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Harry Potter 7CD Collection - MUSIC discussion


Jay

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Just now, bollemanneke said:

Wait, what do you mean by sessions? There are no HP3 sessions... are there?


Leaked sessions, no. But this is a part for those original sessions.

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Not as far as we the wider public know. But there are rumors and clues that some very limited group has had access to stuff for quite a while.

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1 minute ago, Holko said:

Not as far as we the wider public know. But there are rumors and clues that some very limited group has had access to stuff for quite a while.


Are you referring to “Shawm”, etc.? That’s most likely from the live-to-projection version, which would only include the isolated scores, so no alternates or other things not heard in the movie as you’d find in a sessions leak.

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Even that would be helpful if we had it widely. But no, I was referring to for example the supposedly leaked early OST assembly that had Shrieking Shack that Jay once said leaked ages ago but nobody I ever talked to heard of it before and I've only once read one rumor about it on the Shrine (I think). Or that a member who hasn't been active for a good while once shared a spectogram image on the Discord (when that mild fiasco about lossy-looking sources was going down) that looked very much like the Buckbeak's Flight revised opening insert separately on its own with a clean ending, and then suspiciously quickly removed it when we noticed it and asked about it.

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The only difference between the early version of the OST album and the final version of the OST album is less of the Knight Bus music was cut out (and it didn't loop back for the ending), and it had the Shrieking Shack cue.  In other words, there was nothing on it that we don't now have on the LLL

 

I don't remember the Buckbeak's Flight opening being available anywhere, what are you talking about there?

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6 minutes ago, Jay said:

The only difference between the early version of the OST album and the final version of the OST album is less of the Knight Bus music was cut out (and it didn't loop back for the ending), and it had the Shrieking Shack cue.  In other words, there was nothing on it that we don't now have on the LLL

Yeah but the point was that it had music the OST didn't have years before the official expansion and it was a private circle leak unlike the relatively widely available, shared and edited HP1 and 2 sessions. (Or 4 5 6 7 8 too for that matter.)

 

I don't think I understand what you don't seem to understand about the latter sentence. I don't know of it being available anywhere either, that's why a picture of a track called "Buckbeak's Flight Rev opening" or something similar, that looked like it was separate with a clean ending, was suspicious. Who's to say there wasn't a more private more complete leak even you don't know about?

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3 minutes ago, Holko said:

I don't think I understand what you don't seem to understand about the latter sentence. I don't know of it being available anywhere either, that's why a picture of a track called "Buckbeak's Flight Rev opening" or something similar, that looked like it was separate with a clean ending, was suspicious. Who's to say there wasn't a more private more complete leak even you don't know about?

 

That's what I mean, I don't remember a picture like that. Doesn't ring any bells

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Yeah because as I said it was shared on our Discord one time then quickly removed. I (and I think @Chewy who also was online at the time) very much regret not screenshotting it.

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17 minutes ago, Jay said:

The only difference between the early version of the OST album and the final version of the OST album is less of the Knight Bus music was cut out (and it didn't loop back for the ending), and it had the Shrieking Shack cue.


Oh, cool! I knew about the last-minute removals of ‘I Am The Senate’ and ‘Picking Pockets’, but not this. Where did Shrieking Shack go in the order? And was that the actual title?

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36 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Who shared it then?

I didn't want to put him on the spot for a 2 year old mistake, he was nice enough to send the LLL to me when he got it quickly so I could recreate the tracked cues, but he hasn't posted since February...

It was Lockdown I think. Don't pester him much.

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Regarding the draft album leak, for completeness' sake I want to add that the Shrieking Shack had some ungodly loud crackling.

 

As for the bonus LLL track 'The Knight Bus', didn't Newspaper Headliner also have some alternate segment in it? That's what I remember reading in the booklet.

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EDIT: I was wrong here, and forgot that 1M9 had differences between film take and album take.  See below!

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" "The Knight Bus", presented in its full length, features a portion of the "newspaper" segment heard on the original album as well as an alternate version of the "squeeze play" " etc...

 

So what does that mean then?

 

Also it switches up calliope and accordion right after. Who proofreads these notes again? :P

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4 minutes ago, Holko said:

So what does that mean then?

The sure thing is that Mike used the OST for that Newspaper section in "The Knight Bus (Alternate)".

Since both tracks sound similar, maybe the section from the OST is just a different take of the same cue, not used in the movie.

