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How can I write crazier Williams-style action cues?

Post Singularity said:
I wasn't saying that the John Williams style should be the only type of score , I love Trent Reznor for example ... But when it comes to recent action blockbuster movies we tend to get a generic corporate garbage approach a lot of the time and way less John Williams / Alan silvestri . I re watched jurassic park 1 and raiders of the lost ark recently and I was shocked at how good movies used to be , not just music ...
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yes, this is a trend defiantly. But to my ears it's everywhere. TV, FILM, VIDEO GAMES...etc. I think the driving force is minimalism. I do think it's a choice too. I used to think it was lack of ability but I was wrong. The composers and music editors are in most instances keeping directors happy and I think there is a universal interest in music being much flatter and less intrusive. Droney almost. So many TV shows now just have this carpet of indistinctive sound, a soup of notes that bubble and slide under the action without anything memorable happening.....and the bugger is that would appear MUCH easier to write than say the "The Asteroid Field! .

But there are some great and Noticeable exceptions, Music that seems simple on the surface but then Like a Rothko when examined it's careful and precise laying of lots of similar but distinctive colours. HZ is a master at this and in many ways set the current High Water mark of what IS possible.

That being said the music that i'd like to write isn't that! I like the possibilities offered by a more complex harmonic and rhythmic approach. Fuck it if it isn't fashionable .



To me the sheer depth of musical story telling in this cue just astounds me. The child's excitement at the arrival of the planes morphs into bottomless misery as he can't remember what his parents even look like. The reverent euphoria mere moments ago has gone, as the doctor losses his temper and shakes him out of his bliss the music loses it's moorings and just sinks into hopelessness .

Best

ed
 
ed buller said:
yes, this is a trend defiantly. But to my ears it's everywhere. TV, FILM, VIDEO GAMES...etc. I think the driving force is minimalism. I do think it's a choice too. I used to think it was lack of ability but I was wrong. The composers and music editors are in most instances keeping directors happy and I think there is a universal interest in music being much flatter and less intrusive. Droney almost. So many TV shows now just have this carpet of indistinctive sound, a soup of notes that bubble and slide under the action without anything memorable happening.....and the bugger is that would appear MUCH easier to write than say the "The Asteroid Field! .

But there are some great and Noticeable exceptions, Music that seems simple on the surface but then Like a Rothko when examined it's careful and precise laying of lots of similar but distinctive colours. HZ is a master at this and in many ways set the current High Water mark of what IS possible.

That being said the music that i'd like to write isn't that! I like the possibilities offered by a more complex harmonic and rhythmic approach. Fuck it if it isn't fashionable .



To me the sheer depth of musical story telling in this cue just astounds me. The child's excitement at the arrival of the planes morphs into bottomless misery as he can't remember what his parents even look like. The reverent euphoria mere moments ago has gone, as the doctor losses his temper and shakes him out of his bliss the music loses it's moorings and just sinks into hopelessness .

Best

ed
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I am not against simpler music at all but I am noticing that everything becomes more generic and formatted especially when it comes to big budget movies / shows . As an example rings of power has been awful with very bad music outside of the main title written by Howard shore when compared to Peter Jackson 's the lord of the rings trilogy or even the hobbit but they had a bigger budget . Also often the " HZ hybrid sound " is considered to be modern but it is like 30 years old at this point .
 
Post Singularity said:
I am not against simpler music at all but I am noticing that everything becomes more generic and formatted especially when it comes to big budget movies / shows . As an example rings of power has been awful with very bad music outside of the main title written by Howard shore when compared to Peter Jackson 's the lord of the rings trilogy or even the hobbit but they had a bigger budget . Also often the " HZ hybrid sound " is considered to be modern but it is like 30 years old at this point .
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Yeah, I do agree that a lot of stuff these days is more generic. The simple but creative scores are very good though (Trent Reznor, Pemberton on Spider-Verse, Zimmer on Interstellar, and many others!)
 
handz said:
For this style of cues, it is better to not think about music theory too much and just write some stuff and see what happens :D
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Every time I try to write something random like this, it becomes a whole mess lol! So I'm looking for a starting point in here... :)

But maybe I should just try and see how it turns out haha!
 
ed buller said:
yes, this is a trend defiantly. But to my ears it's everywhere. TV, FILM, VIDEO GAMES...etc. I think the driving force is minimalism. I do think it's a choice too. I used to think it was lack of ability but I was wrong. The composers and music editors are in most instances keeping directors happy and I think there is a universal interest in music being much flatter and less intrusive. Droney almost. So many TV shows now just have this carpet of indistinctive sound, a soup of notes that bubble and slide under the action without anything memorable happening.....and the bugger is that would appear MUCH easier to write than say the "The Asteroid Field! .

