JERRY GOLDSMITH

^ What he said.

-Erik-

What Thor means is that Goldsmith didn't understand how to use synths like Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. Which is ironically letting personal musical taste getting in the way of appreciating the value of a score... not unlike what Erik is being accused of over in the Santaolalla thread at the moment.

And we should all praise the Lord for that.

Great examples of Goldsmith's synth work can found in Basic Instinct, The Burbs, Total Recall, Star Trek: First Contact, The Shadow, The Russia House, Medicine Man, Leviathan, Innerspace, Hollow Man, Deep Rising, Congo, etc.

-Erik-

Fact is that Jerry Goldsmith's synth scores are hard to 'get', and certainly not for everyone; a rather eclectic listen i'd say and each of them has its own character. Whilst i am rarely able to listen to the majority of this work, still i value their place in the film music medium.

The fact that you of all people would take your opinion to be unquestionably the truth surprises me given the amount of bandwidth you've taken up over the years rallying against people doing precisely that! It can't possibly be unquestionably the truth when three people so far in this thread have questioned it, can it?

The capital city of France is unquestionably Paris. Jerry Goldsmith's ability to integrate synths with an orchestra is neither unquestionably brilliant nor unquestionably awful.

Wow, great replies to my humble question!

thanks! great discussion!

And to avoid doubt, I will exit this discussion by reminding everyone that Jerry Goldsmith was unquestionably the most able composer around when it came to seamlessly integrating synths with the orchestra.

I'm afraid I must side with Thor here. Maybe it has something to do with not seeing most of those films with Goldsmith scores in my youth (and maybe it has to do with you guys seeing it in your youth), but - while Goldsmith of course has to be applauded for 'revolutionizing', if you will, film music by complementing orchestra with synths - the synths themselves are most of the time really, really cringeworthy. The way it's written is undoubtedly great, but it's how they sound, it's the sounds themselves he employs; they're more often than not very outdated (actually, I can't see how they would ever be not outdated) and just very, er, inappropriate (which is a word that might perhaps be used to objectify this discussion to some extent?). For instance, the very masculine Rambo (II) is constantly accompanied by that ridiculous fart sound, which kind of undermines the rest of the writing. Another instance is Timeline, where he still uses that hopelessly out-of-date 80s sound in a more modern film. I like most of these scores, like Legend, very much, but I like them despite the synth sounds - I have to 'cognitively ignore' those sounds when I listen to them.
Anyway - to end on a positive note, I think he did do a perfect blending without any too annoying sounds in his best score - Under Fire, which is plain awesome from start to end!

It's not so much the argument of the "dated" synths for me, as of course you have to take them in context to the films and the time they were written and performed in; it's just that i think that Goldsmith wasn't a particularly good synth composer; in violent contrast to his orchestral brilliance.

Mostly the first team. But there are places where his synths in the orchestra didn't work either. The musical imbalance was very striking, i.e. the ones some people call Goldsmith synth farts

You assumed correctly, dear Sir.

I think he's the only one having fun with those synths, though

Interesting point there James.
As much as I've always loved Lionheart I've always found the trumpets etc rather shabby to say the least.
A few obvious bum notes in places (that I wish were covered by synths but weren't) but I'm greatful for the times they were overlapped or replaced by the keyboard. In a perfect world the score would have been fully orchestral and played perfectly! Much like First Knight.