(Rant) One reason I prefer even bad old movies to most good new movies...

[jancivil]

[xoxos]

soz to counter,

imo duke in the 30's is about as advanced as humanity gets. "sugar" is very pop, but compared to other renditions it is miles ahead. eg. the bridge drops on you and there's no clue what's coming next. same for the notes in the solos, all intrigue.

this ('45?) is about the last ellington recording i listen to, the qualities you appreciate about jeeps' blues i don't know, i only hear obviation. it doesn't have to work hard no more, and i like those dense chops where there are half a dozen discrete melodies at the same time.

there are many recordings of the mooche and this one is *the best* (hahaha). listen. it is thick with the suspense of earlier versions, but before it gives way to the "august" nature of later works, it is at the peak of awareness... the timing of each part is *perfect* - the phrasing of each part is lucid, at the moment between mania and mastery. like someone who has learned how to play the game, giving it one solid demonstration before it's just going through the motions.

you can listen to other versions but eg. the supporting phrases (clarinet) are complete and robust, whole expressions.

while as a whole, this piece is more sparsely arranged than the 1930's period (gal from joe's'38 recording is typical of the cascading, renewing invention duke and his gentlemen did better than) it still has constant interplay between voices.



really though, this one recording right here can teach anyone more about music than some whole decades of western civilisation. and the recording has a density, ambience that is wholly cinematic. it's a fair bet that this entire planet has existed only to produce this one four minute recording, when one considers the remaining detritus.

[Aryaroman]

@aMUSEd

I totally understand; Williams' music isn't everyone's cup of tea. A good friend of mine would agree with you; he considers it "very emotionally manipulative". (He also despises Spielberg for that very same reason.)
OTOH my friend is a self-described "theater geek", and that's a very different discipline. Much more rests on the actors and the direction. There's very little call for music in what he does.
I do like going in for an unabashed emotional ride every once in awhile, but that's just me.

STV

The part of "emotionally manipulating" us, is what bothers me. Saying that aloud sounds so artificial, that I can't help but think: Do we seriously need this kind of approach from filmmakers? Are they just lazy or inconfident?

It reminds me of Clockwork Orange and the scene (yes, that scene), where Alex is strapped to the chair and is made to watch violence and sex until he becomes numb to it. But what if one (an individual, preferably, with feelings) was strapped to a chair and made to watch (and listen) scenes from films, scored by excessively emotional scores? What would that do? Is there such an aspect to this as over-exposure?

And then I think of the Wire. No music. Opening titles and end titles, plus every season had a flash-sequence with a licensed song. So, how could I possibly feel sad when some character on screen got killed, when it wasn't scored at all? Great acting and directing.

[Zombie Queen]

Crap always appears less smelly from a distance.

Slightly off-topic. Is it just me, or Pacific Rim theme is Abba's Gimmie Gimmie played backwards...

[Terrafractyl]

I totally agree with the OP. I feel like music in film has become so formulaic that I can't remember the last time I was even mildly surprised by a musical choice in a Hollywood film. (except Q.T)
But that kinda fits with how I feel about big budget films in general, so I guess that kind of makes sense.

I also blame Mr Zimmer a bit. The music in the L.O.T.R's and the hobbit drove me insane!

I loved the beautiful score for LOTR, although I do feel that The Hobbit score was an attempt at rehashing it that failed.

Cliff Martinez writes beautiful scores - especially loved the Solaris remake soundtrack.

All of these are miles better imho than some 'classic' scores like pretty much everything by John Williams who imho is just unlistenable (although Morricone is brilliant - esp Days of heaven)

Each to their own I guess, I found the LOTR score terribly boring. By the end of the 2nd movie I was so sick of the various 'themes' I wanted to watch to just switch the soundtrack off... by the end of the Hobbit I never wanted to watch any of the movies ever again, which is a pity.

I Agree with you on John Williams to an extent. I appreciate his skills in some ways but find him awfully over-the-top at other times, plus to me most of his most memorable bits are usually a little bit too reminiscent of some awesome bits of Classical music from the late 19th and early 20th century.. eg Mahler, Wagner, R.Strauss, Holst etc etc.(To me still The real masters of dramatic music)

Also I like Morricone, although again I find him a bit hit-miss, I shudder when I hear The Mission theme, I always found it horribly kitsch.

In modern days Carter Burwell is quite good IMO, but here my bias is strong, as he scored nearly every Coen bros film, and I am a rabid fanboi....

[nineofkings]

I was going to throw out some half-baked idea about how the barriers to entry have dropped hugely in both music and filmmaking, so you have more amateurs learning by aping the style of the bigger names, which leads to homogenous filmmaking and scoring. Then I remembered it's the big-budget Hollywood movies with these awful generic scores. No excuses.

