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The Rise of Skywalker - COMPLETE SCORE Discussion - SPOILERS ALLOWED!


Jay

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21 minutes ago, Falstaft (hiatus til TROS) said:

Whatever the case, it speaks to the fact this was a heavily edited and continuously reshaped  sequence, something already suspected by many of us.

 

Definitely, judging by the fact that leaks had the Luke/Leia flashback as the opening scene of the film, and the editor's confirmation that the Luke sequence was involved in reshoots.

 

8 hours ago, Tydirium said:

The "Journey to Exegol" version includes Kylo Ren's Theme, while the B-roll footage/"Approaching the Throne" contains a few notes of Anthem of Evil. (Also note that this version is a bit slower than in "Journey to Exegol".) 

 

You're very correct, good pickup.

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46 minutes ago, crumbs said:

It's funny how all 3 trilogies present completely different, nightmarish challenges for a comprehensive expansion.

 

OT: Masters in questionable condition and variable formats which could require extensive remastering, lost/missing elements from ROTJ, different mixes on first two scores and newly recorded music for the SE... but it's a straightforward chronology with few alternates!

PT: A mix of analogue and digital recordings, narrative holes due to excessive tracking, some cues with different mixes between film and album, multiple versions of some cues due to changing edits, plus some overlays used in the film mixes... but not too many alternates and music shouldn't need extensive remastering. 

ST: A hellish mix of revisions/inserts/unused cues, with multiple versions of cues catering to different cuts of each film, making a definitive assembly with a cohesive listening experience almost impossible... but at least everything exists digitally!

 

This is kinda terrifying. You would think one thing advancements in technology do is make it easier to make sense of things.

 

ST is just pure chaos. Like seriously what they hell have they even done with the music. It's like the entire score exists in 5 second increments. 

 

I think the approach to take with the sequel trilogy scores should be that all of the extended cues that Williams recorded during the scoring sessions should be considered the music as intended by the composer - (allowing for alternates etc.) - but it should largely be extended pieces of music as recorded by Williams.

 

The film assembly - with its massacred approach - should be relegated to the film only - an isolated score like TLJ did it. Because the music is other wise un- assemblable.

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On 12/22/2019 at 9:16 PM, crumbs said:

I noticed the recurrence of Finn's Confession for that scene as well, which fits well thematically with that TROS scene (purely quoting the TFA version, because it has no correlation to the equivalent scenes in TPM).

 

It seemed to go off in a new direction though, so presumably a new cue JW wrote for TROS. Probably temp track love.


Sorry to revive this old point but I’ve just seen the movie for the first time and this stuck out at me as one of my favorite moments of score. Temped or not, it is indeed an excellent fit, and makes it something of a “First Order confessions” theme—in TFA out of shame and fear of rejection, and in TROS from a place of soulful bonding and shared identity. The perfect music for a lovely moment.

 

On 1/9/2020 at 7:06 AM, Jay said:

So it's not a Victory theme, more of a final evolve of Rey's Chime motif?

 

On 12/24/2019 at 4:40 AM, aviazn said:

But my first thought was that the ROS theme (the first one in the cue) is a loose development of Rey’s chimes, representing her growth as a character. The way it modulates upward reminds me of how the chimes modulate up in the development section of Rey’s theme. And the placement of this theme at the end of The Rise of Skywalker cue directly echoes the very-similarly orchestrated finales of TFA and TLJ that feature Rey’s chimes. The similarities are not as one-to-one as in, say, the Imperial March and Anakin’s theme, so you could argue it’s just a coincidence. But it’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

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I'm a little annoyed with how Battle of the Resistance begins with what sounds like an embryo of a fun action motif in a similar vein to the action motifs of TPM but doesn't really develop or feature enough in the 2:51 track to standout. It kind of reminds me of Scherzo for X-Wings except that OST track is much more coherent. Feels like a big missed opportunity. 

 

Although I am generally not a fan of reprising set piece music in SW scores as it is terribly overdone at this point, I think a reprise of Scherzo for X-Wings in the final battle in TROS would have been a lot of fun and call to mind the reprise of Here They Come in ROTJ.

