good album assembly is probably better than a bad C&C presentation. Likewise, a good C&C presentation is better than a bad album.

Ideally whatever presentation is made, it should have all the good content included and have a proper progression through any intended thematic development.

Changes from the "blind C&C presentation" are welcome in my book, IF they have a good reason and improve the listening experience.

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1 hour ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

Technically, yes they are. With one side of that coin being the "good" side and the other being the "bad".

The difference between both approaches is really distinct; almost "night and day", really.

 

Album edits can be pretty good too, of course; sometimes even better than a "C&C as intended" presentation.

But more often than not, that is not the case. Because the flow of intended thematic development is interrupted by changing stuff around without apparent need.

Or when fantastic music that was written is not included. Or when fantastic sections are edited out.

 

Basically, a good album assembly is probably better than a bad C&C presentation. Likewise, a good C&C presentation is better than a bad album.

Ideally whatever presentation is made, it should have all the good content included and have a proper progression through any intended thematic development.

Changes from the "blind C&C presentation" are welcome in my book, IF they have a good reason and improve the listening experience.

 

Yeah, that's the more general part of the discussion I'm hesitant to enter again. You all know my stance on this, and I know yours. There is no common ground there, nor will there ever be.

 

But it was interesting to hear the C&C camp talk a bit about the film edit/TPM thing again. It had been a few years since the last time. Am I any wiser? Not really. But it always helps with a reminder.

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On 6/19/2016 at 8:52 PM, Trent B said:

Attack Of The Clones OST is probably the best of the bunch in terms of listening experience.

 

I prefer TPM. Clones has a lot of boring meandering underscore that just doesn't work well on the album. Save that stuff for the complete/chronological presentation. TPM's album is vital, it really comes alive and there's never a dull moment. Sith just feels slapped together and features a lot of uninteresting stuff. It's not cohesive. It seems like a bunch of random music thrown together.

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On 6/17/2016 at 5:39 AM, Bespin said:

 

For ROTJ, as the third and last Star Wars, Williams may have received a specific directive that the track list have to be "spoiler free".  So it can explain the deliberate absence of some important cues like "The Death of Yoda" and "Final Duel".

 

Urgh.  Just give them non-spoilery titles.  "The Death of Yoda" could be "One with the Force" or "A Jedi's Twilight" or something.  "A Jedi's Fury" works for "Final Duel."

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Yeah, I don't buy that.

 

You've got to appreciate how ROTJ, the longest of the Star Wars trilogy scores at 2+ hours received the shortest OST with a running time of around 40 minutes. I'll always defend that album. It's a great one.

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3 hours ago, Nick Tatopoulos's Beret said:

Yeah, I don't buy that.

 

You've got to appreciate how ROTJ, the longest of the Star Wars trilogy scores at 2+ hours received the shortest OST with a running time of around 40 minutes. I'll always defend that album. It's a great one.

 

Agreed. First of all, ROTJ is my second favourite score of all time, second only to JURASSIC PARK. Just to give context. I've always thought the OST is a wonderful representation of the score; just perfect! That being said, I'm also a big fan of the expanded version in the Arista box. In fact, I'd put that on the same level as the OST -- a rare occurence for me. But it's such a strong score that it can sustain both formats. Not a big fan of the later expansions, however (the RCA 2CD sets and beyond). That's too much. But the OST and the Arista -- wow!

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ROTJ in its complete form does sag under its own weight, especially in some of those Jabba's Palace spots and the odd moments on Endor. And the whole final battle sequence zigzags from duel music, space battle music, ground battle music, it's all over the place. But the Arista rearranges all that to be more musical and listenable.

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I'm in minority here as I am not a fan of "action" cues. So it's why I usually prefer concert suites of soft passages over them.

 

ROTJ original album is maybe perfect for an action cue lover, but I prefer it's rendition on the Anthology Boxset.

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22 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Yeah, that's the more general part of the discussion I'm hesitant to enter again. You all know my stance on this, and I know yours. There is no common ground there, nor will there ever be.

 

But it was interesting to hear the C&C camp talk a bit about the film edit/TPM thing again. It had been a few years since the last time. Am I any wiser? Not really. But it always helps with a reminder.

I think in general, the best possible presentation is probably somewhere in the middle.

C&C can definitely be overkill, while a truncated and massively reordered album can go excessively the other way again.

Advantage of C&C is that at least it gives everything, allowing people to make their own personal truncated versions to their own liking.

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15 minutes ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

Advantage of C&C is that at least it gives everything, allowing people to make their own personal truncated versions to their own liking.

 

Probably the most-used argument from your camp that I've seen in the 15 years I've been fighting the other side. So a few years back, I just made this:

 

http://www.celluloidtunes.no/non-website/faq.jpg

 

:D

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Why is this discussion even returning this often if we all know it'll eventually turn into pointless bickering?

 

Thor prefers his music as presented by the composer on the original album for various reasons. Thor has the right to do so. We prefer it in C&C form for various other reasons. We have the right to do so as well. Period.

