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James Newton Howard - Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)


Edmilson

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The part on Brothers and Sisters that goes from 2:30 to about 3:10 is played twice in the movie. In both scenes, characters are reflecting about losing their loved ones to the Druun. Maybe it was tracked from one scene to another, but I'm not sure. In any case, it's a minor and pretty motif for the movie.

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I got to watch the movie yesterday and I quite liked it. It was fun and visually stunning and I think the music worked perfectly with it, and when it got to shine on its own, it is really good, like the Running on Raindrops scene or the emotional climax of the movie.

 

My only problem is that I wish it had a couple of motifs for each of the tribes, and apparently only Talon gets a motif (well, more a distinct type of instrumentation), also associated with the baby thief and the monkey-like creatures. You can hear it in Journey to Talon, Escape from Talon, Noi and the Onguis and also during Plans of Attack.

 

Apart from that, I only caught two themes, the main theme (Sisu's theme?), and then a more emotional theme. And then I think there a re a couple of recurring motifs that don't seem to have any bigger significance, like the action segments in Betrayed and in Storming Fang.

 

The second half of Betrayed is classic Howard and I love it.

 

BTW, is the album chronological? From what I remember more or less it is, but maybe some cues in the middle section are out of order.

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You are right I have been sampling the album and there are indeed only 2 important themes - Sisu's and the emotional theme - let's call it the Trust theme as someone above called it.

 

Seems to be a slightly underpowered in terms of themes compared to say Fantastic Beasts but this is still a well done score.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've actually whittled this down to a pretty good 47-minute playlist. For now, I've just removed some tracks (mostly the non-descript or overly mickey-mousey affairs, or tracks with a radically different style that breaks up the magical/world music vibes), but at some point, I might try to shuffle the tracks around a bit to allow for even better flow.

 

Here's the playlisted version, if you're interested:

 

http://celluloidtunes.no/_oldsite/non-website/raya.jpg

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That's actually very close to what I had at one point - primarily losing the mickey-mousing tracks in the middle.

 

I eventually put them back in anyway, as even those tracks have their moments, and the album seemed to work relatively well.

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On the interview he did for Burlingame's podcast, JNH said that, due to COVID, they had to record with about 40 musicians, a smaller orchestra that what would've been the ideal for a blockbuster. So, to make the orchestra sound bigger, they recorded the same 40 musicians twice, and then the sound engineers made it sound like an 80-piece orchestra.

 

He also said that strings, woodwinds and brass were recorded separetly, and that no one wanted to be close to the brass musicians because thet can spit coronavirus-infected saliva :lol:

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8 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

On the interview he did for Burlingame's podcast, JNH said that, due to COVID, they had to record with about 40 musicians, a smaller orchestra that what would've been the ideal for a blockbuster. So, to make the orchestra sound bigger, they recorded the same 40 musicians twice, and then the sound engineers made it sound like an 80-piece orchestra.

 

Interesting!

 

8 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

He also said that strings, woodwinds and brass were recorded separetly, and that no one wanted to be close to the brass musicians because thet can spit coronavirus-infected saliva :lol:

 

lol

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