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Posted: |
Feb 25, 2018 - 4:09 PM
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By: |
Avatarded
(Member)
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My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, The Forgotten, The Chumscrubber and The Life Before Her Eyes were electronic with guitar as an accompaniment for the latter two scores. First In Flight was all electronic (its inclusion on the "Collage" album was a first-time orchestral recording)
Considering its prominent violin (?) and piano writing and performance, I myself wouldn't classify The Forgotten as electronic. That's just my opinion, of course. I think those instruments were such a dominant part of the soundscape on that gig that to my ears they fully counterbalance the synths. I'd call it a hybrid without question. Which is cool, because it speaks for the film itself -- the acoustic solo instruments representing the heart and humanity in the film, the electronics representing dark forces, doubt, and uncertainty. It's a pretty underrated score.
While I would agree, the violin itself isn't real. People think this score is boring. I've always enjoyed it quite a lot.
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While I am on balance more of an orchestra guy, there are a lot of electronic scores I love, and I appreciate an inventive use of synths.
But I've never cared for Horner's use of electronics. Unlike Goldsmith, or Poledouris, I don't feel Horner was one of those orchestrally-oriented composers who had a good ear for the electronic realm, and he tended to use unremarkable timbres and run-of-the-mill samples.
I look at a score like The Name of the Rose, in which Horner mostly leans on samples to realize the music, and I can't see why he didn't just use acoustic instruments.
His sampled "panpipe" in Where The River Runs Black has the correct timbre, but since it's played on a keyboard it comes off sounding more like a calliope than the Amazonian instrument it is trying to emulate.
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I like both. I love THUNDERHEART, GORKY PARK, CLASS ACTION, COMMANDO, all of which contain a lot of electronics, as much as any fully orchestral Horner score.
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Posted: |
Feb 28, 2018 - 8:52 AM
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By: |
Avatarded
(Member)
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There's a lot of synth (samples) even in what most would consider Horner's purely "orchestral" scores. There are many scores where cues will alternate between real strings, brass, woodwinds and sampled ones. I talked to Simon Franglen about this and he said that James would often prefer to keep the synth mockup for various reasons: because of how it sat behind dialogue, budget, color, and when he didn't think re-recording it with the orchestra was a good use of time/resources. If a cue was working in mockup form and everyone was happy, James would rather spend more time on other cues than re-recording it.
Searching For Bobby Fischer, Titanic, Braveheart, Troy, Apollo 13. Five scores where this approach is especially notable.
Many of my favorite cues in these scores are synthesized or have a heavy blending of both.
Cues such as:
"Chess Piece in The Dark / Shirazi Game / Little Castle" from Bobby Fischer
"Southampton", "Leaving Port", "Take Her To Sea, Mr. Murdoch" from Titanic
"A Father's Final Return", "Prima Noctes" from Braveheart
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Horner - Orchestral Or Electronic?
Yes. 
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Does anybody out there like both James Horner's orchestral scores and electronic scores, or just prefer the orchestral?
So it's not possible to prefer the electronic?
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So it's not possible to prefer the electronic?
It's possible. In the case of Vangelis I like Blade Runner better than Mythodea. But I don't care for Horner's use of electronics, which I find very dull. I think his orchestral work is spectacular however.
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So it's not possible to prefer the electronic?
No. Everyone has to adore Aliens, Star Trek III and Krull. That means you too.
Word.
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