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Are you currently writing, or seriously planning to write, a book on John Williams?


Jurassic Shark

Are you currently writing, or are you planning to write, a book on John Williams?  

31 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you currently writing, or are you planning to write, a book on John Williams?

    • Yes, a non-academic book
    • Yes, an academic book
    • No


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18 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

About a year has passed since the creation of this thread, and I wonder what's the status of the three book projects. Would you care to give us an update, @Thor, @filmmusic, and @Falstaft? As for myself, the progress on my JW coloring book has been quite nonexistent.

I have finally finished my dissertation (since January) and I'm now in a state where I am waiting for my defense.

Now with the coronavirus, everything is closed (including universities), so it seems I'm gonna wait for a while..

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Congrats! What's the title of your thesis?

Thank you!:)

As I said, it will be in Greek.

 

it's: The film music of John Williams (1975-2018):Melody, harmony, formal archetypes and thematic unity.

It's 248 pages, incl. bibliography.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

That's Greek to me, but the title sounds interesting! :)Any chance it will be translated to English?

I don't think there is a chance. :(

I'd like to publish it as a book in English, but there are so many written examples (and studios involved), that getting the rights would be a nightmare.

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1 minute ago, filmmusic said:

I don't think there is a chance. :(

I'd like to publish it as a book in English, but there are so many written examples (and studios involved), that getting the rights would be a nightmare.

 

Do you need to get the rights when using parts of musical works as educational examples? Isn't it covered by "fair use" exceptions?

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3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Do you need to get the rights when using parts of musical works as educational examples? Isn't it covered by "fair use" exceptions?

They could be regarded as such, but I don't think I would get away with it.

The majority of the examples doesn't come from published material but from unpublished one.... :ph34r:

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Just now, filmmusic said:

They could be regarded as such, but I don't think I would get away with it.

The majority of the examples doesn't come from published material but from unpublished one.... :ph34r:

 

That shouldn't be a problem - they could've been transcribed by ear.

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

 

That shouldn't be a problem - they could've been transcribed by ear.

well, apart from the melody and the thematic unity chapters, they are not one staff examples.

They are 2 or 3 staves detailed musical examples, thats it's obvious are not transcribed by ear. Here's an example:

 

David's theme.png

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1 minute ago, filmmusic said:

well, apart from the melody and the thematic unity chapters, they are not one staff examples.

They are 2 or 3 staves detailed musical examples, thats it's obvious are not transcribed by ear. Here's an example:

 

David's theme.png

 

Much more complex things have been transcribed by ear, including complete lost golden age film scores. :) But couldn't you reduce the examples to melody and chords while still getting your points across? At least that the impression I get from your thesis title.

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4 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

 But couldn't you reduce the examples to melody and chords while still getting your points across? At least that the impression I get from your thesis title.

They are melody and chords (full harmony), but I guess I went too far with it, staying true to the original thing.

 

example from Rosewood:

Rosewood A (b phrase).png

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1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

I meant chord symbols.

Ah, now I see.

Well, yes, perhaps some examples could be written like this.

Williams' music is sometimes complex that even that would be difficult.

(like in the above first example I quoted from A.I.).

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10 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Ah, now I see.

Well, yes, perhaps some examples could be written like this.

Williams' music is sometimes complex that even that would be difficult.

(like in the above first example I quoted from A.I.).

 

I guess it all depends on which points you want to get across with the individual examples. :)

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No development for me since the last time, as I'm basically focussing on staying alive these days (financially). Plus, it was such a downer to lose all my research material a couple of years ago, I've found it hard to find the motivation to acquire it again.

 

Looking forward to 'skimming' your research paper, Konstantinos, if it's put out as a pdf or something. I obviously won't understand a word, but it would be nice to know the scope of it.

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3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Yeah, me too. It's not that hard, I've heard. At least I already know the letters.

 

The letters will be the least of your worries 😀 Grammatical noun cases, genders and verb tenses/aspects would take the most effort, I'd guess. But yeah, you're right that it's not a particularly hard language in comparison to most others.

 

I was actually thinking of learning Ancient Greek, just to be able to enjoy all those classical works in their original form, but it's more logical and practical to learn Modern Greek first. Now, with 250 pages of John Williams analysis, I would actually have a very concrete reason to do that 😀

 

In any case, I am currently learning Italian, and I still have many other languages on my bucketlist, so I am not sure when I would get around to learning Greek.

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2 minutes ago, Biodome said:

The letters will be the least of your worries 😀

 

If you know the letters and start pronouncing the words, you'll soon discover that you understand a few of them. :)

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16 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

If you know the letters and start pronouncing the words, you'll soon discover that you understand a few of them. :)

 

True -  βιβλίο, λόγος, χρόνος - all that sort of stuff greatly speeds up vocabulary learning. In the cases where the common roots aren't that obvious, I always have a Wiktionary tab open, so that I can make those connections between the languages that I know, and the languages that I am learning. It's better than the blind cramming strategy.

 

Still, there aren't too many shortcuts here, even if most European tongues stem from the same ancient family. It still takes about 30-60 minutes of learning each day for a whole year, to get to a basic-intermediate conversational level in a new language.

