AngelCityOutlaw

So this is the article that basically the entire composer world is talking about right now. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/24/composer-john-williams-never-liked-film-music-very-much My own take: I think Williams should remember he resigned from I believe it was the Boston Orchestra in the '80s because they didn't take him seriously since he wrote film music. Then, the orchestra scrambled to convince him to stay. Is he now saying that they were right? Whether we like it or not, music has rarely ever broken through on its own. It almost always requires attachment to some larger cultural vehicle to get noticed. That's why I think that most of what John is saying is simply sour grapes that people don't much care about his concert works. His great film works all stand on their own and orchestras around the world play them because that's what people want to hear. He says "what we think of as this precious great film music is … we’re remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way …" That's true of literally all music ever, regardless of quality. Williams himself has a nostalgia for these classical composers who inspired him in the same way that a boomer will tell you that you should envy them for growing up in the '60s with "the best music", and then play some of the most unlistenable Bob Dylan garbage you've ever heard. There are a lot of bad film scores, sure — but I will argue there has been even more garbage written for the concert hall, especially in the early 20th century. And even romantic era composers considered greats didn't have nonstop bangers all the time. Plenty of times in the music of Holst, Tchaikovsky, etc. you have more atmospheric or mood-building sections and not even every piece Beethoven ever composed was greatly memorable. Further, for as long as music has been around, it has been used to tell stories. This idea that when it is then composed to help tell a visual story, that this somehow renders it innately inferior, is a nonsensical belief. Especially when no one seems to take this position regarding scores that were composed for Opera and Ballet.

Nice. Looking forward to the live version

I added another track to the OP: Sleepless in Shangri-La, a cinematic rock piece.

Hey everyone, Here are a few tracks from my new album aimed at TV and Film licensing. Once again focused on the action/adventure genre, but this one has a greater focus on modern cinematic music and fusions of genres from around the world. Everything from new age, to rock, to latin pop and inspired by films like National Treasure, Tomb Raider, 007, Pirates and more. Hope you all enjoy it. I'll update the thread as I upload a couple more tracks to the ol' YouTube, but in the meantime, if you want to check out the rest of it, you can listen on spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/5VacPSF2HmD200E2NKCZmx Thank you.

Thanks Peter! I'm not familiar with Outlaw Star, but I have heard some of the music from cowboy bepop. As I recall some of the composers from the Shinobi games originally worked under Joe Hisaishi, who went on to score studio Ghibli films, and I've always kinda heard a bit of his influence in the games.

The new ninja gaiden game's music is some of the best game music I've heard since the 2000s.

I don't have much to do with cover tunes or video game music these days, but with new Ninja Gaidens and Shinobi games coming out, it appears 2025 is indeed the year the ninja master returned. I have better gear than they did back in '93, so I arranged the theme from Shinobi 3 in the '80s martial arts film score style I believe they were going for on that old Sega soundchip!

Nice. Congrats on the album I have subscribed

I am a firm believer that the Alain Mayrand video up top is the single best video on orchestration on the internet right now, no joke.

I started getting serious about music beginning with heavy metal music over 20 years ago, which Black Sabbath pioneered. Without Ozzy Osbourne, I'd not be a composer today. RIP Prince of Darkness

So a few things: Firstly, this isn't really very similar to the style of John Williams at all. But of course, John Williams is an absolute master; he'd already been composing 40 years before his first film score. Writing a piece in his style is no small feat. As for your mix issues, I'm not really hearing a problem with the overall levels on my end atm, but there are definite balance issues. Some of these are due to musescore/musesounds which right now are notoriously unbalanced and have limited ways of fixing that, but some can't be. What you could do is put the tracks in logic and automate volume to help them out and send them in to a new reverb. However, some of the other issues are related to orchestration and sample limitations. For example, you have, as a lot of modern composers do, all these big block chords with a melody over them. Bar 20 is a good example. Firstly, you have the trombones and celesta eating up a ton of the frequency spectrum by playing these huge chords, but then you ALSO have the trumpets coming in three-part harmony AND a String Melody in three octaves with the cellos taking the lowest octave. And everything there is playing mezzo piano. That's a recipe for mud, even in a live context I'm afraid. Then, in bar 22 onward, you still have trombone footballs, but now they are accompanied by absolutely massive harp chords. While that is happening, you have different things happening between bassoons + horns, violins, etc. Another issue is that the bass is entirely footballs in the piece, which does not give it any breathing room and becomes rather exhausting to the ear. "Melody + Chords" style Chord pads that have become popular in film music are actually generally considered bad practice not only because they're boring to play, but because the strings, low brass, and choir are basically the only ones good at playing them and these are large ensembles that take up tons of room in the frequency spectrum and stereo field. So you see beginners give this big, five-voice string harmony with a lonely oboe melody on top and then wonder why it's so hard to make the melody stand out even if the strings are at Piano. It's because the oboe is totally surrounded and your ear will focus on whatever line is thickest (the chords). If try to thicken the woodwind line, you're now competing for space with the strings. However, unlike samples, live orchestras have almost infinite dynamic range, and not only that, but they can stay at one dynamic range and still have a lot of modulation in the sound, which is something samples can't do. So chord pads with samples tend to just sound bad. With these pads mocked up with samples, you're always going to fighting the fact that your chords seem like they just can't play quietly enough, and if they can, the timbre is bad because you can't modulate the sound without screwing up the dynamics. TL;DR: You can fix some issues by loading it into a DAW, but the main problem is the writing/orchestration and samples suck at chord pads.

Pop instrumentation can be quite literally anything, but is most commonly based around a "band" rhythm section. Drumkit, bass guitar, and usually some chordal instrument like a keyboard guitar. Drums are very simple in most pop tunes. The simple "four on the floor" pattern is in almost every song. Kick drum on beat 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4.

Nice

What are you working on at the moment? What do you still want to compose?

Frankly, I would not take anything Arnie said seriously and would toss his book in the trash, where his "music" belongs as well. Perhaps set fire to it. It is also blatantly false when he says that "No beginner is capable of envisaging a composition in its entirety". Of course they can. Even laypeople can. They are capable of "envisaging" it, but that is different from "realizing" it entirely. The truth is that even if you plan out a structure or form from the get go, pieces tend to undergo metamorphosis as you actually work on them. The music reveals things to you that may not have come to you while you "envisaged" it and every piece is different. On some, you might have thought of a form you want beforehand and you wind up following it exactly. On others, you might realize partway through that actually, it would better if this "B" section didn't repeat after all and you have a better idea. And yes, it can even unfurl like a tapestry on a one-note-to-the-next basis. As an example, on my last album, some pieces I had a very clear picture of how they would be laid out before I even sat down to work on them. But on others, I did not. On one track I wrote, all I knew for certain was that I wanted it to start with some soft horns, and end with a big march that fades out into percussion similar to "The Flag Parade" by John Williams. I wound up having to change the ending because the company I wrote the album for required every track to end on a hit, but everything between the intro and ending was up in the air. It wound being the most popular and best-selling piece on the album — and is also my favorite piece on it.