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THE ORVILLE - Music Discussion (Bruce Broughton, Joel McNeely, John Debney, Andrew Cottee, Kevin Kaska)


Ollie

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Just now, Jay said:

I mean the second signature looks more like "Andrew Cottee" than "Joel McNeely" but it also doesn't actually look like any english letters at all

Damn composers using hieroglyphs...

 

Finally got to listen to it today. Lots of fine stuff there. But needs further listening to fully unpack. But most enjoyable, broad and tuneful orchestra writing. Nice. 

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Clearly it's signed by Al Ulf, assistant boom operator.

 

@Jay would you mind if I asked what your order number was? I just want to see if I ordered early enough to get an autographed copy, in which case I need to go out and buy another frame.

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5 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

Clearly it's signed by Al Ulf, assistant boom operator.

 

The consensus on FSM is that it's McNeely, as Cottee is UK based.  I can *kind of* see how the first blob could be a "Joel" and the second blob could be "McNeely"

 

5 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

@Jay would you mind if I asked what your order number was? I just want to see if I ordered early enough to get an autographed copy, in which case I need to go out and buy another frame.

 

Order #210749

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

I mean the second signature looks more like "Andrew Cottee" than "Joel McNeely" but it also doesn't actually look like any english letters at all


Speaking of hard to read signatures, I still don’t know who signed my LLL Star Trek 50th Set. 😄😄😄

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My only theory is that it's because the tone is lighter on the top half of the booklet, so it's much easier to see the black ink as opposed to if they signed it toward the bottom. There's not much negative space unfortunately due to there being several characters on the poster.

 

1 hour ago, Jay said:

Order #210749

 

I'm about 50 orders behind you, so either I can not buy a frame and have absolutely nowhere to put it if I do get an autographed booklet, or I can run to the store right now to buy a frame and be disappointed when I realize I didn't get an autographed booklet. :lol:

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 Why is a minute and a half of "Prisoners of the Kaylon" from IDENTITY edited out?? It's one of the biggest cues in the series and it was highlighted by Debney himself on his Facebook last year. Upon rewatch, at least a minute and a half was removed from this version. I understand that CD space is a commodity, but that's the absolute last cue I'd chop up. The cue as heard in it's entirety in the show is a 5+ min rollercoaster

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Just judging by visuals, Season 2's mixing seems to be even better than Season 1. Season 1's is much more levelled, leading to the louder parts being way too loud. Season 2 has some nice peaks! Getting ready to listen once the discs are done ripping! :D

 

Untitled-1.jpg

 

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Mine shipped on the 22nd. Dunno, I know Intrada usually takes 2 days to get to me. My Varese order took a whole week to get here and I only live 70 miles or so from their new shipping location. 

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Does anyone else separate the album by composer? I did the same for season 1... I listen to all of the Debney material together and then the McNeely material separately to get a feel for what each composer's "sound" is.

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34 minutes ago, bondo said:

Does anyone else separate the album by composer? I did the same for season 1... I listen to all of the Debney material together and then the McNeely material separately to get a feel for what each composer's "sound" is.

Yes! But reassemble each album into a playlist so I can listen to the whole thing as programmed too. 

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Quote

Hi all

Trying to get these out as quickly as possible

 

I do not have an order range for autographs. Joel McNeely and John Debney signed about 180 covers. Basically anyone who ordered it on Dec 22 and Dec 23 will get an autograph

 

MV

 

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58 minutes ago, bondo said:

Does anyone else separate the album by composer? I did the same for season 1... I listen to all of the Debney material together and then the McNeely material separately to get a feel for what each composer's "sound" is.


 

I keep mine together by one main artist and then fill in the composer field with whoever is the he or she is. 
 

For The Orville I have the artist tab as Bruce Broughton, John Debney, Joel McNeely & Andrew Cottee and then have each composer slot filled in with the correct  artist. That way I have one complete album.

 

 

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  • 7 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Jay said:

Two pieces of news today!

 

First is that they began recording season 3 scores last week in LA, and second is that Kevin Kaska joins Debney, McNeely, and Cottee for season 3

 

http://filmmusicreporter.com/2021/09/21/kevin-kaska-joins-the-orville-composer-team/

So we’ll get some of his excellent contemporary JW pastiche which I think would probably be great in the orville.

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Just now, Jay said:

I've never heard of him.  What JW pastiche has he done before?

His harp concert is paired with JW’s trumpet concerto on the Sandoval album and sounds very JW in places. However the most similar is his tone poems album which basically sounds like action music from the SW prequels. But kinda fashioned into concert works. He also wrote additional music for Lair (computer game) alongside John Debney which also sounds like 2000s JW action music. All worth checking out. 

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19 minutes ago, Jay said:

I've never heard of him.  What JW pastiche has he done before?

He's also the guy who composed some of the best material in Lair. And he reconstructed Superman: The Movie for Varese recording. 

