soundtrack
- Thread starter startrekrcks
- Start date
Yeah I get the impression most of the people who didn't like it were hoping for a much more romantic, Goldsmith/Williams kind of score.
Obviously that's not the style Abrams wanted, and I completely agree with his reasoning. The tone of his movie was much more urgent and modern, and a romantic, classical kind of sound just wouldn't have fit that at all.
If that means the score doesn't work as well on it's own, so be it. The Bourne movie soundtracks probably don't either, but that doesn't mean they aren't any good.
I absolutely loved the score.
There was the main theme for Kirk, appropriately sounding a little incomplete to match the character; Spock's theme, which touched on a warmth and sadness he could not express; and the sense of fun and adventure is all there.
Incidently, the To Boldly Go and End Credits are not the only places in the score to use the TOS theme or fanfare.
When Kirk and McCoy meet, the opening tones of the TOS Prologue are used.
The Fanfare is also present as McCoy sneaks Kirk on the she shuttle, just before Enterprising Young Men kicks in.
We also hear it just as Kirk, Spock and Pike appear on the Transporter Pad.
Although Kirk's main theme is the biggest theme in the score, there are probably around 6-8 themes in total.
Much of the score is underrepresented in the soundtrack, and some unreleased music deserves to be released:
- The tense music for Captain Robau walking through the Kelvin, boarding the shuttle and travelling to the Narada.
- The snippets of Spock growing up, where Amanda speaks to him before he appears before the Council.
- The music leading up to Enterprising Young Men, where the Cadets are assigned to their ships, Uhura blows a gasket for being assigned to the Farragut and Kirk is injected with the Vaccine for an infection by the Laveran Mud Flea.
- The music as Pike heads for the shuttle, through to Kirk, Sulu and Olsen being dropped.
- The platform fight with Sulu's hero shot (best actuion cue in the movie).
- The music for Spock beaming down to rescue his parents and the Vulcan Council from the Katric Ark.
- The music that plays from Spock standing on the Transporter Pad, through his log entry about being a member of an Endangered Species.
- The lobster monster chase on Delta Vega.
- The scene where Spock tells Kirk he was emotionally compromized before they beam back to the Enterprise.
- The music for Scotty in the pipes.
- The score for the Enterprise rising from Titan, through to Kirk and Spock beaming onto the Narada.
When one listens to some of this material, it becomes aparrent that the soundtrack is inadequate to make a good assessment of the score.
I for one want the soundtrack to be expanded with at least some of the aforementioned cues.
There was the main theme for Kirk, appropriately sounding a little incomplete to match the character; Spock's theme, which touched on a warmth and sadness he could not express; and the sense of fun and adventure is all there.
Incidently, the To Boldly Go and End Credits are not the only places in the score to use the TOS theme or fanfare.
When Kirk and McCoy meet, the opening tones of the TOS Prologue are used.
The Fanfare is also present as McCoy sneaks Kirk on the she shuttle, just before Enterprising Young Men kicks in.
We also hear it just as Kirk, Spock and Pike appear on the Transporter Pad.
Although Kirk's main theme is the biggest theme in the score, there are probably around 6-8 themes in total.
Much of the score is underrepresented in the soundtrack, and some unreleased music deserves to be released:
- The tense music for Captain Robau walking through the Kelvin, boarding the shuttle and travelling to the Narada.
- The snippets of Spock growing up, where Amanda speaks to him before he appears before the Council.
- The music leading up to Enterprising Young Men, where the Cadets are assigned to their ships, Uhura blows a gasket for being assigned to the Farragut and Kirk is injected with the Vaccine for an infection by the Laveran Mud Flea.
- The music as Pike heads for the shuttle, through to Kirk, Sulu and Olsen being dropped.
- The platform fight with Sulu's hero shot (best actuion cue in the movie).
- The music for Spock beaming down to rescue his parents and the Vulcan Council from the Katric Ark.
- The music that plays from Spock standing on the Transporter Pad, through his log entry about being a member of an Endangered Species.
- The lobster monster chase on Delta Vega.
- The scene where Spock tells Kirk he was emotionally compromized before they beam back to the Enterprise.
- The music for Scotty in the pipes.
- The score for the Enterprise rising from Titan, through to Kirk and Spock beaming onto the Narada.
When one listens to some of this material, it becomes aparrent that the soundtrack is inadequate to make a good assessment of the score.
I for one want the soundtrack to be expanded with at least some of the aforementioned cues.
While I can understand what Giacchino and Abrams were going for, but as a minimalistic score it doesn't quite work, certainly not on the level of Clint Manstell's Moon soundtrack. Both scores frequently reuse one leitmotif, but Moon's seems easier on the ears than Trek's and doesn't jar you as much when it's repeated, but that might have something to do with how quiet Moon's leitmotif is.
Another reason the score didn't seem to connect was that it didn't manage to get the bombastic sounds associated with the Romulans to gel with the other tracks. Unlike Moon's or Battlestar Galactica's soundtracks, Giacchino doesn't seem to mix the sounds together much, making it much more jarring to go from the bombastic sounds associated with the Romulans to the quiet ones linked with Kirk and Spock. Doing do would've also provided some nice variety to music as well.
Also, I think a lot of people really noticed how repetitive the score was when Spock was talking to Sarek in the transporter room, where it was decided to edit music into a scene that could've worked just as well, if not better, had there not been music. Had the music been left out of the scene, people might not have noticed that the score was quite so repetitive while watching the movie.
bullethead,
I thought the music worked well in that scene, and really needed to be there to emphasize the emotion.
For a repetetive score, perhaps one should look at The Imperial March in TESB.
There are far more instances of that than there are of either Spock's or Kirk's themes in Star Trek.
