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What composers and which scores kicked off your love for the soundtracks?


mxsch

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Mine introduction to film music was with this three works:

Batman 1989 by Danny Elfman

Phantom Menace by JW

And first Avengers by Silvestri.

I was about 10-11 years old when I've began understanding that I love movie scores, but I'm really rediscovered this thing only in 2019

And what in particular made you being fan of film music?

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My first three soundtrack albums were (if I remember correctly) 

1. The Empire Strikes Back - John Williams 

2. The Black Hole - John Barry

3. Clash of the Titans - Laurence Rosenthal

 

Next was Superman II, I think.

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Pretty much all of the scores from Zimmer's "epic" era, from The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt in 98 to At World's End in 2007. I listened a lot to stuff like DaVinci Code, Pearl Harbor, King Arthur and Gladiator, but my absolute favorite was The Last Samurai. 

 

My love for James Horner's music started when I watched A Beautiful Mind in cable TV as a teen. The love theme was profoundly moving for me.

 

From there I went to JNH, Williams, Elfman, Silvestri and finally Goldsmith. I remember listening to Total Recall and Star Trek: The Motion Picture by late 2011/early 2012. It was amazing.

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16 minutes ago, Jay said:

Star Wars

I wonder how many people got hooked in the scores by SW.

Just now, Edmilson said:

Pretty much all of the scores from Zimmer's "epic" era, from The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt in 98 to At World's End in 2007. I listened a lot to stuff like DaVinci Code, Pearl Harbor, King Arthur and Gladiator, but my absolute favorite was The Last Samurai. 

 

My love for James Horner's music started when I watched A Beautiful Mind in cable TV as a teen. The love theme was profoundly moving for me.

 

From there I went to JNH, Williams, Elfman, Silvestri and finally Goldsmith. I remember listening to Total Recall and Star Trek: The Motion Picture by late 2011/early 2012. It was amazing.

I was a fun of Zimmer back then. But now his is too much simple and repetitive to me.

Same shit with every Remote Control guy, they really ruined movie music with all this pastiche and dumb loud-epic-blockbuster sound.

But I'm not against old Zimmer scores even now, like Lion King, the Rock, Peacemaker and e.t.c.

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We had the first Star Tracks album around the house. I liked all the music, but I especially liked the Star Wars main title and The Bicycle Chase from E.T.

 

As time passed, I saw the Star Wars OT and fell in love with the films. A friend had the ANH soundtrack and I realized I really liked hearing the music on its own.

 

Saw more movies, realized John Williams wrote some of the best music, bought more albums, branched out, etc., etc. Fairly standard film score fan origin story.

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Potter 1

LotR 1

Gladiator

 

I still have a CD I burned with the various mp3s I had in 2003, which was not long after my film music infancy was born. It has tracks from the Jurassics/Mummies, and lots of other stuff that would've come out around the millennium.

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For me, I would fast-forward my E.T. video tape just to hear the end credits. Instictively I thought "Now this is inspired music." The buildup from 1:15-1:36 I later learned was the quintessential Hollywood structure developed by Bernard Herrmann.

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My earliest memories of starting to like film music:

- The Wizard of Oz, specifically The Wicked Witch of the West's Theme

- The Imperial March

 - Jurassic Park 

 

However, my entry into liking soundtracks started with The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time back in 1999/2000. Ironically, as much as that was influential in determining the tastes of music to come, I don't own or listen to that anymore.

 

My first soundtrack CD was a gift - it was either The Phantom Menace or The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

 

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I can't know these things for sure, as my memory is fussy on the area (it's more than 30 years ago, after all), but I tend to credit these three:

 

TWIN PEAKS as the first exposure/the first score soundtrack (ca. 1990/1991), THE ABYSS as the true kick-off point and then JURASSIC PARK as the "cementation" of the interest.

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10 hours ago, Bespin said:

Maurice Jarre - Ghost OST

 

Ok Let's be serious.

 

I'm 46 yo.

