[Thor Joachim Haga]

FSM # 29: January 25, 2001

I’ve been wanting to ask this question for a long time, especially since the board forever has been scattered with questions as to who wrote what and what piece was used in that and that trailer.

The question is not meant derogatorily. I’m just curious.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

25 years later, and it’s still a “thing”. Trailer has its own niche communities, it seems.

[Malte Müller]

When they first appeared mimicing basically Zimmer’s bombast style lie Two Steps From Hell I found some tracks somewhat entertaining. Didn’t really follow anything except finding trailer music in trailers mostly… well 😉

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Well, long before that “Two Steps from Hell” act (and variations thereof), they often used existing film music, of course, and there was this obsession about it, that I noticed on film music forums. Not only the big and famous things, like Horner’s ubiquitous “Bishop’s Countdown”, but the ones you had to dig for. Didn’t understand the fascination back then, don’t understand it now. But it exists.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I don’t really understand the question. Isn’t it perfectly normal that if one hears a piece of music one likes in a trailer, one may wonder what that is and where it originally came from? It used to be that they often used music from one movie in the trailer for another. I guess nowadays, trailers even oft have “original” music composed for them. And there are even soundtrack CDs/digital releases just with trailer music.

There used to be a list on Soundtrack net back in the day with lots of information which music was used where. Not sure if they moved to filmmusic.com, which is where I see the list now: Trailer Music list on Filmmusic com

It has a list of “Top frequently used cues”, with ALIENS, for example, listed 24 times.

I used to sometimes wonder which music I heard in a film trailer, and these sites often helped me to find that information.

[GerateWohl]

I remember at lest two times Christopher Young’s Main Title from Copycat being used in an unrelated trailer. One was Meet Joe Black. The other one I don’t remember.

Anyway, nowadays I am even less interested in trailer music than I am in contemporary movie scores. It’s mostly either Bwaahm! or some sparse accoustic guitar version of some famous 80s song or some zimmerised synth version of an unrecognizable potential main theme.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

I don’t really understand the question. Isn’t it perfectly normal that if one hears a piece of music one likes in a trailer, one may wonder what that is and where it originally came from?

I suppose.

But you have to remember the timeframe here. 2001 was the year. The board was flooded with requests for who did what trailer music. It became rather overwhelming for someone who didn’t have that interest. It’s relatively rare that you see threads like that now, because the music is usually made by companies specialized in trailer music (which have their own dedicated fanbases), or the information is easy to find online if they – on a rare occasion – use existing film music. Back then, it was only John Beal, and maybe a few others, who did that.

So it’s taken a different form today, still as strong (and with an avid fan base), but not as present on film music messageboards. I’m still kinda baffled by the interest in trailer music in general, but there it is. Plenty of things out there that I’m not interested in, but that many people are.

[Malte Müller]

I’m still kinda baffled by the interest in trailer music in general, but there it is.

I can understand it on the current state but theoretically in an ideal world the film’s composer should do a special trailer music (as it was done in the older times).

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