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Posted: |
Oct 4, 2023 - 2:37 AM
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By: |
PollyAnna
(Member)
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We disagree on the merits on album production, Nicolai, as we've discussed many times before. I've never subscribed to the "interactive" idea of creating albums, much like I don't subscribe to the interactive idea of making films or watching visual artworks. Or, in fact, putting any things together that are supposed to come in a finished state. I consume them, I don't create them. Obviously, in some cases I'm "forced" to make a playlist because there is no properly curated album. I don't like it, but it's an emergency situation -- better than listening to the C&C. But I will always, without exception, prefer a situation where the composer-producer has made an effort to reconceptualize the music (even if I think has flaws; that's part of art consumption -- one doesn't always agree with the creator's choices).
Forgive me Thor for being obtuse but what is C&C? I've seen the term several times on the board but haven't copped its meaning.yet.
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We disagree on the merits on album production, Nicolai, as we've discussed many times before.
Indeed.
I've never subscribed to the "interactive" idea of creating albums, much like I don't subscribe to the interactive idea of making films or watching visual artworks.
Neither do I; I prefer to just put on an album and listen to it. It is comparatively rare that I actually edit or change something in an album. I usually just listen to an album or the compositions on an album, regardless of whether it is a soundtrack album, a jazz album a pop album, or a classical album, the way it is released.
Or, in fact, putting any things together that are supposed to come in a finished state.
Indeed, when I get an album, I expect it to be presented for listening in a way that I can put it on an have a listening experience. Obviously, when I have a classical album (say two Beethoven Piano concertos or two other compositions), I don't usually listen to both at once. And if a soundtrack album contains "Bonus Tracks", I usually don't listen to them immediately after the "main program". But yes, I prefer to just put on an album and listen to it over editing an fidgeting around with it. Which is why I rarely do it.
I consume them, I don't create them. Obviously, in some cases I'm "forced" to make a playlist because there is no properly curated album.
Actually, no one is forcing you; the albums you have are usually properly curated albums. You may just not like them because for you, they may be too long or contain tracks you don't like or you don't like the order. That's fine. But it's your decision that this is so. It's comparatively rare that I feel the need to edit or change an album that I get. It happens, but not very often.
I don't like it, but it's an emergency situation -- better than listening to the C&C.
It seems more like an idée fixe of yours that any order is better than C&C, when in reality, C&C often is the most natural presentation of a film score because it is composed that way. (Say, in classically composed scores by Goldsmith, the architecture and structure usually works best when complete and in order.)
But it's rather ironic that on the one hand you say that you don't take the film into consideration when listening to the music, on the other hand you do take the film into consideration very much, simply by changing the order of the music into any other order that's not film order, regardless of whether that makes musically sense, just to get a different sort of "album".
But I will always, without exception, prefer a situation where the composer-producer has made an effort to reconceptualize the music (even if I think has flaws; that's part of art consumption -- one doesn't always agree with the creator's choices).
That's okay, you can do that. I reserve the right to judge for myself on an individual basis when and how I agree with a composer, artist, or record producer, and whose presentation I prefer. I don't mind actual reworking of film scores into something else, like Christopher Young's KILLING SEASON or John Corigliano's RED VIOLIN Concerto, but if reconceptualizing means a diluted and watered down presentation of the film score composition by removing or shortening aleatoric, atonal, dissonant, dramatic parts, was often done in the past, I'm no friend of that at all. For the longest time when I started to collect film music, I avoided Henry Mancini albums, as he removed all that ever interested me in his scores in favor of easy listening arrangements. I was fooled twice and then stopped buying his albums.
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Posted: |
Oct 4, 2023 - 3:53 AM
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By: |
acathla
(Member)
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Just so there is no misunderstanding though, I really like how Hans Zimmer constructs many of his albums, with tracks segueing into each other, he often constructs nice albums that flow well, so Zimmer albums certainly don't have to be "C&C". I sure enjoy it if extra effort is made to construct a good album for listening experience. But even there one can easily see there is more than one way to put together an album (as the expanded INTERSTELLAR shows). I sure prefer the cue "Tick-Tock" (from the expanded release) over the cue "Mountains" (from the regular soundtrack album) if I could have only one of these cue. Fortunately, I can have both. :-)
His album presentations are hit/miss for me.