Most film scores are repetitive, simply due to the fact that themes repeat by design.
I thought the music worked well in that scene, and really needed to be there to emphasize the emotion.
For a repetetive score, perhaps one should look at The Imperial March in TESB.
There are far more instances of that than there are of either Spock's or Kirk's themes in Star Trek.
Most film scores are repetitive, simply due to the fact that themes repeat by design.
Where can people hear the unreleased music?
A favorite theme of mine was the Spock/Vulcan's theme, that eastern lyre (I believe its called a lyre could just be a guitar) was perfect for the film with its exotic sound.
I personally feel that Ben Cross and Zachary Quinto's performances were enough to convey the underlying emotions of that scene, but I understand your point.
Yes, most film scores are repetitive (Moon's is a fantastic example of this), but that doesn't mean the composer gets a free pass when they don't even try to add some variety. Playing the same notes on a different set of instruments would've sufficed. Of course, Abrams may be to blame for the amount of repetition, as he pretty much chooses what scenes go in what order and with what music during the editing process.
Actually, I was hoping for a creative, unusual score with '60s big band or jazz overtones, like Giacchino did for The Incredibles. I'm unhappy with what we got because I feel it's too traditional; yeah, the chord progressions may be different from what Trek has had before, and the instrumentation is more standard Hollywood blockbuster than symphonic Goldsmith (not that that does anything except help the soundtrack feel more generic), but at heart the new score is still a ponderous, pseudo-important exercise that leans on tubas to treat people whizzing around in spaceships with laser guns with far more somberness than it deserves. I feel it's dull and out of step with the high-energy adventure that Abrams tried to recapture from the original series.
I have the soundtrack, and I love every bit of it! I bought the cd around after I saw the movie for the 1st or 2nd time. I also have the soundtrack on my iphone. So I play the soundtrack alot. Everytime I listen to it, I can just picture what is happing just as in the movie. My favorite tracks are To Bodly Go, The End Credits,Hella Bar Talk,Star Trek,Enterprising Young Men. But I love the whole cd no matter what parts I love the most. I think the music in the soundtrack fits really well the movie, so I see no problems with it.
The audio kept cutting out for me during the last part, where they were actually talking about the music for this movie - made it sort of hard to listen to. Even when it wasn't doing that, it was kind of choppy and only roughly edited together out of small bits.
These guys may well be trained in music theory but, speaking as one who has been so trained as well, I didn't hear anything which got much deeper than them saying that they could hear the classical tradition in the music of Goldsmith, Horner, et al, but that in Giacchino's score they heard instead Big Hollywood music (or words to that effect.) Okay, and they did talk about quartal and quintal harmonies a bit, but it's kind of hard to talk about Star Trek music for very long without those coming up at least in passing.
One thing I wonder about (and Gep, maybe you've heard something about this, I don't know) is what happened to the music Giacchino wrote first -- before it was decided to overhaul the score and take a different direction, resulting in what we ultimately got? Wasn't there at least a partial score which was quite different? Do you know whether any of that was ever recorded, even in a piano version, or did it never make it past the draft stage? (I haven't read the Star Trek Magazine article in which this was discussed, but there was a TrekToday article which excerpted some of it.)
Huh. It played smoothly for me.
I'd never heard anything about that. That's very interesting.
I could talk about Star Trek music a lot and never mention those things, since I barely know what they mean.
Gep, philistine.
I guess I'll try it again later and see.
Well, without getting overly technical, most harmonies in the Western European (classical) musical tradition is tertial (based on intervals of a third); for any key, the basic root chord is made up of the first, third and fifth (do re sol) degrees of the seven-note (do mi re fa sol la ti) scale, and the rest of the chords in that key are constructed similarly upon the other notes of the scale. The TOS fanfare uses a mixture of this and quartal (based on fourths) harmony, giving it a different harmonic character. Quintal is related to quartal (one is the harmonic inversion of the other) but again, it has its own distinct character or personality -- it just doesn't sound like your ordinary classical harmony, and can be useful to a composer because of that difference.
I could talk about Star Trek music a lot and never mention those things, since I barely know what they mean.
Gep, philistine.
I guess I'll try it again later and see.
Well, without getting overly technical, most harmonies in the Western European (classical) musical tradition is tertial (based on intervals of a third); for any key, the basic root chord is made up of the first, third and fifth (do re sol) degrees of the seven-note (do mi re fa sol la ti) scale, and the rest of the chords in that key are constructed similarly upon the other notes of the scale. The TOS fanfare uses a mixture of this and quartal (based on fourths) harmony, giving it a different harmonic character. Quintal is related to quartal (one is the harmonic inversion of the other) but again, it has its own distinct character or personality -- it just doesn't sound like your ordinary classical harmony, and can be useful to a composer because of that difference.
I could talk about Star Trek music a lot and never mention those things, since I barely know what they mean.
Gep, philistine.
What about the more exotic music for Spock and Vulcan we heard was that based on western music only using the instruments from the east, or did they use the style of the east as well?
startrekrcks
Fleet Captain
the music was terrific and unique really like listening to the End Credits, Enterprising Young Men.
A
Amaris
Guest
Which music are you talking about, specifically? (Provide links to examples, if possible.)
Spot on, but I think you mixed up 're' and 'mi.'
I mostly loved the score, but after watching the movie yet again recently (yet again only meaning my 4th, conveniently they had it on a plane I took recently
) I did start noticing that the main theme is used a LOT, which gets a little distracting. It works insanely well over the big STAR TREK title at the beginning and great in a few other places, but it's kind of overly-pervasive. I don't think it's quite as interesting as it wants to be. I also recently watched the opening scene of the Enterprise mirror universe episode where they re-used Goldsmith's First Contact theme; now that one I love unconditionally. 
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