The sound quality of City Hunter the movie is far from satisfying. It sounds like the whole album is sampled but not recorded live from real instruments

There aren't many live instruments, or samples of them. Most of it is raw grating electronic noises and hard rock. There's a small string ensemble and piano, and those sound exactly the same as recent Iwasaki works. Which is to say they sound fine, but clearly overpowered by the electronics.

The old Angel Heart had more live instruments, but also had massive budget deficiencies, and so a good chunk of it was made from really cheap samples. It seems Iwasaki is returning back to his days of small budget 10 or 15 people ensembles from the early to mid-2000s. And I sincerely hope it isn't voluntary. Guess we'll find out with Stray Dogs S3.

Tbh, one of his weakest ever (but track 7,8,12 & 15 are rly nice, actually track 7 is delicious), Tatsumi Yano would raise an eyebrow, doesn't help he was sick when he scored it and had very little time (which doesn't say much because Hattori in all likelyhood just had four days before he had to finish Nobita's Treasure island).

But since Ulysses just happened a short while ago and a new Stray Dogs OST on the horizon (which I consider among his best works), its no hard loss.



@Tazer: I'm flattered and also 100% agree ;)

Honestly, given such a crappy budget and tiny ensemble, I can't think of how he or anyone else alive would be able to approach it differently, given all the time in the world. Even going the chamber route like Ulysses wouldn't make any sense since this was meant to be a faux-80s Hollywood action blockbuster. There are some moments of brilliance in there, typical of Iwasaki, but most of that is just riding the coat tails of Angel Heart.

Not sure Hattori's Doraemon is a good comparison considering how much of it was cribbed directly from his other recent works and his orchestral budget was a good 4 or 5 times that of Iwasaki's

Sorry to bring things back to Holkenborg for a minute*, but I just wanted to say the above discussion about him was really fascinating. It was one of those things where everyone was coming at it from different perspectives, but they were all right in their own ways. I agree with Doublehex that Holkenborg can only work with the crappy hand he's been dealt, but I also agree with Zipper and Tango that he still could do a better job regardless of the circumstances, and TazerMonkey makes a very good point about accepting that the best thing you as a listener can do is to spread the word on good music from either the past or the present. It was a great read that reminded me of why I love coming here, so thank y'all for that!

*Incidentally, Holkenborg's just been confirmed to be doing the soundtrack to the utter pile of nothing that is the upcoming live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie. As if I needed more reasons to not care about that film...

We were saying the same things about Jablonsky and Mancina back in the 90s and then someone went and gave them each an anime which I think they blew out of the water. They earned my respect, even though I can't really stand a lot of their work. Harry Gregson-Williams kinda did similar with Chicken Run and Sinbad, though for some reason I find his melodic content weaker than the other guys'.

My theory is we won't know Junkie's true ability until he is allowed free reign, which I was hoping would be Alita, but it appears not to be so. Maybe if he scored something animated in 2D it will inspire him to do better.

Listening to Horner's American Tail expanded we can see how spoiled we were in the 80s and 90s, not just in terms of the music, but the animated films themselves. The advent of 3D animation seems to have killed that tradition, though. Something tells me no one is going to give Junkie a 2D animated film in the west, so he's going to have to look to Japan to redeem himself.

for The LoJC

MINORU MIKI SELECTED WORKS 1-7(+4)
Minoru Miki(1930-2011) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Miki)
''a pioneer in the composition of contemporary classical music for large ensembles of traditional Japanese musical instruments''

Works1 - Four Season_Dances Consertantes I (https://mega.nz/#!sUwEGSYS!w769oUrdvJbftJ1n9KNu5ibofVwvfuBhzAOq5urFEqA)
Works2 - Concerto Requiem (https://mega.nz/#!sYxQkaSS!t2VCo4Yp94IcX2AaSRrpsQes9tiWc6Qcx52PdQsAeZw)
Works3 - Nohara Uta (https://mega.nz/#!QYgijKxD!PMbTTvAfrk6aujaHn8r0v1h16qlSoPTz0IV3gNv4xRU)
Works4 - Eurasian Trilogy (https://mega.nz/#!wYgAwAIL!KW6J-GLrI83enYKpyfEvJBcON34dFJPt9nJkX4BYfwE)
Works5 - Opera Wakahime (https://mega.nz/#!YFpCAaCA!2iZkMVcJXLNCaN8xCCmiJqMwfz2nZ7GxGSK2NLQaUUI)
Works6 - Requiem (https://mega.nz/#!oExwDIaY!Ea-UdpMAams27LxPArqJH2c5Ax84ZTh9joKSIbEkVpg)
Works7 - Pipa Concerto (https://mega.nz/#!cQxw0S6b!btsQ6A8kpeSTnsnVP6P4xY-1xAaqxKaAm5W6nkFX2aU)

Opera Aien (https://mega.nz/#!gZp0WAAY!uQF_8tSjDhsULbAgnZjVyTl1BMEso6LoRb-Tl8raqKI)

Koto Works - Three Festal Ballads (https://mega.nz/#!8U4yHaSY!xRq1zgDvwxH760dNA08dD9sOcYP2Dvbcgowxdzd5gwI)
Ensemble Nipponia - Tennyo (https://mega.nz/#!tQxC2YoD!-iE7KeJWIVHJ7-qGFBju38LmFWYH4j3ibmtEdD2QQ8o)
Ensemble Nipponia - Totu (https://mega.nz/#!8Q5wDawQ!-ZL-FHS6aN9cD3I_5-V4vONy8i-jx1i454WVef39uLo)

Junk can make all the excuses he wants. But if he was asked by a director to write a 1950s film score, how do you think he would fare? Or Tyler Bates? Or Brian Tyler? Or any of the other big names? Excuses are easier to make than good music.

That's the thing with me, nowadays, I prefer not to make pre-judgements or hold too definite pre-conceptions about composers (and many other things in life). It's unwise and even potentially dangerous to just assume some things too firmly without enough factual elements to back them up. Suggesting basically: "he would totally suck at doing this" without having seen him actually doing that yet, is something I would strongly advise against, in the Internet or in any other venue of life.

Trust me, I've seen this many times, when someone just assumes the incompetence of a certain person, and when the truth is finally revealed (i.e. the "incriminated" person ends up showing that she's much more capable than formerly thought), those who were vocal, assuming and snotty tend to become MUCH more humble and prudent with how they judge others.

Don't worry, I don't say this specially about you, I also include MYSELF from the past in it! There are quite a few remarks I've made years ago in this thread that I'd like to edit and tone down, but eh, it's done, let's just move on I say!




If people feel offended that others don't like what they like, but don't have a single insight other than "stop hurting my feelings", why should I listen to them? Not in your case, but to others whom you are referring to when you say that "nobody wants to listen to us".

That's certainly a very important point. At least in the case of people who are intolerant to ANY kind of criticism of what they like. If we start limiting our freedom of speech because somewhere, there's someone who won't like what we say, we can just stop expressing ourselves and having doscussions altogether, right now! Especially since the rise of the millenials, there's sometimes such a level of entitlement, holier-than-thou attitude, and intolerance to different / alternate / contradictory views, that the slightest criticism tends to "trigger" them and make them DEMAND retractations and apologies for having had the impudence to say something they don't 100% approve. Can you believe a society where everybody acts this way? Me neither.

My point is: as long as one does it politely and constructively (as opposed to "being vicious in voicing our opinions" as Tazer puts it), one can freely express his views and assessments, and never should be afraid of "offending" someone somewhere.




Bitching about it isn't going to change the facts.

If I had time for this, I could find hundreds of examples in history or current events where bitching DID help change the facts. ;)

But I do agree wholeheartedly with your idea of celebrating the good rather than complaining about the bad and ugly. I already said somewhere here myself: "each minute spent criticizing someting bad is a minute lost to appreciating something good." Life is short and there are too many good things to do and enjoy (especially in this crazy age) to waste our time with worthless matters.

That being said, there are a few points worth considering:

First, people love criticisms (of others, rarely of themselves) - starting with me! I precisely think that one big appeal of this thread is the occasional biting comments, jabbing statements, and cutting remarks made about the various scores or composers or whatnot that come to our attention - we pretty much all did it at some point, even the nicest among us! And as a matter of fact I ENJOY reading these criticisms, just like I enjoy reading critical articles and books, or watching scathing videos on Youtube, or reading IMDB user reviews with very low scores (the longer and funnier ones, of course, not the ones along the lines of "it sux, don't go").

And so do many other people, because it's just a part of Human Nature. Not necessarily a vicious, perverse part, but rather the part of us that dislikes and wants to eradicate what is bad, evil, wrong, ugly - a bit like the teacher who enjoys underlining mistakes with a red pen, or the gardener who likes to remove weeds and other rubbish to make the place clean and beautiful, or even, to some extent, the movie-goer who enjoys to see the villain take a lot of shit for the bad things he made.

To criticize can then be seen as a psychological need to fix, correct, rectify, repair, reform what we see as imperfect, wrong and flawed. This is exactly what you see when you read movie reviews that lists and discusses plot holes, bad acting performances or lame direction choices. The same goes for tech reviews where the reviewer pinpoints the practical flaws and technical shortcomings of a certain product and proposes some ideas to fix or improve it. When we criticize, beyond the simple fact of voicing our dissatisfaction, there's an actual call for improvement, betterment and making things right. There's a desire to "clean the field", weed out bad elements and allow good elements to strive.

Thus, you can see that far from being something purely negative, criticizing is useful, and even healthy, because it helps pushing things in the right direction. If you never tell a creator why and where his creation is flawed and needs fixing, how can he improve as a creator and make better creations in the future? In fact, there's a real job where you do this: tester. There are testers in plenty of fields, but personally I'm mostly familiar with beta-testing in videogames. The job of the beta-tester is to try out a VG in development and basically tell the developers how much it SUCKS! Of course they do it diplomatically, but their job really comes down to pinpointing the glitches, mistakes and plain bad design, so they (hopefully) get fixed before the official release, and therefore so the CUSTOMER doesn't have to put up with them.

Bad products exist, bad creations too. As a customer and enthusiast, why should I refrain from complaining if it's justified? That would be the best way to stifle progress and let mediocrity spread.

A few important conditions to respect, though, for criticism to be acceptable (beyond the obvious need to be polite and respectful), is that it must be smart, properly argued, and as factually correct as possible. And if there's a good amount of humour on top of this, then it's just reading / watching gold!




