WHERE IS EVERYONE FROM SC IS MORE LIKE IT!...

My friend... pre~70's and way back as well!

Regardless of personal taste, first of all let us give commendation of credit to the grandeur of film score making music where credit is due.

The forefathers of film score music such as composers Franz Waxman, Alex North, Jerry Fielding, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Victor Young, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, George Dunning, David Raksin... should never be forgotten!

Being in my nature, I try to be optimistic but indeed... where are beauty scores today?

I don't want to believe that talented musicians are extinct.

It is not so much that there aren't any talented people in the music industry today who can compose film music as mush as the fact that we might have reached a point of saturation.

This is why there is a lot of recycling going around and around in this unsettling and violent fast paced society we are living in but one must not try to relive the past but simply learn from it and move on.

Free thinking people should cultivate this innate ability they have been programmed with to move on and excel and create new things and differentiate themselves from previous generations.

There were talented musicians, there are talented musicians, and there will be talented musicians as long as civilized human beings are evolving and making history.

The pressure of time factor that has been noted though could be excluded and as much as I personally love big sweeping orchestral works, even the factor of budget to some extent being utilized on such big orchestras.

One would be suprised in how creative musicians can become when they are pressured by time and when the budget is limited having to devise other ways to make up for it trying not to rely heavily on technology, if not at all.

Others factors such as the lack of classical music training, lack of discipline, too much reliance on technology (hence imagination), interference from producers who have absolutely no knowledge and interest in film music making thus taking away the creative freedom from the composers (hence the lack of freedom) might play a role as well as a zillion other things.

I don't want to make myself believe that the Muses have given up on today's aspiring young film music composers even on the older ones... I have a strong feeling that a renaissance of great films and great film scoring is just waiting around the corner getting ready to explode and make history once more!

Sigh! :- (

serifiot, October 8, 2007; 1:00 PM

To much pandering in the film business these days and not enough creative freedom. It doesn't matter. What has been done well in the past need not be done well in the present. There are plenty of good composers working currently to appreciate. Nicola Piovani is one.

I sit here right now with headphones on listening to "Radio Axiom A Dub Transmission" (Bill Laswell/Jah Wobble). Laswell created a damn good score to a film called "Broken Vessels". You may like it if you enjoy hard hitting sounds with a good solid punch.

As for most of the people scoring mainstream American films these days? Who cares.

victoravalentine, October 8, 2007; 11:53 AM

I understand what you're saying, BUT...

In the good old days, only a few composers made an innovative contribution. Most '50s film scores were repetitive and used various cliché's to accentuate certain "moods". (A cliché is not a bad thing, as it has proven its effectiveness, yet it lacks originality).
Since then, film music has improved/changed on many levels.

In the late '70s/early '80s electronic music found its way into film scoring, which resulted in many memorable soundtracks (John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder, Goblin, Harold Faltermeyer, Jan Hammer,...). Of course, this soon became a dubious trend, as many composers pursued this technique to produce quick low-budget soulless scores.

In the early '90s (and I know many of you won't like to hear this), Hans Zimmer single-handedly changed scoring with his talent to successfully combine orchestral recordings with synthesized sounds, resulting in an all new way to approach action sequences. Even trailer music and commerials picked up on this. Today, it has become a standard and therefore a bit boring.

Compare it to contemporary pop music. Everything you hear on the radio nowadays was clearly influenced by music from the '50s, '60s or '70s. Nothing new here, just repeating or twisting and turning the cliché's.

However, I have to agree with you on some level. I'm not a big fan of today's film scores, as they seem to solely accompany the film's images - which means musically accentuating what is already happening on screen - instead of musically adding another "layer" to the film.
But remember, this is what they did in the old days. The difference being that today every single frame has to be accompanied by music, which creates an irritating plethora of unnesessary sounds.

This is just my opinion of course. I think innovation takes place when new ways of making music or new instruments are introduced, or if some creative talent takes a huge risk in trying something new entirely. The reality is that very few film studio's are willing to take any risk whatsoever (especially when it comes to scoring), which results in poorly produced "safe" products.

