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Ludwig Göransson & Joseph Shirley's THE MANDALORIAN (2019-present)


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12 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I just hope it sounds like Star Wars, and not Hans Zimmer / Junkie XL shit.

 

Prepare yourself to be disappointed. I think that's what we'll end up getting. Although to be fair Ludwig has done some fine work in the past so it could be interesting, I'm just not expecting huge symphonic stuff.

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2 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

Prepare yourself to be disappointed. I think that's what we'll end up getting. Although to be fair Ludwig has done some fine work in the past so it could be interesting, I'm just not expecting huge symphonic stuff.

 

Oh I am prepared, and have been since he was announced as the composer. I was hoping some someone a little more... experienced. I mean, they literally did everything else right in terms of the music department. They got the same orchestra that was used for the recent films (minus Solo) as well as The Orville, they got Mark Graham as head of music preparation as well as a conductor, they got Pete Anthony as a conductor, and so on. The only concerning decision they made in my opinion was hiring Ludwig. But I hope that I am pleasantly surprised. I'm hoping that everything I said about him as a composer can be taken back, and that he becomes one of my favorite composers.

 

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I really liked Black Panther, it worked really well on the movie and it was the best of the 5 scores nominated for the Oscar last year, which made its victory very deserving.

 

Ludwig is a talented guy, I'm sure it'll be a good score for the show. I don't expect something fully symphonic, maybe something more harsh and gritty... Like a Morricone western score mixed with traditional orchestra like in the JW/Star Wars tradition, if that makes any sense, lol.

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

Black Panther definitely does *not* sound like either Zimmer or Holkenborg.

 

Well that's a good sign at least.

 

I usually don't judge composers based on Marvel films anyway, since the execs seems to like bland, overly-temp-tracked scores.

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15 hours ago, Edmilson said:

I really liked Black Panther, it worked really well on the movie and it was the best of the 5 scores nominated for the Oscar last year, which made its victory very deserving.

 

Ludwig is a talented guy, I'm sure it'll be a good score for the show. I don't expect something fully symphonic, maybe something more harsh and gritty... Like a Morricone western score mixed with traditional orchestra like in the JW/Star Wars tradition, if that makes any sense, lol.

Indeed Black Panther really stood out to me in that film; in a very positive way.

There was a lot of innovation and clever thought to l put into it; but not at the cost of emotion and proper orchestral power at points.

It was an effective mix, I reckon.

 

The main 'complaints' I'd have about it are that while the highlights are really high, a lot of the stuff in-between didn't strike me as particularly interesting.

And the theme introduced in "Glory to Bast" and featuring again in "Spaceship Bugatti" is the best of the bunch, but woefully underused.

Hopefully it'll return in full force for the sequel!

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15 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Black Panther definitely does *not* sound like either Zimmer or Holkenborg.

Does not make it good or interesting though...

 

Side note: I would have liked Bear McCreary on this!

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Ludwig's work on BP reminded me a bit of Howard Shore on LOTR, in terms of all the musical research he had done, on this case with African music, in order to write his score.

 

49 minutes ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

And the theme introduced in "Glory to Bast" and featuring again in "Spaceship Bugatti" is the best of the bunch, but woefully underused.

 Hopefully it'll return in full force for the sequel!

 

I interpreted that theme on being some sort of "New Dawn for Wakanda" theme. It represents hope for a different future for the country, post-Killmonger, on which they would be more open and helpful to the world, hence its performance on "Spaceship Bugatti", on which T'Challa shows his ship to a young black boy.

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2 hours ago, Edmilson said:

I interpreted that theme on being some sort of "New Dawn for Wakanda" theme. It represents hope for a different future for the country, post-Killmonger, on which they would be more open and helpful to the world, hence its performance on "Spaceship Bugatti", on which T'Challa shows his ship to a young black boy.

Oooh, I like that! Thank you very much for that one.