We were saying the same things about Jablonsky and Mancina back in the 90s and then someone went and gave them each an anime which I think they blew out of the water. They earned my respect, even though I can't really stand a lot of their work. Harry Gregson-Williams kinda did similar with Chicken Run and Sinbad, though for some reason I find his melodic content weaker than the other guys'.

My theory is we won't know Junkie's true ability until he is allowed free reign, which I was hoping would be Alita, but it appears not to be so. Maybe if he scored something animated in 2D it will inspire him to do better.

You pretty much reached the best conclusion, here. We can complain and criticize and bitch and whine all we want about a certain composer, no matter what we say, the TRUTH about him can only be revealed when he's put to the test with TOTAL creative control. Then, and only then, we'll see what he's really capable of. In the meantime, as what recently happened in this thread when I talked about Hurwitz, it would be better to avoid to criticize the composers and limit ourselves to just criticize their music, i.e. the concrete result of their artistic efforts, which level of quality depends on plenty of parameters the poor buggers have sometimes little to no control over.




Vin: thank you again for your recent posts. They're all good, as usual, but that Wada post, with those quotes and interview, is simply STUNNING! Another trophy you can put on your shelf!

What are some examples of existing music that approximate what an ideal score for "Alita: Battle Angel" could have sounded like?

There's a lot I could say to arthierr, but TazerMonkey put it best- the state of Hollywood music is such a beaten horse that I'd just be regurgitating the same things either I or others have said months or years ago. So I'll just leave it be. But I'd argue that the one horse that's been whacked more than Hollywood music is this ouroboros of "complaining about criticism". Honestly, I find it extremely disingenuous. It allows whoever uses such an argument to avoid having to discuss the merits of the work itself. It's another thinly veiled way of saying "you're hurting my feelings!" And it's a tactic I've seen from people young and old alike. Even worse, by constantly bringing this topic up, it gives people reading this thread from the outside the impression that the thread as whole is nothing more than whining about music, which is completely inaccurate and quite disrespectful to both the thread and its contributors.

Why are we still discussing Alita anyway? Nobody has vouched for any musical merit it has other than Streich, and even he was not that complimentary. The rest- making excuses for Junkie, and then even asking what it COULD have sounded like- what's the point? I wonder if this weird obsession with Alita that's consumed this thread as of late is because since it's an adaptation of a Japanese work, some people felt that it should have had the same amount of freedom as your typical Japanese score, and serve as some kind of point of validation or redemption for the absolute dumpster fire that is Hollywood. There is no chance of that happening, and you all know it. Just because Alita itself was not a terrible movie doesn't make it any less of a Hollywood product. Same with other crap like Speed Racer or the Death Note movie.

Also, saying that Junkie can't write a 50s score is more than an assumption without basis, it's an observation entirely from listening to his music at its most basic level. And nobody has argued otherwise. If you can, post some examples of Junkie actually using his supposed training to do something interesting. Even a chord progression. Or will I just get another call to stop complaining?

https://dbr.ee/K79e

Can't believe this is the same Hattori that wrote the bland as heck, forgettable 2018 Doraemon score.

Come on, don't tell me it's only now that you discover this great Hattori score? Intelligent Qube is a CLASSIC! If anyone else missed it, make sure to grab it ASAP.




Alita: I do believe that the japanese origins of the movie have a lot to do with its hip factor and recent popularity in this thread and in general. That said, knowing it's a Hollywood movie, scored by a relatively new composer, a WESTERN composer, the least I can say is that I'm not particularly curious, hopeful and excited about the score (that I haven't heard, BTW).




Beechcott: that's an interesting question, but also a difficult one. Because it supposes that 1) you saw the movie (I haven't), 2) you heard the score, 3) you spent some time analyzing both the film and the score, as well as their interactions, and 4) you took some time searching alternate cues from various other scores that would work in this particular movie and its unique scenes.

Not an easy process, right? So I'll just say what I *think* might work given the general context: to me something like the Matrix scores would fit greatly in this setting. Dark, dissonant orchestral crashes and blood-pumping techno-symphonic action cues seem to be quite appropriate, here.






for The LoJC

MINORU MIKI SELECTED WORKS 1-7(+4)
Minoru Miki(1930-2011) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Miki)
''a pioneer in the composition of contemporary classical music for large ensembles of traditional Japanese musical instruments''

Works1 - Four Season_Dances Consertantes I (https://mega.nz/#!sUwEGSYS!w769oUrdvJbftJ1n9KNu5ibofVwvfuBhzAOq5urFEqA)
Works2 - Concerto Requiem (https://mega.nz/#!sYxQkaSS!t2VCo4Yp94IcX2AaSRrpsQes9tiWc6Qcx52PdQsAeZw)
Works3 - Nohara Uta (https://mega.nz/#!QYgijKxD!PMbTTvAfrk6aujaHn8r0v1h16qlSoPTz0IV3gNv4xRU)
Works4 - Eurasian Trilogy (https://mega.nz/#!wYgAwAIL!KW6J-GLrI83enYKpyfEvJBcON34dFJPt9nJkX4BYfwE)
Works5 - Opera Wakahime (https://mega.nz/#!YFpCAaCA!2iZkMVcJXLNCaN8xCCmiJqMwfz2nZ7GxGSK2NLQaUUI)
Works6 - Requiem (https://mega.nz/#!oExwDIaY!Ea-UdpMAams27LxPArqJH2c5Ax84ZTh9joKSIbEkVpg)
Works7 - Pipa Concerto (https://mega.nz/#!cQxw0S6b!btsQ6A8kpeSTnsnVP6P4xY-1xAaqxKaAm5W6nkFX2aU)

Opera Aien (https://mega.nz/#!gZp0WAAY!uQF_8tSjDhsULbAgnZjVyTl1BMEso6LoRb-Tl8raqKI)

Koto Works - Three Festal Ballads (https://mega.nz/#!8U4yHaSY!xRq1zgDvwxH760dNA08dD9sOcYP2Dvbcgowxdzd5gwI)
Ensemble Nipponia - Tennyo (https://mega.nz/#!tQxC2YoD!-iE7KeJWIVHJ7-qGFBju38LmFWYH4j3ibmtEdD2QQ8o)
Ensemble Nipponia - Totu (https://mega.nz/#!8Q5wDawQ!-ZL-FHS6aN9cD3I_5-V4vONy8i-jx1i454WVef39uLo)


What a massive and amazing contribution, Amish! Since it's so big, I only have listened to the first album, and my impressions are highly positive. This is probably the most relaxing music I've heard recently. Something perfect for meditation, or the contemplation of Nature.

While listening to it, I had delightful visions of me alone, sitting in the most beautiful Japanese garden, in the evening, with a plate of delicious mochi and some freshly brewed green tea next to me. Ahhh, that was Heaven!

Thank you very much!

Come on, don't tell me it's only now that you discover this great Hattori score? Intelligent Qube is a CLASSIC! If anyone else missed it, make sure to grab it ASAP.

Yes, I only discovered it a few days ago. I'm not a veteran, guys :P

Can't believe this is the same Hattori that wrote the bland as heck, forgettable 2018 Doraemon score.Not sure what you're going on about, it sounds very much like his Doraemon, especially Hattori's scores as of late (surprising given it was released over 20 years ago). Those horns at 00:39 are a dead giveaway. Are you sure you're not just starting to get used to his musical language?

Doraemon for me was a flop because of its overuse of kids film cliches and recycled parts from other recent Hattori scores. But the music as a whole is 100% Hattori's style.

Can't believe this is the same Hattori that wrote the bland as heck, forgettable 2018 Doraemon score.

You're all in for a surprise ;)

For me its 20 minutes of worldclass orchestration and a nice wink to Rachmaninov, I certainly got a 20 minute jolly ride out of it, and thats about the average orchestral meat for a Doraemon movie (until Hattori + individual release). The rest I will give you, it was quickly thrown together from a couple of his old and recent works with a couple of cliches, because I firmly believe he just had a few days to write it.

Yes, I only discovered it a few days ago. I'm not a veteran, guys :P

PonyoBellanote, If it makes you feel better, I've been collecting japanese film, tv and game music since 1998, have around 3.000 jap CDs and still consider myself a rookie, each day discovering something new that I didn't notice years ago... It's never too late ;)

I gotta agree with strk_freak on this, Ponyo. I also hadn't listened to Intelligent Qube until a couple of months ago, and it's only recently that I finally got round to listening to the Star Fox Assault OST* as part of a custom soundtrack I did for Assassin's Creed: Rogue (which has also gotten me into some of the music from Civilization V, Magi, and the Celtic Suikoden albums among others). But I'm glad I finally got to listen to them, and I think the same goes for you too. Regardless of how late you may think you are to the party, you've still listened to it now and realized how much you enjoy it, which is the most important thing. :)

*I see why Assault's music is so well-regarded; those tunes are very nicely composed and arranged, and I imagine they make their in-game contexts particularly spectacular, if they can make the ship-to-ship battles in Assassin's Creed feel like game-changing duels from Hollywood classics.

That said, knowing it's a Hollywood movie, scored by a relatively new composer, a WESTERN composer, the least I can say is that I'm not particularly curious, hopeful and excited about the score (that I haven't heard, BTW).

Unless he works with Seth of course ;)

Anybody seen the recent episode of the Orville? Jesus christ, an exciting action finale with the music as a driving and dramatic force... in a Hollywood TV show!!!

(also, the moment they landed I saw the plot twist coming, its too much Star Trek after all :D)

I only wish Cottee could have scored this one and not the "boring" episodes. Debney does one hell of a reminder what good Hollywood action cues sounded like... and it is exciting... but I also hear just a melange of Alien(s), Independence Day and Star Trek.

The biggest realization was the majestic landing on the homeworld, somehow it left something to be desired, despite nailing the sound. It was at this point I realized "oh, its yet another variation on Alien(s)", I wish Broughton could have scored it... Still, this is Debney's strongest episode yet... and the closest he comes to LAIR which was 12 years ago!!! (damn)

I'm so used to Japanese composers with strong musical personalities that a "no originality, just nostalgia" approach is becoming somewhat grating at this point for me. It seriously dampened my enjoyment of the first season to the point I cannot call it great or special in any way (other than HOLY SHIT THIS MUSIC IN 2018!!!!!) but I always hope the next season will have more originality in it. I already like this season more than the first and this show, if it goes on and on, could really bloom into something great. Its pretty much the last stand of the "pen & paper" brigade and I want it to be something really special, a last hurrah, before they all retire.



