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How the Rogue One Title Music Loses The Essence of "Star Wars"

by nick

      It’s been just over two years since Rogue One was released, and it is one of the best regarded Star Wars movies of the Disney era. Yet despite its success, it has one major flaw.    The title sequence music.    Though Michael Giacchino did an excellent job to differentiate this Star Wars spinoff’s music from the other scores, the way he redoes the Main Theme in this title sequence makes the music not “Star Wars”. Furthermore, there is a particular reason why I say that. Because while he only makes a couple of seemingly minor edits, those edits completely change the fundamental nature of this theme.    Now before I get too far, I just want to point out that I think Michael Giacchino did a great job with this score. He is one of my favorite film composers alive and did an outstanding job with the very limited timeframe he was given. He literally only had a month to write, record, and edit the entire score. Most composers get two or three times that time.    Moreover, so while I don’t think he sought out…
Score: 1.3

15 Hot Music Genres You'll Be Thrilled To Discover

15 Hot Music Genres You'll Be Thrilled To Discover      Those of you who've only followed the Present Author for the past couple years may be surprised to learn that I used to write about music. No, really, a lot. It's been a while since I wallowed in the discovery of new bands.    What I'd like to do for the world this Christmas is illuminate some little-known, niche music micro-genres. Most of them are new, some of them only established after the fact or experiencing a retro revival, all of them are judged to be popular and trendy based on stats gleaned from Spotify (mostly), plus iTunes, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, and whatever crazy noise I can run into on the street. I will try to keep it to genres established enough that they won't just disappear by the time you read this.    That's all we're doing. So if, a few days from now, you just received a new music-playing gadget and are looking to load it up with cool new beats, you're bound to find one genre here worth exploring.      #1: Witch House          …
Score: 1.56

How John Williams Creates Emotion

by nick

    “It’s almost cheating when you have John Williams…he writes feelings”   —JJ Abrams, Force Awakens Director (source)   Amongst the film music circle, it’s very well known that John Williams writes emotion better than most (if not all) composers in the film industry.  Whereas Hans Zimmer writes “sound worlds” and Michael Giacchino writes based off an essential chord, John Williams writes the emotional underpinning of the scene.  So this series of posts is going to explain the main three ways that he creates scores with tremendous feeling. We are going to look at his well-known use of leitmotifs as well as other, less popular techniques.  And to start off the exploration, let’s look at one of the historical precedences for why his work carries such emotional weight: Mickey Mousing.    Mickey Mousing    Guess where Mickey Mousing comes from?   Hint: they’re from the early Mickey Mouse cartoons.  Mickey Mousing is synchronizing the music to the actions that are on the screen. For instance, if there is a…
Score: 1.32

4 Popular Misconceptions About Music That You Probably Don’t Know

 
    1. You always know what you hear  Unless you are tone-deaf, you can tell when a note is played higher or lower than other.  Or can you…  Like there are optical illusions, there are also auditory illusions (and I do exploit them as a composer).  One of the most important concepts in music theory is the harmonic series. Essentially, whenever you speak or make a sound, there is the fundamental pitch that you hear as well as many pitches above that pitch resonating that the same time. These other pitches give sounds their unique qualities and timbres.  There is a phenomenon called the missing fundamental.  If you were to take all these upper pitches from a note and remove the fundamental, you would still hear the fundamental.  This can make notes sound like they are rising even if they are falling. Or can make you hear notes that aren’t even playing. Or chords that aren’t present.    One great resource to learn more is auditoryneuroscience.com. There, you can test yourself amongst actual samples and see if…
Score: 1.28

Twitch.tv: Musician's Playground of Trained Hand-Eye Coordination and Muscle Memory in Gaming

by Randy N.