But there are some great and Noticeable exceptions, Music that seems simple on the surface but then Like a Rothko when examined it's careful and precise laying of lots of similar but distinctive colours. HZ is a master at this and in many ways set the current High Water mark of what IS possible.

That being said the music that i'd like to write isn't that! I like the possibilities offered by a more complex harmonic and rhythmic approach. Fuck it if it isn't fashionable .



To me the sheer depth of musical story telling in this cue just astounds me. The child's excitement at the arrival of the planes morphs into bottomless misery as he can't remember what his parents even look like. The reverent euphoria mere moments ago has gone, as the doctor losses his temper and shakes him out of his bliss the music loses it's moorings and just sinks into hopelessness .

Best

ed
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yeah this is the sort of thing I like and try to write. But unfortunately it isn't very fashionable except maybe with a minority of filmmakers and directors. Great example.
 
handz said:
For this style of cues, it is better to not think about music theory too much and just write some stuff and see what happens :D
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I think there's a misconception that composers like JW write these cues with music theory at the front of their minds. I don't think this is true at all. BUT I will say studying music theory can help you understand and arrive at such cues more quickly along with knowing the literature as @dcoscina pointed out earlier.
 
ed buller said:
This is a perfect example of Dominic's deep dives and how much info is available from them. As always it's the pitch set choices and the scales and harmony they make that is the key to the quality of these cues. This one 4M2 from Phantom Menace is just festooned with fast narliness and must have taken an age to write.



Best

ed
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Wondering what's up with some of the rhythmic notation, typos I'm guessing, e.g., the trumpets in bars 10 & 11; five beats in bar 11 in the treble stave below the trumpets, missing meter changes, etc.
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Post Singularity said:
I am not against simpler music at all but I am noticing that everything becomes more generic and formatted especially when it comes to big budget movies / shows . As an example rings of power has been awful with very bad music outside of the main title written by Howard shore when compared to Peter Jackson 's the lord of the rings trilogy or even the hobbit but they had a bigger budget.
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It's not about the budget, but mainly about the money man and his handpicked show runners from hell. The Rings of Power has an astronomical budget, even when considering our current inflationary bliss. What TROP lacks is people of substance, humility, goodwill, decency, respect for and understanding of the source material, and, most of all, talent.

Bezos should give his money to charity instead. TROP is so bad that it’s offensive.

Except for the embarrassing cringe-level cast, the other creative departments are fine, but as the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd.
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JotaArkham said:
Speaking about action music...

Do you know what kind of scales and techniques Sakuraba applies to these types of action tracks?



Most Dark Souls tracks are simple, either tonal or modal, with a lot of modulation, but easy to pick up by ear. However, in this type of 'final boss' tracks, the dissonances are greater and the harmony is one step more complex.

It doesn't seem to me that he uses hexatonic, Hungarian minor or octatonic (alpha chord, atonal subsets, axis...) scales and techniques in the style of J. Williams, Goldsmith, Bartòk... At least, he doesn't use them broadly, consistently or recognisably.

To my ear, it's as if it were from another "school of action music" other than Williams' (perhaps even consciously chosen to, among other things, differentiate itself from Williams' immense imprint). I relate this action style more to the music of Ligeti or Berg than Hollywood 70s, but maybe I'm wrong because I'm a newbie to these topics.

This music is not purely atonal, but rather it mixes tonal passages (a multitude of cadential 6/4, Vsus4-V7, V/V, viiº/V... can be found in his music) and modal passages (aeolian cadence, dorian i-ii and i-iv), with a lot of harmonic planing, and especially these denser and "not very tonal" parts that I have a hard time deciphering and unraveling into a functional and replicable system.

What should I study? Polytonality? Modes of the harmonic and melodic minor scales? Chromatism in the vein of Tristan and Isolde? In some passages of other Dark Souls action tracks I thought I heard eolian b5 and phrygian dominant, but the truth is that I'm lost and I would like to know how to study the matter.

