Nils Jacob Holt Hanssen
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Which one of these would you recommend the most?
As Sigbjørn says, what is your favourite of those, Nils?
Probably a tie between Tony Thomas’ books MUSIC FOR THE MOVIES and FILM SCORE, and Charles Bernstein’s FILM MUSIC – AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
There are probably partly nostalgic reasons for Thomas’ books being among my favorites, as these were (as far as I can remember) the first film music books I owned – and the first time I could read anything of any length about John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. And Thomas knows his stuff, of course.
Not sure if Bernstein’s book is very well known? It’s a collection of essays, mostly about the creative process, that he wrote for The Score, which was the quarterly newsletter of the Society of Composers and Lyricists. He’s a great writer, and the book is very entertaining, sometimes downright humorous.
I wonder if my bookshelf will ever contain Jeff Bond’s THE JERRY GOLDSMITH COMPANION, which I Kickstarter-supported with a fair sum of money? I’m not holding my breath… 🙁
The posts are there, and restored. As mentioned earlier, sometimes until the board «knows» a new member, certain posts with images or links are put in «pending» until approved.
Ah, OK, thanks. Yes, I see they’re all back now, with pictures. And looking kinda messy… I’ve tried to clean them up a little.
Well, now my posts (including the one Thor replied to above) are disappearing altogether, when I try to get the picture posted using imgbb…
But here it finally is – I hope! :
As I tried to post earlier: There seems to be at least some overlap with your shelf, Thor. 🙂
Tried imgbb now – created an account, uploaded the picture there and copied the link and used it in the < img > tag here, but it doesn’t seem to work. But I guess I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Bedtime now. 🙂
Here’s my film music bookshelf.
Not sure if Norwegian composer Ragnar Bjerkreim’s master thesis from the University of Oslo counts as a book, but it’s in there anyway. 🙂
Seems to be at least some overlap with your shelf, Thor!
Edit: Umm, OK, so you can’t load pictures stored on your local PC here, but they have to be stored on a website? Then maybe I’ll post a “text version” of my collection later. 🙂
Scores from a TV movie (DISASTER ON THE COASTLINER) and a miniseries (CONDOMINIUM) from the tail end of the 70s disaster movie era.
This was more or less a blind buy, but I have a soft spot for that lean 70s orchestral TV scoring sound, so I took a chance on it after listening to a couple of samples.
I’ve listened to only DISASTER ON THE COASTLINER so far, and indeed, this shouts “70s TV scoring”, but that’s fine. Quite listenable, usually melodic, with a great mix of energetic action cues (often with jazz leanings), loungy romantic music and some more gritty tension stuff.
For my top three favorite composers – Goldsmith, Williams and Chris Young, I think my collection is pretty complete, with some 360, 200 and 100 CDs, respectively. I also have, I think, all their LPs, at least the ones released concurrently with the movies (I haven’t joined the recent vinyl resurgence craze).
My definition of “complete” is basically everything the composer has composed – meaning, for instance, that I don’t have every release where Williams was “only” the pianist or arranger.
I realize that being a “completist” might seem somewhat stupid. I mean, I buy every Goldsmith release, but I’ve listened to CRIMINAL LAW maybe twice (or was it once…?), and I have no plans to do it again. Still, trying to get a complete collection of something (or someone) you like and admire can be fun. And as Thor said, once you start, it can be hard to stop!
I don’t really have any “holy grails” I’m looking for at the moment. These days, I mostly buy stuff that’s readily available, either new releases by my favorite composers, or other stuff that I’ve sampled and found interesting, or that other people have recommended.
Thor, I’m sorry to hear that your tinnitus is having such a negative impact on your listening. 🙁
I have tinnitus myself, but it’s not affecting my listening to any noticeable degree. So far, anyway…Well, I’ve been to only one, for THE EMPIRE STIRKES BACK, which was a frustrating experience, as I reported here. Of course, I might have been especially unlucky with this one, due to a venue that’s unfavorable for such events (Oslo Spektrum), and a sound mix that did the live orchestral performance no favors, with the film sound basically drowning it.
So this experience didn’t exactly encourage me to go to more of these events, at least not to the ones done by Disney. Which would rule out some of those I actually WOULD be interested in, like more STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES, if I could trust that I would hear what the orchestra is actually doing. Not sure if this is a problem only at Disney-run events. Hopefully it is.
As far as I know, it’s not available anywhere. I got an audio copy from an NRK acquaintance. Let me know if you want a copy.
Sure – would love to!
Thanks also for the link to your Montages review. I must have read that back in the day, but I see now that you wrote that PATTON did not have echoplexed trumpets – while my recollection, as I mentioned above, is that they had! 😀 Guess we’ll have to listen to the recording to settle that. 🙂
Beer so far. Nothing fancy, just ordinary Frydenlund Pilsner, which I like quite a lot. I’m far from a beer expert, but I recently heard that Frydenlund was voted the best of the Norwegian “industrial” beers, so maybe I’m actually on to something. 🙂
Switching to red wine tomorrow, probably.
Not that I’ll be consuming a lot of any of it – I’m at the cabin in Trysil with my sister and her family. 🙂If they ever decide to go back to Williams’ style, one excellent choice would be Kevin Kaska. To my ears, he’s the best Williams clone out there. The score he did for THE ORVILLE episode “Electric Sheep” is terrific. He doesn’t just try to sound like Williams there, he actually pretty much does sound like him. His orchestrations are vibrant and exciting. Granted, in that episode, some tracks are clearly inspired by things like “Battle in the Snow” and “The Adventures of Mutt”, but they’re far from copies.
That was a great concert! (is it available in the NRK app/website, Thor?) I remember they were quite faithful to Goldsmith’s originals, including live echoplex effects during PATTON, for instance.
And wow – it’s been 14 years already! 😮
Edit: This was a reply to Thor’s post from 12th March about the ‘Jerry Goldsmith Live’ concert with the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra. I thought the original post including the picture would be included when I used ‘Reply’ on the post, but apparently not.