In short, I think the whole film industry is to blame, as it has become a business more than a creative audiovisual process. Luckily there are some exceptions to make it worthwile.
Mainly, I find myself travelling back in time to discover "new" scores. Kind of ironic.

rinse_dream, October 8, 2007; 2:11 PM

Guys, you should stop concentrating on US mainstream popcorn movies and music and have a
look and listen at european arthouse cinema. There's a hell of a lot of innovative and beautiful
music to discover.

Brillant scores are definitely NOT history, and I'm awfully glad that most of you have a
perspective that is narrow enough to completely miss this... ;-)

coma, October 8, 2007; 3:09 PM

A true word there, coma.
Many people only focus on US film scores and totally forget what's coming from Europe or Asia (there we've got some mayor modern classics!), which is most of the time better than what comes from Hollywood. Next time guys, do a little research before you say "there's no good film music today".

philkws, October 8, 2007; 6:43 PM

Yeah well, the American film industry and media with their monopoly on what people see and hear are the likely candidates for critisizm. The dumbing down has reached the point of embarrassment and complete ignorance.

victoravalentine, October 9, 2007; 2:01 AM

Thanks coma, i know there are some hidden beauty scores in European and independent movie industry, but that's not the point i was trying to make. There WERE great scores in american populair cinema (sorry i forgot to mention the great composers before the 70's, very sorry!). The trend is not only in the music, but also in the movies itself. Where is the real creativity? I found some in Casino Royale, both film and score. The rest is mostly predictable and effective, but no Horner at Aliens time for example!

dirk.j.jansen, October 9, 2007; 7:06 AM

Hi Dirk! There are still gems to be found, even in US big budget productions. Just think of
Zodiac, The Good German, The Black Dahlia, The Prestige, The Incredibles
.
I agree, that it looks like they were much rarer nowadays, but this might be a result of our
retrospective look. I'd bet that if you'd single out each year from the 60s to the 90s, you'd find
enough boring and uninspired stuff, apart from the great classic scores we all cherish. Gems
don't lie around, they need to be discovered.

coma, October 9, 2007; 7:34 AM

Yes coma, the titles you name have good scores, but are they brilliant? Do they have the 'feel' of 'Jaws', 'Conan', 'Alien (s)', 'Dances with Wolves', 'Land before Time', 'Independence Day', 'Once upon a Time in the West' etc.? No. They are good scores, musically interesting enough, but all forgotten within a year.
Sorry, is it just me being nostalgic?

dirk.j.jansen, October 9, 2007; 7:54 AM

This is supposed to be a matter of personal taste, Dirk. I've just picked some scores, which I
suppose, will stand the test of time and which show, that there's still creative potential in big
budget scoring.
We could argue if this one or that one will end up in the hall of fame, but this would surely lead
nowhere.
(Me for instance, I'm a tremendous admirer of John Barry, but DWW is the one score by him,
which I personally dislike completely.)

David

coma, October 9, 2007; 8:34 AM

Classic scores usually stand the test of time and have a profound influence on the industry, so maybe we have to look back on today's music in, let's say, 20 years from now?

Having said that, those little gems outside of the "mainstream", have less chance of becoming "classics", in the way Dirk meant - rather cult favorites. At least, that's what I think he meant by it (Alien(s), Conan, DWW, ... all Hollywood stuff).

rinse_dream, October 9, 2007; 9:44 AM

Yeah but film music is considered the only true art form originating specificly in the USA and the fact that it has become for the most part simple minded and shithead stupid like nearly everything else in this country should be noted.

Time was each individual composer had their own recognizable sound. Now it all sounds the same. Individuality and freedom of creativity is not what people are led to believe it is in this country. As far as mainstream media influence goes anyway. Anything that has anything to do with big media in this country is so tightly controlled a person would need to be a frigging moron to think it's good.

What I don't like is when I hear an emulation of someone by some talentless hack with artifical sound. You hear it a lot in television commercials.

On the liner notes of an old TV score by Shelly Manne (Daktari). He notes the trend towards artificial music and opposes it. That was in 1966.

Has anyone here listened to that recording (Daktari)? Holy Christ It'll knock your socks off it's so great. A group of top drawer West coast jazz musicians many of which were players in the big bands of the 40's performing with a group of African percussionists. Those guys did better in one day than the chumps toying around today will do in their entire lives.

FSM should release the Daktari recording if it isn't already on CD.

victoravalentine, October 9, 2007; 12:38 PM

Sorry... some scores mentioned like "The Black Dahlia" and so on are good scores and pleasant to listen to and perhaps work well within the movie but personally I don't consider them memorable and are not what I consider classic film scoring.

