Actually to be frank - I can sort of understand Gianna's point about John Williams. I don't necessarily subscribe whole heartedly to it - but I can understand it when it comes to music WITHIN a film. But he's a great writer and brought back melody and orchestra to films in a way that Korngold was a master of. Is he as effective as Herrmann? Probably - but the type of film he scores is usually a very different genre.

Secondly - I completely agree with Errikos' point about Star Wars.  I made the point on some other thread ages ago about the ridiculous dialogue and I agree. The bloody thing would be unwatchable (at least without heavy use of narcotics) if it wasn't for the score. It's as if the score was written first and the film added later.

What I cannot personally agree with is that this thread is about dissing Hans Zimmer (happy birthday btw Hans). Hans is extremely successful at what he does. He is basically a rocker turned filmscore writer. Anyone who tries to copy him is wasting their time in the sense that in the long run it's not going to help their career. He's the only one who can do that style properly. 

Do I like that style? Sometimes. Does it work for the type of movies he does? Probably most of the time (re: Gianna's point about civilian audiences not caring one way or the other). Do I like the type of films Hans scores? Generally no - but that's not Hans fault.

This is a good conversation and I can see no reason whatsoever for anyone getting banned. What on earth for?

My big worry about scoring these days isn't so much the scoring - it's the films. A lot of these directors today would DIE for a Bernard Herrmann score done by the man himself and not a dreadful facsimile.

@PaulR said:

Secondly - I completely agree with Errikos' point about Star Wars.  I made the point on some other thread ages ago about the ridiculous dialogue and I agree. The bloody thing would be unwatchable (at least without heavy use of narcotics) if it wasn't for the score. It's as if the score was written first and the film added later.

Just an observation.....  When Star Wars first came out, I had just joined the military.  It seemed to me then (being around many young individuals straight out of high school) that the score introduced classical music to a lot of young individuals who may otherwise not have been exposed to........

@Gianna said:

this is the same as arguing religion or politics. so much fun!

So, are you still having fun Gianna?

C'mon man.  Even my 3 year old knew that JW doesn't do his own orchestrations.  Speaking of popcorn.  I like butter on mine so get thee to a kitchen and start popping will you.

Look, the reason why JW is so revered on this site is because he's one of the only composers out there who can successfully compose music for anything.  Whether it's the next Hollywood blockbuster or an infomercial for Shamwow.  The music he composes can stand on its own without the visual media it's composed for.  Not only that but he can do it with an orchestra!  He doesn't have to go the synthesizer with the one-note cookie cutter emotion sound designs that other lesser composers all too often depend upon.

Regarding Star Wars.  Yes it's dumb but, like Errikos said, it's a space opera.  What turned me, and majority of evrybody else, on were the spectacular special effects (remember, this is 1977).  When Episode I was released all the critics who tore it apart really pissed me off because they missed the point.  They made claims like "Oh the script is terrible.  The story is bad.  The little kid can't act.  What was George Lucas thinking?" 

Who the hell goes to see Star Wars for the story and the acting?  You go for the action.  It's a roller coaster ride.

Now some would argue, well yeah but The Exorcist was dumb too yet it was a well written brilliantly filmed movie (didn't really need Nitzche's score nor Oldfield's theme IMO).  Well if you think the Exorcist is just a horror movie about a little girl who is possessed by the Devil you missed the whole point.  The Exorcist is simply about a priest who loses his faith and the extraordinary circumstances that cause him to regain it.  That's it.  A simple story told in an extraordinary way.  Kind of like Star Wars.            

@Gianna said:

this is the same as arguing religion or politics. so much fun!

So, are you still having fun Gianna?

C'mon man.  Even my 3 year old knew that JW doesn't do his own orchestrations.  Speaking of popcorn.  I like butter on mine so get thee to a kitchen and start popping will you.

Does your 3 year old know that Williams composes very detailed 8 stave score reductions that are so detailed you or I could "orchestrate" off of them?  This is the reason why his style pervades through his scores and concert works- because he ostensibly DOES orchestrate his own scores, just not in the way most think.  I have copies of his scores from Superman the Movie, Sleepers, and Star Wars and believe me, everything is there.

@Fiery Angel said:

Does your 3 year old know that Williams composes very detailed 8 stave score reductions that are so detailed you or I could "orchestrate" off of them?  This is the reason why his style pervades through his scores and concert works- because he ostensibly DOES orchestrate his own scores, just not in the way most think.