THE LAST SAMURAI is in my opinion a perfect album presentation as it has all the best parts and I dont mind the tracks crossfading or being combined cause its an amazing listening experience as a whole. The same goes for Inception. Perfect flow, and perfect use of crossfades/combined tracks. Batman Begins as well! (all albums are still missing some of my favorite bits from the movies though)
But then there's super messy albums he created which is so badly executed that it makes me almost never listen to the albums, even though I like the actual score. Like THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. What a mess! Track titles dont have anything to do with the actual score. they are just random lines from the movie (I know he's done this on others as well), and there is even a 20 second track as its own track which crossfades in both ends. What was the intentions with that "artistic" choice? why not just combine it with the next track? lol! I love this score but I hardly ever listen to it because of these decisions. Another problem with all the crossfading concept albums is that I usually only add the tracks I like to my Zimmer master playlist. So when I listen to the tracks I like it sounds like the album is just full of mistakes since all the tracks never finish/fade out. It gets too messy. For me. 
Luckily, it seems like he has stopped doing the crossfading thing now with new releases. Probably because of the way people are streaming and listening to music these days.
But that's enough of my rant about crossfading choices for curated albums, lol!
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Posted: |
Oct 4, 2023 - 5:41 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Actually, no one is forcing you; the albums you have are usually properly curated albums. You may just not like them because for you, they may be too long or contain tracks you don't like or you don't like the order. That's fine. But it's your decision that this is so. It's comparatively rare that I feel the need to edit or change an album that I get. It happens, but not very often.
I obviously meant "forced" in a circa way (hence the quotation marks), not literally forced, of course. It's not an idée fixe that "any order is better than C&C", it's an informed evaluation based on sampling (and even owning) hundreds of C&C presentations over the course of 20+ years. 99% of the time, they don't work as a listening experience FOR ME. So when an album comes out (of a score I love), and there are no previous curated OST presentations, I AM kinda "forced" to make a playlist out of them if I am to have any kind of enjoyment from them. Not just get irritated. So it's either that, or don't listen to them at all. Then the choice becomes easy.
But it's rather ironic that on the one hand you say that you don't take the film into consideration when listening to the music, on the other hand you do take the film into consideration very much, simply by changing the order of the music into any other order that's not film order
I suppose that's one way to look at it, i.e. I want to move as far away from the "film logic" as possible. I can agree with that. But what I was talking with acathla about, was the non-existant issue (for me) of being frustrated by a composer leaving out a cue I liked in the movie. That kind of thing basically never happens for me. Example: When "The Big Rescue" was released on the Rhino release of SUPERMAN, I thought to myself "well, that's a nice cue". I had no memory of it from the film. I had lived perfectly well without it for many years (having only owned the Warner OST, which is still my only release of the score), and never craved it. Could it be inserted into the existing Warner program without it losing its current flow? I suppose so. But I can live without it too.
.... but if reconceptualizing means a diluted and watered down presentation of the film score composition by removing or shortening aleatoric, atonal, dissonant, dramatic parts, was often done in the past, I'm no friend of that at all. For the longest time when I started to collect film music, I avoided Henry Mancini albums, as he removed all that ever interested me in his scores in favor of easy listening arrangements. I was fooled twice and then stopped buying his albums.
This is something I judge on a case-by-case basis. Ideally, a score presentation should have SOME of those dissonant cues to be properly representative of the work. But it's not a must. Other times, I can live perfectly well without any of them.
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Well, I agree that you should expect to put in a CD and listen to it, without having to do assembly work. That's what I usually do.
Ironically, it is you who seems to edit albums much more than I do because you are for one reason or another not satisfied with the way they are represented. Fair enough.
I listen to symphonies as symphonies, operas as operas, and film scores as film scores. You seem to not want to listen to film scores as film scores but as something else. Again, fair enough.
But, as I said, you obviously have a lot of desire to edit albums (a lot more desire than I do, it's very rare that I feel the need to edit an album or create a playlist) that you deem unsatisfactory for one reason or another. Again, fair enough. But just as you find some albums lacking because they are too long, containing to many cues, others may find albums lacking because they are too short, containing not all relevant cues.
In case of the former, you can easily edit them to something that suits you, in case of the latter, you cannot. So the latter situation is preferable, as you can make the albums to suit you, and somebody else can keep them as they are (as I usually do) or edit them to something they may find even better. Which may not be exactly the way you would have done it.
