For those who like "Epic Meltdown"

You can count on them switching styles as soon as they have found one that makes the studios more money. I think consumers will get sick of "epic" eventually. I have a hunch the next phase will be pure sound design, like only braaaahms without the ostinatos. Maybe even without drums.

Based on their schedules, he must have written the stuff only days ago, maybe he has it more or less memorized?

 

Ok, so a more serious reply from me.. It certainly does not compare to Goldsmith. However, Tyler does a lot of scores like this and it is entirely possible it is exactly what Stallone wanted, who knows?

I think the trend of this kind of music is already a bit long in the tooth and would guess it won't last that much longer. As you stated, we are saturated with it even in documentaries where it makes no sense whatsoever.

That being said, even though I'm not his biggest fan or anything, I feel obligated to defend him here a little because the prevailing attitude about him seems too severe for my taste. I mean, are the following music examples really so bad? But, if this is more just about being sick of the trend of the "epic" music, I understand.

P.S. Yes he has sweet hair.

 

I am afraid to go down that road of asking how much he actually composed, arranged, etc. I would wager that on his early stuff like Frailty he probably wrote most of that stuff, but with the big band thing I would guess he likely had help with the arranging.

The sweet hair? I don't know the secret, but if I did, I couldn't tell you about it anyway. I would be killed like Jeffrey Epstein. Forget I even mentioned it please.

 

The idea itself is revolutionary. If we applied that method of study to a broader scope and not just the billboard top 100 we would get incredible insights on a lot of music. But it would likely be difficult to market as well as he has with the billboard top 100 study. It is HIT SONGS deconstructed, after all. Not "great melodies deconstructed" or "Mid to late 20th century film music deconstructed". Oh well.

 

How fitting, now he's making music for another douchebag. Great story, thanks for sharing!

Was it that your goals were too different or was he not receptive to your approach?

 

To be perfectly honest that fell short of my high expectations for your music. I'm so happy you gave it a shot though .

I can't tell whether it's just an issue of the mix that you didn't want to put in the work to make a template that is suited for this kind of music, or of orchestration and composition. For something that as far as I can tell you just did as a joke "for the lulz" I certainly understand not wanting to invest the time to make it the best it can be.

Imho the frequency spectrum, especially the lows, is a mess and shows a lack of control. I have trouble hearing any memorable rythms, because it's drowned in reverb and all blurs together. For reference here's one of the tracks in that style that I really like. If you compare it to yours, can you hear what I mean with "lack of control of the frequency spectrum"?

 

Fair enough, point taken!

No, of course not. I definitely prefer you working on the kind of music that you enjoy and that barely anyone else is making nowadays!

I know what you mean, but I can't fully agree with "it's just noise". I do think that there are elements of craft and control that have nothing to do with production values, and lessons to be learned that are applicable to all kinds of music. I generally like the genre, but if it was "all the same noise", shouldn't I like everything in the genre instead of just a hand full of soundtracks? I don't want you to start "liking" that kind of music, there's no need and I always find the rants on "epic" music by you and other redbanned members very entertaining . But I want you to keep an open mind that maybe, just maybe, even in the worst kinds of genres there are tiny bits of knowledge and craft that can be extracted and used for higher purposes. I'll elaborate further in another thread where it feels more relevant.

 

It's already all a blur to me what gets written in what thread, I had to use google to find Doug's post again. To be fair, I don't think any other structure would make more sense. We're talking about things that relate to various different other things in a way that is more akin to a chat, but the posts are too long and in a chat it would be impossible to find anything in the log a year later.

Much better, thanks! I had trouble hearing what exactly the drums are doing in the beginning, that's much more clear now. I like v3 a tiny bit more, but I don't want to focus on the mix.

You know I'm not remotely as experienced as a composer as you are, so take it with appropriate amounts of salt, but I think that the composition/orchestration (which are inextricably linked as we've all heard countless time before...) at the beginning could be improved.

For me waaay too much is happening all at once to lock on to anything, and there is too little rythmic relation between the elements that they'd feel as a cohesive whole to me. At the start that's a timpani roll and then the main big-drum pattern is another kind of drum, right? I'd pick one of the two and establish that as a first anchor to lock on to, and then don't throw all the other elements at the same time at me.

