[Closed] Now Playing XLVII

I wake up every morning thanking my stars that Thor doesn't work at a soundtrack release label.

I used to feel this way until I realized the only reason i loved complete scores was that most album producers sucked ass at picking the actual highlights, which then only existed on the bootleg complete scores. I would prefer a 40 minute album of ACTUAL highlights to anything longer in 95% of scores, because that would free up time to listen to more new music, rather than wasting my time listening to "droning action loop #495" and waiting to get to the good part.

I'm with Thor, 40 minutes is generally the ideal length for the 'average' score. Far better to have 40 minutes of highlights than 80 minutes of highlights plus filler. Of course, some scores are highlights in their entirety-- but they're rare. Where I probably depart from Thor is that I'm still interested in keeping as much of the narrative of the film in the album as possible (though of course this admits to exceptions, for example the A.I. album works far better than it would have in film order. It all depends on the score.)

I'm the opposite with Golden Age scores, I generally can't stomach a film-order and complete presentation of older scores (especially as there tends to be lots of short cues involved). Golden Age scores are far more enjoyable in suite form. Thank the gods for Charles Gerhardt.

Of course not, but -to answer for Thor- forty minutes, roughly, does tend to be the 'optimal' time for an album since it tends to be long enough to carry a decent narrative, but short enough to be consistently engaging. In Thor's defence, I don't think he's advocating strict rules regardless of the score, but more a general rule of thumb.

Yes and no. You might have noticed that I allowed for a little bit of leeway there, depending on the richness of the score. That's fair enough. But I do think there is a rule, of sorts, of the 'ideal' average duration of a single musical work or album (in terms of our attention spans, the 'impulse absorption' of the human mind etc.). It's not accidental that, say, a symphony is of the average length it is; or, in fact, any given non-film music album.

Of course, this is based solely on those who approach this from a purely musical perspective. It's a bit different for those who veer to soundtracks because of the movies and who want to 'preserve' as much music from the film as possible. That's a bit different. In this case, the length may not be much of an issue.

And me.

I'm very much of the "present everything and allow listeners to make of it what they will" school of thought. As Scribe said earlier in this thread, I don't trust anyone but myself to pick and choose highlights, simply because I'm always going to have a different opinion of what constitutes a "highlight." The problem with that approach, of course, is that it assumes that people have enough time/energy to assemble their own playlists like that (and most don't, probably). Still, I will always argue that more is better than less. Always.

The ideal thing, of course, would be to always provide two releases: a shorter "concept album" edit and a (more) complete'n'chronological edition, but that's a pipe-dream.

THE TOPIC THAT WILL NEVER DIE!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAA!

I guess I just don't see it that way. With a film, you pretty much have to watch it from beginning to end, so sitting down to six hours of raw footage just doesn't make any sense. But I don't feel any such obligation with a film score. Yes, I appreciate it when an album flows and has good narrative - and there are plenty of scores I listen to from beginning to end all the time - but more often than not I see a score as simply being a collection of music from which I can pick and choose highlights to revisit later (or not). From that perspective, I want everything to be available so that I know I'm not missing out on anything, even if I rarely or never come back to some or even most of that material.

I have come to almost always listen to an album from start to end, C&C or not. I don't make suites and I seldom listen to main theme playlists anymore like I did when I first dived into this hobby more then 20 years ago.

Volker

The music a composer writes for a film is not raw material. It's a fully realized piece of music. The raw material is the sketch. Until it's orchestrated and fully performed it's still in its raw stage. Once performed it's finished. Sure you can pick away at it and craft something new... You can even do that with a completed movie (all the fan cut of the Star Wars prequels) but the music as recorded on the stage is a complete fully realized piece of music as the composer intended it to be.

Look I have no problem with a 40-50 minute presentation of a score but when composers and/or music editors start chopping up cues to form shorter versions or combining cues that have zero relevance to each other is when I get pissed off. Glaring examples of awful and unnecessary edits that destroyed the pieces meaning and story arc are "Sarah's Rescue" from The Lost World and "The Desert Chase" from Raiders. You don't get the true sense of the composition by cutting those brilliant tracks up. Imagine snipping out portions of a Beethoven or Mozart symphony. Blasphemous!

-Erik-

Is the complete Rescuing Sarah available somewhere? It's very high among my favourite Williams action tracks!

I don't agree with you on that definition. The music is telling a story both in the film AND on its own. The music is inspired by something - visuals or an idea - the same way a concert piece is inspired by an idea, a piece of literature or something else that triggers the creative process. We should be allowed to hear that music away from the film in it's complete form (I'm not talking about the complete score here... just the cue) just as a classical lover would want to hear a complete piece from their favourite opera, for instance, on album away from the stage.

However, in saying that, a slight reorganization of the cues (as written without any editing within the cues) doesn't REALLY bother me anymore. For instead having an end credit cue begin an album is a great way to introduce the listener to the themes they will experience during the course of the albums playing time.

-Erik-