That would be fantastic. Michael Giacchino really captured that essence in Star Trek Beyond with Night on the Yorktown. It really captured that majestic feel.
The Music of Discovery
- Thread starter CaptainMurdock
- Start date
For the Theme Song, I want to see (hear) something similar to Star Trek: Voyager, or even better: Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. (and they both have Voyage in them lol)
As for additional music:
These musicians, or musicians similar to them:
Paul Baillargeon
Jay Chattaway
Don Davis
John Debney
Cliff Eidelman
Ron Jones
Jerry Martin
Dennis McCarthy
and also similar to:
George Romanis
Fred Steiner
Chattaway and McCarthy are capable of making great music when requested to do so, but NEVER anything from nor similar to David Bell.
Please stay as far away as possible from David Bell.
As for additional music:
These musicians, or musicians similar to them:
Paul Baillargeon
Jay Chattaway
Don Davis
John Debney
Cliff Eidelman
Ron Jones
Jerry Martin
Dennis McCarthy
and also similar to:
George Romanis
Fred Steiner
Chattaway and McCarthy are capable of making great music when requested to do so, but NEVER anything from nor similar to David Bell.
Please stay as far away as possible from David Bell.
To not put too fine a point on it..the music is pretty important. I can delineate between the incidental music and the theme, as most of us are most familiar with the theme and how it characterizes a show but the rest of the show needs to find something to define itself as well.
There are two schools of thought..that TOS is so easily identifiable with it's music and STNG onward had "sonic wallpaper".
Looking at TOS, I remember the nostalgia..recording episodes on audio tape and hearing the music over and over again for years. With a little separation and perspective though, it's easy to see that type of heavily dramatic underscoring is no longer in vogue and hasn't been for many decades. In particular, some people dislike it immensely..my wife being one of them.
STNG certainly had stand-outs and several of the recordings on CD are popular. Generally though, as the first season progressed into the 2nd season, the music changed in support of the episode and didn't stand out as much. By the time Enterprise aired, not only was the theme unpopular but as I watch the episodes, the music is un-noticeable. There has to be a happy medium somewhere.
Of the "modern(post-80s)" scifi shows, Seaquest DSV featuring John Debney's music is some of my favorite. It's noticeable but not overbearing. It's also very "traditional". It seems appropriate for a large-scale space opera that tends towards action-adventure.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/seaquest-dsv-original-television/id73335063
Shows that attempt to break the traditional mold have increased over the years. Ethnic music, strange electronic soundscapes and surreal music cues have proliferated. Space Operas like Crusade and BSG have included a lot of this kind of music. Newer shows like Dark Matter and Killjoys have completely switched to rock sound tracks and electronic music. The best space opera ever: The Expanse has some low key electronic music as well as some ethnic harmonies.
http://www.what-song.com/Tvshow/116/Killjoys
http://www.heardontv.com/tvshow/Dark+Matter
What's odd is that we actually have a fairly large sample of the intended music of Discovery and few people seem to have noticed. Fil Eisner is the composer and he was selected from a music audition. I guess this is the music in Fuller's head.
Here he is on Twitter, where he is very active:
https://twitter.com/fileisler?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
https://twitter.com/ImStillARebel/status/767732684433022976
Here is the music, which is fairly bombastic for TV:
The music has vocals, orchestral and electronic elements, a very modern sound track. It doesn't look like they are repeating Enterprise's change of pace with the theme. Some have remarked the beats sound military-like, but we have no real way of knowing yet. All I know at this point is the music made me take notice even more than the visuals the first time I watched it. I'm looking forward to hearing more of this direction.
RAMA
There are two schools of thought..that TOS is so easily identifiable with it's music and STNG onward had "sonic wallpaper".
Looking at TOS, I remember the nostalgia..recording episodes on audio tape and hearing the music over and over again for years. With a little separation and perspective though, it's easy to see that type of heavily dramatic underscoring is no longer in vogue and hasn't been for many decades. In particular, some people dislike it immensely..my wife being one of them.
STNG certainly had stand-outs and several of the recordings on CD are popular. Generally though, as the first season progressed into the 2nd season, the music changed in support of the episode and didn't stand out as much. By the time Enterprise aired, not only was the theme unpopular but as I watch the episodes, the music is un-noticeable. There has to be a happy medium somewhere.
