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The Patriot (John Williams)


Thor

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On 3/26/2017 at 4:54 PM, Thor said:

It was a passion project for Williams, since he wanted to do fife-and-drums music and other modes of music of the era

Just rewatched the movie last night and was wondering how much of the source music was JW and whether he'd allow all of it to be released in a nice 10-20 minute block on a future expansion - this gives me hope!

 

The credits only mention these two pieces, that should mean all the rest was recorded specifically for the film and could be released without any problem, right?

 

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1 hour ago, Holko said:

The credits only mention these two pieces, that should mean all the rest was recorded specifically for the film and could be released without any problem, right?

 

I wonder if the GEMA database could shed some light on this? BrotherSound recently found all the source music JW wrote for Amistad using that method (because it lists entries of music chronologically as it appeared in the film). It then listed the source music for Amistad that JW actually composed himself... and which desperately needs to be included on a future expansion (please convince him Mike! :()

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10 hours ago, Holko said:

The credits only mention these two pieces, that should mean all the rest was recorded specifically for the film and could be released without any problem, right?

 

It's possible they're just uncredited library tracks. Sometimes those get mentioned in end credits, and sometimes they don't.

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  • 1 month later...

I’ve got the NFL draft pre-show on and when they had the presentation of colors by our armed forces The Patriot main theme was playing in the background on-site.  Great scene gave me goosebumps!  Can’t wait for an expanded release of this score!

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  • 4 months later...

For some reason I like to revisit this one early autumn every year. (I revisit Howard's "The Village" in mid-late autumn every year too)

 

Williams always nails it with his concert pieces, though this score is one of the few where the concert piece is the only major highlight for me. Still it is so amazing that I'd say it very much worth the price of the whole album alone on its own. I also always like to listen to "Ann and Gabriel" straight after the opening track, before moving to the rest of the album. That cue feels very much like it belonged to the concert piece - the winding down stage of the amazing journey, that is the opening track. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

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26 minutes ago, Drawgoon said:

For some reason I like to revisit this one early autumn every year. (I revisit Howard's "The Village" in mid-late autumn every year too)

 

That's interesting. To me, this score always had kind of a sweltering summer vibe.

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6 hours ago, Thor said:

That's interesting. To me, this score always had kind of a sweltering summer vibe.

 

I'd reserve a description like that for Caribbean reggae tones, even if I can't quite listen to them as music.

 

 

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6 hours ago, Drawgoon said:

For some reason I like to revisit this one early autumn every year. (I revisit Howard's "The Village" in mid-late autumn every year too)

 

same. but i also associate the movie during Christmas time, because my folks would always get us dvds for Christmas that we've never seen, and I watched that one Christmas night.  Good memories.  I haven't seen the film in so long though, not sure how it holds up for me.  Score is top notch for me, obviously.

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6 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

...so's the apocalypse, and I'm not looking forward to that, either.

I just hope the expansion of The Patriot to arrive earlier than the Apocalypse, and not the other way around.

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  • 2 months later...
1 hour ago, crumbs said:

So I finally rewatched this film thanks to the 4K remaster, now I want an expansion more than ever!

The score is so well mixed in the remaster.  It's has just the right amount of bass presence and never gets buried, even with all of the cannon fire effects.

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35 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Yes! Pleasantly surprised how well mixed and treated the score is overall. Very little tracking that I noticed, and the music is prominent throughout. I'd never made this link before but Tavington's Ambush is like a proto-No Man's Land.

 

Also loved how bassy it is, reverberating around the mix and punching through gunfire and cannons. The warmth of the cellos was particularly impressive, gave my subwoofer a workout. All JW scores deserve to be mixed this well!

 

Makes a mockery of the Abrams scores, where Williams' music is treated more like another layer of SFX than a music track.

 

Incredible how the more advancements we get in audio technology, the worse film music sounds. The extra audio channels have become little more than a vehicle for SFX artists to overwhelm audiences with noise.

Bass presence really makes or breaks a score's film mix.  Not just for the lower parts but for the more midrange frequencies like French Horns and Cellos.

 

Atmos downmixes usually have bass only for the lowest parts + really dainty midrange & high range with very little inbetween (which makes a mix like The Patriot a pleasant surprise)

The Mummy is similarly good mix.

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Yeah, most film score mixes nowadays sound thinned out (perhaps artificially) to reduce their impact in the mix.

 

I'm sure Williams and Murphy have tried to counteract this through mixing, with the intent of 'cutting through' the SFX layers, but who knows what artificial manipulation the SFX team do to the music tracks these days. To my ears, most FYCs sound artificially thin and lack the punch of OST counterparts.

 

Mike made an interesting observation in the F&A podcast, that Shawn is quite expert at "recording the reverberation through the floor" or something to that effect. The Patriot really shines here, as if the orchestra is literally playing around the characters. Contrast that with the newer Star Wars, where it sounds exactly like what it is: a hacked up music track, relegated with the lowest priority in an overly noisy sound mix.

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1 hour ago, crumbs said:

Very little tracking that I noticed, and the music is prominent throughout.

 

 

The most notable tracking is the ‘Susan Speaks’ scene, tracked with ‘The North Star’, but surprisingly the entire ‘Susan Speaks’ cue is still heard in the film, just in the preceding scenes.