In more unfortunate news, Chihayafuru 3 was moved to the October block, but since this summer will be very hot I think I can survive the wait for more expansion on Yamashita's lovliest theme. Since it will be a two-cour show, I hope he gets to write a lot of new material.

Yeah... we got two Cottee episodes in a row - and they were both sparsely-scored character pieces. The second one did have a couple of "wow, exciting science stuff is happening now!" cues including one definitely written "for the showreel" for the staged battle drill, which, excitingly, expanded a little on his themes from "New Dimensions" but I'm left immensely frustrated... why the bloody hell did they give him these two episodes, and then give Debney the gamechanger "Identity" immediately after? Can you imagine with Cottee would have done with that?

On to Identity... I would have rather Cottee scored it, but Debney's score is really brilliant - even though it's a typical Debney copy-and-paste job... The shortest cue in the episode may be my favourite - an Orville flyby as they approach Kaylon, a masterclass in suspense building (what the hell is Goldsmith's Alien motif doing there?!), with that irresistible minor key brassy blast as the planet comes into view. Elliot Goldenthal once remarked of his Alien 3 score that he wanted the score to convey "We're fucked..." from the first note... I think Debney wants his Identity score to convey "Oh, shit!" from the first note. The score is saying "This is where it all changes" and isn't hiding in the shadows. It's telling us the Kaylons are bad news. The "landing and disembarkation" cue (three minutes entirely carried by the score and some truly awe-inspiring visual effects) is dripping with darkness, foreboding, and terror. This is how you do darkness; not by grading every shot into near black-and-white, having everybody running around in pitch-black with electronic grinding noises rumbling in the background... but with proper, symphonic suspense... by the time the Orville lands, you're in the world. This episode grabs you by the collar and doesn't let go.

My mother watched this with me and she may be the least interested in scores of anybody I've ever met... and she watched this scene on the edge of her seat.

And the last act... blanket scored, and structured like an opera. The scene almost feels like a montage. The visuals and the score, and a handful of lines of dialogue, tell us everything we need to know.

And the Blaster Beam is back again. I love that instrument...

Love it, can't wait for the second part...

These are some decent Ishimoto pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TURIgOnscY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOxJCFMLYOo

Interesting Shimomura interview.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080802134421/www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=269

A live sneak peak to Doraemon 2019 movie score:

https://streamable.com/jpuwu

WOT? That's actually rather good... :D

Hisaishi, scoring for an anime film that isn't a Ghibli work for the first time in decades? Might be worthwhile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG0vQuTl_xQ

Damn, this summer sure is hot!

Ponyo, Sea Creatures + Sequel, Cloud on the Slope, Yamato, Shellfish... and now this, man's got a thing for the Ocean.




For a change, I did cast a net this time on the evergrowing influx of anime OSTs instead of grabbing it by my hand, and I catched something. Three scores I really like and I think deserve a listen. Two of those even complete a previously uncomplete picture:




Tatsuya Kato (and his assistants, including Ryunosuke Kasai)

Love Live! Sunshine!! [The Complete Saga]



Sunshine March (https://picosong.com/wSNv2/) / Guidance of the good angel (https://picosong.com/wSNvg/)

Download (Best Selection) (https://mega.nz/#!qCJQGKJS!1ljICI6Phz5iF0AFM0C6VMDuJoKo0KKd39a4eaoJtG4) / Download (Complete Rainbow) (https://mega.nz/#!iPB2kA5b!NV9Gyy8GOuRpZQ__JX7AcEKBONtoFc_gvHjjdbqJDK4)

I think the movie score cannot stand on its own but it is more of a final act anyway so when combining all the material he wrote for this entry in the franchise it all fits right in. I wonder who the next composer for this franchise will be. It's pretty much Kato's first big project and overall his best effort.




Kenichiro Suehiro
Goblin Slayer



Gods dice (https://picosong.com/wSKsW/) / Trace of adventurer's dream (https://picosong.com/wSKsa/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!iOJlmA5a!Tj8S8THkCNvRNnG8gGkwUoUzH3uGkfYcP4p8nbzf-zI)

If you don't fancy the metal and RC inspired action you can delete track 11-16 and not lose much, the score can stand on its own without them. Its a pretty classy affair. Suehiro continues to grow and this is pretty much a classy film score with long-developing cues.




Shūji Katayama
The Saga of Tanya the Evil



Imperial Anthem (https://picosong.com/wSKbb/) / Main Theme (https://picosong.com/wSKQU/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!uGJygYbR!Nydz7WWKrW0PyOszh_VUWbBPB8tvHOYEJPykX6QAWYU)

This is pretty much take 2 of the TV score and its again a style I really like: On the surface it has a lot in common with RC-style (Katayama is a fan of Iwasaki and Zimmer, this score has Gurren Lagann and Dunkirk references) but underneath is much motific and thematic interplay (with lots of woodwinds, he's classicaly trained) and a composer that can switch between RC and classical on the fly and even merge it for a crescendo. With a couple of cues from the TV series, this forms over an hour of Katayama's best work so far and is a complete musical story with climax and resolution. I've arranged it thus.

Also: "Can you add more woodwinds?" Only in Japan.



All things considered, I think its obvious that these composers only need the right project and director for that sweet timeless classical score I/we grave. Endro is proof enough (I'm not yet worried about a release because sometimes it can take up to a year before its announced). Chances are it will not be a long wait.




PS: Don't look at me for Doraemon (even though its anticipated). I'm spent on soundtracks for a while. It's a pleasure seeing Hattori conduct and cracking a smile (offcamera). Samples are up on cdJapan and iTunes btw.

I honestly can't find a trace of Gurren Lagann referencing in Tanya. The mere act of combining orchestra and electronics and RC tropes isn't enough to make one comparable to Iwasaki, who writes some genuinely great music underneath the electronics. Gurren Lagann is filled with so many moments of pure genius that I think people would miss if they can't stand electronics. I don't hear much of that in Tanya. It sounds like an early Zimmer score, and nothing more. But it's still at least ten times better than Alita.

interesting... Ryunosuke Kasai just announced that he was hired by APDREAM as a full-time composer

this is the company that employs Tatsuya Kato and Akito Matsuda. they are in charge of many anime soundtracks.

he says on twitter: "i will work hard to become famous in the scoring industry!"

First lot of Shield Hero: https://columbia.jp/prod-info/COCX-40782/

Chances are it will not be a long wait.

Well, that was quicker than I thought, in various ways: Granbelm (Original Animation) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhMy41RHcqM) :D

In similar news, I hope Akifumi Tada is also on the PriConne TV Anime. The game score gets a full soundtrack release (https://vgmdb.net/album/84439) in april.
Chances are high he is also back again for Pokemon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBieAEGrf8&t=28s) this year.


@.cal: I have high expectations of Kasai. I hope he turns out to be someone to get excited about.


@Zipper: The action tracks of Tanya are in parts very much inspired by the action in Gurren Lagann, now "inspired" or "reference" doesn't indicate quality. Tyler Bates also quoted Goldenthal and Carmina Burana, doesn't make it any better. It's all relative.


No matter how far Kato will grow I just cannot be hard on him if Kasai and all the other assistances he helps get into the industry turn out just like I wish. It's kind of like how I just can't be mad at Yugo for not living up to his standard in the 2000s when he trained and launched Suehiro on the scene.

It's kind of like how I just can't be mad at Yugo for not living up to his standard in the 2000s when he trained and launched Suehiro on the scene.
he wasn't trained by yugo kanno (they just work for the same company). he actually studied composing/orchestrating under taro iwashiro according to his bio.

^He started out sounding literally exactly like Yugo Kanno. Clearly Kanno had an influence on him while he was at the company. A lot of large composer organizations like Legendoor and IMAGINE tend to have their composers "help each other out"- and so offer music that sounds quite similar to each other.

^He started out sounding literally exactly like Yugo Kanno. Clearly Kanno had an influence on him while he was at the company. A lot of large composer organizations like Legendoor and IMAGINE tend to have their composers "help each other out"- and so offer music that sounds quite similar to each other.
i'm not disagreeing but i'm sure any trained composer could mimic yugo kanno without ever meeting him. the way he structures his themes is very simple and his orchestration isn't particularly complex.

i'm sure he was told to mimic kanno when he was hired because the company wants a unified sound, like you say. suehiro has never been listed as kanno's assistant on any soundtrack though.

edit: btw, suehiro lists his main influences as henry mancini, ennio morricone, alan silvestri and joe hisaishi.

It's the middle of the night over here and I'm bumming around for a while, so I thought I'd ask a quick question: what do y'all think of Michael Nyman's soundtrack for Enemy Zero on the SEGA Saturn? I've been listening to it again out of the blue, and I forgot how much I loved tracks like Aspects of Love (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZPoxwu2bBA&t=7m48s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZPoxwu2bBA&t=7m48s)) and Laura's Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZPoxwu2bBA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZPoxwu2bBA)). I think this might have been one of the first soundtracks that got me into checking out orchestral music specifically, since I remember first listening to it back in early 2016 - around the same time I'd gotten into Yoko Kanno's Nobunaga music and a few months before I became a regular visitor of this thread - so it does hold a bit of personal meaning to me beyond being really good.

There are many scores I have never heard before. This is one I wish I didn't miss/overlook. Thank you very much for that. I didn't know Nyman scored a game once. You might know him from Gattaca. His musical style is not something I fancy but its really good music. The love theme makes it a keeper.

@.cal: I always assumed Yugo assisted Suehiro, so thanks for the clear-up. I didn't know Iwashiro was teaching students either (but I suspected).


I think I will definitely survive Yamashita's absence: Popolocrois II (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXDk-isqLE&t=30s)
The new SD Gundam trailer also suspiciously sounds like Ike again, so I wouldn't mind a Part 2 to his first score (maybe thats why he visited LA again).

i'm not disagreeing but i'm sure any trained composer could mimic yugo kanno without ever meeting him. the way he structures his themes is very simple and his orchestration isn't particularly complex.I would be shocked if there was a single person in Japan that asked a composer to "please emulate Yugo Kanno!" Because Kanno himself doesn't really have a specific style or genre associated with him (unless you count his J-dramas, which is certainly not what Re:Zero was). But, his melodic and harmonic language, simple as it may be, is still unique to him. It's easy to copy Sawano too- but even among his peers at Legendoor, none sound quite the same as him. Even now, there are still parts of Suehiro's music that sound almost for verbatim like what Yugo Kanno would write.