(Sorry, a bit Off Topic, but surely we all find it interesting to talk about this variant of action music).
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Reading this just made me feel bad about myself, I know basically nothing about music lol
 
Bara Matahari Pagi said:
Hey all! I wanna spice up my action cues by making them crazier and more 'random' (I don't know a better word for it), like the stuff you hear in Star Wars, etc.
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The thing with Williams' stuff is... it's the opposite of "random". 🙂 Once you find the connective tissue in those compositions, it will blow your mind.
If people are trying to mimic Williams by being "random", they've really missed what that style of writing is about.
(Go check out Verta's Scoring 2 class where he compares Williams' Jurassic Park scoring with Giacchino's wannabe farce. It's truly eye-opening.)

It's great people are interested in this style of writing. We've had enough of Tyler/Giacchino/Goransson/Balfe/whoever-the-current-guy-is tedious, cringy, "modern", shallow pseudo-compositions.

Just the other day I was listening to @Aaron Sapp's and Mike Verta's demos for Aaron's libraries and it's crazy these widely unknown guys can write VASTLY better music than the top-paid Hollywood music guys. (But that's the current state of Hollywood in a nutshell...)

And yes, definitely check @Dom Sewell's videos out. It's a treasure trove. But it's crucial to remember you have to practise that stuff yourself. It's one thing seeing what Williams did, and another understanding why did he do that.
(Again, Verta's Scoring 2 is great for this, where he rescores one poorly scored scene from a recent movie and tells you the how and why. From disjointed shreds of music that tell barely anything to a coherent piece of story-telling music. You'll see how has the craft of film scoring degraded into what we have now. (And no, I don't have any money from "promoting" Mike's classes. 😄))

If you want to be a film composer, please go study the top scores from Williams, Goldsmith, Horner, Herrmann, Rozsa, Bernstein or Poledouris, we sorely need that skill level back! 👍
 
Tanarri said:
The thing with Williams' stuff is... it's the opposite of "random". 🙂 Once you find the connective tissue in those compositions, it will blow your mind.
If people are trying to mimic Williams by being "random", they've really missed what that style of writing is about.
(Go check out Verta's Scoring 2 class where he compares Williams' Jurassic Park scoring with Giacchino's wannabe farce. It's truly eye-opening.)

It's great people are interested in this style of writing. We've had enough of Tyler/Giacchino/Goransson/Balfe/whoever-the-current-guy-is tedious, cringy, "modern", shallow pseudo-compositions.

Just the other day I was listening to @Aaron Sapp's and Mike Verta's demos for Aaron's libraries and it's crazy these widely unknown guys can write VASTLY better music than the top-paid Hollywood music guys. (But that's the current state of Hollywood in a nutshell...)

And yes, definitely check @Dom Sewell's videos out. It's a treasure trove. But it's crucial to remember you have to practise that stuff yourself. It's one thing seeing what Williams did, and another understanding why did he do that.
(Again, Verta's Scoring 2 is great for this, where he rescores one poorly scored scene from a recent movie and tells you the how and why. From disjointed shreds of music that tell barely anything to a coherent piece of story-telling music. You'll see how has the craft of film scoring degraded into what we have now. (And no, I don't have any money from "promoting" Mike's classes. 😄))

If you want to be a film composer, please go study the top scores from Williams, Goldsmith, Horner, Herrmann, Rozsa, Bernstein or Poledouris, we sorely need that skill level back! 👍
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I would add we might need directors who produce movies that warrant these types of scores too. But couldn't agree more!
 
Tanarri said:
It's great people are interested in this style of writing. We've had enough of Tyler/Giacchino/Goransson/Balfe/whoever-the-current-guy-is tedious, cringy, "modern", shallow pseudo-compositions.
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You don’t even have a clue how well trained Göransson is but ok kid, go off I guess
 
ed buller said:
yeah ..with respect to Handz, That's not going to work. For this kinda dense cues you need a tonal "mise en place" ready.

Best

ed
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swinkler said:
I think there's a misconception that composers like JW write these cues with music theory at the front of their minds. I don't think this is true at all. BUT I will say studying music theory can help you understand and arrive at such cues more quickly along with knowing the literature as @dcoscina pointed out earlier.
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Well, of course, you need some music theory, but to me, this is more about writing by ear and feeling. Thinking about traditional harmony won't get you very fast, it will more likely limit you here and makes your head hurt.
 
handz said:
Well, of course, you need some music theory, but to me, this is more about writing by ear and feeling. Thinking about traditional harmony won't get you very fast, it will more likely limit you here and makes your head hurt.
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I agree and disagree. I do think while one is actually composing it is to a large extent 'by ear' or feeling. But I would argue the one who's studied music theory (traditional and non-traditional) and is familiar with a lot of the literature (traditional and non-traditional) will be quicker to write what their ear hears or what they feel because of that previous study. That's all I'm saying.
 