 

Karol

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Wow, just finished that "Battle for Atlantis" track shared.  That was great!  I'll definitely buy that CD now!  Only $8.45 on Amazon.

 

It started out very similar to Battle Of The Heroes and then just keeps going in more interesting directions.  By the end I was reminded of Jupiter Ascending a bit

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Today I took the shrinkwrap off my Orville Season 2 LLL set and figured I'd provide a little commentary on each episode score

 

 

The Orville Main Title (Bruce Broughton, Season 2 Shawn Murphy Mix)

 

I think the new mix is only subtly different from the first, but it did make me wonder what they might do for Season 3 - probably a whole new recording, since they are "rebranding" (?) as The Orville: New Horizons

 

 

Ja'loja (John Debney)

 

We only get a minute and a half of this score!  It essentially acts as a warm-up to what's to come.  It made me curious what type of remaining score is in the episode but not here...

 

 

Primal Urges (John Debney)


The season 1 episode that Fox held over till Season 2.  I love the bit early in track 5 that reminded me of Jerry's Star Trek First Contact score, and then the part near the end that reminds reminds me of more Star Trek music.  The action wrap-up track is only just OK

 

 

Home (Joel McNeely)


The first real banger of the disc!  The entirety of "Alara Goes Home / Arriving Home" is great!  The whole 17 minute suite is well done and engaging.

 

 

Nothing Left On Earth Excepting Fishes (Joel McNeely)

 

"Interrogation / The Aliens Attack" is a really fun re-write of Williams' "Belly of the Steel Beast", with the Kamen-ized "Winter Wonderland" riff from Die Hard popping in.  It's a definite highlight track of the album!  The overall suite for this episode isn't the most memorable, however

 

 

All The World Is Birthday Cake (John Debney)

 

Wow, "Making First Contact" is a terrific track, I wanted to hear it again as soon as it was over.  Most of the rest of the suite was not as compelling.

 

 

A Happy Refrain (Andrew Cottee)

 

Wow, what a lovely, intimate score!  This might be one of my favorites on the disc, it's so lovely and intimate, and such a fantastically placed breather between all the action heavy suites that dominate the album.  Bravo, Mr. Cottee!

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Deflectors (Andrew Cottee)

 

Comparatively, this 5 minute suite didn't do much for me.  Oh well.

 

 

Identity Part I (John Debney)

 

Man, this is great!  I loved the riffs from Horner's Aliens, and the whole suite has a great and exciting flow to it, building and building to the great climax.  I just wish it was longer - much longer!  "Prisoners of the Kaylon" features an awesome rewrite of The Darkest Day from Independence Day by David Arnold and sounds great.

 

On to disc 2!

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Identity Part II (Joel McNeely)

 

A pretty good followup to Debney's part 1 score.  There's some nice Williams prequel-isms near the start, then the suspense kinds of builds for a while until we get to the longest track on either album, the 9 1/2 minute "Battle For Earth", which is 6 straight minutes of non-stop orchestral action blowout, followed by a really nice 3 1/2 minute wrapup of the whole affair.  Pretty good, although much like the actual episode, it isn't quite as strong as Part I.

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4 hours ago, Jay said:

Today I took the shrinkwrap off my Orville Season 2 LLL set and figured I'd provide a little commentary on each episode score

 

The Orville Main Title (Bruce Broughton, Season 2 Shawn Murphy Mix)

 

I think the new mix is only subtly different from the first, but it did make me wonder what they might do for Season 3 - probably a whole new recording, since they are "rebranding" (?) as The Orville: New Horizons


Exactly this, as Bruce Broughton revealed when I interviewed him two (!!) years ago now:

https://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/2083614-odyssey-interviews-bruce-broughton
 

In short: Longer intro — MacFarlane asked him to write and record a new version.

 

4 hours ago, Jay said:

Ja'loja (John Debney)

 

We only get a minute and a half of this score!  It essentially acts as a warm-up to what's to come.  It made me curious what type of remaining score is in the episode but not here...

 

Basically thanks to a season 1 episode being moved to air as part of season 2, if LLL wanted to (or was required to) keep to a 2 CD album release, they had some hard choices. Their season 1 album already had to leave off some good cues with that approach (the promo edition of Broughton’s pilot score in particular included some good cues left off the LLL). Now that they had the same amount of disc space but two more episode scores to fit in (14 vs 12), that job of whittling down and prioritizing gets even tougher! So I guess this score got the short straw. I’d have to revisit the episode to look for highlights but I know there was indeed a lot more score in the episode.

 

I personally kinda wish LLL could have done a 3 disc season 2 release, with one full disc dedicated to the complete scores for the Identity two parter (maybe filled out with A Happy Refrain complete — I love that episode and score too!)

