Making your own perfect album

For me, soundtrack albums have NEVER been about just favourite cues. It's ALL about the 'concept album' feel it creates. It's about the composer taking all the musical raw material from the film and fashioning that into a representative suite or narrative that is its own thing. That's something I could NEVER do, for obvious reasons.

Example:

Just a few months back, I tried to make a listenable album out of Williams' JOHN GOLDFARB PLEASE COME HOME from FSM, but failed. I ended up with maybe 22 minutes or so of reasonably coherent cues (out of 70-something minutes), and then it was a matter of organizing them so that the intensity varied. This proved impossible, more or less, since the tracks themselves were quite scatterbrained. It would require editing WITHIN tracks, and at that point I gave up.

I think the only way this particular score could have worked on album is if it were rerecorded, extending some of the tracks into more coherent pieces -- which of course was Williams' habit with the 60's comedy scores; just not this one. So even picking out favourite cues proved to be a failure in this case.

My brother John (who lives in Adelaide) makes helicopters. Traditionally I have sourced my helicopters from Bradshaw's of Wigan, mindful of the well-publicised perils of ordering a helicopter from one's own brother. However, I bowed to pressure from his very attractive, and very pursuasive wife Elena (originally from Fray Bentos in Uruguay, clearly a dangerous place to live when one is vegan). So it came to pass that late in 2011 I ordered my latest helicopter from John, who did offer a reasonable discount. Extraordinarily, I returned home from work - I recall quite clearly that it was a Thursday - to find on opening my door that there were various large metal objects inside my house, as well as rather complex-looking electronics. It was clear to me what had happened - John had posted me the materials to make a helicopter. Naturally I was furious - previously all of my helicopters had come pre-assembled. Still, I worked long into the evening to assemble the helicopter myself. It took approximately 80 minutes. The following day I took the helicopter for a test flight - I was keen to visit the new branch of WH Smith in Leningrad. But lo and behold, when arriving in Leningrad, far from the traditional greeting at the helipad of potato and vodka, I saw instead an elderly woman holding a pretzel. I had in fact landed in Gdansk. Investigations revealed that I had made a slight error in the wiring of the navigation system.

Anyway, the moral of this story is clear - just as when ordering a helicopter, there are hazards in simply being sent the raw materials and having to assemble the device oneself, so too are there hazards in ordering a soundtrack album only to discover that instead of producing the album for you, the "producer" has simply supplied the raw materials and expects you to assemble the album yourself.

Actually, the producer (a professional) of JOHN GOLDFARB did produce an album and in this case decided that a complete presentation would best represent the music whether Thor liked it or not.

-Erik-

I'll hang my hat on that.

This is too much fun! :rubbinghandstogether:

-Erik-

I love those albums as well and Williams was the best at doing them. Rozsa's Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis albums are some of my all time favorites as well.



I too like I little re-sequencing. Maybe the end titles at the beginning of the album so you hear the major themes first and then discover them while you listen to the album proper (the original release of Star Trek Generations comes to mind.)

I also miss composers writing concert suites of their themes. Again, Williams was the master of this. But that takes a lot of time and energy and with production schedules the way they are now it's almost impossible for a composer to flesh out a theme into a proper musical suite for album/concert presentation.

Oh well, how times have changed... but it doesn't offend me or anything.

-Erik-

I was thinking that, instead of archiving this topic as a complete record of the comments, I might edit it down to about 20 comments. 75% interesting comments with the rest boring bits (mine?) to add a bit of variety.

I am not sure that playing around with the running order is going to improve the reading experience.

Way ahead of you, Alan. I actually created a succint FAQ-type image for this every time the topic popped up -- for convenience -- but when my site went under, it went along with it. I need to put it back up somehow.

Just too sweet

Not exactly an answer to your question, but because of The Hobbit I just realised that the tracks itself have to be good in the first place to be able to choose favourites!

Now an answer to your question. I often make playlists that work for me, for instance to listen to when I want to relax or to listen to with the whole family. Sometimes that means I leave out good action tracks but I do that because they are too loud for the flow I want to create. Good recent example is my playlist of Snow White and the Huntsman. While the action music is great I have created a quieter playlist that my family doesn't mind listening to and even when I'm alone, doing ironing or something, I can put this playlist on and never have to turn the volume down because of loud outbursts or something. My playlists aren't better than the albums, they just work for me personally. I do call them The Best of... in iTunes though.

While it's timeconsuming to assemble the helicopter yourself, you can assemble it more to your liking. Also, John has the nasty habit of leaving out essential parts.

Peter

If their musical skills and experience deem the best artistic expression to be presenting the score in chronological order (possibly even complete), surely that is perfectly valid from your perspective? This re-conceptualisation is not required in all circumstances.

You're crazy.

If I am, I'm not alone. Seems like there's a pretty even 50-50 balance of the two preferences here (which is unusual, but very refreshing).