 

I actually find myself in the middle. I never actually listen to entire C&C presentations - in that case I much prefer an album arrangement. I do want to be able to listen to every note the composer wrote for a film, though.

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On 19/6/2016 at 7:04 PM, Shatner's Rug said:

 

I think we need to break this down very simply.

 

1. Often the composer doesn't score the absolute final cut of the film before it's released. He doesn't necessarily know how the film will be edited after he's completed his score - he just scores what's given to him.

 

2. The composer completes the score. This is the version people want to hear. Complete and chronological as the composer intended, unmolested by further edits by the director or producer after this stage.

 

3. After the score is completed, the director or producer might make further edits to the film, which often necessarily results in microedits to the score, tracks placed in different parts of the film they weren't intended for, segments looped or replaced, etc. People do not want to hear this on CD or in any form, as this does not preserve the intended score in any scholarly or enjoyable way.

 

Just for the sake of argument, I do think it is not that simple.

-The composer often scores different versions of the same scene, adapting the music to a more recent edit. Sometimes different versions are recorded (think about Tintin, for example). Which one is the "true" version? (same problem with all the alternates)

-Even though music fans like to pretend that the music, as originally composed, is pure and free of "non-musical" influences, that is not true. Sometimes the original music IS somehow "anti-musical" because the film demands it. If an album edit can "correct" those aspects, is that valid or not? (for example, suspended chords...)

-Often edits are done to the music on the day of the recording to adjust to the current cut of the film. These edits include deleting certain bars or looping/repeating others. Does it REALLY matter if the edits were done before the recording (naturally) or after (editorially)? The answer seems obvious, but it is a bit stupid, really. (for example, certain sections that were believed to be looped, and therefore considered "bad" -only to be found later that they were originally recorded as heard, and suddenly it becomes "good" ... I'm thinking about the looped bars of the Trade Federation march opening, for example).

-Also, sometimes those edits are done with the aproval of the composer,

-The idea of the director or producer being the "bad guy" who edits the music that was written by the composer without such bad influences is another false idea. Directors demand changes. Again, WHEN those changes were made seems a bit irrelevant.

(another example: the main SW theme was recorded five times, each of them with changes in orchestration, including the removal of the opening chord -which was certainly done at the request of Lucas/to adjust the film. Shouldn't the first version be considered the "perfect and ideal" version made by the composer?).

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1 hour ago, oierem said:

 

Just for the sake of argument, I do think it is not that simple.

-The composer often scores different versions of the same scene, adapting the music to a more recent edit. Sometimes different versions are recorded (think about Tintin, for example). Which one is the "true" version? (same problem with all the alternates)

-Even though music fans like to pretend that the music, as originally composed, is pure and free of "non-musical" influences, that is not true. Sometimes the original music IS somehow "anti-musical" because the film demands it. If an album edit can "correct" those aspects, is that valid or not? (for example, suspended chords...)

-Often edits are done to the music on the day of the recording to adjust to the current cut of the film. These edits include deleting certain bars or looping/repeating others. Does it REALLY matter if the edits were done before the recording (naturally) or after (editorially)? The answer seems obvious, but it is a bit stupid, really. (for example, certain sections that were believed to be looped, and therefore considered "bad" -only to be found later that they were originally recorded as heard, and suddenly it becomes "good" ... I'm thinking about the looped bars of the Trade Federation march opening, for example).

-Also, sometimes those edits are done with the aproval of the composer,

-The idea of the director or producer being the "bad guy" who edits the music that was written by the composer without such bad influences is another false idea. Directors demand changes. Again, WHEN those changes were made seems a bit irrelevant.

(another example: the main SW theme was recorded five times, each of them with changes in orchestration, including the removal of the opening chord -which was certainly done at the request of Lucas/to adjust the film. Shouldn't the first version be considered the "perfect and ideal" version made by the composer?).

 

Don't over complicate it. I'm trying to simplify it for Thor.

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Just give up. Thor isn't in charge of making albums so his anti-C&C crusade has no implication on the industry. The labels cater to the majority. His refusal to buy C&C doesn't change their market strategy, and until he and his goons start burning down the label offices like the abortion clinics and planned parenthoods he perceives them to be, our obsessive hobby is safe.

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2 hours ago, WojinPA said:

Just give up. Thor isn't in charge of making albums so his anti-C&C crusade has no implication on the industry. The labels cater to the majority. His refusal to buy C&C doesn't change their market strategy, and until he and his goons start burning down the label offices like the abortion clinics and planned parenthoods he perceives them to be, our obsessive hobby is safe.

 

Ah, now you're giving me ideas! :D

 

By the way, there are times when I prefer a 'film edit' over the original intentions (in the film itself), ALIEN being the prime example. I actually prefer Scott and Rawlings' version of Goldsmith's score than Goldsmith's own original. OK, they only changed a few things here and there, but I prefer those changes nonetheless.

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15 minutes ago, Jilal said:

Now you're beginning to make no sense at all.

