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The music on Star Trek Discovery

I was underwhelmed by both the DS9 and Voyager themes when I first heard them, and I grew to like them to an extent, without ever thinking either were terrific. I get a much better sense of this new theme, it's more exciting and less drawn out than those.
I love the DS9 theme and I had the Voyager one at my wedding. I've really enjoyed the music of the JJTrek movies and my overall favourite is First Contact. This one doesn't come close to any of those for me, but I fully accept that I'm hearing it chopped up, without the visual, and with someone taking nonsense over it. I look forward to seeing the real title sequence.
 
No melody is apparent, aside from the variant of Courage's intro and aside from his TOS fanfare at the end. A major meh experience that sounds like something between incidental music and accompaniment in an Alexander Courage sandwich.

Bear McCreary can effectively turn something that's basically just orchestral accompaniment into a main title theme itself, with only the barest and most rudimentary of semi-melodic tonal progressions, like he did for The Walking Dead (befittingly). But McCreary did not lay the foundation for that with just simple arpeggios either, in contrast to what Jeff Russo did here.
 
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I have the feeling this is mostly slow, unmelodic build-up. Up to the final seconds. So it's not exactly a theme to hum along. But we have to see the visuals to get what they were going for. I guess the intro will be a very, veeeeeeeeery slow reveal of the ship. With the credits over shots of parts of the ship, and only during the final fanfare a full beauty shot of the whole ship.:techman:

Would have hoped for something more instantly iconic. But I'm not going to judge until I see the final result.
 
I do home there's more to it. I think the most significant element missing is the "conversational" element to it, where different parts of the arrangement "talk" to each other. It's the key component of any great piece of music from LVB to taytay.

I think rock music is the best indicator of this, since all the "sections" are reduced down to individual parts. All even do Digits a solid and toss out Rush as the best example

You've got three guys who are each a virtuoso at his instrument, and so each song is perfectly divided between them. Yet they are all almost always "saying" something different. Sometimes each might be saying his own thing, sometimes Alex and Ged are talking to Neal, or any of the different possible combinations. The only time they speak in unison is when they want to create emphasis or exclamation. "YYZ" is the perfect example of this.

A really good Trek example of this is the TUC overture.

Eidelman starts out with the strings and baritone horns making an ominous predication. Then the woods timidly speak up against it. Then the chorus and percussion come in and talk over both trying to quell the disagreement before it becomes and argument - but there's that moment it realizes it has failed, creating a moment of tension before it all erupts into each section shouting at one another.

But the DSC theme is just every section saying the same thing in happy agreement. You see, great music requires conflict too.
 
http://ncc-1031.com/news/heres-intro-music-star-trek-discovery-orchestral/

With the recent trend of streaming shows shortening their intro credits, or doing away with them all together, might this all be moot given Discovery is a streaming series? Not according to series executive producer Alex Kurtzman. “I think it’s [a minute and a half], and we have a credit sequence that we are very excited about, that we’ll run with it.” he said during a recent TCA. “It’s absolutely running at that length, for sure.” That means show watchers will hear the music every week when new episodes go up online.


Adams says Star Trek Discovery‘s music hits the mark. “There is a clear honoring of the music of past shows. It’s orchestral, upbeat, optimistic, exciting, and strangely familiar yet fresh” he says. “A new take.”

This is all good news for series showrunners who have been paying meticulous attention to getting the new series right, while charting their own course. Many of them are fans of the show themselves and recognize that the music can be a character of its own.

So the theme is set to run 90 secs, and I clocked the video music at...90secs. So it appears to be the whole thing.
 
Streaming shows are not shortening the theme credits. Network shows are. Shows like Orange is the New Black has long title sequences.

In terms of this theme, I heard it this morning and than instantly forgot about it. It might be improved when we hear it with no one talking over it and the visuals are really important. My favorite theme is the Voyager theme because of that reason.
 
Yeah. AFAIK all of Netflix's series have full credits/themes (Some excellent ones). They're not limited to time restraints to squeeze in commercials.

They're unbreakable. Alive, dammit.
 
The Marvel shows have had some awesome opening credits sequences.
It's good but not great, probably my least favorite of the shows' themes, and I include Faith of the Heart there, but since I love all of the other themes, that's still very good.
 
The thing about "sonic wallpaper" is there is a school of thought that supports its use. I don't buy it, but it can be justified. It's there to not "get in the way." I've often suspected that it was Berman's attempt to try and keep Trek from being too operatic.

But, even if that was the case, as I said before, the Trek's was it's own thing. It was instantly identifiable. And, if those who are patient enough, can find real McCharthaway nuggets of inspired brilliance buried in the endless hours of banality.

But a theme is the musical face of a show or film. It's the bit that's supposed to be memorable. And the one place Star Trek has always been exceptional is in its thematic scoring.
 
That was ... bad. Choke full of things I hate about modern scoring.

I'm guessing we now have a windows into how he'll approach the scoring.
 
I'm running a poll on social media out of curiosity. I suppose someone could do it here as well. We don't hear a new tv show theme very often!

RAMA
 
I think that the music is quite good, will be interesting to hear it paired with the visuals. I like the callback to TOS.
 
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