Credits should be taken with a grain of salt. As most of us know, Amano may have only been credited as an "orchestrator" on Sagisu's albums, but he's responsible for far more than that. Everyone has to start from somewhere, and a lot of the people who join these larger composer organizations do so not just to get jobs, but to learn how to become better composers. A lot of fresh composers don't really have an established "voice" for themselves yet and need something to build on. It's not out of the question that a young Suehiro, fresh off the boat, needed a role model to give him guidance. For Suehiro, that role model and backbone was most likely Yugo Kanno.

Certainly, a lot of younger trained Hollywood composers like Justin Hurwitz would greatly benefit from having someone like Yugo Kanno around them- a big part of the reason the music in Hollywood keeps getting worse even with so-called "classically trained" composers at the helm is because they have no skilled role models to help them with the ropes. We need more people like Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, but they no longer exist in the realm of western media music.



Side note, there was one time Iwasaki was asked to emulate (Yoko) Kanno on Oban Star Racers by its director, who originally wanted Kanno but couldn't afford her. Iwasaki gave him the ultimate blueball and something of a middle finger with this.

https://picosong.com/wSU2c/

First 35 seconds are straight up Kanno, with the 30 to 35 second mark being her signature chord progression (to think this piece preceded "Test Flight Delight" by a whole two years)- but everything that comes afterward in that piece is a violent protest of pure Iwasaki from the Zimmerisms to the Herrmannisms, which is ultimately what the rest of the soundtrack was, as usual.

Vinphonic: I'm happy to have shown you Enemy Zero's soundtrack, which has a fairly interesting story behind it. The game's director Kenji Eno was also a composer and musician himself (for example, he did the music to D and D2, which Enemy Zero acts as a spiritual interquel of sorts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWkCWDQUw), so he could have very done the music himself if he wanted to. But it seems that he wanted another composer to work on Enemy Zero - according to issue 24 of Next Generation Magazine, he originally wanted Ryuichi Sakamoto of all people to do the soundtrack, but couldn't find what he was looking for from Sakamoto. However, fate would end up playing a role in bringing Nyman into the project, as Eno once explained in an interview:


"...I like Michael Nyman a lot, and I like his soundtracks, so I was thinking that it would be awesome if I could get him to do the music. I thought, "That would be impossible, but it'd be great if that happened." ...then, there was a big earthquake in Kobe, Japan in 1995, and Michael Nyman was donating pianos to schools in the city. When this earthquake happened, he said that he wanted to check out how the pianos that he donated were doing, so he came to Japan. When I found out that he was in Japan, I invited him back to my hotel room and tried to convince him, for six hours, to come work with me. So, at the end, Michael was like, "OK, I'll do it, I'll do it. Just let me go back to my room." So he went back exhausted after being convinced for six hours. We didn't work out terms or conditions; he just said that he would do it."

Well, that was quicker than I thought, in various ways: Granbelm (Original Animation) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhMy41RHcqM) :D
just saw this. it's the next project of masaharu watanabe, director of re:zero, so you know it's in good hands. he has a very traditional sense of music direction. it's no surprise that he was trained by yutaka yamamoto (fractale)

Hiroshi Miyagawa & Akira Miyagawa
SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 2202
Warriors of Love
The Complete Score of the OVA series
Tokyo Studio Orchestra & Osaka Sion Wind Orchestra



Encounter with Teressa (https://picosong.com/wSGE9/) / The last song (https://picosong.com/wSGET/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!DXYBVQAS!f7IO-BhQIftiwG8E_FyVfiXv4qpQLh5Vao-gwPEcqCk)

The full score to the OVA project "Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love" in lossless quality and in its full scope. It deserves it, pershaps more than any other score this year. Its a special score for sure, not so much in its originality but in preserving, revising and rerecording an important score in anime/music history. Much attention goes to the symphonic arrangements by Kentaro Haneda but the actual score as used in the TV series often falls into obscurity and in an interview below it becomes evident not much of it survived on paper.

100 Tracks, three hours of sublime music from the days of SciFi TV scores like Star Trek to Battlestar Galacticas. A score Akira Miyagawa revised, arranged and expanded in memory of his father and a testament to a scoring approach that fills your mind with "imagination" and truely, you can hear the romantic space voyage unfolding while listening. Even the "reused" cues from the first series are revised and newly recorded (Sorrowful Yamato is quite an upgrade compared to 2199). In general it all sounds much better than the first series. It was a personal obligation and love for his fathers music that you really feel in this score. Of course I acknowledge that no show or score is perfect and there's always something that doesn't appeal to everyone, but fuck me, I LOVE the show and especially the score as you're aware I'm sure. It exceeds the first series by a considerable margin, thanks to updating and expanding on one of the greatest villain themes ever written for any piece of media. It's up there with the Empire/Vader theme from Star Wars and a league above other favorites like the Band of Seven from Inuyasha.
Its prominent throughout the entire score witch gives it much more character and presence than the first where the Gamillas theme never really got the variations or action tracks it deserved.

The White Comet Empire Theme is pure evil, the classic 70s and 80s evil, and performed in best Bach fashion. The approach of given the main villain a pipe organ is so classy it was used in various pieces of media, most notably this: Ganon's Tower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S4h1gcCMBc). But all pale in comparison to the White Comet. Pretty much the entire show is an homage to classic SciFi television and filled to the brim with references to classic literature and SciFi films and shows. The massive body of music is too vast to go into detail but all the numerous rerecordings and arrangements of Hiroshi Miyagawa's music impress. It has more sinister villain pieces, more emotion and gravitas, more powerful action, more dramatic weight compared to 2199. It's absolutely amazing to hear a score so shamelessly 70s, a major action scene underscored with some kickass disco: A gruesome fight (https://picosong.com/wSGdz/)

It's a style of television scoring that yet survives in Japan and I'm confident that even beyond the upcoming movie and third series of this stellar remake of a classic 70s series and an important milestone of anime history, this style will not disappear. At least as long as Akira Miyagawa wields his pencil/baton in the studio:



2202 Recording Session (from 15:17 to 16:52) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkXg0IvdezA&t=15m17s)

For more detail about the score and its unique quality, here's an (well-known) interview with Miyagawa on the score for Yamato 2202:

Interviewer: On 2202, the director has been replaced by Mr. Nobuyoshi Habara. Do you have different exchanges, or impressions of the work?

Miyagawa: It’s completely different. Mr. Izubuchi entered into it from a philosophical point of view, but Mr. Habara didn’t. I don’t know if I’ve had a chance to talk about that yet. My impression is that Mr. Habara has very good judgment. When it comes down to “Should we go this way or that way?” he seems to be good at choosing the one that is closer to the goal or where the future is brighter.

Since Mr. Izubuchi started with philosophy, he suffered from not reaching an understanding with what he said. (Laughs) I think there are places where Mr. Izubuchi got caught in his own traps. That’s very bold for an artist, but Mr. Habara chooses paths to avoid falling into traps, so I’m very relieved.


Interviewer: Is it your impression that it’s easy to work together?

Miyagawa: I can’t say it’s “easy to do,” but when I look at what’s been done, I have a strong sense of security. The flow of time feels smart and avoids waste, and the feeling is, “This is well made. The results are good. My younger brother is a clever guy, and doesn’t get stuck in the same rut.” I selfishly imagine that Mr. Habara is the second or third son and I’m the oldest, the type that falls into the hole. I’m the type that has all the hardships so you don’t have to. (Laughs)


Interviewer: The story goes that there was no sheet music from the past for 2199, and that you had to start by making ear-copies.

Miyagawa: My father’s library is still there, but I knew there wasn’t much Yamato music in it. Just some tattered leftovers or single-sided pages saying “This is part XX.” It’s nothing like having all of Yamato’s wonderful 73 pieces. And I don’t remember seeing a musical score for Farewell to Yamato. Columbia, who was in charge of the music at the time, told me “There is no sound source,” but there is one. Everyone has the CD. (Laughs)

There might be multiple recordings for those that were multi-recorded, but in any case it still became a story of rewriting everything. The information changes in the video picture and the designs, and the thing that changes most is the texture. The old anime had the tone of a flip-book. That was the taste back in those days. But a lot of it is done in CG now and the pacing is different in both picture and music. Because the music doesn’t fit today’s pacing, it’s understandable that it would need to be re-recorded. And if you re-record it, you need a score.

Mr. Izubuchi was amused to hear that. “…This is what you mean by ear-copy?” And my feeling was just, “Well, these things happen.” (Laughs) At first I thought, “Are you serious!?” But on the other hand, I was very excited. (Laughs) “I get to write out all that music?”

Several things came to mind. Writing the score would make it clear what kind of structure the music has, and I would come know how this score was realized. That was going to be fascinating. Any composer who graduates from music school can do an ear-copy, but I felt like I was getting classes. I got lessons from my father like, “How did he extend this thin 1-minute piece to 2 minutes?”( Laughs) That kind of technique takes skill. (Laughs)

When I began to write it, it was thinking “This song was written in 30 minutes.” And then there were many, many points where I’d realize “Oh! That’s how it is, that’s how he did it…” The details are kind of a trade secret, though. (Laughs)


Interviewer: Is it different from just listening to the music and writing it out as sheet music?

Miyagawa: It’s entirely different. “There were only these elements, but simply modulating a semitone here brings the whole dream to life” and “After that, I can go back down a semitone!” I’m not really an editing man, but it was fun to understand all of it. And there were several pieces where you could say, “God dwells in there” and I thought it was great. That was Hiroshi Miyagawa from those days.


Interviewer: For 2202, you revived the music of Farewell to Yamato.

Miyagawa: We’re calling it “salvage” in the sense that we’re rescuing old music. If you try to ear-copy Farewell, I understood that from the start it clearly differentiates itself from the first Yamato in musical terms.


Interviewer: What is it like?

Miyagawa: The string parts are abnormally large. The first Yamato was mainly based in rock. There are a lot of scenes where the rhythm section is active. However, the score for Farewell is intentionally based on the string ensemble. In other words, there’s a lot of music in this world that doesn’t use a rhythm section. The strings are almost taking the place of the previous rhythm section.

I’m sure there was a meeting when they said, “Since that was how it used to be, let’s do this way this time.” After all, my father wasn’t trying to make exactly the same thing. Change is necessary to maintain your motivation. I think it started from “Let’s not use this instrument for a while” and the instruments were changed.


Interviewer: Is that why it has a classical impression?

Miyagawa: That’s right, it sounds classical as a result. Plus, there’s the Bach pipe organ in there.


