FILM SCORING: What Happened to Memorable Themes?

[@pqlr8763]

Thank you, Tom, for answering this age-old question! I would like to add here that there is another issue - one that is bigger for me, and it is about the systematic and seemingly deliberate destruction of our emotional threshold. In places where we absolutely need a poignant melody, modern productions come up with something that is so generic it physically hurts. Give me 5 minutes at a piano and show me a scene with a dying hospital patient, and I will put my entire soul into it. Nowadays, it's like there's a "sad" folder, an "epic" folder, a "risk your life to save the Earth" folder and so on and so on... 9 out of 10 Hollywood films I have to wonder if this is being done on purpose. I really commiserate with you on having to work in such a soul-destroying industry!

[@AlonsoJoaquinComposer]

I think this is happening because temp tracks are more accessible than ever, and lots of directors just want *that specific song* and ask the composer to essentially rewrite it but make it slightly different, like the "hey can I copy your homework/sure just change a bit so it's not too obvious " meme

[@AriKona]

Very sapient and introspective answer and certainly explains the memorability of the music as it relates to the visual aspect of the movie. There are times, however, where the movie has not been seen by the listener and yet the music arouses inner emotions, making it memorable in and of itself. One of the reasons I will, if I have a soundtrack, purchase other music from the composer to see what they do when they are not scoring. Often times I find the music they create without the boundary of a script is as memorable as their movie music. (Example: Radio JXl or The British Years (Zimmer) both contain music which says so much about the artist and is many times on par with their soundtracks.) Excellent answer to the question and I look forward to future such sessions.

[@Abhishek-cx2jq]

Whenever Tom mentions a movie's name that he worked on, I am instantly reminded of all the music cues from it, and seeing him talk on them in such detail makes me feel rewarded. Thank you, Tom, for all of your work and for this channel too.

[@hellointerstellar7112]

The string riff in Mad Max gives me L I F E. I remember seeing the movie for the very first time in the cinema - no idea what to expect AT ALL. And then Max started running from the War Boys in the Citadel and 'Escape' with its string theme parts kicked in and I knew. I knew that this was gonna be a wild ride. Now everytime I listen to the soundtrack (which is a lot), I look foward to the string theme appearing in the tracks.

[@shadymike88]

exactly! the music is such an integral part of conveying the mayhem!! :D

[@Lithium6868]

i love your job. the best part is when an artist like a director meet a composer..

[@generaldom]

Him explaining that riffs is incredible. These things work on you without you even realizing why.

[@Canqwertz1]

you are such a humble, nice and amazing person . I appriciate your work and your advices not only for composing music. Keep going and I hope you get your grammy and your oscar. you really deserve it!

[@newpianotutorials]

Excellent video and very honest answers - I've wondered the same - however many films are guilty of overuse of music with no particular theme or emotion , which don't lend themselves to what's happening onscreen - also a modern phenomenon (not one's that you have scored though !!! )

[@drtytech9885]

man.... im learning so much from your videos just want to say thank you and I appreciate your time. thank you sir!... LEARNING

[@oscarortegarey635]

Hello Tom. Congratulations on your youtube chanel. I think it's a shame that music in movies has been relegated to almost a third plane. It's something I can even see in pop music in general. There are fewer and fewer truly memorable songs. Greetings from Barcelona. Hola, Tom. Enhorabuena por tu youtube chanel. Opino que es una lástima que la música en para películas se haya relegado a casi un tercer plano. Es algo que incluso puedo ver en la música pop en general. Cada vez hay menos canciones realmente memorables. Un saludo desde Barcelona.

[@militaermusikvorarlberg]

Dear Mr Holkenborg! Thank you very much for picking up this issue in modern film music. Your answer is - as always - very honest an humble, which deserves great respect! I get everything about artistic decisions by the directors and discussions about emotions, but i can't help the feeling, that one of the reasons for the lack of big memorable themes nowadays is something else. I sometimes get the feeling, that directors nowadays don't want them because of fear. The fear, that great music could overpower their images. Which is nonsense. Great tunes always elevated the picture. There are extremely few examples, where the music slaughtered the image, and it was almost everytime done by noname-composers with no experience. I don't know, where this fear from directors might come from. Maybe they don't want a movie to be forgotten, but the score to be remembered. Good examples are Psycho or Jaws. Today almost no one under 40 has seen this movies, but everyone seems to now the music. Maybe they fear lack of control. Because in this day of age a director want's to be involved in every single decision and music mostly is the part of the filmmaking process, where they have the least knowledge of. And the need to control every detail and the lack of knowledge really don't go well with each other. Maybe the problem is the overuse of temp-tracks. Every young director is cutting his image to his favorite Zimmer-scores. The Problem is, that those temp-tracks are tailored for different movies, with different art-direction and emotional cores, but now a composer has to come in and come up with a solution to make it sound the same, but a little different. And if that composer would do something else it wouldn't work, because the picture is edited to that temp-track. Nonetheless thank you again for your honest answer and your great videos! They are a treasure for young composers that aspire to be as great as you are some day.

