It should probably go without saying that the "John Williams" sound is no more the John Williams sound than mine is, as even a cursory examination of his (and my) influences should make abundantly clear.

But that being said anyway, what sets JW apart is not his orchestration; it's his use of cohesive symphonic structure within the context of film cues; two things which are almost always mutually exclusive. If you know 10 guys here who can do that, tell them to step up and take their rightful places as the new top-call guys, because as of yet, that's an ability almost totally absent from the landscape.

I'm sure you only come across like you've got an ax to grind due to some sort of internet thing.  Nonetheless, I don't expect you'll be hearing anything different, musically, from me, anytime soon.  Especially inasmuch as any comparison to JW makes me giddy as a schoolgirl.

_Mike

 These cues sound really good.  

I agree about Williams - he is probably the greatest since Herrmann, Goldsmith and Korngold.   Also he does a full tilt symphonic development as you say within a film context to a fantastic degree.  E. T. for example is like a symphony combined with a movie, and Spielberg gave Williams full reign to develop it.  That's true about Williams having direct influences from many orchestral composers - something impossible to avoid in this day and age - , and some people have tried to say he was plagiaristic because of it but he is not.  He is truly original with his own style and themes that are instantly recognizable. 

Anyway, you don't have to worry about whether you are copying somebody if you truly love what you are doing.  Your own style will come through all by itself. 

...well that's the thing: I bristle at this idea that anyone can just "do a Williams" thing.  That's ridiculous; everyone I've heard who set out to do that failed, usually because while they might understand the orchestrational approach, that doesn't magically imbue them with the symphonic sensibilities.  They sound like people doing JW who don't actually understand what he's doing.  Bad impressions.

Having just written 84 mintues of score in 5 weeks, I can attest to having zero time to second-guess or attempt to do anything compositionally other than get the cues done, and right now. If someone says to you, "Do what you do, right now, and don't think about it because there is no time," and it's internally cohesive and competent, then it's a pretty safe bet what's coming out is you.  It's your first instinct, your comfort zone, that which you've internalized, that which you understand, can control, and have mastered.  Nothing's worse than deliberately trying to do something you wouldn't actually do, to sound like somebody else (or not sound like somebody).  Personal style is always in there, and over time, takes many forks and roads; you don't have to force it and you don't have to sweat it.

As I look down at the pile of reference scores I cracked open from time to time on this score, which are still on the floor, I notice the usual suspects: Ravel, Schumann, Barber, Holst, Penderecki, and no Williams.  But that's where "Williams" lies, in all ways, anyways.  It's an amalgum.

_Mike

@mverta said:

I'm sure you only come across like you've got an ax to grind due to some sort of internet thing.  

_Mike

Here come the axe - you_are_wasting_your_talent copying John Williams. The start of your piece is obviously Close Encounters - were you even alive when that film came out? Why are you bothering to waste time with an obvious talent for production techniques using samples - copying?

If I had your production skills and knowledge of orchestral music - I would seriously be out there at your age (30's?) trying to be original from minute one. You will never be John Williams - no one will - it's all been done already by JW so_forget_it. No one in the business gives ashit whether the influences in a piece of music include Benderbollocks or anyone else. They will just say - it sounds like JW - which is maybe what they'll want or not want. Probably mostly not these days.

Do something original. I won't comment on your work in future if that makes you happy. Makes no odds to me one way or the other. Be original.

John Williams isn't exactly original, if you know the repertoire.  I'm curious who you think has managed to redefine this style of music in the last 100 years?

In any case - and this will probably bother you to no end - 95% of work comes to me BECAUSE of my sound, not in spite of it.  I find it interesting you keep mentioning CE3K, because I honestly have never seen that film end-to-end (it feels really boring to me) and I don't own the score in any form.  There are a few JW scores I was just never motivated to seek out, that's one of them, 1941 is another, I hated Catch Me if You Can, and if memory serves, Seven Years in Tibet was a giant WTF for me.  But I'm so curious now I have to go get it.

I'm also very curious to hear your original music.  Which I'm assuming has no Williams in it, and thus none of his influences.  I'm not 100% sure what that leaves behind, but I'm dying to hear it!

_Mike

Believe me - you're 10 time better than I am. I play Bach on the harpsichord for fun. I don't make the kind of money I like to make from music - I'm really a trader most of the time with private clients money - and my own. Music is an interest and I like listening to other people's music a great deal more than any of mine.