Interviewer: There weren’t just ear-copies, but I heard that you also composed a lot of parts yourself. Your musical background is different and you have your own individuality, but what were your thoughts on making your pieces compatible with those you transcribed from the original?

Miyagawa: In order to answer that question, the correct response has to be, “I didn’t think about it at all.” I was uncertain at the beginning, so I talked with the Sound Director Tomohiro Yoshida and finally got around to asking, “It’s good, isn’t it?” But when it was all finally sorted out for the recording, there was no mismatch at all.

It’s a mysterious thing. Even though the style is completely different, I dared to write music that my father didn’t write. I think this is because the seeding of 2199 was quite good. Mr. Izubuchi said, “There’s no melody that says, ‘ambitious youth,’ so I want you to make one.” And we prepared a Garmillas National Anthem. When I surged into 2202, both myself and those around me said, “There’s no mismatch” and “You did well, Akira.” I know it was good, because it was said at separate times.


Interviewer: Yes, no mismatch at all.

Miyagawa: Anybody can be influenced or not by the original author, but with the yearning in regard to the stylishness that we call harmony, the linear beauty that’s like a huge dragon that we call melody, and the yearning for the coolness we call rhythm, whether due to DNA or experience, I can’t say, but our intuition is definitely identical. And perhaps, in the end, it’s born of a desire to “express the age.” Well, perhaps my father was a bit more eager…

No, no, but the ending is Scarlet Scarf, right? (Laughs) That one was lagging behind the times. When I was a junior high student, I couldn’t accept it. “Dad! This is no longer the era of Hiroshi Wada and the Mahinastars!” (Laughs) It’s certainly a good song, and I could understand it after I became an adult. That’s one bit of evidence that he wasn’t thinking about being fashionable. The other is that he didn’t use a computer, and I don’t use a computer for music at all. That’s how we’re alike. Because it cannot be used.


Interviewer: You don’t even record things separately.

Miyagawa: I think music needs to be done in one shot. That’s why it seems like “Miyagawa music” is conjoined by its own nature. Some writers have a lot of trouble if you tell them “I want you to write pieces that don’t match” but I don’t think my father had any problem with that.

There were a lot of things that were really well done in the battle scenes, where you can say, “This piece feels different because the enemy is different this time, too.” Does it accumulate to more than 900 pieces? He went through incredible hell, didn’t he? And here I am thinking, “can I just use the same piece as before?” (Laughs)

But knowing that my father boldly said, “I’m still fighting even though I’ve run out of bullets,” I think he was really great. There’s a lot of music in Farewell to Yamato.


Interviewer: From there, some would say, “Bring out something inside of me beyond even that.”

Miyagawa: This time I noticed that Yamato is itself the act of struggling. Yamato is a struggle. Why is it the Battleship Yamato from World War II? Why not the Battleship Nagato? Anyway, it would be no good if it wasn’t Yamato. (Laughs)

Anyway, if you have “it must be Yamato,” then you also have, “It wouldn’t be Yamato without this.” The first thing I wanted to do was find a basis for replacing the Pacific War with space. So this work carries a lot of things on its back. It’s sociology and philosophy. It wouldn’t be Yamato if there was no struggle.

This time I even wrote music that wasn’t requested. I can’t say the title because it was temporary, but I recorded it in August. I went in and played the melody on piano for the staff and said, “I heard something like this,” and they said “We’ll keep it until we find a place to use it,” and because of that I went through the struggle of making it.

That’s a different method, to make a song that doesn’t have any purpose other than “There may be something in this,” then you go through the assembly line to record it and then, “It’s done.” “Thank you very much.” “Best regards.”

Since this is Yamato, you can approach it from several directions, asking yourself “Is this not cool? Is it not new? Is it not sufficiently Yamato-like?” Even I think of musical compositions in this way. It’s a piece that might not actually be used, but I enjoyed making it.(Laughs)


Interviewer: The story goes that the information density in a picture is completely different now than it was back in those days. Do you have the feeling that music will sound dull if you make it with the same density as back then?

Miyagawa: “Dullness,” or rather, the feeling that it just doesn’t fit. I don’t know the right terminology, but it seems somewhat irrelevant. If you made music with the same density, my feeling would be, “Why not just leave the picture as it was long ago?”Now we can freely pile up musical instruments using a synthesizer and the sound is similar, like we’ve “mixed all the colors.” I think it has the aspect of making the melody difficult to understand. But I think when a bold melody is actually applied, they just say, “I don’t need that.”

In film music, much of it is mainly chiseled out with rhythm only, “dun! dun! dun!”, bass-heavy growls of “zoon,” with the occasional different instrument thrown in. One of the reasons is that the visual information is clear, and I think that to a large extent visual information provides all the information in the movie.


Interviewer: Does it become noisy if you insist on sounds?

Miyagawa: Yes, you don’t need a melody, you just need a feeling of music in the air.


Interviewer: Is it supposed to be “abstract”?

Miyagawa: You could say that it becomes abstract, but perhaps it’s the extreme abstractness of the melody that embodies the atmosphere that makes it abstract. That’s an extremely difficult question, but I think there are plenty of examples where you’re buried in information and you’re told “We don’t need a melody, just give us atmosphere, please. But, since I’ve not worked with many directors like that, I can only imagine that. (Laughs)

So, as a result, it may be that you get the balance of information from a melody that can’t be sung. The main theme of Francis Ford Copolla’s Godfather is very famous, isn’t it? It’s used in many places, and the person who hears it can freely make a leap with that image. When that happens, the image darkens and blurs, and there’s something about the details of the subject of the shot that you lose.

In older films, I guess the audience had to flip a switch on their imagination. Although records had a crackling noise at first, you can flip a switch on your imagination with that. “The sound you hear is the diamond needle scratching the polyvinyl chloride, but it sounds genuine.” (Laughs)

The sound on a CD is really clear, and the “thing itself” comes out to be transmitted. The structure and receiving system of the brain are different, and I think making full use of your imagination was a way to enjoy old movies and analog records. My argument is that it’s normal for half of imagination to be made by the producer and the other half by the recipient. I can’t prove it, but when I work on Yamato I respect the music a lot and the staff all listens to it, and we try to make the music talk. In that sense, I think Yamato may be one of the last strongholds.

- November 2, 2017.[/QUOTE]

Onward to the movie and the next entry, of course I also really want a spinoff for Ginga.



A truely spectacular show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd27DCqZUrI)

I hope he will work on something new on the anime front in the future.

Yamato is also not the only "Retro" series getting a revival, there's numerous other "classics" in the making, in 2020 we have the next one:





In other news, Hamaguchi has not yet played all cards, the recent episode is a musical spectacle and fires the heavy guns. Crazy that soundtrack is only four weeks away. And Endro has yet again a powerful musical episode. Can't wait for both.

I gave up with Endro because it's been re-using the same three, very short orchestral cues almost exclusively for the last six episodes. It looks like they blew their good stuff in the first two episodes. This is not a good sign, to me - it's increasingly rare that an ensemble this size is used in anime and allowed to just be an orchestra without a load of electronic noise, guitars, and corny drumkits dubbed in over the top - but it seems that the tradeoff is that there's hardly any score. And, we're a month away from the end of the show and no release has been announced - not a bonus CD or a standalone release. Not even a crappy iTunes release. Though it may still happen, I'm not holding my breath. I hope there's at least a little more to come, but my hope is withering away. I'll probably skim the remaining episodes after the show has finished, but only Kotobuki remains on my 2019 watch list.

Kotobuki is extremely good. I haven't seen Sunday's episode yet, but last week's one was really brilliant score-wise. There seems to be AT LEAST one substantial new cue each episode. This gives me hope for a decent amount of orchestral score on the CD. A decent length score performed by a good-sized ensemble is really overdue. So far, Kotobuki is turning out to be what I hoped Girls Und Panzer could be... But Kotobuki is more grown up, more straight, more serious... so it's getting the gold treatment.

Edit: Just listened to Episode 8... Bloody hell, where did this come from? There feels like bucketloads of score in this show. Pretty much this entire episode is blanket-scored. I don't think the quality quite beats last week though... I'm a sucker for a fugue... 17:57 is just wonderful and at 18:47 a magical thing happens... The one thing that doesn't happen enough in anime is cues that change moods midway. Usually, out of necessity, you have cues that largely stick to the same feeling throughout... but this one is a glorious aerial battle that moves through optimism, resolve, tension, and then a lovely major key release. This is one of those scores that really push the main theme, but do it with such skill and variety it's a good thing. It's a great theme, and Hamaguchi pushes it through endless variations, never letting it rest, never letting it grow stale. He just works it, it's an earworm. Not like Sagisu's Gridman which was basically 25 minutes of the theme being repeated with increasingly dense orchestration - this is proper scoring. LOVE IT.

Really looking forward to TWO Hisaishi anime movie scores this year... I guess he's not retired just yet after all. Really interesting to hear that Ni No Kuni is directed by a 40 year veteran of the industry (and worked as an animator on Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke) but is making this his directorial debut, and Children Of The Sea is directed by Ayumu Watanabe, of Space Brothers fame. These aren't going to be crappy little throwaway films. I hope Hisaishi gets the opportunity to fly again. More of Hisaishi's "underwater" style can only yield good things.

Yamato... Well, there's a few cues in there that are pretty decent, but on the whole the score is massively, massively underwhelming. Mostly it's 70s pastiche and re-recordings of existing music - albeit with a very large orchestra. Great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't detect a lot of value musically.

Nonetheless, I'm grateful to you for your efforts in bringing us ther music. :)

Some of Evan Call's new movie is recorded in Bulgaria.

I have a very different impression of Endro of course but I will survive a bit of waiting. After the Rain (another Ayumu Watanabe-directed show) suddenly got a full cd release out of nowhere, even more sudden than Kado, so even if it takes a year it could still get one. I hope the show makes it beyond a one-time only affair.

I almost forgot that not only Kotobuki is four weeks away, only a week left for Tanaka's next One Piece entry: First five minutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQrPOcrklsk)

The only anime movie I really wanted to hear was Danmachi, but no cd release so far, which is frustrating, Inai gave at least quite a few promising tweets about it.

It seems to be the same three or four pieces over and over again. As I say, I hope there's more and that the thing is released... but, let's see. One-cour shows rarely get massive amounts scores but I was hoping this one could go further than we've heard so far. Eight episodes in to a twelve episode show, and three pretty short orchestral cues to show for it - even though they are quite good - is not encouraging.