That's the thing. We both agree you shouldn't have to edit albums, but if you think that you must because the album is lacking, it's much better that you actually have the option of editing it. Something you do not have if the album is too short.
As you said, maybe you can live perfectly without certain cues, maybe even I could live perfectly without certain cues, but if there is just one listener out there who loves that particular cue and wants it included, I think it should be included. If in doubt, put in on the album (within the main program or as bonus track).
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I suppose that's one way to look at it, i.e. I want to move as far away from the "film logic" as possible. I can agree with that. But what I was talking with acathla about, was the non-existant issue (for me) of being frustrated by a composer leaving out a cue I liked in the movie. That kind of thing basically never happens for me. Example: When "The Big Rescue" was released on the Rhino release of SUPERMAN, I thought to myself "well, that's a nice cue". I had no memory of it from the film. I had lived perfectly well without it for many years (having only owned the Warner OST, which is still my only release of the score), and never craved it. Could it be inserted into the existing Warner program without it losing its current flow? I suppose so. But I can live without it too.
We can all live without lots of things, but it's good if we don't have to. As I said, I remember sometimes music of movies I have seen years ago where I don't even remember the plot. Whenever a piece of music plays in a movie, I usually "hear" it (as in being fully aware of it). Sometimes I then like it enough to listen to it on its own. Also, as in case of some classical composers, if you move away from "film logic", which is basically "story logic", you often also move away from "music logic", which is in many ways very similar to "story logic". (The "sonata" form in classical music is practically the form of a story put into music.) Which is why, if you remove the music from the film logic on album, you also often break the musical architecture, which is at the core of the composition.
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Posted: |
Oct 4, 2023 - 6:04 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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I only need to edit albums that are...well, not 'albums', the way I define them. C&C releases aren't really albums in my eyes, they're something else. Don't really know what to call them. "Archives", perhaps? Alas, I'm not into soundtracks for archival and archeological reasons, even though I value the work of preserving something in general. I'm into it for the conceptual listening experience aspect. My amateurish playlists certainly don't turn them into "albums", but they're the closest I can get when no alternative exists.
Which is why, if you remove the music from the film logic on album, you also often break the musical architecture, which is at the core of the composition.
This is of course our fundamental disagreement, where we'll never see eye to eye. I'm on the team of most old-school composers who recognize that film logic and pure music logic are two different things, and so you need to adapt it to make "sense" without the images.
To find some common ground, I do agree with you that the best option is to have both the OST program and the additional music, for those who crave such things. Best of both worlds. It appears this new THE ROCK release (to get back on-topic a little bit) does NOT include the OST program, which is a shame. Probably also no information about how to program the cues into the OST program, if at all possible. Then again, the OST is widely available, so no biggie.
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Which is why, if you remove the music from the film logic on album, you also often break the musical architecture, which is at the core of the composition.
This is of course our fundamental disagreement, where we'll never see eye to eye. I'm on the team of most old-school composers who recognize that film logic and pure music logic are two different things, and so you need to adapt it to make "sense" without the images.
You have to differentiate between adapting a film score for various listening purposes (which is something that can make a lot of sense, even when there are classically composed scores) or tempering with the actual architecture of the composition. In the 90s, there was an enormously successful recording of Gorecki's 3rd Symphony. Why was the symphony so successful all of a sudden? It hit a spot, but as the (conductor of that recording) David Zinman said, it was successful as a recording, no one would go to a concert of the symphony to hear a piece where that little happens. The Symphony works for "home listening". It's like you don't listen to all four hours of PARSIFAL all the time, sometimes you just listen to some excerpts.
It's perfectly clear that you don't play Rózsa's full score for BEN HUR in concert, but it can easily be enjoyed on an album.
But structurally, the logic in which certain classical compositions unfold has at its core the same basis as a story that unfolds. That isn't just my opinion, every book on composition reveals that. That's why some composers have stories in their mind and compose then a symphony or other composition "around" the story in their head.