Of the "modern(post-80s)" scifi shows, Seaquest DSV featuring John Debney's music is some of my favorite. It's noticeable but not overbearing. It's also very "traditional". It seems appropriate for a large-scale space opera that tends towards action-adventure.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/seaquest-dsv-original-television/id73335063
Shows that attempt to break the traditional mold have increased over the years. Ethnic music, strange electronic soundscapes and surreal music cues have proliferated. Space Operas like Crusade and BSG have included a lot of this kind of music. Newer shows like Dark Matter and Killjoys have completely switched to rock sound tracks and electronic music. The best space opera ever: The Expanse has some low key electronic music as well as some ethnic harmonies.
http://www.what-song.com/Tvshow/116/Killjoys
http://www.heardontv.com/tvshow/Dark+Matter
What's odd is that we actually have a fairly large sample of the intended music of Discovery and few people seem to have noticed. Fil Eisner is the composer and he was selected from a music audition. I guess this is the music in Fuller's head.
Here he is on Twitter, where he is very active:
https://twitter.com/fileisler?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
https://twitter.com/ImStillARebel/status/767732684433022976
Here is the music, which is fairly bombastic for TV:
The music has vocals, orchestral and electronic elements, a very modern sound track. It doesn't look like they are repeating Enterprise's change of pace with the theme. Some have remarked the beats sound military-like, but we have no real way of knowing yet. All I know at this point is the music made me take notice even more than the visuals the first time I watched it. I'm looking forward to hearing more of this direction.
RAMA
It does have a Bear McCreary kind of vibe to it.
I thought ENT was an improvement on the previous series. Reminded me a bit of the music from the TNG movies of the time.
Kind of relevant, about the blandness of Marvel movie music:
The argument is that film makers play it safe, when they should try to emphasise emotion. But the video somehow forgets to mention what is obviously implied in the opening sequence - great scores have great tunes.
For a laugh, go to youtube and scroll down to find the guy making a lengthy argument that sometimes films NEED bland, generic, forgettable, unoriginal score.
The argument is that film makers play it safe, when they should try to emphasise emotion. But the video somehow forgets to mention what is obviously implied in the opening sequence - great scores have great tunes.
For a laugh, go to youtube and scroll down to find the guy making a lengthy argument that sometimes films NEED bland, generic, forgettable, unoriginal score.
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I've absolutely hate the direction film music has taken in the last decade. Not all films have resorted to being boring, quiet and minimalist but I'd say 85% of the movies I've watched in recent years all sound the same unfortunately. I prefer theme heavy music with themes that you will remember and hum for years to come. I can't wait for film music to get back to how it used to be, Fun, memorable and not afraid to express itself without being bound by trendy saltine cracker music.
Apart from John Williams, who is somehow still chugging along, I'm not sure there are any composers now who can write a memorable melody. You'd think that, if someone chooses to be a composer, that would be one of the things they are interested in. But you'd be wrong, I guess.
Alan Silvestri, Howard Shore, Ramin Djawadi, Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, just to name a few off the top of my head.
Kind of relevant, about the blandness of Marvel movie music:
The argument is that film makers play it safe, when they should try to emphasise emotion. But the video somehow forgets to mention what is obviously implied in the opening sequence - great scores have great tunes.
For a laugh, go to youtube and scroll down to find the guy making a lengthy argument that sometimes films NEED bland, generic, forgettable, unoriginal score.
Here's an interesting response video I saw:
For one thing, it pretty solidly debunks the claim that all those classic film themes were ever really original, as well as the idea that temp tracks are anything even remotely new.
"All" those themes? He addresses some of Star Wars' most obvious lifts (Stravinsky's Rite, Holst's Mars), but the main theme is NOT ripped off of King's Row - the first bar-and-a-half is the same, then it goes a very different direction. Only someone with no ear for music would say otherwise.
I can't take anyone who quote Adorno seriously. A pompous crypto bolshevik who was alternately stating the obvious or talking out of his arse (more often the latter). And to say no serious composer would write a film score except for money is an argument he would have known is fallacious (if he'd known anything about classical music). Great composers wrote lots of their music on commission (Haydn practically all of it). The reason great composers who had no talent for opera (Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven) still attempted the genre is that that was where the money was.