Psycho, Love Story, Dr. Zhivago, The Sting, Un Homme Et Une Femme, Zorba, The Magnificent Seven, The Godfather, Chinatown, High Noon, Gone With The Wind, Now Voyager, Casablanca, Wuthering Heights, Lawrence Of Arabia, Godzilla(1956), Bond scores! by Barry, Star Wars, ET, Star Trek, Jaws, Suspiria, Close Encounters, Indiana Jones, Vertigo, The Good The Bad..., Basic Instinct, Once Upon A Time In America, Sicilian Can, The Omen...

All in one way or another very different and not necessarily my cup of tea... but they certainly have that extra something which I think makes them if not classics, at least memorable.

PS

I just have to include one Mancini... Pink Panther.

;- )

serifiot, October 9, 2007; 12:46 PM

@ knives: I generally agree with your opinion. But I can't support, that there is no more
individuality and creativity to be found by US composers. Without any particular order, I'd
recommend to give a listen to Christopher Young, Thomas Newman, Cliff Martinez, Carter
Burwell, John Ottman to name just a few.

@ seri: I'd appreciate it, if we wouldn't let this interesting thread drown in a listing of personal
likings or dislikings.

Anyway, I'm absolutely sure that a score can only be regarded as classic after a certain
amount of time has passed. Unfortunately, we're living in an era, where rapidity and lack of
permanence are regarded as virtues. Everything is the biggest and the best and the greatest
in the world. Until next week.

I guess we also tend to forget, that everything is a matter of prevailing taste as well. No one
can guarantee, that Dr. Zhivago, Conan, Star Wars, James Bond etc. will be regarded as
cherished masterpieces in twenty years from now.
Just keep in mind, that Miles Davis' innovative score for Escalator To The Scaffold hasn't
raised any further attention in the mid 50s. Nowadays it's regarded as a timeless (?)
masterpiece. To quote Mr. Davis himself: So what?

coma, October 9, 2007; 1:33 PM

David... as I mentioned, not all the the scores I briefly mentioned just to make a point are of personal liking.

Of course the Miles Davis soundtrack which I proudly own but forgot to mention is a classic in its own right as well as others and of course there are talented composers today like the ones you brought up and surely deserve merit but I believe that music in general including film music, is going through some type of a crisis... a so called 'dry spell'.

serifiot, October 9, 2007; 2:15 PM

Isn't that the same, what happened in the 70s when everybody complained that there were
no more composers like Max Steiner and other from the "Golden" era? And who cares now
for scores from the 30s, 40s, 50s? A vanishing minority.

The more I reflect about all this, the more I'm convinced that it's a question of comparison.
Each generation is acoustically surrounded by their music and tends to look for something
more worthwhile from the past. But everything we value from the 60s or 70s is nothing but
the tip of the iceberg and no proof at all, that there was a greater individuality or creativity
then.

Just think of all the incredibly mediocre movies (and scores) from the 70s or the horrible B-
movies from the 40s. I doubt that anyone would dare to proclaim that any of these decades
was the summit of musical creativity.
Perhaps it's a sort of mercy that the human mind is able to forget the worst and preserve the
best... ;-)

coma, October 9, 2007; 2:32 PM

Its all a matter of opinion. One person might find todays scores to be amazing and hate ones from the 50's-90's and some people might hate modern scores while loving the 50's-90's.

back_off92, October 9, 2007; 3:45 PM

''Perhaps it's a sort of mercy that the human mind is able to forget the worst and preserve the
best.''

...or preserve the worst and forget the best as well, unfortunately!

Good points though!

Who cares about scores from the 30's, 40's, & 50's???

Ouch!... I do.

A vanishing minority???

Perhaps, but I love it!

Many times I find myself searching for something different to find my refuge until it's time to move on but I never forget.

Personally, I never liked mainstream followings and always have turned my back on them and stuck my nose high up in the air.

