This morning, partly out of curiosity and partly to ease the pain of 2 days’ worth of washing up (Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, forgive my sluttish ways), I have been listening to a Spotify playlist called Cinematic Chill-Out. (Under Classical genre, I might add.)
Serves me right, I suppose, but I was startled at how dull and generic it all was. Great washes of synthesised sound (might be an actual orchestra, but how can you tell?) over basic and endlessly repeated chords or arpeggios with no variation or resolution, with a hint of Vangelis here, or a nod to Barber’s Adagio and Albinoni there. If I had the Logic Pro skills I could knock up something similar in fairly short order without too much strain.
It might be argued that the title of the playlist was a clue, and that it isn’t designed to be listened to like this. Both true. But you can listen to soundtrack work by the likes of Elmer Bernstein or Henry Mancini, either as individual tracks or satisfying and enjoyable collections of music in their own right – lots of light and shade, and above all lots of choons.
Here’s an entirely representative sample of what I’m talking about. Is anybody out there writing interesting soundtracks?
This, for instance.
There are some brilliant scores being written at the minute. Here are a couple of recent faves from Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL:
https://youtu.be/xllG3fSUAOw
Yes, those are good I grant you – and the second one, while at the chill-out end, at least goes somewhere.. There were a couple of tracks by Zimmer on the playlist, but I gave up before I got there.
There are vast libraries of generic sounds and phrases that, as you say, anyone with Logic or Garage Band can use to cobble together some generic tosh that passes for film music these days.
Music is generally the one aspect of filmmaking that directors and producers know least about. So they ask their wives, kids, girls in the office what’s supposed to be good.
Cynical, moi?
Hans Zimmer is a curious case study. At his best, I really like him. But my theory is that he just does too much. ( Got to pay the bills, I suppose). The result is that the bulk of his work is just that wash of strings and booming kettle drum noises that sound vaguely “cinematic”.
When he pulls it out of the bag occasionally, it’s incredible. That Superman theme, for example. Or the main theme from Interstellar.
I couldn’t agree more with this – the music in pretty much every Hollywood film these days feels like it’s been cobbled together according to strict genre rules/expectations (horror soundtracks, eg, now ALWAYS use exactly the same ‘spooky’ chords). Even the two examples posted above as being better than average both employ the ubiquitous ‘clattering drums’ now used to accompany any chase sequence or other dramatic scene, and the second one also includes the ‘moody slow piano notes over a synth-strings bed’ trope.
Only recently I was thinking about what the last great film theme was – you know, like Jaws, or Star Wars or Superman, or Indiana Jones (all John Williams as it happens), that you can play to anyone and they know the movie instantly… and I came up very dry. I’m sure there are fans of Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings who’ll recognise their respective music, but as far as I can tell those haven’t “crossed over” in any way…
That’s not to say that there isn’t any good film music being written, even at the “chill out” end of the scale (Cliff Martinez’ music for the Solaris remake is a fantastic cosmic steel drum concoction), but especially with the preponderance of franchise & superhero movies around now, it struck me that there’s a inversely small number of great themes to go with them… I love the Marvel movies, but the music in them is generic at best – surely there should be some “Avengers Theme” that has you leaving the cinema feeling ten feet tall…?
If you stop 100 people on the street and play them the Harry Potter theme and the Superman theme, waaaaay more of them would recognise the former than the latter.
You may well be right, Bingo – it’s always tempting to think that just because I’m unaware of something, then that goes for everyone…
Solaris is great, it’s the only time I’ve ever left the cinema after seeing a film and went straight to a record shop to buy the soundtrack.
I’m just here for the ‘marigolds’ tag.
Couldn’t disagree more with all the moaning on this thread. I think there’s some brilliant score work being done just now.
You can pull stuff up in isolation and criticise it, but all that really matters is whether it works with the movie. There are a lot of areas where modern movies deserve to be slagged off, but I really don’t think this is one of them.
Here are some more recentish faves:
Hateful Eight
https://youtu.be/p7YvxGOgEDQ
Attack the Block
Tron Legacy
It Follows
Atomic
You can also pick just about anything from Under The Skin (fantastic score), or anything Johann Johannsson has done for Denis Villeneuve.
Any of Clint Mansell’s sound tracks get to me. Here are two I play regularly.
This is from Moon
This from that piece of Cine-Marmite The Fountain (I love it by the way).
And this from Requiem for a Dream, seems to have crossed over and been used in lots of other things.
I fall between the two views here. I’m a regular soundtrack buyer who lives in hope that the stunning sound I hear in the film — Mad Max Fury Road, Arrival, Bourne, Nolan’s Batman films, anything John Murphy does, anything Clint Mansell does — will somehow translate into a great at-home CD soundtrack.
The problem is it rarely does because the listening ear expects to hear the motifs of the film developed in a long-playing context and they hardly ever are, because they don’t need to be. As a result you get one or two tracks per CD (often ‘main theme’) that are ace, plus acres of the kind of thing described in the OP. It’s not a new thing, mind you. I speak as someone who’s sat through a lot of James Bernard’s scores for Hammer films. Soundtracks for Halloween and Psycho are dead boring once you get past the familiar bits.
There are notable exceptions, of course. Arrival is a good example of a soundtrack that stands up as an album, as is M83’s Oblivion score. Trevor Jones’s Last Of The Mohicans, Joe Kraemer’s Way Of The Gun, Mansell’s The Fountain, all the Goblin stuff…
The Arrival score is absolutely superb.
Is not the point that that immensely skilled composers – Zimmer, Mansell etc are writing music to be listended to alongside visuals, frequently with dialogue and sound effects in the mix as well. So yes take the visuals away and they appear incomplete, thin, repetitive etc – but surely that’s inevitable. As a thought test imagine how many ‘great’ music videos would be watchable without the music?
Exactly. The whole point of most of this music isn’t to operate in a standalone capacity, or to be so mind blowingly great as to take all the attention.
It’s a bit like isolating the bass part on a record and asking why the bass is always so boring.
Sometimes it’s the other way round. Easy Rider is a brilliant album with a very boring film attached to it.
We’ve got to distinguish the ‘featured songs’ to the OST. Sometimes you get two complete different music releases from a film: one the ‘songs’, the other the composed soundtrack. I think this thread is about the latter.
Not soundtrack music as such, but when Pulp Fiction was released it, and its soundtrack, were the coolest things around.
I was in the local Woolworths when someone in the record department put the album on without realising how it starts. The shop’s whole sound system sparked into life and all we customers were instructed, ‘Everybody be cool! This is a robbery!’ ‘Any of you f’ing pricks MOVE and I’ll execute every motherf’ing last one of you!!!’
The album was then removed and something else put on instead.
Warren Ellis (i.e. Nick Cave’s copiously bearded chum) did quite a nice soundtrack to the fine Turkish/French film “Mustang”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGw7sw9NDHU&list=PLSLN5gEzR2h6B27qBo4A1Lp1XztkGdh97
Bear me to it duco01. A great film perfectly complimented by a wonderful soundtrack.
Max Richter has done some good scores too, like this from Perfect Sense (underrated movie, I think).
I’m sick to death of writing here about Nino Rota’s Fellini soundtracks so I just won’t mention them again.
Even though I’m going to spend the next five years writing a PhD about them….