The video misunderstands what Adorno means when he says that composers reuse standard devices to get emotional effects. Of course James Horner used similar music in different films - all composers have their "fingerprints" that appear in work after work. What should have been shown is DIFFERENT composers using the same musical devices for similar scenes.
"The question of originality" - this is definitely an issue in film music (in all music, in fact, and in all art), but simply pointing to motifs that have been reused doesn't make the argument. Composers (and every kind of artist) have been doing that since forever. It's a way of acknowledging and rethinking earlier ideas.
The idea that, before computers, film directors didn't hear the score until it had been finished is false. It was standard practice for the composer to play the music to the director on the piano, explaining how it would sound as they did so.
To say that Zimmer is just writing rock music shows ignorance. If you are familiar with how real orchestral music sounds, it's obvious that Zimmer does too (and a argument by a guy who has written a couple of game scores on his PC doesn't really counter this).
Use of computer generated sounds and "atmospheres" is not inherently bad.
Notice he had to cut away from the Man Of Steel scene before the music developed with actual melody and chord sequence, thus disproving his argument.
At the end, the argument basically boils down to "Computers are bad, m'kay?" But I'd say a poor workman blames his tools. Or as more techy people might put it, PICNIC ("Problem in Chair; Not in Computer") or EBKAC ("Error between keyboard and chair").
I can't take anyone who quote Adorno seriously. A pompous crypto bolshevik who was alternately stating the obvious or talking out of his arse (more often the latter). And to say no serious composer would write a film score except for money is an argument he would have known is fallacious (if he'd known anything about classical music). Great composers wrote lots of their music on commission (Haydn practically all of it). The reason great composers who had no talent for opera (Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven) still attempted the genre is that that was where the money was.
The video misunderstands what Adorno means when he says that composers reuse standard devices to get emotional effects. Of course James Horner used similar music in different films - all composers have their "fingerprints" that appear in work after work. What should have been shown is DIFFERENT composers using the same musical devices for similar scenes.
"The question of originality" - this is definitely an issue in film music (in all music, in fact, and in all art), but simply pointing to motifs that have been reused doesn't make the argument. Composers (and every kind of artist) have been doing that since forever. It's a way of acknowledging and rethinking earlier ideas.
The idea that, before computers, film directors didn't hear the score until it had been finished is false. It was standard practice for the composer to play the music to the director on the piano, explaining how it would sound as they did so.
To say that Zimmer is just writing rock music shows ignorance. If you are familiar with how real orchestral music sounds, it's obvious that Zimmer does too (and a argument by a guy who has written a couple of game scores on his PC doesn't really counter this).
Use of computer generated sounds and "atmospheres" is not inherently bad.
Notice he had to cut away from the Man Of Steel scene before the music developed with actual melody and chord sequence, thus disproving his argument.
At the end, the argument basically boils down to "Computers are bad, m'kay?" But I'd say a poor workman blames his tools. Or as more techy people might put it, PICNIC ("Problem in Chair; Not in Computer") or EBKAC ("Error between keyboard and chair").
Obviously, nothing applies to every single example and no composer worth a damn is going to copy older themes line by line, but the fact that he could show such clear lifts in Star Wars (which this thread and the original video were both holding up as a classic example of things done right, and of being original) is pretty damning for the claim that the current problem is a lack of originality and a use of temp tracks.
I also don't think it makes much of a difference to say that the directors could (in many cases) hear the music on piano up front, since the point of that part of the video was not that the directors had absolutely no influence, it was that the process was kind of difficult due to financial issues, which was ultimately solved with the computer software.
Likewise the point of the next bit is not that the computer software is bad, but that it originally came with some limitations which drove composers who used it in a certain direction, leading to more homogeneity. And that it may contribute to a tendency to focus on atmosphere over melody.
I can't really judge the validity of the last part, but based on the themes of the recent era and especially on the work of Zimmer, I can't entirely discount it either.
I do agree that Man of Steel was a very poor example, as that's actually an excellent theme with a good melody. And it's not the only such theme in Zimmer's work. But it's also counterpointed by, for instance, the Batman Begins theme/score, which I would say is a pretty perfect example of what he's talking about, and which I do think is at least somewhat representative of the kind of themes that have been generally in vogue.