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8 minutes ago, Holko said:

" "The Knight Bus", presented in its full length, features a portion of the "newspaper" segment heard on the original album as well as an alternate version of the "squeeze play" " etc...

 

So what does that mean then?

 

Also it switches up calliope and accordion right after. Who proofreads these notes again? :P

 

Huh.  I dunno how that slipped through like that.  Oh well.

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Oh, like the other non-different album takes. I thought those were at least partly only presented to keep them in the registry properly if there's space for it, but since it's presented in a wholly different assembly than on the OST, that wouldn't be at play here.

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On 8/6/2020 at 3:36 PM, Chewy said:

The sure thing is that Mike used the OST for that Newspaper section in "The Knight Bus (Alternate)".

Since both tracks sound similar, maybe the section from the OST is just a different take of the same cue, not used in the movie.

 

EDIT: I was wrong here, and forgot that 1M9 had differences between film take and album take.  See below!

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Huh. I probably knew this at the time and had forgotten all about it. How about that! That's very cool info. I will listen to the difference in the bass when I get a chance. 

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Don't expect anything radically different of course. In the short comparison excerpt Chewy sent me I also noticed in one version the cellos were a bit more vibrating while in the other maybe a bit more snappy staccatoey?

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5 hours ago, BrotherSound said:


Oh, cool! I knew about the last-minute removals of ‘I Am The Senate’ 

 

I never knew about this. Is that why that version of the track in the expanded version I have sounds so radically different from the film where everything else is basically just like the movie?

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Yeah yeah, just like in the new interview, where he totally just rehashed old stuff and didn't say anything new and amusing or lovely.

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Who knows what kind of untold goodies are being stashed away by the studios. Hundreds, of not thousands of hours of footage from recording sessions; interviews with him about specific movies and scores that were edited down to 30-second spots to place on the DVD extras (remember those?)

 

The studios may know the value of these things and are holding them close to their chest. Or maybe they don't know the value of them at all, and there's a 30-minute interview about Prisoner of Azkaban done during the sessions where he talks at length about jazz orchestration in the Knight Bus or writing for period instruments that some bigwig thought wasn't interesting. Who knows.

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54 minutes ago, Arpy said:

An in-depth, candid discussion where Williams is asked to go through specific scores, discuss the writing process and perhaps reflect further on the experience is something I'm sure many of us here would want to hear or read. The sad reality is that unless there was someone who worked alongside Williams the equivalent of Doug Adams' relationship with Howard Shore

 

I won't be surprised if @Falstaft gets to sit down and talk with the man.

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1 hour ago, Docteur Qui said:

Or maybe they don't know the value of them at all, and there's a 30-minute interview about Prisoner of Azkaban done during the sessions where he talks at length about jazz orchestration in the Knight Bus or writing for period instruments that some bigwig thought wasn't interesting. Who knows.

 

This.

 

Also, DVDs are catering for the mass crowd. Stuff like stunt or VFX breakdowns are 'cool', but a 30 minute interview with the composer probably isn't to the masses.

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I think it's reasonable to think the studios are indifferent on scoring material, but the second someone else wants a piece of it, they clutch it tighter and demand a high price for it. It's all money.

 

Didn't it take WB wanting high res audio for them to consider working with a label like LLL through Mike? 

 

 

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I don't think he likes talking about his work as much as people wish he did. Because that's what it is: work. There's no excitement in sitting on your ass 10 hours a day looking back and forth from a monitor to a slowly-filled sheet of paper, hoping for a eureka moment that will speed things up a little. The real satisfaction comes from when he can finally stand up and conduct some extraordinary musicians. In that Times interview posted yesterday, he doesn't say a word about how he dug deep into the music of Waxman, Korngold, Steiner, and whoever else to almost single-handedly create something which resuscitated the symphonic film score in a historic way. Who cares? Instead his favorite memory was going into the recording studio, being surprised at how this guy nailed a high C, and being surprised still more since it was his very first day with the LSO. Now there's talent worth talking about.

 

That's why he likes telling that Schindler's List story so much: it was a powerful movie that Williams acknowledged would take the skill of a much better composer to do justice to. Spielberg agreed and likewise acknowledged, however jokingly, that his movie was so great that it demanded the very best of any composer working on it, Williams or anyone. Don't we all like it when our favorite artists display that real pride and confidence in their work? Those are the special moments that stay in his memory because they make all the long hours and hard work worth it on a spiritual level.

