The music on Star Trek Discovery
- Thread starter Scotty
- Start date
No fake future music, please. The worst music Trek ever tried was the now-incredibly-dated synth score for the first couple of seasons of TNG. Just awful. Thankfully they switched to 100% orchestral, which is far more timeless.
That shouldn't be an issue anymore given the budget. Song licensing is within the grasp of even the most low budget TV show, so if Trek wanted to do it, it could. Dating the show would be a more plausible reason not to do it - showing contemporary music which doesn't end up surviving till next decade let alone the 23rd century.
As far as we know it's been played in public only once, so we're reliant on someone having recorded it. The longer we wait the less likely that seems.
As I said, it doesn't have to be music -- just have some human popular culture from after the year 2000 (or 2017 by now).
If you're referring to Ron Jones's scores from the first four seasons of TNG, which mixed orchestral and electronic instruments as appropriate, that's a total change of subject, because most of it was not presented as diegetic, in-story music. And I think you're wrong that they went 100% orchestral after Jones left; the other composers used mostly orchestral scoring, but I believe they still made occasional use of electronics as the situation called for it. And of course the music in Enterprise's last couple of seasons was largely electronic, because they no longer had the budget to hire an orchestra for every episode.
Also, it's artificial to treat the two as incompatible or opposed. An orchestra, by its very nature, is based on combining multiple different types of instrumental sound to create a wide range of different textures, and many modern orchestral composers include electronics as a way to add new textures and qualities to their music. Jerry Goldsmith used electronic elements in a great many of his film scores, including his Star Trek scores. Many TV composers today use orchestral music for premieres and big episodes and electronics for more routine scores, since modern synth and sampling technology has improved to the point that it's hard to tell the difference -- although there's still room for using electronics to experiment with new sounds that can't be achieved acoustically.
ST: TNG scoring never became 100% orchestral. There were always electronic use sprinkled throughout. Also in spin-off series as well. They did, however, become more orchestral-focused (in other words, relying on real players than synth sounds for body of an episode score).
I love those synth scores form early STNG. They sound as integral to the episodes as the story is to me now.
Those make me cringe, mainly because they used a Roland D-50 which I have, but did not utilize it to the best of its potential. It's like they intentionally made it cheesy because you can get far, far, FAR better sounds from a D-50.
The moment Picard sees his grandmother and the Synths in Datalore are magical to me.
I agree that older synth sounds can seem dated; it seems that you can easily identify the decade an electronic composition came from by the timbre of the sounds it uses, due to the progression of the technology. But I feel maybe we've lost something in the pursuit of electronic instruments that more authentically replicate the sound of acoustic instruments, rather than embracing the potential of electronics to add new sounds to the repertoire. I think some composers still do that, though. For instance, most of Blake Neely's Arrowverse scores are electronic approximations of the sound of the orchestral scores they can afford to do only a few times per season, but his Arrow scores rely more on overtly electronic sounds.
Anyway, back in the day, I was often annoyed by hearing electronic scores when I preferred orchestral ones, but these days I sometimes feel nostalgic when I hear those '80s or '90s-style electronic sounds.
Anyway, back in the day, I was often annoyed by hearing electronic scores when I preferred orchestral ones, but these days I sometimes feel nostalgic when I hear those '80s or '90s-style electronic sounds.
Yep I remember Babylon 5 did a product placement for zima beer which then went out of businss a few years later and never made to the year 2258.
You don't know, it could end up something like some breweries do. They buy the rights to the names and replicate the recipe. I've found some beer that my dad remembers drinking in the 1950's and 1960's, being made again!
I thought the organ music used as Prometheus's theme in the last season of Arrow was pretty cheesy.
Kor
"Organ music?" I took it to be a descending electronic shriek. Which, fittingly, was a harsh "reflection" of the rising electronic tone that constitutes part of the Green Arrow's theme and the main titles. (At least I think it's electronic. It has a similar quality to an electric guitar glissando, but different.)
Well, I kept getting an old "Phantom of the Opera" vibe from it. It almost made me laught a couple times.
Kor
I think that scores with a heavily electronic sound seem to mostly be in the realm of video games nowadays (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Mass Effect: Andromeda being some recent good examples). The only recent movie examples I can think of are Tron: Legacy and maybe Oblivion...
But you're right, there are composers like Neely who still manage to incorporate a "synth-y" flavor into their more orchestral works - Ramin Djawadi (Person of Interest - not so much Game of Thrones), John Powell (the Bourne scores, including the newest one from last year) and Hans ZImmer all come to mind.
I don't recall Djawadi's Person of Interest scores having much of an electronic sound to them. I recall them as mostly acoustic-sounding and intensely leitmotif-driven, with most main characters and entities having their own distinct themes that played under almost every moment featuring them. Although they were so wall-to-wall, pretty much playing constantly without a break like animation music, that it may have been necessary to supplement the orchestral sound with electronic surrogates, much like Neely has to do in order to churn out weekly scores for 6-7 different shows at once. (Although Neely also has several uncredited junior composers working under him.)
I gather the composer for the new Blade Runner sequel is trying to emulate the sound of Vangelis's score to an extent. So there will probably be a fair amount of electronics there.
I gather the composer for the new Blade Runner sequel is trying to emulate the sound of Vangelis's score to an extent. So there will probably be a fair amount of electronics there.
Well that was... there.
Not that I was expecting much, but that could have been the theme to almost any generic SF show/film from the 80's or 90's.
I know what McFarlane is aiming for with the show and it fits. But it's not very interesting and it's attempt at "stirring" is very flat.
If you're going to waste 60-120 seconds of screen time with a theme, you've got to make it count.
This one will just make me count the seconds on the screen as I FF.
Hugo - listened to every note of TNG/DS9/VOY themes every week