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23 minutes ago, artguy360 said:

I'm a little annoyed with how Battle of the Resistance begins with what sounds like an embryo of a fun action motif in a similar vein to the action motifs of TPM but doesn't really develop or feature enough in the 2:51 track to standout.

Yes, it sounded very promising, although I wonder if it was much longer (at least the medley of cues) but JJ wanted to segue into the big rebel fanfare statement as Lando arrives...

 

 

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I thought the motif at beginning of Battle of the Resistance was some sort of extension of the Knights of Ren motif, but maybe I’m wrong

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On 12/10/2019 at 6:51 PM, tmarps said:

 

 

This extract of score we had ages ago is 1:20+ of "Hallway Shooting" track 8

 

 

On 12/10/2019 at 7:10 PM, tmarps said:

 

 This score extract is 0:41+ of Track 11 (The Old Death Star) 

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I get the feeling that the smaller the sound mix is, the more likely the score is actually going to be present in the mix. The speakers at the theater I went to were pretty crappy, but I found that the music jumped out at me a lot of the time. Since some here have mentioned SFX taking over the mix in spots, I get the feeling that's done with the fancier set ups like Atmos to try and emphasize how "immersive" the 7.1 is.

 

As for the score in the film itself, yeah it's been edited to hell. It's only really at the end that I actually heard any of the new stuff. So much of the older themes were prioritized that I'm not particularly surprised when some say that it was completely underwhelming. The OST I found to be far more of an intriguing listen, since I did get to feel more of what Williams was aiming for. The final film edit isn't too bad overall, but there's no real definitive identity I could get from it in a way I feel I could with previous films.

 

As such, I'm much more interested in hearing everything Williams originally wrote instead of a possible isolated score.

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I don't know if it's just me, but He Won't Remember sounds way louder in that clip than any of the music anywhere else in the film when I saw it in theaters. Is it possible that with better speakers/headphones, the score will come out much more once it's available for purchase? It just sounds loud but also nice in that Babu Frik clip.

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Ditto, interesting. Definitely wasn't that loud theatrically.

 

The clips might come from a stereo 2.0 mix prepared for home video, rather than a downmix of the 7.1 mix (where the music can be spread over 7 tracks, probably lowering the overall volume).

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5 hours ago, crumbs said:

Ditto, interesting. Definitely wasn't that loud theatrically.

 

The clips might come from a stereo 2.0 mix prepared for home video, rather than a downmix of the 7.1 mix (where the music can be spread over 7 tracks, probably lowering the overall volume).


Is a stereo 2.0 mix prepared for home video what was made to put on places like YouTube? And then the DVD/Blu-Ray/etc. would have a 7.1 mix? I’m just confused because I thought home video had a 5.1/sometimes 7.1 mix, but I guess what’s sold to consumers must not be called “home video.”

 

I think my biggest issue with the movie was that the speeder chase and Falcon flight scenes (among a few others) sounded like extreme auditory nonsense with all the sound effects, but if it was only like that in the theater—great! I know that it wouldn’t sound exactly the same given the difference in speakers in theaters and whatever I’d be listening to the movie on at home, but the cue in that Babu Frik scene just sounded surprisingly loud.

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15 minutes ago, dylanskie said:

Is a stereo 2.0 mix prepared for home video what was made to put on places like YouTube? And then the DVD/Blu-Ray/etc. would have a 7.1 mix? I’m just confused because I thought home video had a 5.1/sometimes 7.1 mix, but I guess what’s sold to consumers must not be called “home video.”

 

I think my biggest issue with the movie was that the speeder chase and Falcon flight scenes (among a few others) sounded like extreme auditory nonsense with all the sound effects, but if it was only like that in the theater—great! I know that it wouldn’t sound exactly the same given the difference in speakers in theaters and whatever I’d be listening to the movie on at home, but the cue in that Babu Frik scene just sounded surprisingly loud.

 

Home media (DVD/Blu-Ray) releases typically contain multiple audio tracks. All of the recent SW films have had 7.1, 5.1, and stereo mixes.

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6 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

Home media (DVD/Blu-Ray) releases typically contain multiple audio tracks. All of the recent SW films have had 7.1, 5.1, and stereo mixes.


