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Expansion fans: Do you listen 'from start to finish' or 'piecemeal'?


Thor

Do you listen to expanded releases piecemeal or from start-to-finish?  

47 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you listen to expanded releases piecemeal or from start-to-finish?

    • Always piecemeal
      2
    • Always start-to-finish
      6
    • It varies, but most often piecemeal
      15
    • It varies, but most often start-to-finish
      24


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Thanks Bruce, now next time just put the words someone else said either inside a quote box (hit the image.png icon and then paste the text inside the box that pops up) or at least put it inside normal "" marks you type yourself. so there's no confusion over what words are yours and what words you are quoting.  Thanks!

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45 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

Things can be rearranged a bit if it sounds better, but it should never come at the cost of leaving something off.

Yeah, as long as it's in the ballpark of For Mina and Grave Trampling/The Asylum from the Varese Dracula, or including the original more fitting "Leaving Home" in the main film program while putting the less fitting film version in the bonus section for The River, sure, why not.

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On 9/16/2020 at 6:52 AM, bruce marshall said:

There are definitely projects where I now feel I should have diverted from chronology in just a few spots for listening purposes. As long as all the cues are included, I think that listeners appreciate when adjustments make sense for the musical experience. If you just line up cues in order, then you’re making a museum piece, not an album.

 

I have begun to sense lately that there is a greater interest in having a good listening experience rather than just collecting an inventory of cues.

When I criticized the U.S. Marshals expansion for being that kind of museum piece with no sense for actual listening purposes, no one (on the FSM forum) could understand my point.

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It quickly veered into general expansion talk, though, which was not my intention in this particular instance. My initial query (of which I'm still curious, btw) disappeared at some point. Still, quite a few voted in the poll, which garnered some interesting responses.

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7 minutes ago, Thor said:

It quickly veered into general expansion talk, though, which was not my intention in this particular instance. My initial query (of which I'm still curious, btw) disappeared at some point. Still, quite a few voted in the poll, which garnered some interesting responses.

 

You should write an article on the topic at Celluloidtunes.

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

You should write an article on the topic at Celluloidtunes.

 

He, he. Not on this topic, especially, but I have planned an article on the general C&C issue (or rather an "ode" to the lost artform of album creation), which I can then use as a reference every time the topic pops up.

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Thought of this thread when listening to The Big Doors and The Great Hall Ceiling from Prisoner of Azkaban, lamenting how well the OST works in seguing into Rainy Nights - after all these years it just... fits. So perhaps my eschewing of the OST artform was a bit heavy. 

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On 8/28/2020 at 2:08 PM, bruce marshall said:

Goldsmith fanatics listen to all three discs of ST:TMP - even the blaster beam tests- in one sitting!

😎

 

I recreated the 1999 programme with my favorite takes/mixes from the La-La Land release(s):

 

01 3-01 Overture [long version] 2:50
02 1-02 Main Title/Klingon Battle 7:01
03 1-03 Total Logic 3:54
04 1-04 Floating Office 1:08
05 1-05 The Enterprise 6:02
06 1-08 Leaving Drydock 3:32
07 1-11 Spock’s Arrival 2:03
08 1-14 The Cloud 5:05
09 1-15 V’Ger Flyover 5:01
10 1-16 The Force Field 5:07
11 1-18 Games/Spock Walk 9:51
12 x-xx Inner Workings (alternate mix) (4:03)
13 2-01 V’Ger Speaks 4:04
14 3-14 The Meld [film version] 3:16
15 3-15 A Good Start [discrete] 2:27
16 2-03 End Title 3:16

----
70:40


Inner Workings (“featuring the wind machine more prominently”) is from the 50th Anniversary Collection, Disc 1, Track 55.

 

I did this in order to have a go-to listening experience for when I just want to pop in a CD and let it run from start to finish, and have a satisfactory experience in a reasonable amount of time. The LLL Film Score presentation is frankly too long, and the 1978 Album is too bare bones, jumps around too much, and I don’t like the mix.

 

There is a lot of GREAT stuff in the set, though, really too much to name, and I will reach for one of the actual discs as often as for my CD-R. But yeah, there’s no listening to it all through, Discs 1+2+3!

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Again I will say

 

On 8/28/2020 at 8:49 AM, Jay said:

I listen to the main program, from start to finish.


The bonus tracks are bonuses.  I listen to them once in a blue moon

 

And again point out this is not reflected in the poll, so I can't vote in it

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13 hours ago, Thor said:

It quickly veered into general expansion talk, though, which was not my intention in this particular instance. My initial query (of which I'm still curious, btw) disappeared at some point. Still, quite a few voted in the poll, which garnered some interesting responses.

Almost forgot to answer that question. I voted "It varies, but most often start-to-finish" and although that is normally the case there are many ways I can listen to C&Cs, depending on the nature of the score:

 

A) Some scores are varied, constantly interesting and at the same time short enough to just listen to every cue in one sitting - e.g. The Wind and the Lion, Empire of the Sun or Poltergeist - these examples all have the lenght of a generous OST, they have really no noticable portions of dull underscore and the pacing and musical development is naturally given.

B) Other kinds of scores do not lack the measure of variety and constant musical merit, but they might be just too long to listen to them from start to finish - e.g. The Lost World or The Empire Strikes Back - it isn't exactly a great act to find a narratively reasonable point to cut the C&C program in half, so I often do that with these kinds of scores. In some cases, the creators of the C&C releases already split the program, so that it makes sense.

C) On the other hand, there are many scores that partially consist of hot air and just need a few cues of tracks thrown over board - e.g. Masada, Deep Rising, 1941 or Powder - that's either because the C&C program has too many super short, irrelevant cues (the first two examples) or because it gets very redundant after a while (the last two examples). So I normally have a Windows Media playlist that excludes a number of short or uninteresting tracks or I even create an alternate OST program editorially, combining multiple cues to get a good pacing that the C&C program couldn't deliever.

 

There's a special case in which, when I find that the OST of a score doesn't represent the tone of the score properly, I created an alternate OST program for, such as The Ghost and the Darkness and The Prisoner of Azkaban. I mostly listen top the C&C program of these two, but I gave the alternate OST to some friends, because I didn't want them to get to know the score in the form of the lighthearted commercial representation.

 

In the end, at least for me, it depends from case to case in which form I use to listen to a certain score. I'm not always for the C&C and I'm not always for the OST, sometimes I think that neither of these two options can live up to the true potential of a score, so I try to create a better program. However, the problem of this kind of music is that there is no definitive way of listening to it outside the movie.

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It's a strange phenomenon when the tracks or cues people most want are often omitted by the composer. It's a persistent thing that continually annoys me, and one of the reasons why I covet expanded scores over their OST counterparts.

 

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10 minutes ago, Arpy said:

It's a strange phenomenon when the tracks or cues people most want are often omitted by the composer. It's a persistent thing that continually annoys me, and one of the reasons why I covet expanded scores over their OST counterparts.

 

Yeah.

It was really prevalent during the LP days.

Not as bad now, but it still happens.

Just now, bruce marshall said:

Yeah.

It was really prevalent during the LP days.

Not as bad now, but it still happens.

 

I will bump this thread when the FOUR EFFIN CD release of ROBIN HOOD comes out! 😆

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