Lend me your ears: What do you think of this composer ?

AWWWFUL!!!! Nah..joking. Moodwise I like the piece Doug. It is surely no big piece (and probably no intention) here to make something catchy and where the audience goes out of that listening experience thinking: Ah well, I totally get it. Sometimes there is a need of those more ambient loose tracks with its very loose harmony and ambient style which I appreciate and like also.
So whats good there and whats not so much to my liking? (just for me personally of course)
Good things:

1. You set right from the beginning a very specific tone and mood
2. The dissonances in the beginning work quite well for my ear
3. You are starting slowly which is good for that kind of stuff.

Things to maybe think about:

1. Question could be: Does that music work just for a scene and therefore works with the picture, but as a piece on its own it doesn´t feel that much telling a story or is at all a self supporting piece of music? For me the music is hard to grasp and while I like the harmony and concept it is very depressing not because of the mood but because I get not an idea how where its going not whats going on, I know whats going on there and there are places in music where this kind of stuff is needed.so don´t get me wrong..
2. Even with very loose harmony and dissonance there can be something achieved imo so that the audience get an anchor. Thefore imo the more strange and out of place the music is in its core the more "repeating patterns" we need. You know..the more familiar stuff you write the less repetitions are needed (imo) because our ear knows the stuff already from so many other pieces and places in music so that we already have made up our conclusion and guess for whats going on. But the more loose and unfamiliar it gets the more "explanations" and "narrative" you need at least when there is the goal to tell your audience not just to: Fuck you audience.
3. Imo the piece could have worked better for me if you would have started a bit more with familiar stuff and then later that you explore other more loose and dissonant places. Why? Just because we as the audience are simple minds and we love to understand music and feel therefore cool and good. You know? Yeah you know..it better than I! So when I would rework that track I would try to find a melody bit in your piece and would try to simplify it and make is just more accessable after then this is done, I would make it more obstruse and loose.
4. If Point 3 is obselete for you and you think your idea is as simple as your think for yourself then I tell you: More power to you. But the majority of the audience would scratch their heads. So there is the question: Is your music more a test of aural sonics with some more or less randomized spheres or is the goal to feed the audience with a bit of: Hey folks..I know..my track with not be easy but therefore I give you something so that it makes more sense.

You know that I listen to a lot of JW stuff and do transcribe a lot of him. Yesterday I was transcribing an underscore from Indiana Jones cue "escape form the temple" and though this track is challenging it has a pattern there which gives a bit more merit to the piece on its own. I say the more complex ,uncommon harmony and patterns you feature the more you need some kind of "lego bricks" of the same shape when they have a "different color". (or the other way around). If you have too many different shaped lego bricks with different colors it becomes..mush..and unpredictable chaos, soyou know..just use that imagery.

I don´t know if all that makes sense, if you think I need some bustelo coffee with some redbull let me know. I would be thankful..

Best wishes,
Alex

 

Yes, I saw that now..see I needed some bustelo coffee to see that..man I fell sometimes I am still jetlagged. Well tbh: Just because Williams did that piece doesn´t mean for me to say: Yes, and Amen to like it. Or even to say: Man thats a great piece and I feel engaged and carried throughout the piece. he has places also in film where he does things where I don´t know what the fuck is going on and therefore I said: Sometimes we need those things in film as an underscore because the scene needs such things. But is it a self supporting piece of music (just for me): No..not really. If I miss the anchor..then I apologize in advance but it is hard to grasp. Now there comes the good thing: I know he can all do the normal stuff where I very oten feel let through his music and therefore: The man is 87 (or 86..?) and he has done his typical we all know style to perfection and he wants probably to write also different things. Does he need to tell another starwars or indy jones or action underscore? Meh..no. But I am brutal honest: I really don´t think that this compositon speaks to me much that much when it comes to anchor and red thread. But does it have to? Nah..so what tells us that here? Do we have alwas to write totally safe in order to please somebody else, or the audience..no..I don´t think so. I remember you said to me that my music sounds at times too formularic and let me tell you: Yes, because that is a little the downside there imo. And when you are learning new words first you have that formularic approach because you are still a little child repeating the stuff in a mediocre way plus I anyways suck at composing.

PS: I am doing ok..just a lot of work was piling up while I was in the US and now I had the first week a shitload to do..and still. At least that is good because I get some bucks in my bank account because it feels depressing to see my bank statements....lol.

PS2: It is good that you post that so that we get not the idea that music has always to feel safe or lets say to have that patterns in order to have a place.

 

John Williams has a giant, huge fucking hangup about being merely a lowly film composer and not a "serious" one, and compensates with a lot of mostly unlistenable academic shit for concert works. He's always been that way. Grass is always greener.

But a more important takeaway in my view is what I primarily try to focus on and what the point of Redbanned and improved craft is: control. Control is we can choose to write avant-garde cat-piano crap, or we can choose to write the Raiders March. That's craft. Choices can be debated but at least we should have them.

 

I actually had a talk about this with John's former concertmaster (and my first one) Endre Granat. Endre was being complimentary and comparative by telling me what reminded him of John was that I was "steeped in serious music," but could, basically, stoop to writing film music, too. He was European and charming and masterful, and just dripping with charisma and wisdom - and at the moment I understood why John would want to please people like him. But in many ways, film music was John's Plan B, I think. Orchestrating was Conrad Pope's. Life's funny.