Hopefully that's true; does make a lot of sense and also gives it a good reason to reappear more often in the sequel. :D

 

2 hours ago, Thekthithm said:

I can't remember a single note from Black Panther other than the bit Silvester quoted in Affinity War.

Only remembering the main theme seems like quite a normal thing to me.

And it far, FAR beats remembering not even the main theme:lol:

 

I wonder how many notes people would have remembered from Raiders of the Lost Ark the very first time after seeing it.

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10 hours ago, Thekthithm said:

I can't remember a single note from Black Panther other than the bit Silvester quoted in Affinity War.

I remember drums and a fanfare for Wakanda, but the rest was meh. I find Giacchino's scores for Spider-Man more well-rounded and thematically driven.

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36 minutes ago, Arpy said:

I remember drums and a fanfare for Wakanda, but the rest was meh. I find Giacchino's scores for Spider-Man more well-rounded and thematically driven.

 

Those were worse. Not a single note remembered other than the old TV show theme.

 

The only Marvel scores I like are Silvester's, Djawadi's and Doyle's.

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Last week it was an LA Times profile, today it's a New York Times one.

 

image.png

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/arts/music/ludwig-goransson-mandalorian.html

 

It's also another one that doesn't spend much time talking about the actual music.  Just the below grafs.  All these younger composers who grew up with Zimmer.  Everyone gets so precious about their creative process now.

 

Quote

The key to the modern-western sound of “The Mandalorian”? A flute theme that Goransson came up with once Jon Favreau, the show’s creator, shared his vision — which involved a lonesome rider and a samurai inspiration. The series exists in “more of a dystopic part of the ‘Star Wars’ history,” Favreau said, “and technology and deconstruction are themes that we explore.”

 

With that in mind, Goransson locked himself in his studio for a month and intuitively bought a bunch of rarely heard bass woodwind recorders. He started improvising, going into an almost meditative state, he said, creating a sprawling four hours of score that he spent the past year writing and recording with top Hollywood studio musicians.

 

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54 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

a sprawling four hours of score that he spent the past year writing and recording with top Hollywood studio musicians.

 

4 hours of score for an 8 episode series? So, 30 minutes of music per episode?

 

It seems that the show won't be exactly overscored, considering the episodes will be 50 - 60 minutes.

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I was very impressed with the spotting in Creed II--in fact it's one of the best-spotted films I've seen come out in a long time--so I'm hoping to see similar instincts at play with this one. Maybe there's potential for some classic unscored Western gunman drama and visuals!

 

A lot of comments here about his dandiness with the process, but he's a dude who has shown he can deliver a score that both enhances the film and hints of an interesting vocabulary on its  own merits. 

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14 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

 

A lot of comments here about his dandiness with the process, but he's a dude who has shown he can deliver a score that both enhances the film and hints of an interesting vocabulary on its  own merits. 


I agree!  While also enjoying teasing him!  He’s such a prototypical Swedish hippie type, it’s adorable.  If he hadn’t become a media composer he’d have either been a space disco DJ or a black metal guitarist, the kind that obsesses over the “sonic landscape” while the frontman screams away.

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3 hours ago, Disco Stu said:


I agree!  While also enjoying teasing him!  He’s such a prototypical Swedish hippie type, it’s adorable.  If he hadn’t become a media composer he’d have either been a space disco DJ or a black metal guitarist, the kind that obsesses over the “sonic landscape” while the frontman screams away.

 

Genuine question: how would people prefer he talk about it? As someone who groans anytime Zimmer talks about

 

 

THE PROCESS

 

I'm not reading similar vibes from Goransson.

 

30 minutes ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

 

That a technical term?

 

This series was scored by the Borg.

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This just aired on Monday Night Football and it's quite clear that the music at the beginning, made possible by a presumably uncut as-is scene leading into typical trailer footage, is the first we've heard of Goransson's score. I really dig the woodwind sound that we'd heard about and can now hear here. It's very smooth and organic sounding, with an ethnic touch. So while I was intrigued before, this really has my attention now.

 

The action looks great in this by the way.