It bothers me in the sense that this is a typical inditement of filmscore music today - derivative. Your music SOUNDS great - apart from some brass which stinks on ice (soundwise). I suspect I have slightly better monitors than you do. It however pleases me to learn that you are making money from doing this music because someone wants it and you obviously enjoy doing this 'style'.

Yes - funnily enough I agree with you on Close Encounters - boring and twee a lot of the time.

Heheheh

Monitors-wise, I primarily use B&W 800D's.

_Mike

Close Encounters is probably the most underestimated of Williams' scores, probably because it is one of his most cinematic (in that the music is not as prominent an effect as in Star Wars, Jaws, ET, etc.). I did enjoy the Stravinskyesque "Catch me if you can" - in how effective Williams was with reduced instrumentation and rhythmic effects. Apparently he enjoyed it too, a break from his usual blaring brass armies and whirling strings.

@mverta said:

I'm also very curious to hear your original music.  Which I'm assuming has no Williams in it, and thus none of his influences.  I'm not 100% sure what that leaves behind, but I'm dying to hear it!

Well his music is right there in the VSL demos.  It doesn't have any John Williams whatsoever, as the insufferable Limey Robbins was around in music before John Williams was known for film scoring.  Like me.  Though my music probably sounds something like John Williams because I steal from the same composers he steals from.   Just joking.  I don't actually steal, though I cannot help being influenced. 

Now if you want to talk about stealing, don't even get me started on James Horner. There is an example of somebody consciously, calculatingly, deliberately and coldly lifting from every composer from Robert Schumann to Charles Ives.

John Williams: a lot of blaring and whirling.

Not an entirely fair characterization, but not entirely unfair, either.  :)  My favorite small-group score of his is Witches of Eastwick, hands-down.  Manuel de Falla-like in its effectiveness with a small ensemble.

And yes, Horner's theivery is shameless and well-documented.  Not that it seems to matter; in the short term anyway.

_Mike

Don't forget who Charles Ives influenced strongly either.

I'm out of here because I have to practice my archery at least twice a week and don't have anymore time.

Paul, you never said which monitors you are using... :)

Henrik

Awesome music Mike.  I read one of your older threads on the star trek mockup and was wondering if your still using the same reverb settings?  It seems like everyone is always raving about Todd AO but you seem to be using other scoring stages and using different ones for each section.  I was wondering if you could tell me in more detail how you set your reverb for Captial City for each section?

Actually I keep playing with that stuff.  This time around, everything you hear is within Todd-AO.  The idea of using different rooms came about because the samples themselves are often from different rooms, requiring compensatory reverbs to try and unify them.  Some changes in my samples seemed to make using purely Todd-AO a viable option for the time being.

_Mike

Thanks Mike,

Can you perhaps Tell me in which IR Meter your using for each section?  And are you using the speaker position placement for any sections?

I'm not using speaker placement.  As for each IR, for the mix, we re-created the setup at a different studio and built it from scratch, so I'm not 100% sure what we ended up using.  I think it was the wide 15' for Horns and Tpt/Tbn, but one of them may have been the 18'.  I think we used one of the narrow mic profiles for woods, but again I'm not looking at it.  Here at home, my setup was pulled apart and all reverbs disabled so I could have the extreme track count necessary for recording the stems, and I haven't re-done it yet.

_Mike

Something I've been meaning to try; think I'll give it a run today:  In a real session, there's tons of bleed between sections.  So I'm wondering about setting up a series of reverb returns - each for a different usual mic placement, and feeding each section to every single return, just in varying amounts depending on distance from the source section, like a real room does.  Hmmm...

_Mike

There are couple pieces here, which are you referring to?

_Mike

Ah yes, that's possible I suppose, what with having to start over with raw tracks at the mix.  My setups are usually the result of weeks of tweaking, but there were logistical problems with outputing from my system.  For example, it had to be true 5.1.  Programming-wise it was never going to be great - I simply can't write and perform 84 minutes of this kind of music in 5 weeks at the level it deserves.  I'm not 100% sure I can turn out 84 minutes of this kind of music even ON PAPER in 5 weeks, come to think of it.

_Mike

Thank you, Tanuj.  In reality, this score was always to be virtual, and those are the performances heard in the soundtrack for the film.  Gratefully, they're in the mix with a billion laser blasts, explosions, yelling, fight sounds and an enormous shreiking monster, so it manages to pull it off in context.  But you're right, I tend to go for things which samples are just horrible at doing, because that's how I write and I can't stand to write around the shortcomings of samples.  If I did that, I think all I'd be left with are percussion pieces.