 

The First film music LP I bought (and the only one, because in 1989 LPs were already in decline):

 

Danny Elfman - Batman (1989)

R-426722-1498247713-4076.jpeg.jpg

 

The very first film music CD I bought:


John Williams Conducts John Williams - The Star Wars Trilogy (1990)

R-10302037-1494951555-7897.jpeg.jpg

 

Then I joined The Columbia Club, and ordered this CD in priority:

 

John Williams / The London Symphony Orchestra – The Empire Strikes Back (1985)
R-10536519-1499444507-4835.jpeg.jpg

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4 minutes ago, Bespin said:

Ok Let's be serious.

 

I'm 46 yo.

 

The First movie music LP I bought (and the only one, because in 1989 LPs were already in decline):

 

Danny Elfman - Batman (1989)

R-426722-1498247713-4076.jpeg.jpg

At least I am not the only one who at least started collecting soundtracks before the CD age.

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The first scores I got into were video game scores. The first VG score I listened to outside of the game was Troel Brun Folmann's score to Tomb Raider Anniversary.

 

My love for film music was "kicked off" slightly later, when I stumbled upon a Youtube video of Up is Down by Hans Zimmer.

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2 minutes ago, Loert said:

The first scores I got into were video game scores. The first VG score I listened to outside of the game was Troel Brun Folmann's score to Tomb Raider Anniversary.

 

My love for film music was "kicked off" slightly later, when I stumbled upon a Youtube video of Up is Down by Hans Zimmer.


I adore the score to Tomb Raider Legend. Probably my favourite era of Tomb Raider to boot 

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Homeward Bound probably planted the seeds, but Star Wars was likely the real deal. HP came later, I definitely remember being too scared to watch past a minute of the first one when it was first on TV - after I'd already read it. E.T. was a bit later too. Morricone's Occhio Alla Penna is the one I remember recording on my flipphone for a ringtone.

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3 minutes ago, Holko said:

Morricone's Occhio Alla Penna is the one I remember recording on my flipphone for a ringtone.


I can remember programming the Imperial March on my Nokia 3410 back in the day!

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I didn't purchased many JW's CD, I mean at the exact time they were released.  Jurassic Park, Schindler's List... Then in 1996, I bought the E.T. remastered score.

 

God, I was furious that it didn't contain the "Over The Moon" piano track. I didn't understand at all why!!!

 

Then I opened the Pandora box and discovered the complexity of John Williams's discography... It took me 9 years to find enough courage (and ressources!) to go with my own website!

 

Hey, BTW I have a website, don't you know??? :lol:

http://www.goplanete.com/johnwilliams/music/disco/albums.htm

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1 minute ago, Bespin said:

I didn't purchased many JW's CD, I mean at the exact time they were released.  Jurassic Park, Schindler's List... Then in 1996, I bought the E.T. remastered score.

 

God, I was furious that it didn't contain the "Over The Moon" piano track. I didn't understand at all why!!!

 

Then I opened the Pandora box and discovered the complexity of John Williams's discography... It took me 9 years to find enough courage (and ressources!) to go with my own website!

 

Hey I have a website, don't you know??? :lol:

http://www.goplanete.com/johnwilliams/music/disco/albums.htm


Wait. You mean there’s an online JW discography?!?

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So original... :P Well we already know all the scores which "created" the newest generations of JWfan:

 

  • Jurassic Park
  • Schinder's List
  • The Phantom Menace
  • Harry Potter (ah... the most despicable batch!) :lol:
  • The Force Awakens
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1 minute ago, Bespin said:

So original... :P Well we already know all the scores which "created" the newest generations of JWfan:

 

  • Jurassic Park
  • Schinder's List
  • The Phantom Menace
  • Harry Potter (ah... the most despicable batch!) :lol:
  • The Force Awakens


 

I would say anything associated with the ST is the worst! 

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Might as well list the films in order:

Danny Elfman's Spider-Man 1 and 2 (plus Young's SM3 of course), Harry Potter, Star Wars, Transformers 1 (strangely), The Lion King, and finally Lord of the Rings is the trilogy that got me completely hooked on film scores and composing in general. 