   If you want your talents to pave a path towards a career, you have to put in due time and diligence to master a certain skill of your choice. I’m sure some of you have heard the saying, “It takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.” Though I do not believe this rule to be the case.   It is amazing what you can accomplish in a single day with effective and efficient practice techniques whether you are an artist, ballet dancer, or even a construction worker.   In this article, I'll be discussing the joys of my passions and my obsession with muscle memory and hand-eye coordination.   The Joy of Music   Elementary school was when I began noticing a joy in music. My father, being the musician that he is, always sang and played guitar around the house. He also ran a music store where I spend the majority of my time after school.   I soon picked up instruments like the bass and drums, but it didn’t quench my musical thirst. One day, my grandfather mailed my father and I a CD containing the Vivaldi…
Score: 1.22

The 10 Most Underrated Overlooked Hip-Hop Rap Albums of the 2010s

In a landscape where hip-hop has been under the shadow of Drake, Kendrick, Migos, and Kanye, it is very easy to forget the hundreds of talented acts that left a mark on the genre and culture.   Many of the artists on this list also run around the lines of sex, guns, and drugs but it's in the way they deliver it that set them apart from the mumble rappers of the 2010s. Likewise, some of the albums also include artists who fit that "woke" label that feel more genuine than their mainstream contemporaries. Let's start spinning the vinyls.    Danny Brown – XXX    In an era of rap where artists left and right have radically shifted from the standard norms of the genre, it takes a real weirdo to stand out. One of these iconoclasts is Detroit native with a distinctive squawk and wordplay as tight as his designer jeans. But it is on XXX where his years of mixtape blast into something muscular.        Danny Brown’s style of rapping is gallows humor turned up to the spirit of Nas and Mobb Deep. He’s equally ugly…
Score: 1.07

Harmony of Teamwork and Leadership in the Orchestra and Business through the Eyes of a Musician

 
    I’ve spent most of my life in and out of various orchestras and businesses professionally throughout my career.   During this time, I discovered many subtle similarities between these two careers and what makes them successful or not.  In comparison, we look to understand the harmony of teamwork and leadership within the different “branches” of an orchestra and business through the eyes of a musician.    The Conducting CEO           I am sure there’s been a time in all our lives when we’ve thought,   “ Wow, the CEO is so lazy and does nothing but make the profit from all the hard work of his employees.”   Or while watching an orchestra perform we think,   “That guy up there is just flailing his arms all over the place and acting like a clown.”  While this may seem the case, the conductor and CEO play enormous roles when it comes to running the show. They are responsible for the overall strategic focus on success.    Side-by-side, both the role of the CEO and conductor is responsible for unifying their…
Score: 1.39

VTubers (Virtual YouTubers): Is This The Future Of Entertainment?

       Pardon my round-eyed white idiot weeaboo indulgence, but your Present Author has been sent on a mission by the Editors That Be to explore vTubers(Virtual YouTubers, Japanese: Vユーチューバー, バーチャルユーチューバー). This is 21st century living at its most stereotyped: whole subcultures emerge and gain millions of followers within a couple of years, without most of the world quite knowing they exist.  But I'm a techie and media geek first, so even I can appreciate that there's something happening here. We all expected that better AI and CGI technology would give us virtual celebrities sooner or later. That's all a vTuber is: a Virtual Youtuber, a real-life celebrity who never shows their face (almost), instead of having their movements motion-captured and animated through a virtual character, for whom they also provide the voice.        Westerners may smirk and say "Hey, that's Max Headroom." Well, no, not quite. It's actually more like Black Mirror. Namely, The Waldo Moment way back in season two:        Scary, isn't…
Score: 1.3

January 2020 Listen List - The Ones You Can't Miss

by CFC123

Periodically over the course of the new year, we will produce two lists to highlight a few of each month's new albums. This list spans multiple genres, with each album ordered best to worst – the first list is the former, the second is the latter. Of the 50 albums in both lists, these are the Ones You Can't Miss - - -    🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Stellar    Bill Fay – Countless Braches An absolutely gorgeous album, despite the songwriter’s age and distance from his previous work. The music has a unified mood, but each song’s nuance elevates its poetic meaning. Each song has excellent lyrics, plain yet elegant piano/guitar backing music, and melodies so simply perfect that you will be amazed you have never heard them before. A poignant unfolding of Fay’s masterful songwriting, and easily the best album of the new year so far.    ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Awesome    Wire – Hive Mind This one is definitely a grower more than anything. The dynamic elements of Wire’s post-punk approach show they are truly at the top of their game. The…
Score: 1.22

