About Music

01/23/2018

My Favorite Film Scores

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So this post came about because a) I have to push back the other post I was planning for today because I haven’t finished the research for it and b) the film I am focusing on for what is now next week’s post has a particularly iconic and important score in terms of film history. I also really don’t care for it. Not to give too much away, it’s a very bass heavy and monotonous score and not very motivic. Well, it has one motif. Still, I started thinking about what I do like in film scores and that naturally lead me to some movies that I really enjoy the music of.

I’ve talked about music in film before. This list is going to cover films with mainly non-diegetic music, meaning that the music is present in the film, but isn’t happening within the world of the characters. All of these films also have wholly original score, save one notable exception– mostly because saying that Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 have great scores is fairly redundant. I also managed to only repeat one composer (no surprise as to who that was though). The films are listed in chronological order as well, because the films I picked really aren’t a fair comparison to rank.

Let’s get started.

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03/04/2017

The Best Songs of Disney’s Golden Age

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The Walt Disney Company is responsible for some of the most recognizable music of the 20th and 21st centuries. From “When You Wish Upon a Star” to the recently Oscar-nominated “How Far I’ll Go”, they’ve put out so many great albums, and have more platinum albums (20, according to the RIAA search function) than Led Zeppelin (18), Madonna (17), or Bob Dylan (15). Kids around the world learn the lyrics to their favorite songs, from their favorite movies– every girl knows the feature song for their favorite princess, at least.

And that is what we’re talking about.

In this series, I am going to go through every Disney soundtrack that accompanies each of the Disney Animated Canon– currently, 56 films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and going to Moana— and pick the best song out of each album. I will be breaking this series up by era and releasing them over the next couple of months, with other stuff in between so that this doesn’t just turn into a Disney blog. This week, we focus on the Golden Age of Disney. This era includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi. These first five movies are all classics, made in quick succession within the span of 6 or 7 years. These movies put the Disney company on the map as a movie studio, establishing the tropes that they continue to use, and setting the standard for family entertainment for years to come.

So, like, no pressure, right?

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01/25/2017

Disney’s Top 15 John Williams Moments

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The Walt Disney Company is responsible for some of the most recognizable music of the 20th and 21st centuries. From “When You Wish Upon a Star” to the recently Oscar-nominated “How Far I’ll Go”, they’ve put out so many great albums, and have more platinum albums (20, according to the RIAA search function) than Led Zeppelin (18), Madonna (17), or Bob Dylan (15). Kids around the world learn the lyrics to their favorite songs, from their favorite movies– every girl knows the feature song for their favorite princess, at least.

But that’s not what we’re talking about.

A John Williams Moment is a moment in a film that is carried by the music. The last time I talked about these, I talked about the man himself, and that was easier to some extent. That’s because John Williams moments are generally not musical numbers (there will be some exceptions in the list, but bear with me for now). Disney, on the other hand, is the champion of the movie musical, more so than most other studios. This means that many moments of high emotional impact are sung– “Let it Go”, for example, or “Part of Your World”. That’s not a John Williams moment. Luke looking out at the binary sunset contemplating his future and dreams, that’s a John Williams moment. But given this is Disney, some of the following “moments” are more full scenes/sequences. Here are what the rules will be:

  1. It has to be something that Disney put their name on. This list will not have PIXAR (they deserve their own list), LucasFilm (kinda covered that in the last post), Marvel (they don’t really have great scores), or Touchstone pictures.
  2. If there is singing, it will not be by a named character (that is, one named on screen), at the very least. Disney has some great choral scores and I want to recognize that tradition.
  3. There will be some live-action, a lot of animation, and one from the park. That’s not really a rule, more of a statement.

As before, this will be in chronological order, because my brain hurts just picking only 15.

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11/24/2016

The Group W Bench: The Storytelling Techniques of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”

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The story of Alice’s Restaurant (with the full orchestration and five-part harmony) is a story in two parts. The first part details a Thanksgiving where Arlo and his friend attempted to get rid of a half a ton of garbage and got arrested for littering; the second part is about how Arlo was not drafted to go to Vietnam. The story is about 2600 words, and takes about eighteen and a half minutes to listen to, one of the longest songs outside of a symphony that you’ll probably hear.

It’s also absolutely fantastic.

And this is for multiple reasons– it’s a mix of comedy, satire, and Vietnam protest song that I’d describe as “if the Pythons wrote 1984” if Terry Gilliam’s Brazil didn’t already exist. But you can also learn a lot about how a story is told from this. There are people who have this monologue completely memorized, and there’s a reason for that. It’s catchy. Some of that is in the story, and some of that is in the telling, but that’s not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

(I’m kidding, we’re talking about “Alice’s Restaurant”.)