Just about every symphony opens with a sonata form, the basic structure of which is the same basic structure as most stories. To simplify, you have exposition (Introducing Theme A and theme B)... the starting situation, you have the development (which is usually Theme A and Theme B battling it out, could be protagonist/antagonist, could be protagonist/love interest, whatever... it's "the story" a conflict, sometimes additional themes (characters) are introduced, various situations, until Bang!, it comes to an end ("recapitulation"), and the themes may have been changed (or not). That's a very simplified description, but that's basically how one of the most core forms of classical music works, and if you sketch it out on paper, you will find that it's easily also a core form for stories. (It's not the only musical form that is basically "story".) That's why you find many descriptions about "absolut" music such as Beethoven or Mahler symphonies revealing the underlaying musical architecture by referring to a (hypothetical) story or story mechanisms. Discussions about whether the third Hammer blow in Mahler's 6th symphony (a piece of "absolute" music) should be included or not are often done by referring to the clear underlying story aspects of the musical architecture, and not on purely musical terms. Why? Because there is obviously (very obviously) a story going on in the symphony, even if it isn't spelled out.
That does not mean all film scores, not even all classically composed film scores have to be represented C&C on album, but it usually means that it's a good start.
To find some common ground, I do agree with you that the best option is to have both the OST program and the additional music, for those who crave such things. Best of both worlds. It appears this new THE ROCK release (to get back on-topic a little bit) does NOT include the OST program, which is a shame. Probably also no information about how to program the cues into the OST program, if at all possible. Then again, the OST is widely available, so no biggie.
It's certainly nice to have the OST program as well, especially if there are certain edits made that are not on the film score program. Though in some cases, like STAR TREK II or Goldsmith's TWILIGHT ZONE, the liner notes tell you how to program the OST program, which is also nice.
Hans Zimmer's scores are usually not really composed with a classical music architecture, so they can actually be more easily "shaped" into something different for the album release.
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As I've said many times before, I don't think the link to classical music works.
It sure does if the film score is composed according to principles valid in classical music, which some film scores are.
In the cases of adaptation there, it's one type of music written for its own sake (like a full symphony) adapted to another type of music written for its own sake (like a suite of that symphony). It doesn't transgress medium.
You can certainly adapt a piece of music into another piece of music, no problem. Rózsa adapted his violin concerto into a film score, and Corigliano his film score into a violin concerto. But an actual adaptation of a piece of music into another piece of music involves more than just re-arranging and deleting tracks.
In the case of film music on albums, you deal with two types of musical architecture.
Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
One for how it works in the film and another for how it works on album. They're not the same.
Well, they can be the same. I am not saying they have to be the same, but I am saying they sure can be the same, and in case of some composers ( such as Goldsmith) they often are.
Same as if you listen to the audio track of a film without the images, that doesn't automatically make it a well-functioning radio play. You need to make changes to make it work (cut out some bits, perhaps move other bits around).
True, but a radio play and a movie are two different things. A film score in a movie and a film score on an album are not two different things. They are film scores either way.
A film score can be adapted into a violin concerto, sure, just like a violin concerto can be adapted into a film score. But if you put the violin concerto as is in the movie, it remains a violin concerto, and if you put the film score as is on CD, it remains a film score.
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As I've said many times before, I don't think the link to classical music works. In the cases of adaptation there, it's one type of music written for its own sake (like a full symphony) adapted to another type of music written for its own sake (like a suite of that symphony). It doesn't transgress medium. In the case of film music on albums, you deal with two types of musical architecture. One for how it works in the film and another for how it works on album. They're not the same. Same as if you listen to the audio track of a film without the images, that doesn't automatically make it a well-functioning radio play. You need to make changes to make it work (cut out some bits, perhaps move other bits around).
I think the link works just fine. Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg is certainly considered classical music. It was written for a play, to support acted drama just as a film score does, and later a concert suite was made out of it. There are plenty of other examples of this in the classical music world, from Mendelssohn to Sibelius. Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker is certainly considered classical music, and that music was written to accompany the movements of ballet dancers. Tchaikovsky later turned it into a concert suite himself (and IMO left out most of the very best music, just as happens all the time with abbreviated film music albums). I honestly don't see how this is in ANY way different from Sergei Prokofiev adapting an Alexander Nevsky Cantata from his film score Alexander Nevsky (except in that case he thankfully left out far less significant music).
When you give examples of a full symphony being turned into a "suite of that symphony", it makes me think you don't know classical music very well. As far as I know that does NOT happen (or at least it's extremely rare). Maybe a single movement of a symphony might be excerpted on the radio or something, but that's not the same as making a suite of a symphony. If you ask someone in the classical music about that, they'll wonder what the hell you are talking about.
Yavar
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Dont get me wrong, I respect your opinion, but I just want to understand it! haha!
I think we really need a thread pinned to the top called "FAQ about Thor's Preference for Short Albums."
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