Thanks for clearing that up. I didn’t know that the recent SW films have sometimes had stereo mixes—I thought they were always in 5.1/7.1 as long as they were newer. I understand what crumbs was saying now

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On 1/18/2020 at 1:44 AM, dylanskie said:


Thanks for clearing that up. I didn’t know that the recent SW films have sometimes had stereo mixes—I thought they were always in 5.1/7.1 as long as they were newer. I understand what crumbs was saying now

 

I think I looked for stereo mixes in the Blu ray options and it wasn't in English or something like that

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Is it just me, or is it odd that no sheet music has been released for TROS yet? No easy piano and piano solo books yet, as far as I know. Don't know how long these usually take, but other films with roughly the same release date already have sheet music published, eg. Frozen 2, Cats.

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1 hour ago, carlborg said:

Is it just me, or is it odd that no sheet music has been released for TROS yet? No easy piano and piano solo books yet, as far as I know. Don't know how long these usually take, but other films with roughly the same release date already have sheet music published, eg. Frozen 2, Cats.

I was curious about that as well. If memory serves, both TFA and TLJ had their piano sheet music published within a week or so of the theatrical release.

 

|| Warning || entering tin-foil hat territory... ||

 

I've been thinking about a few interesting & at first seemingly unrelated features of the TROS soundtrack/score/production (forgive me if someone has already leaped to these conclusions). 

  • Delay of sheet music publication.
  • Inclusion of The Imperial March in a prominent position in the End Credits suite.
  • Relatively minimal screentime of the highly publicized Sith Troopers in the theatrical cut.
  • Repeated inclusion of unknown minor march in promotional material, at first in the Anthony Daniels TotalFilm tweets, then rather conspicuously at the start of the livestream of the premiere (to my ear & taste, I would've sworn this was a new Williams work and concert suite from the upcoming score). 

Given the above, is it too wild to speculate that JW composed a theme for these Sith Troopers, but developments in the film's edit led to it being cut out entirely? Rolling with this idea a bit, the 3 or 4 brief shots in which the troopers appear all happen while other thematic material is already underway - it seems plausible to me that those short moments wouldn't include quotes of those themes and so the idea would then be left absent entirely (this is not even to grapple with the liberal repositioning of cues in the final cut).

 

Looking at a somewhat similar situation - the score to TFA and John's motif for the First Order - with the score to Hux's speech dialed out (along with perhaps other edits), there are to my count only 2-3 appearances of the theme (as the shuttle takes Poe to the star destroyer, as the resistance discuss their battle plans, and as the x-wings come out of hyperspace for the bombing run). The motif was effectively held back from a place of prominence in the final cut and not surprisingly left completely out of the set of ongoing themes going forward in the trilogy.

 

For the sake of argument (and again, please forgive the theorizing), let's say this is what happened - a removed March of the Sith Troopers.  For me, the above peculiarities start to fit together. With the theme making zero appearances in the final cut, JW pulls it from the soundtrack and from the other key spot where he features his new concert suite material - the end credits. The new theme is replaced with The Imperial March there (the motif of which at least appears several times in the score).

 

Continuing with all this speculation, whenever this change was made it was soon enough to hit the release window for the digital and physical versions of the soundtrack. But is it possible that the sheet music publication had to operate within a different window and Hal Leonard weren't able to correct the physical books in time? We already know that the Art of TROS book as well as the novelization have both been delayed (along with the sheet music, much later than the releases for TFA and TLJ). 

 

Take this all in the spirit of wild conjecture :) Looking forward to the piano arrangements, and hopefully the Signature Edition concert score for 'The Rise of Skywalker' whenever it is they're eventually published. 

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1 hour ago, carlborg said:

Is it just me, or is it odd that no sheet music has been released for TROS yet? No easy piano and piano solo books yet, as far as I know. Don't know how long these usually take, but other films with roughly the same release date already have sheet music published, eg. Frozen 2, Cats.


I’ve been checking for sheet music daily. Today I found this. It’s the only thing I could find, not even Hal Leonard’s site have it listed, but allegedly it’ll be out on the first of Feb. No cue listings as of yet.

 

Strange that it’s taken this long, TLJ’s piano arrangements were available around Christmas in 2017.

 

As for the theory of a lost Sith Trooper March.. I’m not convinced. I don’t think that track is Williams, nor did I think so when we first heard it.