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6 minutes ago, Biodome said:

 

True -  βιβλίο, λόγος, χρόνος - all that sort of stuff greatly speeds up vocabulary learning. In the cases where the common roots aren't that obvious, I always have a Wiktionary tab open, so that I can make those connections between the languages that I know, and the languages that I am learning. It's better than the blind cramming strategy.

 

Still, there aren't too many shortcuts here, even if most European tongues stem from the same ancient family. It still takes about 30-60 minutes of learning each day for a whole year, to get to a basic-intermediate conversational level in a new language.

 

In a year, I expect you to have written a book on JW, in Greek! :)

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7 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

In a year, I expect you to have written a book on JW, in Greek! :)

 

Not before @Thor writes his. I went through the great difficulty of learning Norwegian, in the hopes of putting it to good use, and now he loses motivation! Pfff. I call it false advertising!

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

 

You mean as a toddler?

 

I was more like 10 or 11. What helped me was that I didn't know any English back then, so there was no lingua franca for me to use, and I just had to learn it.

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6 minutes ago, Biodome said:

 

Not before @Thor writes his. I went through the great difficulty of learning Norwegian, in the hopes of putting it to good use, and now he loses motivation! Pfff. I call it false advertising!

 

You seem like an excellent language learner, when we talked in London. I'm kinda envious, and wish I was 20 years younger to more easily absorb new languages. I speak English, French and German (in addition to Danish, because I have Danish family), but that's it. Always wanted to learn Spanish, at the very least. Always loved to learn languages.

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9 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

You seem like an excellent language learner, when we talked in London. I'm kinda envious, and wish I was 20 years younger to more easily absorb new languages. I speak English, French and German (in addition to Danish, because I have Danish family), but that's it. Always wanted to learn Spanish, at the very least. Always loved to learn languages.

 

Oh you're still very young as far as language learning goes! I've seen people in their 80s picking up new languages!

 

It's more about determination and a methodical approach, than about natural talent or the ability to absorb new information, though kids are definitely at an advantage here.

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  • 4 months later...
On 4/1/2020 at 2:41 AM, Thor said:

.

 

 

 

......I speak English, French and German (in addition to Danish, because I have Danish family), but thats it....

" that's it!?"

Americans can barely speak English, and those who speak a second language are as rare as a Giacchino CD in your collection!

 

 

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On 3/31/2020 at 8:47 PM, filmmusic said:

The film music of John Williams (1975-2018):Melody, harmony, formal archetypes and thematic unity.

 

I'd especially like to read what you've written on formal archetypes.

 

What exactly do you mean with thematic unity?

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42 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

I'd especially like to read what you've written on formal archetypes.

 

What exactly do you mean with thematic unity?

the unity between themes in a film (like one theme comes from another), which is usually a motivic one. (it's based on Reti's The thematic process in music)

I have examples from 11 movies.

 

My defense is on September 21st if nothing changes.

I'm really stressful about it!

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3 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

My defense is on September 21st if nothing changes.

I'm really stressful about it!

 

I'm sure the defense will go well. Will it be via Skype or similar due to the COVID situation?

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2 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

I'm sure the defense will go well. Will it be via Skype or similar due to the COVID situation?

Thanks.

No, they didn't tell me anything like this about skype.

If it is, I won't be able to do it because my pc is old and it really gets stuck on videos.

I can't even watch a youtube video properly.

 

But i don't think so. Even schools will work like they always do, with even 25 students in the classroom.

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3 minutes ago, Thor said:

Good luck, Konstantinos! I feel like you've been working on your dissertation forever!

Thank you Thor.

Yes, I have. I had many problems during doing it (health issues and others), that's why it took me many years.

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14 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Thanks.

No, they didn't tell me anything like this about skype.

If it is, I won't be able to do it because my pc is old and it really gets stuck on videos.

I can't even watch a youtube video properly.

 

But i don't think so. Even schools will work like they always do, with even 25 students in the classroom.

 

Good luck! In Norway, you have to do it via Skype (or similar) nowadays.

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  • 1 month later...
3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

How's it going with your book project, @Falstaft?

 

:)

 

Alas, I keep getting side-tracked by other projects! The big one right now is shepherding an edited volume featuring some truly fantastic film music scholarship, including a brilliant essay by @Ludwigand an essay on Shirley Walker I really need to get cracking on myself! I also have some smaller scale projects on Williams, including a talk on Rosewood and further stuff involving Star Wars. Once that's all done, the book will be back to being my main priority... 

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12 hours ago, Falstaft said:

 

Alas, I keep getting side-tracked by other projects! The big one right now is shepherding an edited volume featuring some truly fantastic film music scholarship, including a brilliant essay by @Ludwigand an essay on Shirley Walker I really need to get cracking on myself! I also have some smaller scale projects on Williams, including a talk on Rosewood and further stuff involving Star Wars. Once that's all done, the book will be back to being my main priority... 

 

That's good! Are you comfortable saying a bit about the contents of the book?

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1 minute ago, filmmusic said:

Just got my PhD yesterday, with grade "Excellent"! :)

The defense was done via the internet eventually..

 

I'll upload the full thesis in a few days.

 

Congratulations! :beerchug:

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