What's playing all at once on the first beat after the roll? Cymbal, tubular bell, strings, brass, and drums? I know it's all about ridiculous amounts of layering, but I think there needs to be a bit more restraint in the "hierarchy" of how important the layers are. Drums, brass and strings are all very dominant but it doesn't feel to me as though they are properly "cooperating". It doesn't feel like they work together to form "one groove", they just kinda do their own thing each. To me this sounds too chaotic. And in the genre there may very well be examples that are just as or more chaotic, but the stuff that I like in the genre feels way more "in control" to me. Check out the first 45 seconds of this one by Hans:

Starts off with likely more layers than you have, but it has one very easy to follow pulse in drums and bass and none of the melodic elements "fight" rythmically against the pulse. I get much more of a feel of "unity and purpose" from that.

I feel like in your track the timp roll isn't a good riser to lead towards the pulse of the drums, the cymbal drowns out too much of the beginning of the pulse and prevents me from exactly hearing what else is happening at the start of the pattern so it gets harder for me to lock on to. The strings, drums, brass - each element for itself is fine, but I don't feel like they work well together, and especially not at the start of the track without starting simpler and developing towards that kind of complexity. To phrase it in Comp1 terms, I need the hand that guides me down that hallway, but it feels more like the hand is slapping me with 3 different rythms all at once . I was expecting more of a firm and controlled handshake to start on that epic journey with your track. You know what I mean?

I'm only giving you such a hard time about the start of that track, because I have such high expectations of your music and I want you to get the most out of this excercise. I think it's great that you tried moving out of your comfort zone and try to write in a style that you don't have the same amount of practice in as in others. And I feel like I'm learning a lot from it too, simply from engaging in this discussion with you and contemplating what works and doesn't work for me.

I do think the later parts get much much better! Starting at 18 seconds the brass and drums work well together in my opinion. They feel more related and interlocking, and the strings here work as a subtle layer that ads flavor without distracting or fighting with the main elements. Then the next development at 26 seconds is a nice refreshing change of colors and gives us a break from the intensity of the brass. For me personally the main rythm motif has outstayed its welcome a little at the 42 second mark. I think you could push it that far if you did a little more vertical development on it and moved it around a little over different kinds of drums and add/remove/delay a single beat here and there (do it twice!) to keep it from getting stale. But at 52 seconds, after the break, I'm definitely ready to hear a new rythm.

Starting at around 1:09 the part with the timpani rolls I like a lot! Imho it leads up to the most epic (and this time I'm using the word unironically) moments of your track. I think from 1:08 till 1:31 is my favorite part of the track. I really like the change at 1:48 as well. The rest is fine, but I think it might benefit from one or two more changes in rythm and color.

There is lots of great stuff in there and if I had written this I'd be quite proud of it, because - believe it or not - I can't just knock out such a track, no matter if you give me a day or a week of time. But I still think the first 17 seconds still could be improved and I think if you listen to the first 20 seconds of a couple of "epic" tracks from established titans of the genre and redo that part as form of deliberate practice, it could be educational, maybe.

And who knows, maybe you should "as a joke" also submit it to one of those music libraries and it'll make you a fortune x].


You've motivated me to continue a bit with my trailer music course on udemy, but my god... it hurts to listen to that. He drags in an epic hit sample, adds 3 piano notes and is so fucking pleased with himself... it makes me cringe every time he listens back to his latest change and says "nice!". I'm glad he's enjoying his work so much, but I'm having a much much easier time relating to people that are critical of their own work, like - as far as I can tell - everyone who posts here is.

 

I fear I still don't quite get it, and I'm not sure I was able to really get accross the points I was trying to make, but oh well... we both tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

At one point, this is what I wanted to do, but ultimately the way people around here compose looks much more fun to me. I think from the trailer music guys even among those that like the genre some get depressed from always writing in that same constrained style. So I absolutely understand if you don't want to touch that stuff ever again!

I'm doing my best to broaden my horizon and expand my taste and I think last week I finally found something that might work as an entry point for me to the "next level":

I've listend 3 or 4 times to the whole thing already and plan to listen a couple more times over the coming weeks. Once I'm a little more familiar with it, I might point to specific parts and ask here for recommendations that are in a similar style.