My favs from TNG's Ron Jones soundtrack compositions ...

[Lance]

McCarthy's work during the early seasons of TNG occasionally rivalled Jones. But he let Berman sap his scores of emotion and his work became much more bland. McCarthy is the composer who came up with "The Picard Theme" which was a great piece of music. I believe there's a final hint of it at the end of "Yesterday's Enterprise". But Berman prohibited him composing anything as thematic or melodic. That being said he did some good work and even when it was bland he injected some warmth into his music. In the later seasons his scores for "Violations", "Conundrum", "Attached" and "Frame of Mind" stand out. His work had more variety of mood than Jay Chattaway, who rarely composed anything other than dour notes that go nowhere. His first few scores, "Tin Man" and "Remember Me" were amazing and I liked some of his season 5 scores such as "Power Play", "The Perfect Mate", and "The Inner Light".

It's instructive that on the roundtable thing on the Blu Ray where the main composers all talk about their work, the discussion about Berman's instructions turns to bemusement that anyone would ask music composers not to indicate how the audience should feel about a scene.... when that's a composer's job. :/

 

[Armus]

It's instructive that on the roundtable thing on the Blu Ray where the main composers all talk about their work, the discussion about Berman's instructions turns to bemusement that anyone would ask music composers not to indicate how the audience should feel about a scene.... when that's a composer's job. :/

There's no point in having incidental music if its not composed to clarify the emotional subtext. Ron Jones gave every TNG episode a stronger emotional subtext.