 

Lately he has been loosening up and giving his blessing to expanded score releases, to do those sorts of things while he's still around. Maybe one day he'll decide to do a Hugo Friedhofer-type thing where he sits down with someone and goes over his entire career which results in a 400-page interview. But really I think he'd rather talk about someone else's career than his own.

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1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

I really love the fact that you guys think the studios had the brains to ask intelligent questions to JW.

 

Hey you never know, maybe some up-and-coming personality at Warner Brothers was tasked with interviewing JW for promotions and actually did their homework, or was already a fan to begin with.

 

The point I'm making is that it isn't Williams' fault that we hear so little fresh and interesting stories from him, it's every single person in the chain leading up to any given interview that is the result.

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@Skelly I get what you're saying about different perspectives or definitions of what's 'work', but I think it's a little reductionist too.

 

It's more than 'work', It's his way of life. 'Sitting your ass down 10 hours a day' is part of that varied and detailed process, and having collaborated with artists of different stripes myself, and observed their practice, it's never so simple or chore-like as you would think. They would also take pride in what they do and how they do it, and Williams' decades of experience would be no different. Seventy years of honing his craft isn't something even as humble a man as he is would consider just 'work'!

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Sure, if it wasn't stimulating he wouldn't be doing it. All the same, in interviews he describes the life of a pencil-and-paper guy like him as hermetical and lonely, usually in a soft-spoken, thoughtful tone of voice. That's how he wants to spin it for the public, even if in reality the pencil-and-paper process might be more fulfilling or invigorating than he admits. He describes the day-to-day schedule of his writing period as very challenging, very private, and through the decades he's more or less kept it that way for his listeners and fans -- even though some interesting morsels slip through the cracks every once in a while, like the Empire Strikes Back documentary where he and Herb Spencer discuss the orchestration for a cue.

 

But whenever he starts talking about the parts of his job that are away from the desk, that's when his eyes will light up and he'll wax lyrical. His job has brought him into contact with some extraordinary people and that's what he seems to be more comfortable talking about. People here say it's the journalists' fault for not asking him more thoughtful, probing questions, but Williams is happy to go off on tangents and change the conversation towards things that he thinks are worth people's time to read -- about the brilliance of directors or actors or other musicians, how the world responds to music and vice versa. He kinda flippantly says that he doesn't watch movies and doesn't listen to music (obviously he does) but I feel like he only says that to abstain himself from talking just about movie music in these interviews. If he wanted to go off on a tangent about that stuff then he by all means would. He's done enough of these things to know that he controls the conversation, not the reporter. But if he doesn't want to get into great detail about his musical choices then he won't do it. In an interview a few weeks ago someone asked him the specific question of why he used timpani so much for the new Star Wars movies. His final word on that was "I don’t know", before switching to the old spiel about how lucky he is to be doing these movies for forty years. He's more interested in that phenomenon than what must to him feel like an an orchestration 101 question. That's just what he wants to talk about, and the nuts and bolts of his working life and musical intuition are a deeply personal part of himself that he's only going to share with his close buddies.

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I’d also have to imagine that it probably feels easier or more comfortable for him to talk about the collaborative process recording with other musicians rather than his private musical tinkering that takes place largely within his solemn headspace.

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  • 1 month later...

Fascinating! So we only actually have one proper take, the final one, for Dementors Converge? After the original ending (Patronus Power) was rejected and Watching the Past (alternate) written, did they just track it in with an overlay as a semi-temporary version that JW liked and put on the OST; then the film version got written? Or did he just do this for the OST for the heck of it?

Or is Watching the Past (alternate) something else?

 

 

 

Watching the Past without Patronus Light is very interesting too - but so is the fact that yet again Mike didn't have access to the separate complete mixed takes and had to use the OST here too and create false endings to cover up a crossfade just like we do for stupid track combinations. Maybe WB (Music?) really didn't have their shit together and Mike said he can't do their job for them all the time, he'll take what they have and do whatever he can to be as complete as possible and finish before the year's over?

 

 

Those booklet quotes were always weird. How on Earth could Dementors Converge (OST) have been a prerecording? And Patronus Light has nothing to do with it, it's for Watching the Past! It's Patronus Power that's an earlier version of Dementors Converge!

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