Hey Everyone. For a nice change of pace over the ubiquitous symphonic Korngoldian film scores, or the incessant noise of Media Ventures, check out Michael GIacchino's score to Brad Bird's The Incredibles. Yes, it is reminiscent of '60's John Barry but it's an oversimplification to pass it off as a second-hand knock off. Giacchino infuses the score with some other staples of '60's and '70's scoring such as unison flutes played in their lower register, odd-meter rhythms, actual dynamic drumming (not that simplified garbage from contemporary pop music), sambas/mambas, some nice jazz harmonic extensions, some great instrumental ornamentations, ah heck, just check it out. And one thing that really works well is the orchestration. It's not a wall of sound. There's a real economy in the counterpoint and as such, it makes for a great listening experience even without having seen the film (although I've seen it more than a few times so I'm biased).
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check out Michael Giacchino's INCREDIBLES score
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If you read my post on Film Score Monthly forum you'll see I started a thread of praise there calling it the BEST DERIVATIVE SCORE EVER! And that was a major compliment. I listened to the whole thing TWICE today already. it's huge in my house right now!
Love it!
10% Mancini
35% Bond
35% Schifrin
15% Williams
5% Sinatra!
Evan Evans
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If you read my post on Film Score Monthly forum you'll see I started a thread of praise there calling it the BEST DERIVATIVE SCORE EVER! And that was a major compliment. I listened to the whole thing TWICE today already. it's huge in my house right now!
Love it!
10% Mancini
35% Bond
35% Schifrin
15% Williams
5% Sinatra!
Evan Evans
Yeah, I do recall reading that post. Apart from Yared's Troy score (which still floors me even after doing a lengthy analysis of the music for FSM) Giacchino's Incredibles is my favorite score of the year.
Did you get that "Green Hornet" reference in "100 Mile Dash"? Love the frantic double-tonging in the trumpets!
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Or you could say it's 100% Giacchino...channeling all those influences but making the score his own. That's my spin.
Either way, it sure is masterfully done. And just plain fun to listen to!
Fred Story
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Yeah, there is very little personal voice present. But it's still the best score of the year. Proving that originality is not always important. That's an especially hard one for composer's to swallow, so I don't expect you to understand William. But maybe you can back up and see that "best score" doesn't always have to be the most musical nor the most original.
Evan Evans
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Yeah, there is very little personal voice present. But it's still the best score of the year. Proving that originality is not always important. That's an especially hard one for composer's to swallow, so I don't expect you to understand William. But maybe you can back up and see that "best score" doesn't always have to be the most musical nor the most original.
Evan Evans
How true. The Golden GLobes were announced today and boy do the Best Score nominees underwhelm me. Other than Shore's The Aviator, I think the voters are totally out to lunch. How Hans "what's contrapuntal writing mean?" Zimmer can be nominated and Giacchino's superb music passed over is beyond me. Really, what kind of message is this sending out to young aspiring composers? "Hey, just get a bunch of great sample libraries and play everything at the keyboard and you too can sound just like ZImmer and his homophonic buddies at Media Ventures".
The really funny thing is that if one visits Northern Sounds forum, you'll see plenty of people bitching about how EWQLSO Gold doesn't sound realistic or whatever. Wa wa wa. If any of these people actually 1/ studied orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, and 2/worked with the resources they have, they'd find they have a lot to work with.
I guess VSL doesn't get as many neophytes largely due to its price point and complexity. Considering that one has to invest in a sampler player like GS3, Kotankt or HALion on top of the library itself, it would seem to preclude those who like to mess around with orchestral sounds for fun on the odd occasion...
Sorry for the rant folks...got waaaay off topic there.
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"Hey, just get a bunch of great sample libraries and play everything at the keyboard and you too can sound just like ZImmer and his homophonic buddies at Media Ventures".
LOL!
I thought you said HOMOPHOBIC!
LOL!
Evan Evans
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The really funny thing is that if one visits Northern Sounds forum, you'll see plenty of people bitching about how EWQLSO Gold doesn't sound realistic or whatever. Wa wa wa. If any of these people actually 1/ studied orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, and 2/worked with the resources they have, they'd find they have a lot to work with.
yeah, check out my score to HUNTING HUMANS. It was done with around 150MB of RAM, two samplers, and teh Miroslav Vitous sounds about 5 years ago.
http://www.cafepress.com/evanevans.11301825
Evan Evans
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The really funny thing is that if one visits Northern Sounds forum, you'll see plenty of people bitching about how EWQLSO Gold doesn't sound realistic or whatever. Wa wa wa. If any of these people actually 1/ studied orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, and 2/worked with the resources they have, they'd find they have a lot to work with.
yeah, check out my score to HUNTING HUMANS. It was done with around 150MB of RAM, two samplers, and teh Miroslav Vitous sounds about 5 years ago.
http://www.cafepress.com/evanevans.11301825
Evan Evans
Yes, exactly. Some really nice writing although harder to appreciate given the bandwidth of the examples. But I totally see your point. I was doinf full orchestral sketches on a Proteus 2 and U-20 back in the early '90's and they sounded all right. It's just a matter of to the strengths of your palette. If you have a bad sample, don't use it.