That is true, as Herbert Spencer himself has pointed out. All Hollywood composers worth their salt write orchestrated shorthand. Bruce Broughton - a proper composer/orchestrator - confirmed this to me as applies also to himself.

I am still waiting for Gianna's (I thought it was a she) musical selections to compare with Bach, Beethoven etc. I mean some really mind-blowing stuff which will once and for all make me forget Wagner and his "occasional cute moments"...

Following that, I really welcome Gianna's take on religion and politics - should prove most entertaining...

@vibrato said:

1. Memoirs of a Geisha

2. Munich

3. A.I

4. Munich

...

Well, #4 definitely looks like it's copied from #2...[:)]

 agree on those Vibrato,  and  another John Williams score that is really great   I always remembered - The Fury. It is a somewhat sick but interesting film by de Palma, but anyone interested in film music should see it because there are scenes in it that de Palma allowed Willams a lot of freedom to score and show absolute genius of film and music design working together.  It is the ultimate composer's chops that one guy did that as well as Star Wars and Schindler's List - he has created a  huge range of music.

Is that maybe a constructive comment?

@Chuck Green said:

Just an observation.....  When Star Wars first came out, the score introduced classical music to a lot of young individuals who may otherwise not have been exposed to........

Yeah! Well that and light sabers.

@mathis said:

Is that maybe a constructive comment?

The second I see "By the Director of The Dark Knight" I'm immediately not interested.

@vibrato said:

Where are the following John Williams scores copied from.

1. Memoirs of a Geisha - never seen it.

2. Munich - dreadful voyeuristic nonsense of a film.

3. A.I - interesting but shame Kubrik didn't do as planned.

4. Munich -  still dreadful voyeuristic nonsense

5. War of the Worlds - crappy remake of the original

6. Catch me if you can - garbage basically. And boring ultimately.

7. Saving Private Ryan - and excellent film up to a point with minimal scoring.

8. Schindler's List - great film with a melody that's been challenged in Jewish musical circles.

9. Jurrasick Park - one of life's great themes from the movies and an all round fun film.

10.The Terminal - voyeuristic and quite boring.

11. Minority Report - well done. Can't remember anything much about the score or the film.

Lists of films are great fun. let's do some more.  [:D]

@mathis said:

Is that maybe a constructive comment?

That is hilarious Mathis! I love it.

I can remember listening to the score for The Rock and thinking 'OK, seems to work for the movie'. Then I heard the score for Man In The Iron Mask and thought 'that's insane, it's the same bloody score for a totally different movie???'. At that point I have to confess I started a bit of a hate / hate relationship with Mr. Zimmer - but over time my view has softened a bit.

I agree with previous posters who have pointed out Zimmer's pioneering work with his bank of Akai samplers and the creation of a new sound-world for filmscores. I respect any composer - or band for that matter who can be successful having created a 'sound' that they own. I do wonder however whether those beginnings and the risk aversion of the industry have painted him into a bit of a box. Even though he now has access to real musicians, he still produces a lot of stuff that would work well on an Akai S2000. But isn't that what his clients are paying him for? When you hire Hans Zimmer, you don't expect a score that sounds like Danny Elfman.

Maybe the Rock / Iron Mask thing that wound me up all those years ago is part of his risk management strategy - copy elements from the previous film(s) and add a new bit in each new project (maybe a new intern on the team?). Maybe he's progressing as fast as his clients will let him / are comfortable with? There are elements in Da Vinci Code which are a world away from The Rock (maybe not a world away from elements of Hannibal or The Dark Knight) - but his 'sound'(and chord sequences!) is what he's hired to reproduce. Goldsmith (unless you're a bit of a score geek) didn't have a signature sound as such, but was hired as a 'safe pair of hands' - different kind of risk management, a guy who has years of good scores in several genres behind him - and that allowed him the licence to experiment - his clients didn't expect him to replicate Planet of The Apes, just that he would come up with something appropriate and good.

That brings me to another point. I'm as guilty as the next composer of listening to scores critically as music, but it isn't really fair is it? - these guys were hired to underscore a movie and they're being paid for the 'movie + score combo' - so judging their craft only makes sense on that basis. If the end result is something like JW's Imperial March then the stand alone quality is a bonus.