[@victornoagbodji]

thank you so much Tom!

[@5ub2ero]

First of all many thanks to Mr. Holkenborg for being sincere and sharing his knowledge through all those interesting & fun-to-watch videos. To be honest and fair to today's composers, a miracle-like composition does not come every so often. Even for the predecessors. For example, as most of the soundtrack-freaks out there, John Williams is one of my all time favs by far. But, without disrespect, I can't say that all of his creations are as memorable or unique as i.e. Imperial March, Duel of the Fates (btw, era of epicness just took a boost with this particular track), Star Wars Main theme etc... Same goes for Danny Elfman. He is a great composer and Batman themes are real "epic" productions for many like me. But can you name 20-30 songs from Danny Elfman in an instance? Probably no. Sometimes it is only one or two tracks that makes you fall in love with a composer. Say, "Deadpool theme" is not an Imperial March, yes, but it justifies the task and fulfills the expectations for such a movie and character and it's an enough remarkable composition that made me follow Junkie XL with a closer interest. Take "Resident Evil" series. Would you care or even dare to write an "Accross the Stars" like love theme for those? No. Because the story, the plot isn't related to that. Take Charlie Clouser's Shithole theme from Saw movies, is it something related t Imperial March? Of course not. Because, the screen-play or the atmosphere does not demand this. But they are spot-on soundtracks! OTOH, today's soundtrack industry is suffering from "epicness" conception. You throw Hans Zimmer-like hard beaten drums and a powerful choir and some low-end brass, here you go. But this is not what I call "epic". This is cheesy and old-news nowadays. Dynamics that John Williams captured with "Duel of the Fates" is something epic or the string sections of "Soccent Attack" by Steve Jablonsky is epic or "Do You Bleed" by Hans Zimmer/Junkie XL is epic. It is more about understanding the orchestral and arrangement concepts rather than creating mock-ups with out of the box samples.

[@shadymike88]

Fury Road OST is nothing short of EPIC!! :D thank you, JXL.

[@isaac10231]

I kinda enjoying being able to watch a movie, leave, and remember a part of the score once it's all done (such as anything from Harry Potter, interstellar, guardians of the galaxy, etc). For me, I feel like watching a movie and remembering plenty of the visiuals but no music just ends up being half of the experience. I hope that the big melodies and amazing scores make a comeback, because I've always enjoyed them.

[@NickHchaos]

Check out the films of Takeshi Kitano as scored by Jo Hisaishi, among my favorites.

[@HawiOfficial]

Could you show us what your master chain looks like? Do you prefer analog or digital compressors / eqs?

[@junkiexlmusic]

see video of last season reg that

[@GS-km1vo]

Great inside! What are your thoughts on temp music?

[@junkiexlmusic]

coming up in future episode in this segment

[@PowerRedBullTypology]

Do you have 2 accounts or is that an account by another?

[@AirwaveMusic]

Jxl live from the modular hell cabin. ;-)

[@harijay2410]

Brothers In Arms from Mad Max Fury Road is one of my all time favourite

[@simonslee73]

Definitely seems like a trend, and maybe as a result of the movies the current generation of directors grew up watching. As a Gen X, the movies of the 80s with big themes still seem so powerful still to this days but o grew up like that. So many scores today sound like a film score midi chord pack to me, but if your childhood was movies from late 90s to 2000s that might be what they know

[@issiewizzie]

great insght

[@ArthurStone]

Cheers; great insight :D

[@hubzcaps]

bass station 2 i make some cool tunes trying to fix this funky SP1200 i like its sampleing rate

[@Fyrlink]

simple answer: ambient film scores are in right now.

[@generaldom]

spspsps (that's me whispering to you)

[@oscarmike1131]

StudioghoulASMR that's not true. Dozens of melodic and thematic scores still come out now. You can't take a handful of movies with ambient scores and assume that's what everyone is doing

[@JohnSmith-xo7ri]

I'm glad about it. Over-dramatic sample library battle scene stock music my ass.

[@asongaday5920]

Hey! Tom Holkenborg I'm not sure if you read the comments personally but I've a question as a young composer how did you get where you are today? And on any tips that helped you get to be a composer.

[@junkiexlmusic]

keep watching this segment. A lot of questions like these will come up every week!

[@asongaday5920]

Awesome thank you!

