The Hollywood strikes continue and have no end in sight as I mentioned in my last post. So, with that “no news is bad news,” I thought I’d share some good news for this Labor Day. Now, I’m more of a Tom Swifty fan than Taylor Swift fan, but besides knowing that “girl can write a song,” I appreciate how she’s taken the “with great power comes great responsibility” challenge seriously. You see, she’s made … Read more
For my work, I’m often focused on continuous improvement — and the silver lining of broken processes means there’s always room for improvement. On the one hand have you ever met those people for whom 99.9999% just isn’t close enough to 100%? Can more optimization be too much of a good thing? Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic feels that might be the case, starting, with that most American of statistics obsession: baseball. If you … Read more
Okay, I was going to post something else today, but then thanks to Andrew M. Edwards of Blue Police Box Music, you’re getting a short, but so, so sweet video. There was an online discussion of the upcoming ultra-HD release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and conversation, quite naturally, turned to the iconic score by composer Jerry Goldsmith. Now, Goldsmith loved “esoteric instruments” as this article points out — and for the noise of … Read more
As the New York Times obituary put it, a “Titan of the American Musical” has left the stage. Stephen Sondheim has died at the age of 91. The whole article is a long and excellent read — and I tend to agree with Mark Evanier in that there doesn’t seem to be much for me to individually add about my own personal connections to Sondheim’s work. However, one thing that has become evident to me … Read more
I haven’t posted anything about Star Trek for a couple months, so… enjoy:
Someone posted about Bobby McFerrin earlier this week (who many people still know best from his song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy“) and that made me think of this short video where he shows how humans naturally think in musical terms: If you like the video above, it’s part of an overall talk that is just delightful in a geeky sort of way (which I’m biased towards anyway.
One of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek and, I would argue, one of their best overall episodes, was the action-packed season two entry, “The Doomsday Machine.” A significant factor on why I believe it should be ranked so highly is because of the episode-specific music composed by Sol Kaplan. Viewers may recall the original series re-used a lot of music cues as a cost-cutting technique. The fact that they don’t do so … Read more
I posted yesterday about Marvel movie music, which I found interesting since –while I’ve collected movie soundtracks since I’ve been little, I haven’t gotten around to getting any of the Marvel soundtracks. (Though I do remember the Avengers “fanfare.”) One recent soundtrack that I have gotten, however, is Game of Thrones, composed by Ramin Djawadi. Spencer Kornhaber writes about Djawadi, his composing, and his fame, in a recent article for The Atlantic.
So, I talked about comics and Captain Marvel specifically so far this week… and that got me thinking more about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and then I thought of “Every Frame a Painting’s” critique of Marvel’s movie music. You may recall me raving about the YouTube series on the occasion of its end, but in any case, this approximately 14-minute video gives you a bit to ponder.
I know I’m not the only one who grew up collecting movie and TV soundtracks… and the opening themes of many works retain an almost Pavlovian response on me (and I’ve also tested this on my kids in the name of parent science: the Fraggle Rock theme still works). So naturally, I thought of the memorable Doctor Who theme what with the current sweepstakes I’m participating in (as Jabberwocky Audio Theater). Josh Jones over at … Read more