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New Podcast! The Baton: A John Williams Musical Journey


Trumpeteer

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Sad to see the podcast end. I have enjoyed the insights and think this series will be looked back as a valuable resource for info on John Williams. I've learned so much from each episode (and liked the comments from your guests as well) 

 

Thanks again for the great work!

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I'd also like to thank @Trumpeteerfor this amazing journey. For me, being in my 20s, it's difficult to really comprehend what a 60+ year musical career really means, and what it means to have composed 100+ film scores. The realisation that you'd have to spend an hour each week for 2 years in order to get an overview of every John Williams film score, really puts things in perspective. I've never fully appreciated John Williams until I started listening to The Baton, and it really helped me grasp the sheer scale and variety of his creative output. Watching all of those films is now on my bucket list!

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Thanks @Biodome and @Bayesian for the kind words. They are much appreciated. I am happy that you discovered more music from John Williams and are going to watch some of the films. Many of the scores will be greatly enhanced from matching the music with visuals.

 

Hey @T.RASK you are the first to say that you are going backwards. That feels like reading a book from the last chapter to the beginning, "Memento"-style. Hope you find it enjoyable. 

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I started in the middle and listened to a few episodes (scores I was familiar with).  I have now downloaded all of the episodes.


I highly recommend them.  The approach is amateur in the truest sense of the word: for the love of it.  Very little techie talk (e.g.: chord progressions, use of pedal tones, use of modes) which usually comes from co-hosts.  Heck, I think he misidentified a recorder as a flute, but I don’t expect him to point out the Wagner tubas in Empire.  (Star Wars Oxygen didn’t mention it).

 

And yet, with all I’ve read/heard about Stars Wars, there was something in his Star Wars episode that was new to me.  That’s something, right?


No, I’m not going to say what it was: you have to listen to it yourself.

 

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18 hours ago, bruckhorn said:

I started in the middle and listened to a few episodes (scores I was familiar with).  I have now downloaded all of the episodes.


I highly recommend them.  The approach is amateur in the truest sense of the word: for the love of it.  Very little techie talk (e.g.: chord progressions, use of pedal tones, use of modes) which usually comes from co-hosts.  Heck, I think he misidentified a recorder as a flute, but I don’t expect him to point out the Wagner tubas in Empire.  (Star Wars Oxygen didn’t mention it).

 

And yet, with all I’ve read/heard about Stars Wars, there was something in his Star Wars episode that was new to me.  That’s something, right?


No, I’m not going to say what it was: you have to listen to it yourself.

 

Just as a reminder: I mention in the first episode that I am not a trained musician, so approach this podcast knowing that. Plus, I would personally be bored if every episode was a music theory lecture. My frequent cohosts add that when needed and I am very thankful for that.

 

@bruckhorn I am curious to know the new piece of information you learned in the Star Wars episode. Send me a private message.

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  • 3 weeks later...

As we all know, John Williams' 89th birthday is tomorrow (Monday), and I will be posting a special video episode of "The Baton" to celebrate. I will be joined by 12 of my podcast's cohosts as we share how we celebrate the Maestro's birthday, and talk about some of Williams' music we would use to introduce a new fan.

 

This video will make its debut as a YouTube "live" Premiere at 9 am Eastern on Monday, February 8. Link is below. I invite you to the Premiere to chat with other John Williams fans as the video plays. If you can't make the "live" video, it will be available at the same link as an on-demand video.

 

Celebrating John Williams' 89th birthday

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  • 3 months later...
  • 10 months later...

Started listening to the podcast recently and just made it through the 60s. I don’t listen to podcasts often but I’m enjoying this one very much! I’m also taking this opportunity to go through my personal collection and hopefully fill in some of the holes. 

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I know I'm very late to the party, but I started listening to this podcast yesterday and I'm already 10 episodes in.

 

Wonderful job, @Trumpeteer. It is particularly helpful in getting to know some of JW's lesser known scores and how the music plays works in the context of the film. I've been enjoying it tremendously and love your selection of clips. I think by the end of next week, I might've gone through the whole thing.

 

Besides the work you've put into getting to know the music, I'm particularly amazed and thankful for your dedication in watching all the movies JW scored and how that helps color one's opinion of the score. 

 

I stumbled upon your podcast when searching Spotify for the Sleepers soundtrack, and your episode was the first result I got. And even for score such as this, which I consider to be a personal favorite and which I assumed to know very well, I was pleasantly surprised by your insights on how the music works in the film (for all the love I have for the score, I've never really watched movie more than a couple of times).

 

Great work, that's all I wanted to say. You're helping make my working day all the more pleasant

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I've been downloading these episodes and archiving them forever, but had not gotten around to actually listening to any of them until this week.  I'm up to the Bachelor Flat episode now, and just wanted to say that it's a very enjoyable and informative show.  Pretty thrilled I get to listen to the rest of Williams's career this way!  Thanks, and keep kicking ass!

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I think I detected some small errors there. So you think @Falstaft did only mention the battle music in his article, because there is no other great music in the film?? Perhaps the article was already finished and ready to go and he just managed to add one sentence just before print? Did you ask him about your interpretation?

Also, the theme at the end of Prologue is not an artifact theme, but the Archimedes theme. And Tintin was 2011, not 2012, and for me it is obvious that Mangold DID know about that score, and that the Duel music from Tintin was on the temp track and was consciously used as a template, if we like it or not. Perhaps it was a subtle reminder to Peter Jackson to get off his butt and make the promised second Tintin movie as long as Williams is still able to compose the music :-) But that is only speculation on my part, of course. 

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Gurkensalat said:

So you think @Falstaft did only mention the battle music in his article, because there is no other great music in the film?? Perhaps the article was already finished and ready to go and he just managed to add one sentence just before print?

yep

On 07/07/2023 at 7:48 PM, Falstaft said:

I actually wrote this well before Dial came out, but was glad I was able to sneak in a last minute edit about "The Battle of Syracuse."

 

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Thanks, Holko, for putting in that post from Frank. I did not know he had thrown in the analysis of "Battle of Syracuse" at the last minute, though it makes sense because an article like that takes weeks of research and analysis. I had not planned to mention Frank's article, mostly because I had read it after I finished most of my script and didn't think it was important to mention it. But, it's an article about John Williams in one of the most well-known publications in the world. It deserved a mention and I hope it draws more attention to it.

 

Thanks also for the points about Tintin. My apologies for getting the date wrong. You have a good point about Mangold possibly using it as a temp track, something I did not think about when pondering its use.

 

On 13/07/2023 at 12:15 AM, Bryant Burnette said:

I've only made it up to 1941 so far!

Take your time. Hope you are enjoying what you hear.

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On 20/07/2023 at 6:35 AM, Jay said:

 

?

The Best Song Podcast is my newest podcast, which started in January 2023. The show is very similar to "The Baton," in that it is doing a year-by-year analysis of movie music. This time, I am giving the history of the 450-plus songs nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award in the first 90 years of its existence (1934-2023). There are stories to tell about songwriters such as Sammy Cahn, Henry Mancini, and Irving Berlin, as well as the men and women who wrote nominated songs who didn't get much of their 15 minutes of fame.

 

Check it out:

 

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