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

Just coming back from the theater, loved it. Stayed in there till the last note.
Originality is the least interesting aspect any composer should go for anyway, especially nowadays. Direct road to depression.

@evanevans said:

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.

@dcoscina said:

"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

@dcoscina said:

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

Evans

I don't understand that originality means nothing in today's film scoring world?

Is that a joke?

To me this is the most basic fact of commercial film scoring. Sadly enough.

@dcoscina said:

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.

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.

@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.

..

..

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!

Welcome to the colourful world of prejudices.
Waiter, one more beer!

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.

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@William said:

Evans

I don't understand that originality means nothing in today's film scoring world?

Is that a joke?

To me this is the most basic fact of commercial film scoring. Sadly enough.

I'm telling you William. You are in a box. I told you before, you couldn't understand, and I see now why. You are in a box.

Try backing up OUT OF THE FILM SCORING WORLD. Then maybe you will begin to understand. Don't be so damn confined all the time. Is it so earth shattering to your ego and persona to think that everything you hold so dear may not matter much at all? Because that is what being the most powerful film composer is all about ... true, unbridled, unchained, weightless, free POV. That is what makes a good film composer great, and maybe the great film composers' masters. When one stops thinking about the damn music. That's the point of infinite power. And it's also the reason why my directors and film makers call me up to ask me about scenes to cut, and other production issues, because I am a true collaborator, with inputs and outputs that connect to everything in the film.

How good, ... how valuable, an asset do you think you could possibly be if all you do is provide the music for a particular movie? That is the pinnacle of the bottom my man. That is being only what is necessary. There are greater boundaries to be explored AND PUSHED.

I intend to push them. I don't intend to JUST write music. The art of cinema means more to me than being just a musical vehicle. I am a collaborator in a collaborative artform. I refuse to become a cog in a wheel, not because of my own ego, but because of the ego of the film itself. It doesn't ever deserve to have cogs in it's gears. Every film can transcend the norm. Every film.

Goldsmith was the last genius to understand this. The spice he added to certain films was barrier breaking at times. And at others was certainly the pinnacle of current possibilities.

Evan Evans

dcoscina,

Sorry also to be a bit harsh there in defending old Erich Wolfgang. I actually agree with a lot of your points. We had quite a discussion of Korngold a while back.

@William said:

dcoscina,

Sorry also to be a bit harsh there in defending old Erich Wolfgang. I actually agree with a lot of your points. We had quite a discussion of Korngold a while back.

Well, for once William, I am in total agreement with you! People tend to sneer and say (about Korngold's music) that "it just sounds like film music", forgetting that before some of the greats in the 30s and 40s there was no film music (in the way that we understand scoring today). Not only was Korngold a marvellous composer, but an incredible orchestrator, unlike most of the current crop of composers. However, one must remember that he was first and foremost a composer, and films came later.

DG

Mr. Evans

Your post is so arrogant and egocentric that it borders on the irrational. That is the only possible response to such nonsense.

@William said:

Your post is so arrogant and egocentric that it borders on the irrational. That is the only possible response to such nonsense.

Well, technically, claiming that your response is "the only possible response" is in itself arrogant and egocentric... [:D]