One Piece Cutscene: Starts off nice, then turns into pop. A shame. And I wish that lovely sweeping theme near the end went somewhere - i's just there, then it's over. This is where Tanaka falls over for me - lovely sounds in the moment but they're here, then they're gone. Looks like this is going to be Gravity Daze on a pirate ship. Hopefully there will be some decent orchestral cues in the score - Tanaka must surely be able to do at least a few, these days... and it's One Piece - I remain cautiously optimistic.

Then turns into pop.

But that's the good stuff, my friend :P


Anyway... anybody got the strong Diebuster transitions into Sakura Wars vibe from the first couple of cues? Lovely villain march already and a sweeping adventourous main title screen and theme. Can't wait for next week. Btw if you want to listen to prototype Gravity Daze, have some Exkaizer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuC0jO7vM8E) (anbody got a cd or a share of it? I dig it but never got around to chase after the cd.)



Now on to a little present from strk_freak, who was so kind and generous to bring you this little score:



Takayuki Hattori
Nobita's Chronicle of the Moon Exploration
Tokyo Studio Orchestra



The Kaguya Stars (https://picosong.com/w6kYR/) / Rabbit Monster (https://picosong.com/w6kYY/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!CGoT2YaI!vlCV3YR1QQ4UYcPWu5ym22jk8JI9IAEsOIebm7c4uAg)

All credit belongs to strk_freak and Ponyo for the Hattori video.

EDIT: Revised album with better cohesion (10.03.2019)

Hattori shows some restraint for a change, of course he can't help it with the hiphop but he only includes his drum loops for a mere 30 seconds in a one hour score, so I guess that makes it better than Treasure Island by default, though I like a few showpieces in it more than in this one. It still is a gorgously orchestrated sea ride in parts afterall. His orchestration is as always, masterful. He also wrote a lovely Overture for Nobita's Moon Chronicle and a song as a bonus. You can tell he had much more time on his hands than in 2018. He's getting comfortable. In parts its wonderful, the main theme is delightful and the action is very much Battle Athletes in style more so than just a blueprint, including a three minute action piece. So now that Hattori is also on Doraemon, how much higher can he climb? Also, I welcome the change in style, so long as Sawada gets something else for compensation (or he's happy with the current influx of TV drama he gets to score).

In any case, always happy to present some good music :)

But that's the good stuff, my friend :P

If you like this stuff, definitely, it's great stuff. :P

But if you want a little more from an orchestral, symphonic score - something that actually goes somewhere, hangs on to an idea and takes it somewhere, and hangs together in cohesive, grown-up way... then it's a lazy cop-out.

Edit: Wow... I was thinking about buying Doraemon on the strength of the concert performance posted by Ponyo, but I'm really glad I didn't. What a mess of a score. A handful of lovely cues surrounded by a load of psychotic noise. And almost every cue that starts off promising turns into slamming noises, electronic shit, or outright silliness. It's nice to hear the "classic" theme from Spaceblazers in "A Thousand Rabbits Rush Down" and Battle For The Moon is superb... I love 1:02 particularly but I love the cue in general. It's well structured, orchestral playful, thematic, suspense-building, and it lets the orchestra be an orchestra without taking the cheap way out - electronica, drums, Hollywood-esque slamming noises... It may be the most sustained, focused cue in his career since IQ... but look at what's surrounding it. I do not know what Takayuki is playing at. Why does someone THAT GOOD with an orchestra spend three quarters of his time with the orchestra utterly abusing it? Oh, well... Kotobuki is enough to keep me happy for a bit longer... :D

It's quite a coincidence that I've been giving Kazunori Miyake's portions of Uncharted Waters Online a listen lately, because there are some pieces in there that sound for verbatim like Hattori. Listening to Doraemon again, and comparing it to this...

https://picosong.com/w6kW4/

I can almost hear Gundam The Origin too.

Is the Miyake-Hattori relationship the same as the Suehiro-Yugo Kanno one? I don't know much about the guy- but I do know he's from the same musical organization as Hattori (Face Music). From what I can see from his work on UWO though, not only does it sound A LOT like Hattori, but he's also using some of Hattori's ensembles (i.e. Strings by RUSH).

That one was a big surprise to me, too!

Miyake doesn't really turn up any more but he did a few Sentai scores some years ago. He also did orchestrations on the Final Fantasy Grand Finale album - the one that sounds like the orchestra was 15 players, drunk, and recorded in a tin box. No he didn't, that was Tsuneyoshi Saito, sorry, don't know where I got that idea from...

He seems to be incredibly skilled... but his career never took off, not at all... (And his Sentai scores sucked. I think...)

Miyake's contributions to Uncharted Waters completely and utterly blow Iwasaki's and Yoko Kanno's out the water (pun not intended). Granted, neither one of them enjoyed nearly the same budget that he did, but some of this music is just plain inspired.

https://picosong.com/w6Yng/

There's even that same fascination with 50s Herrmannesque fantasy and sci-fi as Hattori.

https://picosong.com/w6YCz/

It's like a pure version of Hattori without the self-indulgence that holds him back. No electronics, slamming percussion, or unusual cuts. Just top-shelf orchestration and brilliant melodic sensibilities. Interestingly enough, he's also an orchestrator for Hisaishi.

I don't know if the entire soundtrack has been uploaded here yet, since Miyake isn't much of a talking point, but if you guys want, I can share it.

I can wholeheartledy recommend Uncharted Waters Online 2nd Age...It's short and there's some right crap in it... but some of that music is just fantastic. :)

Edit: I'm just listening to his 2007 Sentai score again - Gekiranger... There's actually some awfully good stuff in here, too. There's a lot of banging, but there's also a tight, thematic, and at times rather sophisticated score, a nice big orchestra, and a real Japanese flavour. It's actually quite far away from what we now see as the "Sentai house-sound" - maybe it's time for a post...

I don't know if the entire soundtrack has been uploaded here yet, since Miyake isn't much of a talking point, but if you guys want, I can share it.

I'd really like you to upload it. I've only listened to Kanno/Iwasaki's work on the original UWO release, but I like what I'm hearing from what you've posted (American Sea is especially nice), and I'd love to hear more! :)

I'd really like you to upload it. I've only listened to Kanno/Iwasaki's work on the original UWO release, but I like what I'm hearing from what you've posted (American Sea is especially nice), and I'd love to hear more! :)
I'm working on it. There's 50 tracks and some filler, so I'm reorganizing it in the manner that's most suitable for the ears. You guys are going to be in for a treat.

https://picosong.com/w6YJY/

Listening to this and then Doraemon, it's like man, this is what it COULD have sounded like had Hattori put in his A-game.

I'm still very bothered by Sawada not doing Doraemon movies anymore.

Kazunori Miyake
Uncharted Waters Online

Roma (https://picosong.com/w6Yt6/) / Historic Fleet Battle (https://picosong.com/w6Ytt/)

Download (https://mega.nz/#!mGxijYba!sM-9gm-rduvFOAhkgP8wqdIDYSGRd55bNYQ4XXKmMjc)

I separated the orchestral and non-orchestral cues into separate folders, and rearranged the order into something more cohesive. Hopefully this makes it a better listening experience.

I'm still very bothered by Sawada not doing Doraemon movies anymore.

So am I. I thought it was a very odd choice but assumed that it was because 2018's Doraemon movie was a "special" one-off, and that Sawada would be back on the next movie... but they seem to have fallen in love with Hattori. Maybe after twelve years, as many movies, and 500 episodes of the TV anime featuring his score, they just wanted a change... Or maybe Sawada himself was bored to death of Doraemon. Japanese franchises have a tendency to settle on a staff and just stay there for as long as they want to, or as long as the show makes money. Maybe something happened.

It's a shame because Sawada fit Doraemon like a glove, and it's probably the only modern franchise that can sustain such exhuberant, tuneful, orchestral scores as he wrote - and I doubt he'll ever write like that again...

TheZipper: Thank you for Uncharted Waters! I really appreciate having it together in one place - I never really got any similarity between the styles of Hattori and Miyake but comparing the two side by side... the difference in quality is depressing. Hattori is the better orchestrator, but Miyake is the better composer by a country mile, I think. (At least based on what he's done so far.)

Yusuke Shirato from LOST SONG is back again for the new Oda Nobunaga show: http://wakanobu.com/staffcast.html (He looks like a chick tho)
Maybe it will be better than LOST SONG 'cause I didn't like the score for that much.

Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBYLIuobor8

In distant memory, there may have been an Uncharted Waters album I made ages ago but can't remember if I did (or if I shared it) so thanks for highlighting it Zipper. Miyake is another unused talent, like Minobe. There's alot of talent among SEGA, Koei and Namco composers that I wish was utilized more often.

@ladatree: I like the brass play in the middle of the PV but I hope its not a poor man's Nobunaga's Ambition. The best part about Lost Song was the Songs, which are larger than life but I think there was a good action piece in there.

@Tango: I don't think he's the better composer (nor do I believe that the recent Doraemon is nearly as bad as you make it out to be but different strokes for different folks). Granted, he did not do nearly enough to make definitive statements but Takayuki's A-Game is just too catchy. My dream composer would be a cross between Hattori's orchestration, Sahashi's melodic sensibilities and Kohei Tanaka's joyful style. Looking forward to your Sentai share :)


From the recent pvs, this sounds very familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfPyxG-ZbFM&t=25

Never thought I would see these two in the same room.

https://external-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCaNvDp5NXhrS7G&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.cybird.fr%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F05%2Foban-yoko-kanno-04.png&_nc_hash=AQAezcNlFakXtK1a


Taku Iwasaki: Sometimes, when I compose, I happen to find a really excellent piece. I even cry while composing music. This is not systematic, of course. But in those moments, I feel at the top of the wave. You know what I mean?

Yoko Kanno: You make yourself cry by composing, then?

TI: Yes, it happens to me! (laughs)

YK: On Oban too? (laughs)

TI: So now you're in charge of the interview? (both laugh)

YK: Come on, tell me.

TI: Yes, it happened.

YK: When?

TI (seemingly embarrassed): Well ... It's a song we hear at the end of the series. Already, it is a scene that is made to be full of emotion. I tried to be in the mood, actually. And I realized that I started crying as soon as I got to work.

YK: So, did it touch you?

