Well, call me what you like. These are my opinions, and I've had them forever.

***However, you're missing out on all the fun of being a soundtrack nerd if you rise yourself above all of this.***

I never said that I was "rising above" anything. I just said I had DISTANCIATED myself more from it. I'm just not a traditional soundtrack nerd anymore (although I love film music and love to talk about it....RATIONALLY).

***However, his comments did have the slight tone of "I don't take this music seriously" which for those of us who do take it seriously is a provocation.***

Well, I didn't interpret it that way. First of all, the quotes are taken out of context. Zimmer often says things with a wink in his eye. Second of all, he just said that much of film music isn't as challenging to compose as an opera. Nothing weird about that.

Now, I'm afraid I sense the beginning of a "tone" in your posts that is getting more and more aggressive, so I'm not sure there's any point in going further with this. Or am I just seeing things?

NP: ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE (Howard)

quote:

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Originally posted by Thor:
***Even before I suggested you were contrarian, Franz Conrad said that about you before me.***

Well, call me what you like. These are my opinions, and I've had them forever.

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It's ok if you didn't interpret Zimmer's statements that way. And maybe you have the correct interpretation. However, the topic was started in the first place by someone who did interpret Zimmer's statements as an "interesting perspective" and others followed in interpreting Zimmer's statements as even insulting. That's not to say all those people were correct either, it's very possible we all have it off.

And a lot of people do eye wink when they express themselves. I do. You do. But when you are as public a figure as Simmer is and have as many detractors as Simmer does, it's only bound to get you into misunderstandings & hot water to be playful on the record.

Also, if you sense that I'm getting a bit annoyed, that's true. After stating my positions on both this topic and the Italian System one, I've had to go back to those topics every day this week to answer you. I state, you contradict, I state again, you contradict again. And I'm just getting tired. I've said all I really want to about these topics and don't want to post anymore to them.

So I hope that when you say "I'm not sure there's any point in going further with this" I hope you mean it and will stick with that.

Now if I felt the debate was good and you were raising points I could take in and consider and the whole thing was making progress, I would be up for more. But I don't feel I'm learning or changing or am wrong or missing anything. We're just saying the same things over & over and it's obvious we don't agree with one another and are not going to convince the other. So yes, I want outta here. There is no point in going on further with this.

Of course it is. There is a list of habits that I associate with the term "soundtrack nerd" (which is for another thread), and those are the ones I have distanciated myself from. NOT the artform of film music itself. There is a difference.

***So yes, I want outta here. There is no point in going on further with this.***

Other topics lend themselves to a lot deeper discussion & transfer of information. I listened to what you've had to say in all the topics you've been posting on and taken in what you've said and considered it and re-defined my statements in answer to them. Indeed, I think I've done a very good job of expressing myself about things in a few of these posts and you have as well and its the discussion that brings that out in both of us.

Says you!!

(that's the way the discussion should be have been from the start...)

Before I start, let me just say that I saw Pirates 2 last night in a double feature, and sean WAS right: the cues not already on the OST are garbage. They're even beyond Zimmer's crap.

Anyway ... let me draw your attention to a wholly different score for a minute, a little summer score called "Superman Returns". You might say "Hold it, it hasn't to do anything with this post", but don't worry, it will flow into the film music is shallow discussion pretty smoothly.
I watched Superman Returns the other day and thought pretty much the entire film was badly spotted. Returns has the worst compositional decisions I've heard in a long time, that's for sure.
Especially during the plane rescue and the updated "Flight Sequence". At somepoint I wondered: doesn't a film composer just long for those scenes? I mean, scenes in which you don't have to worry about balancing your music in order to not detract the audience from the screen.
Just look at the two scenes mentioned above! That's heaven for a composer, especially when he can draw from such brilliant material as John Williams original score.
And what does Ottman do? Just listen, it's one idea after another. Originally I thought these were edits made for the album, but that's actually what ended up in the film! Take "Rough Flight" from 2:35 to 2:41 or "Saving The World" between 2:05 and 2:13. These aren't scoring necessities, this is guillotine- writing.
Or the flight sequence: why does the music die down abruptly everytime it seems to pick up some decent rhythm and melody?

So, what's the point? The point is that I was reminded of Jerry Goldsmith mourning the young composers' inability to take a simple and intuitive melody and expand it.

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G-Man--The answer to your question is: I don't know. I think for many different posts over a lengthy period of time, I've tried to define just what is going on and I think I've got a good picture of just what & why, but it isn't completely comprehensive.

You ask if the decline in film music is due to the way composers are trained today. Well, I don't know.

And remember a lot of people from the Zimmer Age don't even think there is any decline in film music--everything is just fine & and even an improvement from their point of view.

If the answer is yes, then it is only one more factor among the others we're already agreed upon. Because it seems to me that the classically-trained film composers of the past didn't have to choose, they could both sync to film and do so using music with flow & unity. But now you see composers who can sync but can't write or write but can't sync. Why? The training? Perhaps. But perhaps not.

The same goes for spotting films, it's hard to say under today's dictatorial set-up just who does this now, it was part of the composer's job in the past, but does he still do it or is it the producer/director who tells the composer where he wants the music.

Sorry G-man, you only have yourself to blame here, because ever since you said the cue was a mishmash of inputs, you let the composer off the hook for "his own" music, because now any one of a dozen people might be calling the shots on why a cue sounds, is mixed, and is placed as it is. We can't just blame the composer for the end result any longer. The composer might be a genius hampered by idiots or just an idiot himself and now we can't say for sure which. The same goes for good scores, are they the composer's good score or the temp track?

Of course, according to Zimmer, film music was always shallow, shallow today, shallow 30 years ago, shallow at all times, shallow and not opera. If you disagree, take it up with him.

As for Shin's dad, a decline starting in the 18th Century means all the music we like to listen to is trash so 30 years doesn't make a difference one way or the other.

As for art being disposable, that's just another one of the attitudes that threatens to weaken it. Why work to produce quality if it's only here today & gone tomorrow? But as Shin suggests the reasons for this may go beyond composers or industry practices to our culture as a whole.

I recently came across this rather discouraging sentence by Juri Lotman: "The process of alienation of human relationships and their replacement by token relationships in a monetary society was first analyzed by Karl Marx."

Yikes! No more human relationships only token ones in their place. We're pod people. It suggests that everything in our society is slightly unreal and insincere, that everything and everyone is a commodity and has a price tag and that real authenticity has been replaced by a saleable image of authenticity that has no substance behind it.

Or put another way, music started to decline in the 18th Century because we as a species and a culture started to decline in the 18th Century. The human race jumped the shark and now we're living in the bad, bitter, decadent aftermath of that.

Or put still another way, when you listen to bad Zimmer scores, well, what do you expect, the good music of the 17th Century? C'mon now. Get real (except that you can't--you're now just only a token of your former self).