For those who like "Epic Meltdown"

I agree that it seems the overall quality of scores has declined from say, the 90's. I still think there are some great scores out there, but they do seem to occur a bit less frequently.
As far as Brian Tyler, I always consider the movies he usually scores, which in my opinion are not often good... However, I enjoy some of his stuff like Frailty, or Now You See me 2, Theme to Yellowstone, and Crazy Rich Asians theme.
But again, in terms of the state of film scoring, yeah I think we're in a bit of a lull overall.

 

Brian Tyler used to be among my favorite composers, but Mike and redbanned ruined my appreciation for that style to quite some degree. Iirc for the Expendables 2 or 3 Soundtrack he said he had 1 week to compose it. One week... I'm willing to cut him lots of slack if those are the conditions he and others are working under. It's sad all around. I'm sure he'd love to spend more time and do cooler stuff, but ultimately he probably likes more to get well paid. I can understand that as well.

 

I wouldn't say modern media is devoid of interesting scores, but I doubt that anything has been written in the last 10 years in film that will land a place among the greats of film, but there are scores that I like. I still often find games more interesting in this regard -- a wider variety of palettes, and the nature of game scoring often means people write complete pieces with coinciding themes. They're often less ambitious in terms of scope and scale, but that's precisely why I like them more -- they play out like a nuanced album, rather than someone attempting to control an orchestra.

Haven't heard any of Tyler's older stuff. The issue isn't more the specific composer at hand, but the amount of praise they get. The fact that arguably the most popular/"top" Hollywood composers have little in the way of classically-competent knowledge, skill or ability is really the issue (and let's be frank -- creativity as well, in many cases. The repetitious nature of many scores isn't exactly breaking boundaries).

Hard to blame a guy for having difficult churning out a noteworthy score in a week. The choice is ultimately his, though, and all it's doing is feeding the downfall of creative competence in Hollywood.

 

Done! He edited his post and the other one deleted his post. Sorry I waited so long. I thought surely someone else from here would have already messaged him and I didn't want him to get swarmed with redundant mails.

That's true :-/.

 

Oh my god. At 0:30 nobody's playing, the musicians are all watching the screen. Dude is passionately directing on the stand. Happens again at the 2 minute mark. They took a photo, added motion to it and just edited him in directing, it looks weird as fuck. At 2:21 it's time to go BLASTISSIMO ON THAT NON AUDIBLE OSTINATO MY DUDES! I also like how he directs the sound design at the end. Also, doesn't he stripe his sections like 99% of these guys?

Still, the dude's got a Ferrari so what the fuck do I know?

 

Looking forward to see the movie on netflix one day .

I'm wondering how much Wiskey Mike needs to hold an "Epic Trailer Music Masterclass" on April 1st. I'm thinking the first hour is just rants and fast paced drinking to get in the mood, and then 2 hours of composing and orchestrating similar to "Orchestration 3", but with more focus on how to write percussion parts for this kind of music and his thought process about how best to fill out the frequency spectrum through orchestration.
He's touched on it briefly in Orchestration 3 and Rythm and Percussion I think, but I could do with way more examples and more focus on "sensible" vertical development within the confines of the genre and writing melodies for it.

That's no photo, they are blinking. This promo stuff is probably all outsourced to some company making these videos for him.

 

He had more than one Ferrari and I think he once donated one as a price for a Quake or Doom championship.

Yeah, probably best not to. Although it is fairly easy to open peoples eyes to "it's just vertical development". Even if they aren't musicians/composers. I used to quite like his music, but Mike and redbanned kinda ruined it for me. Still like the work of Hans though. The COD MW2 soundtrack is full of catchy melodies imho.

 

@Alexander Schiborr well, it is his YT channel. So the comments are bound to be mostly positive. I'm guessing that if you took a poll on a wider sample the results would be different, depending on the audience. But it is a good sample of the target that current film scoring (and film in general) businesses are aiming at. You know what is the highest grossing movie here in Argentina, historically? Fast and the Furious 7. Second highest? Fast and the Furious 8. That shallow attention span will buy a lot of expensive cars.

I remember seeing him in "Score: A film music documentary". He goes to see a movie he scored because, allegedly, he does that often to look at people's reactions to the film, rather than the film itself. He then proceeds to tell us that he hides in the bathroom to see if anybody is whistling a theme from the movie.

I'm going to go on a limb here and say instagram is probably his favorite social network.

 

Alexander, I think we (redbanned members) should all chip in and buy you an autographed 8x10 headshot of Brian Tyler for you birthday or something

Also, there's nothing wrong with old grumpy cats!

 

Definitely!

Thanks, that cracked me up!

He's absolutely needed... for the making of video... and someone has to tell the musicians to play LOUDER!

Iirc Mike mentioned on multiple occasions that some of the musicians said they just play to the click and ignore the conductor on this kind of session.

I can't tell whether Brian's looks around 4:30 are saying "wtf am I doing here..." or an expression of fear, or straight up insanity or whatever, but he doesn't look relaxed at all to me. Something seems off.


The way these things are made really has me shaking my head on many levels. The time pressure, the temp music, the "I don't care about specifics, I'll hear the final soundtrack in the theater" attitude...

But - when I watched that movie years ago I liked it, and I liked the soundtrack, and I listened to the soundtrack on spotify afterwards. I'm not so sure that without all the stuff Brian and Hans composed I'd be talking to you guys right now. This stuff all played its part in interesting me in "orchestral colors" in music, and led me closer to the rabbithole that is composing orchestral music. Taste evolves and that doesn't always have to be for the worse.

 

Yikes... I think the true mark of a Pro like Tim (I read his blog often) is having a great poker face for exactly moments like that.

If he does not know the proper clefs, what is he reading while he conducts? Just the time sigs?

It depends on the conductor. I'm sure some of them can be replaced with a click track and are up there on the stand just for the ego boost. There's a great book by Gustav Meier on the subject. Conducting is such an ethereal and complex part of the music making process, it seems intimidating and like too big of a responsibility to just casually do it without knowing your shit.

 

I don't understand why even bothering using a live orchestra for this stuff. In the end you can't even tell the difference because it's all mixed in with samples and layers upon layers of other shit on top. Plus it's so so expensive, I'd say keep the money and buy another Ferrari

 

I think the trend will change if, and only if, people reach higher standards of education in music. The standard has to be raised. But the issue with that is that it is part of a bigger problem, imho. The way we are teaching people is ancient at this point and in dire need of reform. A broader discussion is needed there.

But for music, just look at the billboard top 40 or top 100 for a taste of the musical education most people have. I listen to it once every 3-4 months just to get a thumb on the pulse of the average joe. The music people listen to the most is absolute garbage. Most of the time it is lacking in either melody or harmony. Rhythm is the only common denominator, and it is just variations on the same type of beat for the most part. Melodic profficiency is almost non-existant. It is all very, very primitive. Recorded, produced, mixed and mastered to a very high standard, but in terms of musicianship it is absolute utter bullshit. Not only that, but those songs are written with these trends and patterns and hooks in mind, they are aiming for that target because they know people can't get enough of this crap. Have a look at "hit songs deconstructed". This shit's engineered now.

The same thing is happening in film music. 3 or 4 "epic" chord progressions, horns a12, a percussion loop, ostinati and a woodwind section reserved for the runs you include when you want to sound like williams without putting in the work.

How do you stop people from consuming such crap? They have to know there is something better, goes back to Plato's "Allegory of the cave", it's simple as that. Education.

I saw the JW interview as well, and though the same thing on the NFL comment. The guy is as charming as he is humble.