TI: We can say that, yes.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/393603837735/

Miki(2) (Thread 57893)

ORCHESTRA ASIA (1995)


101. Symphonic Variation "Nam-do Arirang" _Youtube_ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3dkoNbJMlg) - Back Dae Ung
102. Country Song:Hinauta - Katsutoshi Nagasawa
103. Love Song:San Min Mai - Zhao Yong Shan
201. Boatman's Song - Park Beum Hoon
202. Jasmine - Liu Wen Jin
303. Folk Symphony "Den-Den-Den" - Minoru Miki

FLAC (https://mega.nz/#!IF4VHaxY!hKKUmVJkQPKlqQut4K3cPeMBEl9rkZm8BWtoC8-CS-M)

If you want to give Doraemon another shot, I revised the album and put some editing in it. It should now flow better and more cohesive. I think the core of it is a lovely little score that is pretty much devoid of Hattori's drum loops, which are the only thing I don't really like about his current style, the rest is fine by me: https://picosong.com/w6Lf8/

Moon Exploration is already a step-up from Treasure Island with a lot of class and wonderful moments and a lot less drumloops so I hope Hattori gets a little more into classical mode as it goes along, assuming he will stay for a while. Though I agree, its a shame Sawada is not scoring the movies anymore, he surprisingly still seems to be on the TV show (he was in charge of the christmas special).


Btw, that "sweeping" World Seeker cue was just an edit (and the other pieces must have been just edits for cutscenes), the full piece is four minutes long, so I hope for another cue like "One Piece: To the New World", with a real orchestra this time please.


EDIT: I hope Yuya Mori is getting some gigs this year, aside from arrangement and performance for an Octopath Album he continues to write some interesting music for Dragon Ball Heroes, a cross between modern style and Golden Age Orchestra, so not for everyone, but I anticipate his first true project, hopefully on a SciFi show: https://picosong.com/w62Xu/

Does anyone here know if the soundtrack to ASURA by Inon Zur et al. ever got a proper release? I found it on SoundCloud but not in great quality: https://soundcloud.com/tencent-gameaudio/sets/asura-ost

Thanks!

I've got a few minutes to kill, so I thought I'd write a tiny bit about a piece of music I heard yesterday. One of the forums I frequent had a thread talking about music in Wuxia films (fantasy martial arts, in a nutshell) similar to Shunsuke Kikuchi's work on Dragon Ball, and someone posted a few examples from several Shaw Brothers films. One of these was Red Sequence, a theme composed for the 1980 film Bat Without Wings by Eddie H. Wang Chi-Ren, and I wanted to gush over it for a paragraph or two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGlMyXT1YkU

What I love about this song is how effortlessly it manages to build a very palpable sense of tension despite being so minimalist in both composition and arrangement. The song consists of 19 bars in 3/4 time, which last barely just over thirty seconds long when played. In terms of melody or rhythm, the timpani/piano consistently plays two pairs of quavers and a triplet of quavers per bar, while the strings/brass play two chords that each last an entire bar. On the subject of the instruments, it sounds like a small ensemble consisting of a timpani, a piano, a small strings and brass section, along with something that sounds like a xylophone.

And yet, through the slow introduction of more instruments (the piano joining the timpani and the brass joining the strings), the repetitive rhythm of the timpani and the changing chords, the piece manages to convey a far stronger sense of dread in just over thirty seconds than four-minute walls of noise performed by 60-piece orchestras for big name Hollywood movies. It's incredible to think that much can be conveyed with so little, to the point where it's actually kinda inspiring. I've been thinking of listening to Wuxia music and composing something in that style (thought I'd only have synthesized instruments to arrange with), and this may help me find the inspiration to start checking out more Wuxia scores. If anyone can suggest any particularly good scores, that would be really cool!

From the recent pvs, this sounds very familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfPyxG-ZbFM&t=25
hmm... looking at the director's history, over half of his works are by imagine composers. so i'd say there's a pretty good chance it will be an imagine composer.

his recent non-imagine works are tenkai knights (keigo hoashi/ryuichi takada), monster hunter (masaru yokoyama), and world trigger (kenji kawai).

Does anyone here know if the soundtrack to ASURA by Inon Zur et al. ever got a proper release? I found it on SoundCloud but not in great quality: https://soundcloud.com/tencent-gameaudio/sets/asura-ost

Thanks!


This question interests me too, as well as soundtrack for South Korean MMORPG Lost Ark. Yes, I know that some compositions was released this year, but there are (if I'm not mistaken) only music by Korean composers and I'm interested about Brian Tyler's work.

@cal.: I would prefer people remember him from Outlaw Star, Candidate for Goddess and Sakura Wars the Movie ;) My initial impression was Sakimoto or Basiscape. In any case, I hope its just a mockup.

I know what soundtrack I'm getting on March 15th. :)

Vin, you've done a really good work (as usual) with your editing of Doraemon. The original CD has too many short cues and it's not a very pleasant listening experience. Now it works much better. And I agree with you, it's a nice little score :)

Here's another one to enjoy.. :)


The History of TOM JONES, a Foundling
Jim Parker
The Pro Arte Orchestra of London



MP3-V0 + Booklet scans
http://www.multiupload.com/8CLIMD5EV5

A witty Baroque-styled score from BAFTA award-winning composer, Jim Parker, familiar from Foyle's War, Moll Flanders, Ground Force and The House of Eliott. It has all the period touches you'd expect, and some you wouldn't. The catchy arch main title sets the tone for the rest of the score; we have light and dark in equal measure, sometimes both at once, through clever pointed instrument choices. The most surprising sound in this pert chamber ensemble would be the flatulent rasp of the appropriately named 'rackett'! Great stuff!

More JP to come..

Anyone have this one still? I recently saw the series and want to catch up with this magnificent music.

April will be the 20th anniversary of the anime Betterman. It's not as popular as GaoGaiGar, but it had a good soundtrack...half of the time. Originally 2 CD's, totaling to 2 hours and 40 minutes long, I trimmed the fat and compiled only the orchestral tracks, giving you an hour's worth of music by Kohei Tanaka.

Betterman (1999) (Kohei Tanaka)
https://mega.nz/#!jqAGmK5I!hb5Ojt3-9ZAOIOCs-cNJ3G_WxDgvTXYRCABUAbnI1_E

I still have no idea what we done to deserve a soundtrack as awesome as SHINOVI MASTER.

Oh Iwasaki... I can almost forgive you for City Hunter.

https://youtu.be/jsDmoxCfytE?t=46

Please deliver this time.


Also, his Chinese movie got its release postponed until the end of this year due to some controversy with its lead actress committing tax fraud. We won't be hearing that full orchestra recording for a while.

Well, One Piece appeared a day ahead of schedule. Electronics, noise, guitars, and Christ-knows-what-else constantly interrupt a nice, large orchestra - rendering 99% of the action cues unlistenable... and, as predicted, the themes go nowhere and the big, seafaring, sweeping theme we've all heard in trailers is, unsurprisingly, totally abandoned at the exact point it finishes in the trailers, and instead it goes straight into another melody which is very good, but ultimately it's spoiled by some silly springy synthesiser effects that persist in the background. Very typical modern Tanaka - heaps of fun in the moment, unabashedly hummable but don't expect any kind of thematic interplay, or any symphonic structure - just too much stuff happening at once, and a thousand different melodies flying at you from all directions but which never stick around long enough to make an impact. The recording is claustrophobic and dynamic range is almost non-existent.

This score is like Spock mind-melding with V'Ger in Star Trek The Motion Picture: https://youtu.be/CbHX160cgYo?t=159

Still, there's enough good stuff in there to save it from being a total disaster, for my ears... so from that perspective it's better than I was expecting. :)

@BladeLight: Betterman is that one score where Tanaka fully embraced christian kitsch ala Wada and Hirano. Much more dark and brooding as you come to expect from him, almost venturing into atonal territory but also not a strong melody or theme in comparison to GGG, so its no wonder it falls behind its shadow.

@WorldSeeker: Sigh, another game score that I would never release in its current form on cd. The loops are absurd, not even variations and with a clear ending, oh well, nothing a little editing can't fix, a little rearranging here, a little trimming there, thankfully I had two hours to spare and eh voil�, much better:



Kohei Tanaka
WORLD SEEKER: Recording Session
Tokyo Studio Orchestra



Onward Ho! (https://picosong.com/w6Nhk/) / Sky Prison Charge (https://picosong.com/w6Nhc/) / Farewell to Jeanne (https://picosong.com/w6NhX/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!6lJXTSYb!DxarHsPzTMpX7wsev-hF1c0ckXtYkRWzhaVFlqM-cso)


You know me, I think its quite exciting, lots of subtle ways the two principal themes are woven into the score and a real villain theme. Its been a while for Tanaka. Not to mention his orchestral rock is spot on as usual, even more joyful than in Planet With and Gravity Daze. It very much reminds me of his old mecha scores and pieces like Onward Ho! even have shades of his 80s work, especially the sweetening synthpads and the bouncy melodies. I only wish there was more expansion and development of the first sweeping fanfare-esque theme. Otherwise I'm too tired to talk about it proper so I will stop. Enjoy everyone!


Since I uploaded some of his music on my channel, people have written me, from all around the world, how much they respond to his music and it's amusing to me because its pretty much the exact same reaction I had when I was very little. Hearing the Main Menu to World Seeker and then the Main Menu of Heart of the Maelstrom, its just amazing that so much time lies between them but they have the same power and vigor (structural differences aside). I'm pretty sure his music will live on and be cherished when right now four different generations can respond the same way to his music.

And judging by his recent tweets, he remains a force of nature:


Recently, I am involved with a large number of projects,

Also, more and more different jobs have been introduced to me.
Pretty much every day, I sit in front of my desk, from 5 to 14 hours and work hard to write music

I'm doing my best.

Being 65 years old, I really like having such a job. I am grateful every day to live with music, I will compose by waking up at 6 am this day, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

By the time the music I wrote reaches everyone's ears, they may be processed and working differently as I wrote them and I may work on something entirely different.

I want you to listen early >.<

SEGA festival is just around the corner and the new Sakura Wars has the spotlight, pretty great as a fan of his orchestral music. The train is not stopping so expect his name on a lot of projects in the future, some familiar, some new.
The man has been writing music since the 80s and still keeps me anticipating his next work, at least I will ALWAYS have a smile on my face when I listen and sometimes that's enough ;)

Thank you so much for sharing!

I plan to share a soundtrack here on March 25th. It will be the 20th anniversary of a nearly obscure game that was released for the Sega Dreamcast.