And then have on the remaining two discs an approach more similar to season 1 for the remaining episodes…this would’ve been more akin to their Star Trek TNG volumes (one of the three discs on each being dedicated to complete scores).

 

Yavar

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Blood of Patriots (John Debney)

 

Pretty decent score, if not particularly memorable.  However, the version of Broughton's theme that ends the suite is really nice!

 

 

Lasting Impressions (John Debney)

 

The only episode from either season to only get a single track as representation, and it's only 2 1/2 minutes long.  At least, it's a decent track!  A nice melody with lots of nice orchestral touches.

 

 

Sanctuary (Andrew Cottee)

 

Wow, this one impressed me right away with a strong opening, and then ended up being one of the strongest suites on the whole album to boot!  It's also one of the longest at almost 18 minutes.  And well worth it!

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (John Debney)

 

This makes a big impression despite only having 8 minutes here!  The entire suite is forward propulsion, engaging action / tension building.  Really good!

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The Road Not Taken (Joel McNeely)

 

"Another Kaylon Attack" features a riff on another part of Belly of the Steel Beast, and the whole suite actually has a lot of pastiche to it.  And it's all good!  "Lifting Off The Ocean Floor" is wonderfully Star Trek (Horner's).  "Activating The Device" is a cool action track but then.... the suite is over!  There's no denouement / wrap-up track at all, for the episode, or the album.  Just a big action cue right into the end credits.  WTF?

 

 

The Orville End Titles (Season 2 Shawn Murphy Mix)

 

It'll be interesting to see if the end titles change next season, too!

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21 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

Or just do digital releases. The limitations of of fitting music on a CD feels more uneconomical by the day.

 

As someone who was completely against this sentiment years ago, I'm starting to agree more and more every year. I love getting physical CD sets, but the unfortunate truth is that it makes up probably 90% of the reason why albums (and some expansions) are limited in terms of how much content is released. Not only can a disc only hold a certain amount of music, but I imagine they're much more expensive to produce than a record company just uploading files to the internet.

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Even though it might have been a bit repetitive (and I doubt that) I would have love them to make a presentation as great as the one they did for time Tunnel. Because we can joke about it as much a we want because there's not enough Williams in it but the presentation is simply perfect containing most (if not all) the music of each episodes

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My honest personal feeling is that a lot of people are too attached to the idea of of wanting to see their favourite scores/composer displayed to the world on physical CD, in a nice box.

 

If they did this set all-digital, they could focus 100% on making the best listening experience, and not on deciding what to cull because it's over a CD's limit.

 

Of course, mainstream score releases are 90% there anyway. I have no idea what was the last contemporary score I got on CD - it's all digital.

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The ideal situation would simply have a working delivery system for digital music from each label (including making licensing for different formats easier). They could offer albums both as digital downloads and physical CDs, with CDs costing more, but including a download code for the digital version, which can just contain everything that didn't fit on the CDs.

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That's exactly what Djawadi did for season 6 of GoT - the CD included a code for accessing 18 minutes more music.

 

I think that part of the problem is that as soon as you go down the CD route in any capacity you're into the world of pressings, artwork approvals, and general pain. I yearn for a world where all that was avoided, and you just downloaded lossless files (hi res if appropriate) with high quality cover art, and maybe a PDF with some liners.

 

A small part of this wish is to free us from the endless demands for repressings for minor errors.

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  • 2 months later...

Extremely sad news from MV

 

"Seasons 1 and 2 sold very poorly. We are out of the Orville business regardless of what network it's on. Sadly, No one bought it.

MV" 

 

https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=118900&forumID=1&archive=0&viewLast=1

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3 minutes ago, Jay said:

Extremely sad news from MV

 

"Seasons 1 and 2 sold very poorly. We are out of the Orville business regardless of what network it's on. Sadly, No one bought it.

MV" 

 

https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=118900&forumID=1&archive=0&viewLast=1

Now that is a massive shame... guess there's no chance of someone else picking it up, even for a digital release?

6 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Now that is a massive shame... guess there's no chance of someone else picking it up, even for a digital release?

Looking again, might this just refer to physical versions? The digital release was released on Hollywood records. If so, we might still get a digital release which would be fine be me!

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This statement has nothing to do with future seasons getting digital albums - those are already released directly by 20th Century Studios, LLL was not involved with them.

 

LLL only released the digital album on the CD format, and a shortened edit of season 1 on vinyl. 

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1 minute ago, Jay said:

This statement has nothing to do with future seasons getting digital albums - those are already released directly by 20th Century Studios, LLL was not involved with them.

 

LLL only released the digital album on the CD format, and a shortened edit of season 1 on vinyl. 

Exactly... so it doesn't necessarily mean we won't get any more releases, it just means we won't get CD releases from LLL. I have ask MV the question. But I think that's an important distinction, it does kinda sound like there won't be any kind of release which I don't think is necessarily the case.

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