 

He, he...I know it's popular among film score fans to stick up for Goldsmith in that case (if only out of principle), but I wonder how many have actually sat down and analyzed how the edited version works in context. I have (for a paper I did years ago), and IMO it blows the original out of the water in terms of sheer effectiveness; and also in terms of narrative, symbolism etc.

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3 hours ago, WojinPA said:

Just give up. Thor isn't in charge of making albums so his anti-C&C crusade has no implication on the industry. The labels cater to the majority. His refusal to buy C&C doesn't change their market strategy, and until he and his goons start burning down the label offices like the abortion clinics and planned parenthoods he perceives them to be, our obsessive hobby is safe.

 

I'll just quote the interview I did with Lukas Kendall a couple of years ago. I think his answer is pretty definitive:

 

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Q: The so-called “complete & chronological” presentation is now the norm for specialty labels. However, this is a choice that makes a strong argument – sometimes to the point of obsession – among film score fans and collectors, i.e. complete & chronological vs. original album sequencing as envisioned by the composer. I guess after producing a couple hundred albums you developed a personal idea about all this. So, is there a right way to arrange/produce a film score album?

LK: The right way to produce a film score album is the way we did them. It may seem like there were a hundred people who wanted abridged albums, but it was really just one guy who posted a hundred times. I’m not saying our way is creatively the best, but it is the best for our audience. There are some producers who in their arrogance think they can devise some magical sequence that will unlock the majesty of a score, but I find it obnoxious to leave off cues just for the sake of it. My friend Dan Hersch, the well-traveled mastering engineer, likes to say the two most overrated aspects of album production are the sequence (with regard to pop music) and the spaces between tracks—nobody really cares. It’s true: producers like to obsess over these because most of the time they didn’t write the music, they didn’t perform the music, they just want to insert their own authorship, and this is all that’s available to them.

Anyway, I’m ranting. It’s not rocket science. Sometimes you want the source music within the score cues, sometimes you want it at the end—there are subtleties to address—but most of the time the answers are obvious. If everybody complains about your CD, it’s your fault, not theirs. Very rarely would more than a collector or two complain about an FSM album. It is true that we treated our CDs not like albums to be listened to but more like a “document dump” to be archived. It may be artless, but it is correct for our audience and correct for posterity.

 

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

 

He, he...I know it's popular among film score fans to stick up for Goldsmith in that case (if only out of principle), but I wonder how many have actually sat down and analyzed how the edited version works in context. I have (for a paper I did years ago), and IMO it blows the original out of the water in terms of sheer effectiveness; and also in terms of narrative, symbolism etc.

 

Thor, listen to yourself.

 

One moment you mention that your love for abridged album presentations is driven by respect and admiration of the composer's intentions, of the album presentation as an underappreciated art form in itself, and now you're lauding the way a score is chopped up?!

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2 hours ago, TownerFan said:

 

LK: The right way to produce a film score album is the way we did them. It may seem like there were a hundred people who wanted abridged albums, but it was really just one guy who posted a hundred times. 

 

 

Ha, ha...I'm kinda proud of that, believe it or not. To be a reference point, albeit an infamous one. Lukas and I have VERY different ideologies regarding what a soundtrack album is and should be (the last paragraph is very revealing in that regard).

 

8 minutes ago, Jilal said:

 

Thor, listen to yourself.

 

One moment you mention that your love for abridged album presentations is driven by respect and admiration of the composer's intentions, of album presentations as an art form in itself, and now you're lauding the way a score is chopped up?!

 

I don't see how one has anything to do with the other. The album is the composer's baby, a film is the director's baby. And if the director is Ridley Scott -- one of the most conscious creators of images and sound in the history of cinema -- it's worth paying attention to. Have you ever sat down and compared the two "versions" of the ALIEN score; I mean seriously sat down and analyzed them objectively? Not just cried out in outrage because Goldsmith's music was "chopped up" (sic.)?

 

It's a worthwhile exercise. There are good things to be said both about Goldsmith's original intentions and the "edited" version, but ultimately my preference is for the latter.

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41 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Ha, ha...I'm kinda proud of that, believe it or not. To be a reference point, albeit an infamous one. Lukas and I have VERY different ideologies regarding what a soundtrack album is and should be (the last paragraph is very revealing in that regard).

 

There is such thing as one being trapped by their own ideology that they can't see past their rigid adherence to one way over the other.

 

In many scores, I like both the abridged album and the C&C. Usually one for easy listening, the other for archival purposes. Sometimes there's crossover.

 

As far as the final edited film version of Alien is concerned, did you also include moments from Freud in your analysis? No-one wants to hear Freud in Alien. If they want to hear Freud, they'll buy the Freud CD. They want to hear Goldsmith's intended score and not a patchwork resulting from the director's last minute panic attack because they're enthusiasts for the composer's contribution to the film.

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What Scott did with Jerry's score in the final cut of the film is fine, and completely effective.  The film is a masterpiece, including its use of music.  Scott was wise to drop some of the more romantic music Jerry originally wrote from the final film.

 

On CD, though, I want Jerry's version.  Every time.

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