January 2020 Listen List - The Ones You Might Want to Avoid

by CFC123

Periodically over the course of the new year, we will produce two lists to highlight a few of each month's new albums. This list spans multiple genres, with each album ordered best to worst – the first list is the former, the second is the latter. Now presenting, with 50 total albums on both lists, the Ones You Might Want to Avoid - - -   ⭐⭐ Pretty Decent / Recommended to Genre Fans Only Alice Boman – Dream On Alice Boman is part of the “melancholic indie singer/songwriter” genre that has blown up in recent years. As a debut, there are enough good worthwhile songs, and the whole thing has a nice lo-fi vibe as well. Fans of the genre will get plenty from the atmospheric, meditative tracks like “The More I Cry” and “Everybody Hurts.”Check this song out: “The More I Cry”     Stabbing Westward – ­Dead and Gone [EP] Definitely one for the fans, since there are only 3 songs and 2 remixes. The single “Dead and Gone” is great, one of their finest sounding songs and the other two are…
Score: 1.22

Compositional Complexity in Technical Death Metal

by CFC123

INTRODUCTION  Outside of the realm of radio airplay and mass consumption, metal bands struggle to distinguish themselves while subjected to ever-shifting standards set by short-lived trends. All groups with media presence seem to have something to prove, and Florida native Chuck Schuldiner was no exception. When denounced by the other members of his band Death, Schuldiner arrived at a creative waypoint; he knew that he wanted something cleaner, and to “move forward musically.”  In 1991, Death released Human, and Schuldiner claimed "this is much more than a record to me, […] it’s revenge,” in a 1991 interview. Though the trademark style of Death was called Floridian death metal at the time, listeners would later recognize Human as one of the first albums of technical death metal. Long before the term became accepted, Chuck Schuldiner and few other contemporaries maintained the sentiment of the subgenre, seeking analytical complexity over the basic stereotype of incomprehensibly growled…
Score: 1.25

Music That Can Help with Depression

by CFC123

Music is a powerful tool. It can make us smile or cry, inspire anger or peace, even create feelings of romance or enlightenment. Music in society channels someone’s emotions and thoughts into a universal medium, relying on complex sociological interconnections that allow two individuals from different walks of life to have two unique experiences with the same song.     The power of music has been used throughout history to soothe life's ailments, and depression is historically no exception. Since depression affects over 17 million adults in the U.S. in any given year, the songs listed below are meant to help find the right direction for depression assistance. Hopefully, you can find what is right for you – and hopefully, you will keep reaching out until you find it.    National Helpline - a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.    “My Sweet Lord” –…
Score: 1.06

February 2020 Listen List - Don't Miss These Albums!

by CFC123

Periodically over the course of the year, we will produce two lists to highlight a few of each month's new albums. This list spans multiple genres, with each album ordered best to worst. With about 40 albums in both lists, make sure you Don't Miss These Albums! - - -      ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazing    Katie Gately – Loom      Loom is only Katie Gately’s second release, but she can already craft a deeply moving, complex, and emotional album. Her experimental approach is less written than designed, shaping the sound to match her chaotic yet intentional vision. The middle track “Bracer” is one of the most brilliant avant-garde/electronic pieces I have ever heard, moving through a series of increasingly intense and eerie sonic concoctions – however, this is just one-quarter of an album filled with adventurous and transportive material from start to finish.   Sepultura – Quadra     Now long past losing their original members (and, as some would say, most essential), this Brazilian group finally puts all the pieces…
Score: 1.22

February 2020 Listen List - The Less Good Albums!

by CFC123

Periodically over the course of the year, we will produce two lists to highlight a few of each month's new albums. This list spans multiple genres, with each album ordered best to worst (here’s a link to the best albums of February). With over 40 albums in both lists, here are the Less Good albums of February! - - -        ⭐⭐ Satisfactory    Wrekmeister Harmonies – We Love to Look at the Carnage     This experimental duo has never feared to let the darkness creep into their music, but beauty often shows up as well. We Love to Look at the Carnage is one of the band’s least heavy releases so far, but the brooding atmosphere is still present. The contrast between the darkness and light is not very subtle here, but the results are a complex tapestry of emotions frequently not easy to process.     Khruangbin/Leon Bridges – Texas Sun [EP]     While this is most certainly a one-off compared to their usual output, this four-track EP by Leon Bridges and Texas band Khruangbin is undoubtedly a good listen…
Score: 1.25

