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Re: Dubious musical taste.

James Newton Howard's gorgeous score for A Hidden Life is now streaming. My favorite of the year by a wide margin.

Last edited by Abbie (2019-12-10 18:46:25)

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

Oh hey, another great film soundtrack! Desplat's score for Gerwig's Little Women is very good in general but this cue in particular (starts at about 34 seconds in) is just sweepingly lovely.

Thomas Newman's take on the same scene from the Gillian Armstrong adaptation is no slouch either.

Last edited by Abbie (2020-01-07 20:12:30)

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

A little something from the world of Canadian musical theatre. Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is a "sumptuous Klezmer-folk music-theatre hybrid" and it is very, very good.

alicia ♆
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I miss when Aoife O'Donovan was still with Crooked Still, but her voice is as gorgeous as ever, and the string quartet she's paired with here is just mmph.

Last edited by Abbie (2020-02-09 05:39:42)

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

Gorgeous.

Also, the engineering. The micing on the instruments. The mix.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

I can only imagine how absolutely batshit it must be to hear this live.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Dubious musical taste.

1:45

*grin*

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

I never knew chains dropped on a bin lid was something you could find in an orchestra. I fucking love this world.

Sébastien Fraud
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I love creative stuff like that. In Neptune, of Holst's The Planets suite, there's a choir in a room adjacent to the stage, where a screen can be lowered to mute them slowly over time.

Nowadays, we'd just turn down the volume on a part of the mix, but at the time, with live orchestras, there was no way to do that while still keeping the richness of all of them singing at a semi-normal volume while also having them get quieter.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: Dubious musical taste.

Another way they do it is have the choir start standing in the audience and then walk backwards out of the hall.

...

Right? I know.

Our friend Mr. Ruger has some fun points on this topic; he introduced me to the score for The Matrix, for instance, where one of the key instruments is a waterphone.

(The Matrix actually makes several really interesting and, generally, pretty original sonic choices; frankly, I probably wouldn't even start with the waterphone, in the broader context of 'the sound of The Matrix' — I'd start with the saw-blade fanning-horn thing that happens when one horn chord fades into a dissonant-adjacent horn chord, and then talk about the highly-integrated handoff between concert-style and techno music [who said anything about Daft Punk and TRON?], and maybe the... look, we're not talking about this shit here, I'll shut up.)

If I recall correctly [from Alex's schpiel], when the composer says "this piece of music requires a fucking anvil to be hit with a fucking hammer," The Way Things Work is... they write it down in notation and write "Anvil Player" at the top of the sheet; if a notation doesn't exist, they invent it right then, and in any case, the thing that happens is they write down what someone is supposed to do with that anvil, because that's the composer's prerogative and it's the composer's art form. (T'was, anyway.)

An example from my own recollection might be the artillery sounds meant to be heard in the 1812 Overture. ("Meant" may be a strong word, but it's not something I'm making up.) You know this symphony; this part right here is the finale. Right where you think there should be a huge boom, and every time you think that — "buh-nuh nuh-nuh NUH-nuh nuh-nuh NAHH! NAHH! NAHH!" BOOM; repeat — the point is, the Russians are blowing up their own cities to spite the invading Napoleonic army. This "celebratory" musical vibe, which you've known your entire life — and which is celebratory, despite the following — is literally happening in the same context as, like, Rage Against The Machine screaming "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME." It's, like, psychotically making a final stand in an apparently-doomed fight to kill yourself before your enemy can kill you...

...and, in the case of the Russians in 1812, it worked. Ask me about Napoleon's retreat sometime. It's a schpiel.

(Never get involved in a land war in Asia.)

Anyway: Cannons! Artillery! When performed outdoors, anyway [ — if ever]. If I'm not mistaken, sometimes they even get local churches to ring their bells at certain points. It's a whole thing.

And it's in the score.

Music is cool.


Disclaimer: I could have been wrong about all of this — and if I was, what's changed since Down in Front, right?

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

I have only just discovered the curiosity that is Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.

I'll say this: it is probably my favourite adaptation of The War of the Worlds. This is a prime example of my dubious musical taste, but it's a fun example of leitmotifs in a popular work. And certainly the Martians' cry of "Ulla!" is chilling and effective.

Much like Moulin Rouge, it is excessive and fairly absurd. (I don't love it quite that much. But I love that it exists.) I tentatively recommend it? If for nothing else than Richard Burton's narration. (Or the Liam Neeson version, if you prefer...this thing has had many lives.)

alicia ♆
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I've been getting a little bored with the standard brass/bass/piano/drums hard bop lineup lately, so anything that deviates from it is very welcome. Cue my discovery of Allison Miller, whose lineup includes violin and clarinet.

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

Babymetal

I got convinced by a few folks I used to work with to go and see these live, and holy crap it was awesome. If you don't know Babymetal, they're a group of Japanese girls that sing and dance along to a masked metal band. I went to the gig only really casually knowing a few songs, but I left a fan.

\m/

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

Yep. Fantastic live!

The difficult second album Regan

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

Another weird way BDA knows things...the reason I know of them and specifically this song is because 8Bit Drummer covered it in one of his streams and I now listen to it fairly regularly. Haven't really dug into the rest of their catalogue yet.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

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Re: Dubious musical taste.

LatinAlice wrote:

I have only just discovered the curiosity that is Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.

I'll say this: it is probably my favourite adaptation of The War of the Worlds. This is a prime example of my dubious musical taste, but it's a fun example of leitmotifs in a popular work. And certainly the Martians' cry of "Ulla!" is chilling and effective.

I had it on vinyl back in the day. One of the biggest regrets I have is not going to see the Jeff Wayne live show when it was going. It had a projected face of Richard Burton above the orchestra - narrating as they played. It would have been sooo good!

edit: OOOOOOOllllllllaaaaaaahhh!

edit #2: The mother fucker is touring the uk next year! I thought he was brown bread!? Or atleast last I checked, he wasn't touring.  Earth invading aliens couldn't keep me away!

Last edited by Regan (2020-02-29 11:18:59)

The difficult second album Regan

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Owen_Ward wrote:

Babymetal

I got convinced by a few folks I used to work with to go and see these live, and holy crap it was awesome. If you don't know Babymetal, they're a group of Japanese girls that sing and dance along to a masked metal band. I went to the gig only really casually knowing a few songs, but I left a fan.

\m/

I urge you to seek out BABYMETAL live at the Tokyo drome. You will not be disapointed. Super fun. Granted the sound is obviousely well edited, but, most stadium gigs are just pro-tool sessions these days. Though, it their energy is fun to boot.

Last edited by Regan (2020-02-29 13:42:03)

The difficult second album Regan

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A friend just introduced me to Pavel Chesnokov and, uh, fuck

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*mosh*

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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The Hu, singing in an alien language developed specifically for Star Wars. Absolutely badass.

ZangrethorDigital.ca