This was the case in the EWQLSO Christmas competition. I had an old piece that I adapted for the SIlver Edition entry but found that the oboe was less than ideal (it goes flat which sounds....well blechy). So I substituted it with a bassoon and transposed the line down the octave. Surprisingly, it worked even better because of the harp/glockenspeil/flutes going on in the upper register.
Being limited to a single sound library is actually kind of liberating as the composer is then forced to solve his/her problems compositionally and orchestrationally (if that's a word).
As for William's response to Evan's claim. Well, if you have written for film, you know that temp tracks make writing a completely original score almost impossible. Remember, the composer is employed by the director/producers. They want a certain product, not necessarily a mind-bending original piece. And honestly, what is truly original these days? Given our 12 tone equal tempered system, there are only so many permutations that we can eke out of it. And listen to the mess music ended up in with modernism. Not that I'm knocking it. I really dig Varese, Ligeti, Cage, Crumb, Xenakis, etc. But music moved away from its visceral sphere of influence to a cerebral region that alienated much of the concert going patrons. Not that I believe in catering to the mindless masses either.
This is an expansive issue and one that cannot be solved in the span of a single post. Varying perspectives are needed and wanted to wring this topic out.
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Originality does not have to be completely unknown new kinds of sound. Schonberg himself stated that there was much music to be written in the key of C major. In fact, mathematically speaking, the number of permutations with even classical tonality (let alone romantic or post romantic or even early modern) is nearly infinite. A similar misconception to the oft-repeated cliche of monkeys at a typewriter typing eventually the complete works of Shakespeare. Believe it or not, someone calculated the numbers on this, and determined it would take almost infinitely longer than the projected age of the universe to do this. Musical permutations are just as complex.
On the other hand, somebody who assembles music from various actual sources - like James Horner with his ransacking of classical music - or apparently this person (whom I have never heard anything from) does from film music sources - is completely devoid of originality. The most original film composer of all time is probably Herrmann, but his music is heavily influenced by Holst, Rachmaninoff, Vaughn Williams and Wagner. So the assumption that I am asking for shocking new things every second is not at all what I meant.
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@William said:
Originality does not have to be completely unknown new kinds of sound.
On the other hand, somebody who assembles music from various actual sources - like James Horner with his ransacking of classical music - or apparently this person (whom I have never heard anything from) does from film music sources - is completely devoid of originality. The most original film composer of all time is probably Herrmann, but his music is heavily influenced by Holst, Rachmaninoff, Vaughn Williams and Wagner. So the assumption that I am asking for shocking new things every second is not at all what I meant.
I played Psycho for my composition prof. in university. He said it was a knock-off of Bartok's String Quartets. Of course, that man was Jim Tenney, one of the mosty unique and original composers of the late 20th century. But my point is that everyone is influenced by others. And given that film is a highly commmercial medium, largely for mass entertainment rather than artistic integrity, the underscore falls in line with this ideology.
Yes, there are same pretty inventive film composers. Elliot Goldenthal is one of them. Howard Shore is always coming up with interesting ideas and not simply resting on the laurels of his Lord of the Rings opus. I'm a huge fan of John Williams who, in his 60's, came out with A.I. and Minority Report, two scores that eschewed the Korngoldian bombast his style is oft been associated with.
Horner is a little creep in my opinion though. A hack really.
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Psycho is a knock off? So that means a deliberately contrived copy, I assume, of Bartok. That is shit. The person who said this has no understanding whatsoever of what he is talking about. I have heard this kind of crap over and over from academics. It is all too easy to say this is like that, and claim as a result you have great discernment and knowledge. They had a field day with John Williams, because his influences were many as a result of writing post Romantic style in the latter 20th century. However, his themes were original, and he developed a style of his own out of them.
Would you like to know why professors talk this kind of trash?
Very simple. They are unsuccessful composers. That's why they're at a university to pay the bills. And they just HATE a guy who composes and actually makes living off it. So don't quote professors to me. Unless your purpose is comedy.
BTW "Korngoldian bombast" reveals an extreme bias, i.e. Romanticism = Bombast. Well, yes, to people who prefer classicism, or modernism, or what have you. But there are, believe it or not, people who like Korngold!
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William, I'm sorry if I suggested anything negative regarding Korngold. I LOVE his Sea Hawk and Adventures of Robin Hood. He was a master. My reference was to the nimbrod film critics who bitched about Williams' '70's style and how "intrusive" or "distracting" it was in films. Translation: film critics are tone deaf morons who cannot digest such rich and well composed music. They like it to be in the "background". I'm glad WIlliams wrote the way he did. It was music to Star Wars, Jaws, CEOT3K, Dracula, The Fury, Jaws 2 and so on that made me want to become a composer...well, that and Liszt's Les Preludes.