Quarantine Playlist – Songs to Listen to While Stuck at Home

by CFC123

Music, with all its transcendent power, can help us through some tough times. For some, music helps those who need to assuage their anxieties caused by depression. Other times, it can just be for a troublesome problem sweeping the nation.   Since we all are experiencing that similar problem right now, let’s dive into some good music to help alleviate everyone’s cooped-up feelings. Skip to the right mood for you, or ride the whole wave beginning to end (I promise it will leave you will a hopeful ending).   Now presenting, your new QUARANTINE PLAYLIST for 2020!   If you’re feeling "Cold and Isolated"       “Station to Station” – David Bowie      The first avant-rock foray for David Bowie pulls the listener into his uniquely devised world, at once inviting and alienating to outsiders. Atmospheric sound gives way to a grooving rock riff replete with major key melodies, contrasting beautifully with Bowie’s alluring harmonized vocals and mysterious lyrics.   Bowie knows better than almost any rock star how…
Score: 1.25

The Joys of Music Exploration – Diving into the “New Arrivals” Deep End

by CFC123

As a teenager, discovering music is the best feeling in the world. I think most people transition through their influences the same way I did – first your parents, then your friends, then yourself. Graduating to that last step can be a challenge, but knowing the right sources opens doors to incredible musical possibilities you may never have considered.    With Spotify algorithms and radio services like Pandora, finding music is quicker than ever. Once you select or listen to something you like, recent technology can link you to ten artists you could potentially enjoy. There’s more to it than circling the same genres and music scenes though – the best method, as scary as it sounds, is to jump into something you’d never expect, immersing your tastes in the farthest reaches of musical depths and broadening your horizons in the process.  To illustrate this enjoyment, let’s look through some of the first bands and artists that began my self-discovery journey through the new music of the last few…
Score: 1.01

The 2020 New Music Mega-List!

by CFC123

All the new music fans out there miss going to concerts and listening with our friends. Check out this list to listen to all the critically acclaimed albums so far this year! 2020 has already had some excellent new releases, so don't sleep on anything below!  Don't get out of the loop, folks! Keep up-to-date on all the new records and artists out there, and keep an eye out for updates and additions. There's still great new music coming out every week, so don't miss out!    🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Top-Notch!    Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia     Dua Lipa’s new album is revelatory pop music, defining the genre’s future and past on every track. Already the best pop album of the year by a wide margin, Future Nostalgia will surely go down as one of the new decade’s best as well.   Thundercat – It Is What It Is     Thundercat’s adventurous and lively new record uplifts listeners in the wake of Mac Miller’s 2018 death, with his distant presence and memory felt on nearly every track. Using grooving, midtempo music to cope…
Score: 1.23

Feel-Good Songs to Boost Your Immune System

by CFC123

Music has properties that defy human understanding.  Why a collection of notes and sounds can mean so much to people confounds scientists and sociologists to this day. In some incredible studies, music has even exhibited the ability to keep people healthy.       In these articles, we see that the “immune-boosting” properties of music are worth investigating. So without further ado, here is the Immune Booster Playlist, which taps into the various feel-good moods that music can inspire. Listen and help yourself through the tough times – it can only help!     Bruce Springsteen – “Born to Run” (1975)    Since its release, Springsteen’s “Born to Run” has been a signature song for motivating empowerment, an enthusiastic grasp at taking on the world. It’s desperate, life-affirming, and undeniably exhilarating, even after almost five decades and millions of listens. The song instantly bursts with energy, grabbing hold of the listener with its legendary guitar hook and never letting up.    Metronomy –…
Score: 1.22

Best Summer Zoom Hangout Albums

by CFC123

Meet up with friends over Zoom and enjoy some of the best music of the 2000s, for gatherings of any occasion! Find your favorite genres and styles below, match the vibe, and let these great records spin. With a little something for everyone, check out the list below and let your tastes be heard!      I'm all about the classic HIP-HOP sound, both from the old guys and the modern greats. I've heard all the best out there, and I want my rappers to be......brash and cocky   Jay-Z – American Gangster      American Gangster may not be the best Jay-Z album, but it contains that undeniable East Coast "cool" quality that will please anyone worn out on The Blueprint and The Black Album. This record moves briskly with bravado as Shawn Carter raps about the struggle of the New York gangster lifestyle, drifting through a semi-conceptual story of the rise and fall of the American Gangster. Though Jay-Z frequently goes into a confessional mood on this album, he never leaves too much space between his typical…
Score: 1.06