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11/17/2016

A Collection of Thoughts

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I’ve been trying for the past week or so to write a post, but the words aren’t doing the wordy thing. So I’m going to try something new this week. Here is a collection of mini-posts and thoughts that I’ve had over the past week– some that I may explore more in later posts, some that are just moments– collected into one place to give a map of thoughts.

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10/15/2016

10 Songs for Your Halloween Playlist

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We’re coming close to Halloween, meaning we’re getting close to Halloween parties. My favorite part of any party is almost always the soundtrack– but Halloween doesn’t have quite the same selection as Christmas. Whether it’s a for a few friends or a whole house full of people, here’s some tracks for your playlist that will help everyone get into the spirit.

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08/01/2016

The Top 12 Songs of Steven Universe

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Well, at least of Seasons 1 and 2.

I’m still on a music kick, but let’s head a bit back into the wheelhouse. Steven Universe is a cartoon on Cartoon Network about a young teenage boy named Steven Universe and his family, a group of women warriors called the Crystal Gems (Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl). Along with his dad Greg and his best friend Connie Maheswaran, Steven saves the world and gets into many adventures in his hometown of Beach City. One of the best things about the show is all of the original music that they compose for the show, and how they use music in the show. This list will focus mainly on the songs with lyrics, but the use of music in the show is some of the most inventive I’ve seen in a while. That being said, the music with lyrics is absolutely amazing. Anyone here keeping up with Summer of Steven? Watched “Mr. Greg”? Yeah, you know the song.

This will only cover the first two seasons mostly because the third season isn’t over yet. I’ll probably do another list for season 3, but for now, here’s the list.

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07/23/2016

5 Cover Songs That Are Better Than The Originals

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I really don’t talk about music enough here. Mostly because I don’t do music as much as I did before college, maybe? For context, I was never in any less than 4 musical groups from 7th grade to graduation. Now, I’m in none. But that being said, I still love it, and really want to talk about it more often here. If you have any suggestions for what you would like me to talk about, the comment section is down below. I can do just about every genre.

Today we’re going to talk about cover songs. My view on cover songs is similar to my view on remakes, it should add to the conversation about the song, give it a new perspective. That is harder to do for a song than it is for a movie: if you change the lyrics, it’s a new song. But that’s not all there is to music, and certainly not all I’m going to consider here. I also want to make it clear that when I say ‘better’, I do mean better. The original versions of these songs range from solid to lackluster, but every cover is compelling and interesting and worth the time to listen.

There’s really not much more to say here, so let’s get started.

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06/19/2016

John Williams’ Ten Most Classic John Williams Moments

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So this week I watched AFI’s 44th Annual Lifetime Achievement Award, which this year went to composer John Williams. Even if you don’t know his name, you know his music. From Harry Potter to Indiana Jones to Star Wars, he is the modern master of the lietmotif, and has written some of the most iconic film scores ever. At 50 Academy Award nominations, he is the most nominated person alive (only edged out by Walt Disney at 59). Many things were said at the event, but one stood out to me the most. Harrison Ford came on stage and spoke about a moment in Raiders where Marion’s Theme was prominent and how it wasn’t where it was expected. He expected it to be when Indiana and Marion reunited in Nepal, but noted that that scene had no music. The scene he eventually pointed out was the cut from the truck that Indiana thinks Marion is on exploding to Indiana later drinking with the Nazi Monkey. He was getting very close to an idea I’ve had about film for a long time, the “John Williams Moment”.

A “John Williams Moment” is a moment in a movie where the scene is carried by the music. Many people don’t think about how music effects our engagement in a film– and I’m not talking about characters outright singing, but what others might call “incidental music” or the orchestral soundtrack. So many classic movie moments are classic because of the powerful music that underscores them, a lot of that music being composed by John Williams. It’s when the power behind the scene comes from its score, and there’s so many for so many movie composers. You don’t have to be John Williams to have a John Williams moment.

But he’s had some pretty good ones.

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04/22/2016

My Desert Island Soundtrack

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Let’s talk about music.

The English language is interesting in the fact that I can say both “I did band in high school” and “In high school, I did band”, and yet find that the second statement is far more accurate. Not that band was the totality of my existence, I had school work and such courtesy of the IB program, but when I wasn’t doing school stuff, I was probably doing something music related. Usually involving one of the three bands I was in. Of course, I’ve also been playing piano outside of band since I was in Kindergarten, plus there was my involvement in my church’s music program. So music is a big part of my life.

I’m not sure where the idea of a desert island playlist comes from (there’s a British radio show that does something like it, but I’m not sure that’s where it started), but the basic concept is that you pick a few albums that you would take with you to a desert island if you had to live there for the rest of your life. Some go by songs, especially after the decline of the album in the past decade, but I’m a traditionalist so albums it is. These are ten albums that I would be able to listen to for the rest of my life.

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