 

More than tracking, there’s a fair amount of partially dropped cues: only the first 40 seconds of 8M3+4 The Death of Gabriel is used, but I’d estimate the complete cue at more than 4 minutes. 6M6 To Gullah Maroon was edited to remove the middle, shortening the cue from about 2 minutes to 1 minute. A bit more (but not all) of this cue is restored in the extended cut.

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12 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Contrast that with the newer Star Wars, where it sounds exactly like what it is: a hacked up music track, relegated with the lowest priority in an overly noisy sound mix.

how else would we know what a speeder sounds like? 

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  • 4 months later...
4 minutes ago, BrotherSound said:
  • Facing The British Lines** (Film Version) 6:00
  •  

The film version of the music for the final battle is one of my most desired tracks from a potential expansion. The OST track is already pretty good, can't wait to hear the FV!

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2 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

The film version of the music for the final battle is one of my most desired tracks from a potential expansion. The OST track is already pretty good, can't wait to hear the FV!

 

Almost all of the final battle music is on the OST, just split between tracks 4, 5, 7, and 12, and combined with other cues. All that's missing is the first half of 9M2A The British Counter-attack. The second half is 0:51-end of 'The Colonial Cause'. There's also an unused insert 9M2AX Over the Top, though we don't know yet whether it was recorded.

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  • 2 months later...
On 18/06/2022 at 4:23 AM, Darth Mulder said:

Williams turned down X-Men (2000) because of scheduling conflicts with The Patriot (2000). Is it true? :o

That's the strategy to turn down projects politely he doesn't want to do! :D

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Williams working for Marvel? That's actually not a bad idea. Marvel missed an opportunity for a catchy theme for every single superhero. What a miserable situation contemporary Hollywood is in when there is no emphasis on such things? Many composers have worked for Marvel, but I only remember the work of Doyle, Silvestri and Giacchino. Marvel's Music Department needs some direction. 

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I have the impression that a Williams score for X-Men would be more Minority Report and War of the Worlds and less Superman. 

 

Which is why I'm glad he chose to do The Patriot.

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14 hours ago, Holko said:

Missed? Back in phase 1 they actively worked against it with cues having alternates with main theme statements and revised film versions without them. JW's a lot better off without having had his soul sucked out by modern scoring expectations in conveyor belt cinema anyway.


I never heard that! Wow, are those available anywhere? Which films specifically? Are there more statements of the Captain America March sitting around somewhere?!

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I know Iron Man 2 and Thor definitely did it, even Iron Man 1 to some extent. They must be up on yt, look for A New God, the suit up part in Mayhem in Monaco, Driving with the Top Down.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just rewatched this solidly entertaining movie (man, what I'd give for a return to the early 2000s studio ecosystem...lots of DVD receipts funding big-budget takes on original scripts, and nearly zero thought given to whether and how a movie would please the Chinese Communist Party).

 

But here's a question: what in the name of Rene Auberjonois is going on with the concert versions of this piece?  I count 3.5—the OST opener (6:40, with piano and solo violin at the top), the OST closer (7:50, seemingly identical,with a low-key fife and drum coda), the Lockhart version (8:15, opening with woodwinds instead of solo violin, and incorporating a lot more flutes/fifes plus an epic finale), and then the Film Symphony Orchestra version (6:55, which opens with snares and the patriotic theme rather than solo violin or woodwinds and the lyrical one, and which has a slightly less epic, more traditionally Williams-branded finale with a couple of false finishes).

 

Was this piece revised twice, and were these the debut recordings?  How recently (if ever) has Williams himself conducted it live, and in which form?

 

Has anyone attempted a catalogue of Williams' various tinkerings with the concert pieces from his scores?  I'm endlessly fascinated by what motivates him to revisit certain pieces and tweak, invert, or blow them up.  I'm also a little sorry that The Patriot wasn't represented in any of his work with Mutter recently.  More for volume 2!

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17 minutes ago, igger6 said:

I'm also a little sorry that The Patriot wasn't represented in any of his work with Mutter recently.  More for volume 2!

I am sure Williams spared ASM from his militaristic or patriotic americana scores on purpose. I am sure, even though she appreciates the quality of the music, that's not her thing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ok, I think I just noticed something: Susan Speaks must have been tempted with Deborah's Theme by Ennio Morricone, right? The tone of the beginning and the strings are strikingly similar.

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  • 1 year later...

At last I purchased the OST and this is really a score to enjoy at times where there are not so many Williams scores to be expected every year. So far I just knew the suite from the Boston Pops recording, which covers the major themes properly.

I am not necessarily a fan of Williams in patriotic mode with all his americana fanfares.

Slightly I remember watching the movie on television thinking that Gibson more or less repeated his role from Braveheart, just in the united states civil war instead of Scottland. But I also remember finding the movie somewhat entertaining, as usual with Emmerich. At that time I had the impression, when there are special ground breaking action movies coming out then some time later there came out some shallow Emmerich version of that movie to the cinema.

Anyway, I really enjoy listening to new old Williams music I am unfamiliar with. But as well I think, with its 73 minutes of runtime now I am not really aiming for an expansion of this score. I am quite confident, that this album covers the body of the score very well. But you never know. Williams is the only composer where I really found expansion of his scores an enrichment. But let us see.

 

 

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