Which brings me to JW. I'm not going to repeat the obvious already stated in this thread of examples - but anyone who doesn't respect his craft and contribution to film scoring is unlikely to find value in VSL either. I get really irritated when people say there's no place for melodic / noticeable music in films today or that we should be using sounds and frequencies to communicate with audiences as an emotional rather than intellectual level. What matters is what works - and I can't help but suspect that the real lack of appeal to this school of 'sound design is the new music' brigade is the rather irritating amount of training and years of experience it takes to have the skill to produce work like JW's. All that aside, anyone here who has had to produce a cue or God forbid entire score in the style of JW using only samples - even if you can replicate his orchestration theoretically - boy does that involve some hours of improvisation and tweaking. It is certainly easier to hold down a pedal point for 20 seconds with a Symphobia brass Sfz-cresc chord at the end of it instead. All I know is that I don't want to go see Indiana Jones without the JW approach to scoring.

I'm not saying there is no place for the 'sound design approach' - but it's 'horses for courses' Whatever approach you take it needs to work for the specific film in question and the director's vision for it. For some reason, Bernard H is the one composer everyone has to respect - and I for one agree that his Vertigo score is sublime. But I think his horse fitted Hitchcock's course - I'm not sure I want to live in a world where BH or JW scored everything, but I'm pretty glad they scored some things. I wouldn't want to have missed (musically) American Beauty, Beetlejuice, Independence Day, Van Helsing or even POTC.

Which brings me to my conclusion - Hans Zimmer is I suspect the right horse for certain courses. Did Pirates need BH? Did The Rock need JW - would Da Vinci Code have worked better scored by Korngold (not sure - but it would be cool to find out???). These days I can't remember having left a Zimmer scored film thinking 'well, Hans ruined that film-going experience for me!' but I can remember thinking 'this or that bit was pretty cool - I wonder how he did that...'

For the most part I think he writes appropriate music for the projects he is hired to undertake - so I'm reluctant to diss the guy, or any other composer who competently does what they're hired to do - maybe with a couple of moments I kind of wish I'd written myself.

However, if someone would like to start a James Horner bashing thread ... [;)]

David.

I've silently been following this topic with quite some interest.

First, let me say I'm not much of a musician. I've got some talent when it comes to writing memorable melodies, and I can pull off a decent sounding pop/rock-tune. When it comes to the art of orchestration, I'm quite lost though. I really repsect the skills of those more knowledgeable than me, which would be everyone in this forum, I'm quite sure.

Anyway, much of the discussion, at least from my perspective, seems to boil down to the question of what constitutes "real" music and the qualitites of a "real" composer. Most of the threads participants seems to have a very intellectual angle on the art of music, and that's all fine by me. After all, composing is in large part an intellectual excersise, requiring extensive knowledge. However, it's possible to convey emotions effectively without the same amount of knowledge as John Williams, and sometimes, the most simple piece of music can achieve this.

I'd like to mention John Murphy's Adagio in D-minor from Sunshine as an, IMHO, brilliant example of this. I guess many of you will think I'm musically retarded, but I absolutely love this piece of music. Even with my very limited knowledge, I could very well have written it, from an intellectual standpoint at least. There's nothing extraordinary going on, it's a basic chord progression consisting of 4 chords repeated over and over again, with a bass line as boring as Pachabels Canon in D. Yet, I can listen to it over and over again, and find it extremely beautiful.

I guess my point is that while you can approach music from a more scientific standpoint, at the end of the day, some aspects of music will not lend itself well to being measured, and these aspects sometimes might be the difference between a successful composer and an unemployed one.

Hi Minstrel!

I think you've raised an important and interesting point - essentially that beauty is in the ear of the beholder; and that the intended beholder for film music probably has no musical training and thinks Korngold is a new breakfast cereal. It is also a painful reminder of a trap it is easy for composers to fall in to, to write music for yourself instead of the audience.

The cue you mentioned (had to resort to you-tube as I've never watched the film) is the kind of composition that would make many of the forum members here want to rant. I think when you've studied hard and worked to try and hone your craft in an industry where it's tough to get a break - it's really irritating when someone is obviously getting paid to repeat 4 chords with synth-pad style string writing. (I have to confess it's the programming - or lack of it - that wound me up. I've just spent 2 days tweaking a string cue to get it to sound realistic and it's always frustrating to see another composer getting commercial success with something they probably just inprovised in a couple of hours, pressed 'upload' and settled down to wait for the cheque to arrive).

The point however is that you as an audience member clearly enjoy listening to it - and that is the point of the exercise (at least within the context of the scene it underscored). I think maybe this is why these topics can get so emotive - and especially on a forum such as this, visited by so many who spend hours 'tweaking' stuff to get it just right. I often think that is why I feel comfortable with composers like Williams or Elfman - because they write 'crowd-pleasers' often with very simple melodic ideas, but I can appreciate the craft and detail that went in to what they did with those ideas. And that thinking affects my own work (maybe detrimentally?) - that no matter what s**t I'm asked to write, I can look at myself in the mirror once I've pressed 'upload' and know that it was the best quality s**t I'm capable of producing.