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The first soundtrack CDs I bought because I wanted to listen to the score after watching the movie were Back to the Future 2, Horner's Grinch, and HP1

 

LOTR a little later. Also just generally noticed a lot of Williams, Horner, and Elfman. And Wizard of Oz/Disney when I was really little.

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Total Recall, Jerry Goldsmith

Chariots Of Fire, Vangelis (just because I think it's the first soundtrack album that I remember my dad playing, even though it's not my favorite Vangelis score)

A.I. & Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, John Williams

The Fugitive, James Newton Howard

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It was probably Elfman that kickstarted the whole obsession for me. Particularly Beetlejuice (main titles), Batman, and Batman Returns. Before these movies, I’d perk up to catchy or harmonically sumptuous music but not bother paying attention to who wrote it.
 

 

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5 hours ago, Thor said:

I can't know these things for sure, as my memory is fussy on the area (it's more than 30 years ago, after all), but I tend to credit these three:

 

TWIN PEAKS as the first exposure/the first score soundtrack (ca. 1990/1991), THE ABYSS as the true kick-off point and then JURASSIC PARK as the "cementation" of the interest.

 

I would like to add to my previous post that I actually bought a soundtrack CD before I was interested in soundtracks. THE COMMITMENTS was my first-ever soundtrack on CD, and one of my first 2-3 CDs in general, and although I did own TWIN PEAKS on a copied cassette at that time, my interest in instrumental film music wasn't really born yet. 

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Probably Battlestar Galactica... on 8 Track.

 

Our family already had Star Wars on the same format, but it was just my love of Star Wars and everything about it (at 5 years old) that made it appealing.

 

But once Stu Phillips' wonderful Galactica score followed, it was then that I realized that soundtracks were more than just for Star Wars.

 

So, Star Wars was like the first of 2 Covid shots, and Battlestar Galactica sort of made it official, and kicked off my love for soundtracks.

 

My local library was a great place to take home scratched up LPs, and I actually listened to Ken Thorne's adaptations for Superman II much more than Williams' own Superman double LP, simply because Williams' original was probably 'checked out' more often.

 

I'd say my love for Williams became clear between renting the super 8 mm excerpts of Jaws and seeing his name in the credits of the ABC Television premiere of Superman and Jaws 2 that I realized Williams was my number one.  That and my LPs of E.T. (Picture Disc) and Raiders that my wonderful grandmother got me for Christmas, and the superb double Empire LP my stoner cousin got me.

 

The library's copy of Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan got me into James Horner.

 

I didn't discover Jerry Goldsmith until about 1984 or so, when I would listen to Twilight Zone - the Movie on Showtime, which was scrambled on our cable, but I could still hear the amazing music.  That was the first soundtrack cassette and first Jerry Goldsmith I bought.  Gremlins and especially Explorers a year later sealed Goldsmith's status as my second favorite.  Only later did I realize he was the force behind the magnificent Star Trek The Motion Picture score, whose music I recalled for years despite not having seen the film since its theatrical run.

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First score I ever bought was Jurassic Park, way back in the cassette days. And being an 80's kid, Williams was definitely the most impactful in my early years. There were a few others here and there over the next decade or so. Goldsmith's Rudy probably had the most impact during that time.

 

Can't say I was much of a film score guy until around 2013 though, which is when I discovered the boutique labels like La La Land and Intrada when I visited the Screen Archives website to buy a Twilight Time movie. It wasn't the big, mainstream scores that fascinated me, since I already had those. It was discovering soundtracks to little movies who's music I always liked. Scores for movies like The Boy Who Could Fly, A Walk In The Clouds, or Peggy Sue Got Married. Bought a bunch, and discovered I greatly preferred film scores to other music when doing any sort of creative work. So it really wasn't one score in particular that did it for me. More of a gradual thing.

 

That was also the first year I attended the annual John Williams concert at The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Which I know was a major influence.

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