[Aryaroman]

I was going to throw out some half-baked idea about how the barriers to entry have dropped hugely in both music and filmmaking, so you have more amateurs learning by aping the style of the bigger names, which leads to homogenous filmmaking and scoring. Then I remembered it's the big-budget Hollywood movies with these awful generic scores. No excuses.

Yes, but you have to wonder though. What drives the amateurs into making "epic trailer" or "hybrid-score"-music? Just the money? An aspiration to become a full-time movie composer? Or is it just some type of male-thing? From playing war games to imagining soundtracks to them.

There are so many beautiful, endless possibilites within music... why someone's artistic desire would comporise creating loud and bombastic metallic boom-and-crunch and braahm-filled soundscapes is beyond me. Other than money and career-aspiration of course.

[goldenanalog]

...

[nineofkings]

I wouldn't say all movie scores are terrible. Mostly action movies. The Social Network soundtrack had some good moments, since it worked as actual ambient music a la Eno. Music that can fade in to the background, but is still interesting and detailed if you decide to pay attention to it.

[jancivil]

duped due to brain damage

[jancivil]

soz to counter,

imo duke in the 30's is about as advanced as humanity gets. "sugar" is very pop, but compared to other renditions it is miles ahead. eg. the bridge drops on you and there's no clue what's coming next. same for the notes in the solos, all intrigue.

Well, I should just stay away from evaluating music in the way I did there.
The record if anything alienates me, but that's me, my experience specifically which has me in such a different headspace than you. I don't find anything in the solos a surprise in the least. This kind of sax, and later trumpet solo in jazz... I never got over kind of just hating it. I have the same reaction to it at 60 I did at 20, it's corny and that's that.

If I were stoned I would possibly have a chance to dig it more for what it is, but I still wouldn't want to live there.

The Mooche is a different story, I find that there is a certain element to Ellington where he is ahead of everybody at the time, and in some ways timeless. I find both that and Jeep's Blues transcend the whole 'this is dated' aspect somewhat, albeit in different ways. I don't need music to be transcendent to be great; much of music, maybe most of music is of its time and that's ok.
But while you have a religious experience to speak of with that record, I'm brought back to earth by the descending chromatic gesture not long after the train whistle sonorities, it is vocabulary of that time pinning it to that time. It is obscured some by its treatment.

For instance the seminal work of, the advances of, the origination of the template for later exponents of jazz by masters way back to Bix Beiderbeck and Louis Armstrong speaks volumes; and the 'ahead of everybody else' factors and details are I think quantifiable and analyzable, certainly *knowable* although I tire of language before I'd ever do it.

[jancivil]

This is density:



(Thermopylae - Bob Graettinger)
The B side of The Peanut Vendor by Kenton (1947). Hard to feature what people who bought that record thought after flipping it over and getting this. I think Graettinger may have been full bore crazy.

[xoxos]

ty jan, i think we've touched on this "works for me" before and i find it gratifying that someone with such an articulate expression of music is intrigued by different characteristics. this is a forum working.

i truly value discussion that enriches the public!

for me, i acknowledge that duke working so hard to secure public respect heightens my appreciation, and other folks kind of let him have it. this, to me, is what music lives and breathes to be, a message, not compulsory accompaniment for all phases of life. maybe this is the big problem with cinema scores today, there's no point.. you're in the same place when you walk out that you were when you walked in. it's like watching a culture gratiate itself at a bus stop. "here's your puddle of smeg" and we vaguely remember that once, music used to do something, but can't remember what it was.

it's just way, way too easy to put such things in these terms. i feel like culture should try harder so it wouldn't be so easy to pin it down like that. there's no challenge at all in criticising the mainstream sensibility.

[Jace-BeOS]

I'm in agreement with the theme here. I think I started really noticing it with the new Doctor Who. I grew up on the classic series and my music tastes were influenced greatly by the incidental music. Then the new series came along and it just is constantly at 11 and there's no creative sound usage. The show itself did need to inject more emotion, compared to the old series, but it went way overboard and the soundtrack went first.

I think that the scoring business has suffered from a variation on the loudness wars: the intensity wars.

Remember when Inception came out and suddenly every freakin' trailer and film had to insert blaring (French?) horns? "BWAAAAAAA!!!"

Also... Anyone remember when trailers weren't 75% black screen pauses?

The business end is destroying the art end, as capitalism is want to do with every product ever...

[Jace-BeOS]

It's something I've sort of known for over a decade, but this guy has explained it better than I could ever have;

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing that. I like sound textures and sound design, but it's certainly quite clear that melody has fallen out of soundtracks by and large.