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30 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

This just aired on Monday Night Football and it's quite clear that the music at the beginning, made possible by a presumably uncut as-is scene leading into typical trailer footage, is the first we've heard of Goransson's score. I really dig the woodwind sound that we'd heard about and can now hear here. It's very smooth and organic sounding, with an ethnic touch. So while I was intrigued before, this really has my attention now.

 

The action looks great in this by the way.

 

Ooh, I hope there's more rough and tumble stuff in this show! Stuff that makes you say "Damn!" Hopefully those moments aren't edited as softly as this scene is shown.

 

Modern directors need to watch Jackie Chan movies for editing action scenes! Burton knew!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I hope that was just trailer music and not actually part of the score. That sounded awful. Not just awful, but legitimately annoying. Like those "braaam"s or goofy noises they have in every scifi trailer ever.

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2 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I hope that was just trailer music and not actually part of the score. That sounded awful. Not just awful, but legitimately annoying. Like those "braaam"s or goofy noises they have in every scifi trailer ever.

 

Which part? The low winds? Or the music where he has the dude tied up?

 

EDIT: I answered my own question watching the clip. I agree with you in that I hope that's  not actual score, but I'm inclined to think it's trailer hype stuff.

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4 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

Which part? The low winds? Or the music where he has the dude tied up?

 

Both. The winds were rather distracting, but perhaps acceptable I suppose if it works with the score. I think it would have worked better if they were mixed a bit lower, or mixed with other elements. I'm pretty sure that music when the quarren gets trapped in the door is just stock music though... hopefully.

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1 minute ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

Both. The winds were rather distracting, but perhaps acceptable I suppose if it works with the score. I think it would have worked better if they were mixed a bit lower, or mixed with other elements. I'm pretty sure that music when the quarren gets trapped in the door is just stock music though... hopefully.

 

I can practically guarantee the winds are part of the score proper, it lines up perfectly with Goransson's comments on the score.

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Yeah, I remember him saying something about some ethnic winds being used for the character. Upon first listening I'm not a fan, but hopefully I'll get used to it upon repeat viewings. Hopefully the score doesn't sound like that all the time.

 

EDIT:

Upon watching the clip a second time and skipping the second half of the trailer with the generic stock crap, it's not as irritating as I though it was. My gripe seems to mostly be how there are no other elements whatsoever. The lack of music in between the winds makes the audio of the sound effects and dialogue sound a bit awkward to me, as if something is missing. It's a bit too loud compared to the dialogue as well. The overall audio mixing seems strange somehow. Hopefully that's just the trailer mix, and the actual show itself sounds better.

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I really like this new trend of releasing music every week for every new episode.

 

For example, a season of a TV show with 8 - 10 episodes, considering 30 minutes of music per episode, we have 240 - 300 minutes of score per season (4h to 5h). So, considering an 70 - 90 minutes OST album, you still will have about 3h of unreleased music.

 

But, with small score releases every episode (even if it's just 15 - 25 minutes of music), the amount of unreleased score for the whole season decreases. 

 

And this is not just mathemathics: one small release per episode allows the music fans analyze more carefully the work the composer has done on each episode, wheter it's an interesting performance of a theme, a bigger orchestra, unusual instruments for the introduction of a character, etc.

 

Of course, if they want to, by the end of every season they can release a more traditional album with the musical highlights. But still, this is a very interesting thing that I hope it will become more common.

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The music may work well within the show but listening to the soundtrack for episode 1 right now, I see no reason to ever listen to this again on its own. It is just not compelling or musically interesting enough to hold my attention in the way that all JW SW music and other non-JW SW music does. So far, I rank this far below Rogue One and even further below Solo.

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It definitely echoed the dreaded "modern film scoring" trend of generic, electronic junk that could be pasted on any modern film and you'd be none the wiser. I expected a much larger orchestral presence from Ludwig, so I'm very disappointed in that sense. It was barely symphonic.

 

All I can say is savour John's upcoming score because Star Wars will never sound as good once those TROS credits finish rolling.

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