Goldsmith, in much of his score work, used synthesizers to come up with interesting "other worldy" sounds that worked to enhance the score. When it called attention to itself, it served as a motif on its own, or a punctuation that could send chills up your spine. The television composers never acheived that. Its use never really served any real purpose and never went out of its way to be unusual. It was preset after preset. If I still had a D-50 around
I see where you're coming from. What you're saying is that they needed to add a Korg M1 to their arsenal
But joking aside, I didn't find the synth scores grating.
repetitive yes maybe a little, but grating, never.
I always laugh at how musicians get mocked for using preset patches on Synth equipment by "non synth" musicians, who go home and play their acoustic instruments that have "one" patch setup to them: Whatever acoustic sound they came preset with.
I'm more of a musician than I am an engineer when it comes to music. I've made my own patches in my own equipment, but it's usually tweaking stuff to my liking.
I also happen to love the D-50 and used to have one. Eventually it did get outdated and I replaced it with an XP-30, which I still have.
I'm not mocking though. I own more synths than I know what to with. With the exception of one patch on my DX-7 (The Tub Erupt sound-most recognizable as the "Do They Know it's Christmas" patch), I rarely use preset sounds. Sure, if I need a piano or something.. There is always some room for tweeking, especially if you want something unique. The TOS composers did this with a vengeance. They were able to pluck a nylon string, feed it through a bunch of tape echo and BOOM, You had Talosians..
They took great pains to come up with something different and exciting.
The scoring for much Television in the late 80s-Mid 90s suffers from a vacuum of creative thought. It wasn't just Berman. The industry as a whole had so very few creative minds on the scoring stage...and when they *were* creative, they were often tempermental and difficult and couldn't get things done on time. The result is less adventurous scores all around.
I guess it just comes down to taste. I have never found modern television scores that engaging. Scores were more interesting in the seventies, when composers tried to write beyond the budget and capture something effectively without resorting to cheesy synth, whose only purpose for some composers was to "replace" a musician or group of musicians they couldn't afford.
By the way.. I never said I found them grating.. Cheesy? Yes. The reason they sound horribly dated is the lack of creativity, on the part of the composer, to push the limits of the technology beyond dialing up a preset and sending the horn players home.