 

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7 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:


I’ve been checking for sheet music daily. Today I found this. It’s the only thing I could find, not even Hal Leonard’s site have it listed, but allegedly it’ll be out on the first of Feb. No cue listings as of yet.

 

Strange that it’s taken this long, TLJ’s piano arrangements were available around Christmas in 2017.

 

As for the theory of a lost Sith Trooper March.. I’m not convinced. I don’t think that track is Williams, nor did I think so when we first heard it.

 

Book Depository is normally very reliable for such pre-orders so it seems we finally have confirmation for something.

Two weeks ago I sent an email to Hal Leonard asking for an estimated publication date for TROS Signature Edition, and they said it wasn't even slotted for production on their production list yet :heartbreak:

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Maybe John was just exhausted by the end of the sessions and sheet music was the least of his priorities? The sessions ran late and the album went down to the wire, so he probably hasn't had the chance to think about it.

 

Maybe he wants to write some other concert suites that he never got the chance to do during the sessions? After all, he wrote Adagio and The Jedi Steps after TFA was finished, then Han Solo and the Princess after TLJ.

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17 hours ago, martybmusic said:

We already know that the Art of TROS book as well as the novelization have both been delayed (along with the sheet music, much later than the releases for TFA and TLJ).

 

Actually, the novelization release schedule was the same for TLJ (and Solo).

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1 hour ago, Pellaeon said:

 

Actually, the novelization release schedule was the same for TLJ (and Solo).

Thanks for the clarification. I had recalled reading that the novelization was delayed, but revisiting that info today it looks like it was pushed roughly 2 weeks (March 3rd to March 17th), nothing quite so major.

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18 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

Strange that it’s taken this long, TLJ’s piano arrangements were available around Christmas in 2017.


TLJ was recorded by far the earliest of the sequel trilogy, though. Everything was wrapped up by Spring 2017, so plenty of lead time for the piano versions.

 

Anyone recall when the TFA arrangements came out? That’d be a better reference.

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11 hours ago, crumbs said:

After all, he wrote Adagio and The Jedi Steps after TFA was finished, then Han Solo and the Princess after TLJ.

 

I get the sense he did not have it in mind to write Jedi Steps and Adagio concert suites at the time of the scoring sessions. I think he was encouraged to do so only after the release of the film.

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3 hours ago, BrotherSound said:

Anyone recall when the TFA arrangements came out? That’d be a better reference.

 

Tried looking up on the Hal Leonard website, but no publication dates displayed.

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It may have been available slightly sooner, but found my order of a few of the individual pieces (digitally) via sheet

 

musicdirect. It’s dated Dec 29, 2015. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

image.jpeg


The physical books may have been available slightly later than that date, but if memory serves I recall seeing them in stock at a local music shop before the end of the year. 

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2 minutes ago, Demodex said:

 

If I Google "John Williams Adagio" I don't get anything Star Wars related. What is it?

 

It's a concert version of the Starkiller cue from TFA

 

 

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23 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

 

Is the evidence conclusive?

 

I will tell you why I ask - I don't think it is a good concert suite. It is meandering and dissipates the drama of the melody. After the big buildup for the 3 biggest statement of the theme - it stops dead and goes into meandering underscore like material.

 

And secondly, you could argue the original version - even if it is a film cue, is already a concert version. It is big bold and dramatic, with an entry point and then 3 increasingly dramatic presentations of the full theme - capped off by a rendition of the force theme.

 

So honestly, I don't think an expanded suite was needed at all and the expanded suite adds nothing to the theme.

 

--

 

I say this because this is a quality which is found in concert suites which are written after the actual score has been written.

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Just an aside: Adagio was written specifically for a March 2018 performance, as we learned here.

 

As for Jedi Steps, well, the published suite has separate “Jedi Steps” and “Jedi Steps and Finale” movements; if we saw them both listed in the catalog in 2015, then it seems to me a stretch to guess that it could have been different then than how it eventually came to be published.

 

FWIW, I really like the concert version. I agree the film version is perfect, but, it’s nice to give the theme a little development. Interesting to hear this bit quoted:

 

 

 

Then at the end of the piece there’s a lot of nice time spent with the Darth Vader progression.

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