To go back to the topic, I can't say I've ever been offended by Zimmer's work in that regard - I'm sure his team put hours into programming and he feels proud that his audience can't see the joins between what is 'real' and what is 'sampled'.

I was recently asked by a library to write tracks in the style of  Ludovico Einaudi's Primavera - and I just couldn't do it (I ended up with two tracks I've had to give to a different library because I tried to make them something I could bear to listen to - not deliberately, that is just how it kept happening). I have to confess if they'd asked me to write a track in the style of The Dark Knight I think I'd have been OK and actually quite enjoyed the experience. I think this is always a dilemma for media composers, how to put aside your own musical tastes and write something for the audience that is sufficiently 'accessible' on first hearing to easily communicate the emotions the director has in his/her vision. I think for the type of project Zimmer works on he clearly achieves that goal.

I was trying to think of an illustration - and suddenly got all 'piratey'! Take 3 pirate films, ranked by how often I listen to the scores as music:

1. The Seahawk (Korngold)
2. Cutthroat Island (Debney)
3. POTC (Zimmer)

And ranked by how often I've watched the DVDs?

1. POTC
2. Cutthroat Island
3. The Seahawk

As film music is about creating a movie that people want to watch (presumably because they enjoy watching it) which of these 3 'film composers' is really the best? [;)]

Cheers,

David.

@mathis said:

Is that maybe a constructive comment?

I'm going to preface with, I haven't seen most of these movies, and I never will. It's strictly-from-commercial most of it, and it doesn't get my wallet out.

@Another User said:

What matters is what works - and I can't help but suspect that the real lack of appeal to this school of 'sound design is the new music' brigade is the rather irritating amount of training and years of experience it takes to have the skill to produce work like JW's.

Hi Gianna,

I think the point I was trying to make is that there are people who express the opinion that there is only one style of composition (i.e. their's) which is the right way to compose film music in 2010 and that traditional classically based orchestration is dead. Conveniently (based only on my experience) the style they propose (using drum loops, off the shelf midi files, synth drones, Symphobia ( a product incidentally I often use myself for the brass ensemble patches), 'cinematic ambience effects' CDs and so forth) take way less time and skill to programme than something like VSL. If you've taken a look at any of Guy Bacos' tutorials it's a pretty good illustration of the amount of layering and programming required to replicate an orchestral sound.

I'm not saying that this style of production takes no effort or does not take time and practice to get a good result - but that the relative time taken is different to a considerable degree. I guess it is also a question of what you're used to and feel comfortable with - I can remember early in my career spending two days in the studio with a band who'd asked me to write a string arangement for one of their tracks, and being driven nuts (compared to working with orchestral musicians as I was used to) that no-one could read music and nothing was written down. I spent the first day just transcribing what they played so I had something to take home and work on. I can see how in reverse having a 'classical cat' who can't jam without having something written down for them would be equally frustrating from the band's point of view.

I guess this is a a similar argument to - 'which is easier to become competent on, the electric guitar or the violin'. I would argue that after 5 years of dedicated study, a violinist can still be painful to listen to but after 5 days it would be possible to get away with smoke on the water on the guitar. That doesn't mean I think Itzhak Perlman is an artist and Hendrix wasn't.

Programming a convincing rock track (and it wasn't rock I was referring to as 'sound design' of course - see description above) or a JW score involve similar processes of learning (listen to a lot of examples of the genre (both in terms of sound and how that style of composition works)  and tweak the composition, programming & mix until it sounds the same as your examples. But just as the guitar has a long finger friendly neck with frets [ and a lod of different amp, pedals & effects to change the tonal quality) and a violin has a short one without frets or electronic assistance - one takes a lot more work to be basically competent on than the other. As a listener I can enjoy the results of both without needing to know the player's CV - but as a composer there's a big difference in time & complexity between recreating the two.

My bottom line of course is that neither approach (classically based or sound design) is right or wrong - the test is whether the chosen genre is right for the project. A heavy rock score for Raiders of The Lost Ark (seen that one ? [;)] ) or a JW-type score for Resident Evil wouldn't have been good choices, no matter how skillful the programming.

Cheers,

David.

Ummm... so I devoted about 3 days of my life to read through this post from front to back...(sarcasm)...