[@sklgy]

Hi Tom, what do you think of the virtual analog Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer for making music scores?

[@evilgremlin]

Hey Tom, i just wondered, how you fight the cases when synth gonna play you? I mean, if you got funky sound it inspires you to play funky music, which isn't always good. How do you deal with it?

[@legoharry100]

If you were offered the opportunity to write the score for a standalone Star Wars film, would you do it? If so, what would you envision the score to be?

[@DavidBrant]

I think it's still doable to have a catchy hook line, but still with an edgy cool approach - take the electric cellos from The Dark Knight for the Joker's intro - hardly melodic but evoked a memorable feeling/emotion - then there's Wonder Woman, albeit a 'cheesier' hook, but still works as a great electric guitar anthem when she does her hero bits. One of my fav film scores is 'Let The Right One' in by Johan Soderqvist - beautiful soaring string melody & intimate guitars on a similar theme for Oskar - a dark indie horror movie can still have a beautiful old school style score. Modern scores today have so many production cliches big rez basses, dubstep drops and sub booms, string ostinatos, yet don't work hard on memorable hooklines. Definitely is the directors choice & the producers, but it's such a disappointment when you don't get emotionally excited by a score and just drones on as background.

[@AlonsoJoaquinComposer]

Fun fact, the wonder woman theme is an electric cello!

[@adronic8255]

That Mad Max Theme inspired me that much. So tried a Filmscore. It's on my KZbin Channel. If you have time, checkt it out and Feedback is always welcome. (It's not finished)

[@DaveDexterMusic]

I have no problem with not all films using a huge orchestral soundtrack full of themes and leitmotifs; it simply doesn't work for all movies. It's composers who clearly work toward that goal but just aren't good enough to achieve memorable themes that are my problem. It's a very first world problem, but there you go.

[@SuganthanHarmless]

Just wanted to quote this, "As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn’t have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering"

[@nandoflorestan]

I am sorry, but you are not going to get very far by defending ignorance. I could easily find you a quote about incomplete understanding being a dangerous thing. Further, if your analogy is that being able to create memorable themes and use complex harmonies and rhythms (as opposed to common rock harmonies and rhythms) to write a score is like mastering metalworking when all you need to do is cut something with a knife, then I would say your analogy is wrong because you expect way too little from your scores. But I concede that this is part of the problem: that directors today are generally ignorant about music and therefore do not know the power of music and are not conscious of what music can offer them. You absolutely could say "I learned metalworking but the director only asked me to apply butter to a piece of bread".

[@oragami94]

Filmmakers don't want a memorable theme right now because they believe they can tell the audience everything they need to know without the assistance of music. Egos are running unchecked because the public flocks to movies regardless of the music (a real travesty). Some movies even obsess with the inclusion of pop music from major artists as an extra push to beef up their box office numbers. The filmmakers generally want music as background noise meant to either amplify points already made in the script or fill in gaps between dialogue.

[@CarloNassar]

That's what I hate seeing filmmakers do.

[@issiewizzie]

Pixar or Disney animated films still have memorable themes

[@qnebra]

Animated movies require more creativity from composers than traditional films.

[@HanggliderDelta]

Memorable music scores walk in hand in hand by memorable films. Today most of the blockbuster movies are not memorable nor their music. Fast endless CGI actions without real stories character development and emotions.

[@HanggliderDelta]

Ennio Morricone is a good example form The Good the Bad and the Ugly to The Thing. His memorable music has connected to memorable films.

[@Yebi263]

that pretty much answers my question of whether The Justice league score is gonna be any good😕

[@chrismhp]

The scores for Snyder's films are usually one of the consistently _good_ things about his movies. Say what you will about BvS, but unlike MCU movies, it actually has memorable musical themes (A Beautiful Lie opening music, Lex's music, Wonder Woman's theme).

[@TheHypeEngine]

Simple Answer: It's the Director's choice, not the Music composers.

[@nirvanafan21191]

I tend to really like droning, ambient scores. Especially for smaller films, or a dark, psychological movie. Great themes are always amazing, but yes, I've noticed that too in the last 10-15 years, a lot more films relying more on the story and characters themselves to drive movies, and less on big grandiose themes to emphasize plot points and action.

[@DarshanSenTheComposer]

Can John Williams make hybrid music? Does anyone know what he's doing the next score for? *WHAT'S HIS REQUIEM?*

[@RDJ134]

Mijn held en idool _0_

[@MythixMusic1]

I quite like the current trend of heavy Sound Design stuff and not big thematic orchestrations. Makes me feel like I have a hope in the industry one day

[@simonjohansson248]

If you leave the theatre and remember the music more than the movie, the composer has failed in his main job: To support, not hijack, the cinematic experience.