Of course, at the end of the day the video which truly speaks to the biggest problem that the MCU has is this one:
All the rest of this is a discussion which properly applies to Hollywood in general, not just Marvel.
I also don't think it makes much of a difference to say that the directors could (in many cases) hear the music on piano up front, since the point of that part of the video was not that the directors had absolutely no influence, it was that the process was kind of difficult due to financial issues, which was ultimately solved with the computer software.
Likewise the point of the next bit is not that the computer software is bad, but that it originally came with some limitations which drove composers who used it in a certain direction, leading to more homogeneity. And that it may contribute to a tendency to focus on atmosphere over melody.
I can't really judge the validity of the last part, but based on the themes of the recent era and especially on the work of Zimmer, I can't entirely discount it either.
I do agree that Man of Steel was a very poor example, as that's actually an excellent theme with a good melody. And it's not the only such theme in Zimmer's work. But it's also counterpointed by, for instance, the Batman Begins theme/score, which I would say is a pretty perfect example of what he's talking about, and which I do think is at least somewhat representative of the kind of themes that have been generally in vogue.
Of course, at the end of the day the video which truly speaks to the biggest problem that the MCU has is this one:
All the rest of this is a discussion which properly applies to Hollywood in general, not just Marvel.
I actually think all those three videos make eccellent points. Thanks for sharing.
I'll now blame "playing it safe", discontinuity and Hans Zimmer for everything.
I'll now blame "playing it safe", discontinuity and Hans Zimmer for everything.
Hans Zimmer certainly has his highs and his lows, and perhaps his lows are more, but when he gets it right he knocks it out of the park!
For the score, I just hope we get something hummable that isn't so safe that the emotions are obvious and one-note. I still get the theme to Pushing Daisies stuck in my head. I think Fuller's use of James Dooley's music was powerful. I'd love to see what he could do in Star Trek.
For the theme, I don't think I'd be opposed to another pop song. But the problems with "Faith of the Heart" were manifold. First, Braga really wanted to use U2's "Beautiful Day," but it was too expensive. Their ultimate choice smacked of 80s and 90s adult contemporary, which means that for such a big risk it was awfully safe, lame, and geared to the completely wrong demographic. It seems exactly like the type of music I picture Berman liking, but not the younger, hipper audience they wanted.
It's tricky. They needed a song that was optimistic, but not sappy. To me, ENT should have used "Magic Carpet Ride," for its continuity with First Contact. But failing that, I think a theme by They Might Be Giants would have fit, or something like the theme Barenaked Ladies came up with for The Big Bang Theory. Other artists that might have injected the theme with enough quirkiness to undercut the sappiness include Ben Folds, maybe Beck. Artists that became big since then that might work include Spoon, TV on the Radio, MGMT, The Decemberists, Feist, or Belle and Sebastian.
For the theme, I don't think I'd be opposed to another pop song. But the problems with "Faith of the Heart" were manifold. First, Braga really wanted to use U2's "Beautiful Day," but it was too expensive. Their ultimate choice smacked of 80s and 90s adult contemporary, which means that for such a big risk it was awfully safe, lame, and geared to the completely wrong demographic. It seems exactly like the type of music I picture Berman liking, but not the younger, hipper audience they wanted.
It's tricky. They needed a song that was optimistic, but not sappy. To me, ENT should have used "Magic Carpet Ride," for its continuity with First Contact. But failing that, I think a theme by They Might Be Giants would have fit, or something like the theme Barenaked Ladies came up with for The Big Bang Theory. Other artists that might have injected the theme with enough quirkiness to undercut the sappiness include Ben Folds, maybe Beck. Artists that became big since then that might work include Spoon, TV on the Radio, MGMT, The Decemberists, Feist, or Belle and Sebastian.
I love the style of NuBSG music. I also love traditional Star Wars orchestral shit. I even like Beastie Boys.
I would like a more nautical score along the lines of Master and Commander.
I also enjoyed Cliff Eidelman's ST:VI score.
I also enjoyed Cliff Eidelman's ST:VI score.
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