Monday, Monday...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Sorry for the complete lack of postage, but I was in the mandatory post-release decompression over the weekend (which, for me, consists mostly of trawling the various forums and answering e-mail), and as far as I can tell, nothing worth conversing about occurred in the music industry since Saturday morning.
Work has started on the design of our next product, and I’m not gonna let out a single peep about it except to say that this is a whopper and will put all other plugins in its genre to shame, including one of our own.
I also got some work done on my Blip synth; it is now making sound, and this sound is even kind of interesting. All I have to do now is finish the MIDI part of the operation and that’ll be that. As it turns out, there will be no AD IP in it, so I’ll be able to post the code for both of you that are interested in such things.
In any case, we’ll be back to our normal vitriol and such on the ’morrow. Consider this an open thread. I can’t for the life of me think of a topic, so that joy shall go to the person who first posts in this thread.
10 comments
Am I the only one who gets a brutal headache when I'm exposed to a John Williams soundtrack in a movie theater?
--Adam
Not a headache, but sometimes I find soundtrack music so blatantly manipulative that it takes me out of the movie.
Yes i LOVE having all motional responses to a film telegraphed to me even my brain is thinking something entirely different…
but then…
perhaps any film with him scoring is not worth seeing ANYWAY?
So do you guys also find lighting at concerts to be a headache?
After having to actually _do_ lighting at concerts for half a dozen years, there are very few things I find to be more of a headache than lighting. My last tour, I had a no-lights policy which served quite well.
That said, John Williams hasn't had many original thoughts (the vast majority of his themes are lifted from elsewhere) so it's not actually _his_ score giving you a headache, if that makes any difference.
-CR
Williams succeeds at what he aims for with his scores, which is why they work and he gets employed again and again. This is high caliber stuff.
I don't find the virtual factory Hanz Zimmer and his acolytes have to produce soundstracks much better -- I'm just over manipulative derivative orchestral soundtracks in general.
I used to work for tomandandy, and was quite a fan of the soundtracks that they/Andy Milburn did for films like Arlington Road, Killing Zoe, Rules of Attraction, Mothman Prophecies, etc. I haven't been paying attention to what they've done lately, as they seem to be doing soundtracks to films I don't want to see, but I'd definitely like to see more introspective electronic stuff like that, that was interesting without telling me how to react.
Mothman has a fantastic soundtrack. The two that I've liked the most of films I've recently seen are Sunshine (not unsurprisingly, because it is mostly Underworld) and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which was Nick Cave and some other fellow who's name escapes me.
I agree with Dave in general, though. Typical orchestral score work doesn't really do it for me at all. I really like Harry Gregson-Williams' stuff, especially his soundtrack (as opposed to score, I guess) for Man On Fire. It's really scatterbrained, which fits my mood most of the time, and there are a lot of really interesting sounds.
-CR
I appreciate all these guys as well, Thomas Newman too. Howard Shore. Elfman. These composers don't get paid the big bucks again and again to turn out weak shit. But most film producers want the same stuff all the time, using the same scores as temp tracks etc
I think scoring movies is not the same brain muscles as making other kinds of music, and I think once you do start scoring to picture, for actual movies, then you start appreciating different things in other scores you never thought you would. It's utterly fascinating to me, and I find immense joy in discovering new things in and around music all the time.
Yup. Enough with the 19th century chromatic harmony already. I can't even stand the original stuff, much less the derivative warmed over tripe that keeps getteing served up these days. I just don't see why 95% of the movies made, even in different genres, all have to have the same fucking soundtrack.
As counterexamples, I think Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell both had pretty good soundtracks.
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