JotaArkham said:
What should I study? Polytonality? Modes of the harmonic and melodic minor scales? Chromatism in the vein of Tristan and Isolde? In some passages of other Dark Souls action tracks I thought I heard eolian b5 and phrygian dominant, but the truth is that I'm lost and I would like to know how to study the matter.
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A few things to consider:

Sakuraba comes from that generation of 90s RPG composers who were largely influenced by progressive rock. Prog rock has a lot in common with 20th century classical music in terms of the "randomness" or just general "busy-ness" in the composition.

The "gothic horror" Dark Souls sound likely originates in soundtracks such as Goldsmith's The Omen and Kilar's Dracula. On the Japanese side I find the Dark Souls soundtracks somewhat similar to
Yoshihisa Hirano's style of orchestration, especially the brass parts. I recommend checking out the Death Note OST if you're interested. Also have to mention Hayato Matsuo's Hellsing Ultimate OST when talking about gothic horror.

The last thing is that a lot of Japanese soundtracks are heavily melodic and song-like. Rather than composing from a music theory standpoint, you could try writing a song then "corrupt" it by throwing in wrong harmonies and hitting the wrong notes. A good example of this is Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1 which begins with a corrupted lullaby and later you hear a corrupted tango.
 
Bara Matahari Pagi said:
Every time I try to write something random like this, it becomes a whole mess lol! So I'm looking for a starting point in here... :)

But maybe I should just try and see how it turns out haha!
Click to expand...
Not to derail you from the fun of randomizing a bit, specially first at the piano!, but you could take a look (if you didn't already, of course!) at chromatic harmony, hexactonic and octatonic scales, alpha chord, beta chord, etc. The carachteristic major/minor chords in a lot of Williams brass is derived from such harmonies, so it's a thorough vast field for study. And super interesting, to!
 
Tanarri said:
The thing with Williams' stuff is... it's the opposite of "random". 🙂 Once you find the connective tissue in those compositions, it will blow your mind.
If people are trying to mimic Williams by being "random", they've really missed what that style of writing is about.
(Go check out Verta's Scoring 2 class where he compares Williams' Jurassic Park scoring with Giacchino's wannabe farce. It's truly eye-opening.)

It's great people are interested in this style of writing. We've had enough of Tyler/Giacchino/Goransson/Balfe/whoever-the-current-guy-is tedious, cringy, "modern", shallow pseudo-compositions.

Just the other day I was listening to @Aaron Sapp's and Mike Verta's demos for Aaron's libraries and it's crazy these widely unknown guys can write VASTLY better music than the top-paid Hollywood music guys. (But that's the current state of Hollywood in a nutshell...)

And yes, definitely check @Dom Sewell's videos out. It's a treasure trove. But it's crucial to remember you have to practise that stuff yourself. It's one thing seeing what Williams did, and another understanding why did he do that.
(Again, Verta's Scoring 2 is great for this, where he rescores one poorly scored scene from a recent movie and tells you the how and why. From disjointed shreds of music that tell barely anything to a coherent piece of story-telling music. You'll see how has the craft of film scoring degraded into what we have now. (And no, I don't have any money from "promoting" Mike's classes. 😄))

If you want to be a film composer, please go study the top scores from Williams, Goldsmith, Horner, Herrmann, Rozsa, Bernstein or Poledouris, we sorely need that skill level back! 👍
Click to expand...
I second the high praise for @Dom Sewell's videos, they're really really thorough and a wealth of knowledge!
About the current state of affairs in Hollywood, well... I'm from Portugal, so Hollywood's conundrums are really a whole universe away, but here in Europe it has always been a matter of interpersonal relations rather than pure talent or craftmanship. Specially - but not exclusively - in lesser markets, as is the portuguese one, a tiny tiny drop on the media pond. Perhaps before even the less talented people (if those were the ones having the cocktail parties and the directors's favours) was vastly more skilled and artistically mature than the norm nowadays...
 
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