Lorne Balfe's "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" Score

This and all such discussions can be distilled to an essential truth:

For more than 100 years, masterful composers using plain 'ol orchestras have created pieces which transcend the boundaries of time and transform people's lives. They remain cherished and inspiring, discovered anew as only masterworks can be.

This will not be said about virtually any of the work being produced today, because it is neither masterful nor natural. All of these approaches make the playing musicians absolutely miserable; it's the antithesis of what they got into music for, and an offense to the communal, synergistic beauty of playing music together. They fucking hate it. And what's all this in service of? The product is forgettable noise, forcibly birthed at the expense of joy and musicianship - full of sound and fury; signifying nothing, as the man said.

I would rather die an anonymous, failed master than a wealthy noise-smith. But to each his own.

 

Same old discussions about modern blockbuster soundtracks. I couldn´t make it through the whole soundtrack here. It is a very typical approach for the genre I would say. Nothing really sticks to my ear that much. Very boring as a stand alone listening experience for me. Lowbrass pads and swells all over the place, taikos, and Strings playing like a rock guitarrist plays powerchords all the time. Sure it may fit the picture and works for the movie I guess. These things are very often in blockbuster movie these days. I mean honestly: What to expect here? Lorne Balfe is a co-composer and ghostwriter for Zimmer. His turn on the maintheme at 21 minutes speaks a clear language. His manerism are all about those "big sounds", and loud screaming orchestra at the top of their lungs layered with samples or whatever. Matter of taste..I think if you like Zimmer and that stuff, probably you will cherish that kind of soundtracks. So this is same old same story therefore for me. But I don´t pass the buck to Lorne Balfe because that is what the studios want him to do and when he doesn´t another one is doing the Gig. So I think you can´t blame somebody like him just fullfilling and doing his job there. Maybe he doesn´t like the stuff he did there but he is doing it because of course it is tempting to get a big gig like that for his career. Not that he had no career prior that, of course not but you know how that is? People once get a bit of the big cake they have harder times to resist and to say: You know what I stop working for this machinery and do indy stuff.

 

Let me clarify: I don´t say it is a bad soundtrack. It is just not what my personal taste is. Its probably for other people a very good soundtrack. The term "bad" is for me the wrong word for such things. Is it really bad? I mean..there are many good points regarding sound, intensity, mixing wise etc. I think it is well done, though it doesn´t match my own asthetics that much. I mean what is bad. For me this soundtrack just doesn´t utilizes the things which orchestral music makes it great for my own taste which this lacks of:

1. No cool melodic material which get stuck into my brain
2. No cool modulations
3. No sophosticated harmony
4. No use of the whole palette of orchestrational colors and presets
5. No use of dynamic variations
6. No use of much different articulations
7. No motivic developement at all
8. No usage of any kind of couterpoint.

But it is not a bad soundtrack because it dosn´t feature that points because it is not intended to sound like the charming old times. But that is not the goal here. I don´t know Balfes background is and I don´t know any of his other works, so my points just are focussed on this one soundtrack here and maybe he is able to pull of other styles which I dig more, but who knows..Is Lorne Balfe a bad composer? I would say not at all, but he does what the studios want him to do and thats his job. He gets his probably very nice paycheck and the rest doesn´t matter. Period. If you want to work there with that blockbuster stuff, you have to make that sound otherwise, go home.

 

You know my intent is here not to smash Balfes work, because thats the point: Why blame sombody who just does his job there in hollywood. I tell you that a lot of people would jump on that train when they throw many dollars at you. In the end its a job. I just checked out other works of Balfe and they are more or less all of the same ingridients what that Zimmer sound is typical for. No wonder why he worked for him in the past. He is one of the many Zimmer childs. From a pure business aspect, he does everything right.

 

Curious how many of you guys would decline such an offer if e.g. Warner or universal came around and would asked you to score the next super hero movie? If the paycheck is a bigger 6 digit number, I bet my pants that 99 percent would do it, make a shitty soundtrack what they probably hate but go home with a smile and say: Fuck it anyways and buy some cool gear and a nice car. lol!

 

Yeah, exactly. To be honest: I would do a couple of those shitgigs and take the money and then I would be much more independent and have more freedom and choices therefore. I guess thats with other people working there too. Thank you for the comment, Aaron.

 

But not that someone thinks here I am labeling hollywood gigs per se as shitgigs, I just mean by that: When you work there for blockbuster franchise, you have not that much to say and do what they want you to do and that is for me a shitgig because I think when producers dictates too much stylistic choices which would be the job of the composer, so the artist becomes stiff and uncomfortable and probably but that is my guess probably he is not able to show his best performance. I remember doing of course not hollywood but a medium gig and they wanted me to do this 3/4 meter dance track. And they gave me a temptrack (btw..I had most of the time to copy temptracks), having said that: I copied the temptrack and my piece was a shitpiece but close enough to the original but far enough not to step into legal shit. And then they cam: Ah its too slow alex, so I speeded the track up. And they said: too slow..I finally I think I started on tempo 135 with 3/4 beat and ended up on 185 or some shit like that because they told me so. The endresult was a major fucking bullshit shit and I hated the track and still do and they liked it. THe track sounded like the duracell bunny on crack. Now..they want that shit and I didn´t - I thought that it was total douche. When people hear that track they think probably: Wow, the composer was really a douche. But behind the curtain of night that happens. I remember the blakus guy posted a starwars trailer track for battlefront or something in ViC. And man the guy is nice, the musictrailer was done pretty cool for a modern trailer approach and the producers told him: We need more attack in the taikos, more aggression. So I read that he started to layer like a madman all this kinds of additional stuff, just that every drum sounds like Explosion..man, this producers are insane..they have no musical sense, they are fucking douchebags imo and its often not the composers fault that a soundtrack sounds like a loveless trashcan. Imo there are nowadays in hollywood the wrong people with no sense for music but they dictate that and thats also a reason why we hear so much shit these days.

 

Being good isn't why you'll be hired or not. It's why you'll be remembered or not.