A snob? A loner's quest? I don't know... but I'm content in being a minority and always have.

serifiot, October 9, 2007; 8:20 PM

Good to see you all react on my topic: 'Where are the beauty scores today?' I know we all have different taste (how can someone dislike Dances with Wolves for example???) but don't you guys see that out of hollywood not a single movie is the product of creativity anymore? With the digital era and computer generated shots the soul died of films. Spielberg had to be creative when the shark wasn't working. Today every movie is visually stunning, but without any soul and so is the music for that matter. THAT was the point i'm trying to make! Just compare the first Die Hard and it's music to the last.

dirk.j.jansen, October 10, 2007; 6:40 AM

Don't you concentrate a little too much on action movies, Dirk? What about movies by
Soderbergh or the Coen brothers for instance?

I'm not that pessimistic about Hollywoods future. They always produced a large amount of
so-called blockbusters to satisfy the mainstream need. But there has always been and always
will be a recess for creativity too - Lubitsch, Lorre, Wilder and so on.

Come on, what would you've thought if may be fifteen years ago, someone would have told
you, a taiwanese director will one day get the Oscar for a movie about gay cowboys?

coma, October 10, 2007; 7:37 AM

Hey guys -- I've been lurking for a while, and this topic urged me to post.

I love big bombastic scores as much as the next guy, but I really prefer the quiet-intimate-
type stuff, which I usually rely on Patrick Doyle for. But I just found a new score that's really
on the quiet side -- kind of a cross between Good Will Hunting and Big Fish, called "Hole in
the Paper Sky" -- and it's really moving. It's on the iTunes "Soundtrack" page this week, right
next to "Elizabeth" and I was intrigued. A couple previews later, it was in my shopping cart,
and now I can't stop listening to it. This composer has some other great stuff on iTunes as
well.... must not be well-known yet, but it seems like he's getting more exposure suddenly.
His name's Kerry Muzzey (sp?) ALSO -- found a beautiful & romantic score by Jan A.P.
Kaczmarek for the film "Bliss" -- really beautiful stuff.

- Gaby

nyphotoboy, October 10, 2007; 10:26 AM

I wouldn't say that it takes an amount of time for a film score to become classic. I think it's there right off the bat. "Affliction" by Michael Brooks was an instant classic when released. It's one of those scores that stand alone as truly unique and individual. I tend to like all the scores from the Paul Schrader films.

The composers that Coma mentioned, Christopher Young, Carter Burwell ect tend to work outside of the big Hollywood studio scene don't they? Time was a big budget Hollywood spectacular had scores which were often better than the films themselves. Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and Miklos Rozsa will never have contemporary equals.
Those days are done. It would cost a fortune to do just once what those guys did every day of the week.

Until the late 1970's all of the Hollywood scores were recorded in Los Angeles. Today they seldom are.
Yeah, I like Carter Burwells music. If not for two low budget film making brothers he would probably have never had an oppourtunity to do film scoring.

I tend to automaticly be put off with anything that has a big Hollywood dollar sign attached to it.
Hell, I'm surprising myself that I'm able to babble on about this for so long.

I've always considered a lot of the American scores from the 1970's to be the best. In a way it was a logical extension of the previous decades. I'm sure David Shire knew and appreciated the earlier composers. Some of the schmucks today probably don't even know who David Shire is.
I read a story somewhere about the time when Hans Salter visited the Universal music department. The people there didn't even know who he was... He and a couple other guys built the Universal music department from scratch.

That's it for me... I'm giving myself a headache.

One more thing... Seems to me that the scores today that are supposedly compassionate are more mauldlin than anything else. When a composer goes for the heartstrings it's a slippery slope.
Alex North was always good when it came to making an audience feel those sort of emotions. The theme for Robert Mitchums horse in "The Wonderful Country" enhances the tragedy when the riff-raff outlaw kills it at the end of the film. Very few composers could pull that off.

As for contemporary composers... James Newton Howard is pretty good sometimes. His scores have a sort of 1970's feel about them.

victoravalentine, October 10, 2007; 7:00 PM

What about "The Perfume" by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil? Now that was a memorable score of today! But i wouldn't say it was a pure Hollywood film, nonetheless, it's great music and in my eyes a future classic.

philkws, October 10, 2007; 7:06 PM

I think that 50 years from now, some of today's scores WILL be looked back on as classics. Just
like movies have changed since the 40s and 50s, so have the scores. I love the occasional old
movie, but a traditional old-movie-type score wouldn't work so well with contemporary film.

nyphotoboy, October 11, 2007; 1:43 AM