It was the game that marked a turning point in a certain composer's career. I think some of you know who I'm talking about, especially Vinphonic. ;)

I can guess what the game is, considering the nature of this thread, but part of me is really hoping that the game you're gonna post about is Seaman. I've never played Seaman nor have I heard its soundtrack, but I love the idea that Seaman was the Dreamcast equivalent to Intelligent Qube in that it was a weird niche game that inexplicably has incredible orchestral music, and I really want it to be true just for the hell of it. It's probably not, but a man can dream... :)

I can guess what the game is, considering the nature of this thread, but part of me is really hoping that the game you're gonna post about is Seaman. I've never played Seaman nor have I heard its soundtrack, but I love the idea that Seaman was the Dreamcast equivalent to Intelligent Qube in that it was a weird niche game that inexplicably has incredible orchestral music, and I really want it to be true just for the hell of it. It's probably not, but a man can dream... :)

Nope. What Dreamcast game was released on March 25th, 1999?

Would it be a certain colour and poison delivery method-related?

these were all dreamcast games released on march 25, 1999:

- Blue Stinger by Toshihiko Sahashi
- Sangokushi IV by Jun Nagao
- Nobunaga no Yabou: Shouseiroku by Kosuke Yamashita

nice

Oh Iwasaki... I can almost forgive you for City Hunter.

https://youtu.be/jsDmoxCfytE?t=46

Please deliver this time.


Also, his Chinese movie got its release postponed until the end of this year due to some controversy with its lead actress committing tax fraud. We won't be hearing that full orchestra recording for a while.

he's doing a chinese movie? care to share what movie is that?

IMO, Blue Stinger marked the turning point in Sahashi's career.

The Legend of Zelda
The Orchestral Journey
Taizo Takemoto conducts the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and Voces Tokyo



Music by Kosuke Yamashita and Natsumi Kameoka
Additional music by Tomomichi Takeoka and Chad Seiter
Based on compositions by Koji Kondo, Hajime Wakai, Ryo Nagamatsu & VA

Sheik's Theme (https://picosong.com/w6Ge8/) / Zelda's Theme (https://picosong.com/w6G2g/) / Tale of Kass (https://picosong.com/w6Gyj/) / The Legend continues (https://picosong.com/w6G9Y/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!XxwlFAYC!8L4b222MPDSTtJYBNgbcFJs71ICJIF_f-NnV1bFQUJ4)


The video game series The Legend of Zelda began as one of game director Shigeru Miyamoto's many genius creations, this time based on western high fantasy culture. Koji Kondo was the lead composer and formed the musical backbone of a now global media franchise among the biggest media franchises on the planet. Musically, I guess you could call the series the little sister of big brother Final Fantasy and eldest brother Dragon Quest. Over time the eldest brother stayed true to his ideals while the younger brother is in a midlife crisis right now and the little sister is trying to rediscover herself. I think that about sums it up, musically speaking.

Kondo's ideas, lovely tunes, amazingly constructed game scores given the soundchip limitations, have stood the test of time and are nowadays highly revered. With Breath of the Wild the series went into a completely new direction that shows with the latest installments they want to try something different while going back to the roots of the series and I hope they continue with this approach and try new things instead of copying the formular of A Link to the Past ad infinitum again. I'm looking forward to the next installment with one little remark: If you let Michiru Oshima promote your game and make Kosuke Yamashita and Natsumi Kameoka the prime choice to represent it in its best light for the concert hall... how about you use that prestige in the game itself next time ;)

As for the music I chose for this journey, they are all from the orchestral concerts from the last two years, helmed by Kosuke Yamashita. At times you can even put the context aside and think of this as a new fantasy score by Kosuke Yamashita and Natsumi Kameoka. The Zelda concerts (thus far) are not symphony concerts but more like "Orchestral track selections" with a few exceptions. I've revised the albums, edited a little here and there (every track) to present a flowing orchestral journey mimicing the hero's journey.

The music here is at times a tad overly bombastic (Saria's Song especially and I still don't quite like the sound of the 30th anniversary album but enough nitpicking) and thus the pieces I like most are the quieter ones, especially the new themes in Breath of the Wild and the mostly harp-centered pieces from 2018 but the original themes are so good I can forgive the bombast, a testament to the era of soundchip composers. Think of it as a big cinema event instead of a symphony and this little trip ends up being far more enjoyable.

A Legend of Zelda anime series or movie is actually on the horizon I believe and I hope they get one of the aforementioned favorites to score them. Maybe Nintendo is too strict to allow non-inhouse composers on their beloved series but surely they will be more lenient with other forms. That said I actually would be interested to hear a film score by Koji Kondo or Tomomichi Takeoka. In any case, I hope you enjoy this quite long journey and find some music to take with you. I'll admit many of those melodies were around since childhood so I cannot dismiss it has some enticing nostalgic quality hearing them professionaly arranged and performed by a professional symphony orchestra.

One question remains, why the hell have they not chosen this piece to arrange and perform, its the quintessential Zelda piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqUR0Y3dM0

Time and time again, that score gets denied any proper symphonic arrangement. Kentaro Sato remains my biggest hope (His Suikoden arrangement is being put on album as sheduled), or they decide to focus on that game down the road since the concert series continues.

One question remains, why the hell have they not chosen this piece to arrange and perform, its the quintessential Zelda piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqUR0Y3dM0


I've not listened to anything else from the bulk of your (very well written, passionate as per usual) post, but I wanted to chime in and say that having listened to that particular piece for the first time, I can totally see where you're coming from. The first part has a very 'classical' feel, for lack of a better term, and would fit an orchestra very well. I also quite like the second part, and would really love the hear the beginning in particular performed live.

I also agree in wanting to see the series' music take a new direction, especially with the remake of Link's Awakening on the way. While I imagine most folks would be happy with an orchestral arrangement, or at least one with more conventional instruments, of the game's soundtrack, I feel like it would be too easy to do that. Link's Awakening is an outlier in a lot of ways, and I think that rearranging its music should be approached in the same way (personally, I'd just leave it as is, since I think the original arrangements and sound help to convey an ethereal, dreamlike feel that fits the game's mood perfectly - but these things happen, and you gotta make the best of it). I don't know what the approach should be, as long as it's something experimental that compliments the tone and atmosphere while expressing some of Zelda's best, underrated music in a new way.

@Vinphonic - Thanks for all your continued posts and shares. I am especially glad to see you posted the new Code Geass along with the historical scores in FLAC. I had the first 2 scores in FLAC and on CD but was never able to find the R2 scores in FLAC or on CD without importing them from Japan. The first 2 scores were released on CD in the US along the time of the anime getting localized. Though I was a huge fan of Nakagawa's music at the time, I don't listen to it as much because of his mixing of styles but I appreciate completing my digital collection for those times I do want to listen to these scores, which are some of his best work.

I am also writing because the recent Suikoden concert by JAGMO was released and is available on Gamemp3s and likely around here. I have been listening to it and it is quite lovely. Also Kingdom Hearts 3 music continues to be a highlight of the game now that I am in the Frozen level. I may slowly pick up other items that I have missed since my last posting.

Anyone listen to Austin Wintory's take on Command and Conquer music? It isn't that bad. It reminds me of the 80s orchestral music in places. It still doesn't wow me but it is entertaining for an EP.

Also that symphonic album of Suikoden is very nice! This is actually my very first time listening to Suikoden music so it is nice to finally hear it the way it was intended to be heard.

he's doing a chinese movie? care to share what movie is that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.O.R.D:_Legend_of_Ravaging_Dynasties_2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.O.R.D:_Legend_of_Ravaging_Dynasties_2
never thought it is this crap
Well I am chinese, from what I heard about this movie on news and social media, I don't think this one will get a theatrical release, ever
First it's about the tax evasion of the leading actress, it's the biggest scandal that ever happened in Chinese show business (considering the amount of tax she didn't pay), it looks like authority is putting a ban on everything this actress is/used to involved in
Second, the previous installment in the franchise was extremely badly received among audience for its unbelievably sloppy CGI and ridiculous plot, this one does not look any better based on a sneak peek released quite a while ago, also it is rumored the movie itself never got finished because obviously there was poor budget management going on
apparently it's paying the cast way too much(majority of the cast are not even actors, they are singers or "idols" if using terms of korean show business) so there was not enough left for post-production, thus the CGI work could not be finished
the movie was schedule for a summer release in 2018, it was pulled off shortly before the premiere, and it does not have a actual release date now

Also that symphonic album of Suikoden is very nice! This is actually my very first time listening to Suikoden music so it is nice to finally hear it the way it was intended to be heard.

I don't know why, but reading the phrase "...hear it the way it was intended to be heard," just got my brain running with a rather abstract but curious train of thought regarding music arrangement and quality. It's rather late, and I've been tired for most of the day, so it's likely that whatever I say isn't going to make any sense (not even to me). But still, hear me out:

So the phrase "as it was intended to be heard" is likely intended to be praise of the highest order, right? In the sense that this particular arrangement is the best possible version of the song, and has done justice to the original work. But to me, that phrase suggests that this was how the music was meant to be heard all along. And I find that a bit strange, because wouldn't the original version of the music be how it's meant to be heard? It's the music that's worked on most directly by the original composers, since they're trying to create the music for the first time, and is made within whatever constraints they have to work around when creating it - be it the budget allowed for an ensemble, the time allowed to compose and arrange everything, or even having to program everything in the old-fashioned way.

For example, I imagine that when people think of music from the Kingdom Hearts games, they think of either the HD Remix versions (with new instruments and occasionally performed live), or the various orchestral arrangements performed over the years. But are any of those truly how those songs are meant to be heard? Surely, the best way of listening to the music as it was meant to be heard would be to listen to the original PS2 arrangements, since Yoko Shimomura would have composed each song around certain instruments exclusive to the PS2 and what she could do within that.

This isn't to suggest the original versions of songs are objectively superior to all else. For one thing, the intent of a composer can only take you so far. A composer is only human, and can still screw up when creating or arranging music. They can choose instruments poorly, they can disregard sound principles of music theory and create something that doesn't work, they can overcompose a song into sounding overly busy, etc. It's possible that Mamoru Samuragochi might have intended the infamous Basement Theme in the Dual Shock Director's Cut version of Resident Evil to sound like it does, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a disastrously arranged, nonsensically composed and performed piece of aural nonsense (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcF7E69C6Q).

There are of course many arrangements that far surpass the originals, or at the very least appeal to the listener's sensibilities much more (on the subject of Suikoden, I much prefer the Celtic arrangements of Currents - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1zsLM66O70 - and An Old Irish Song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fKIxwIlMQE - to their original versions). Again, intent isn't worth that much when it comes down to evaluating musical quality.

I don't know if I really have a conclusion with this train of thought, but it was something that nevertheless struck me as rather interesting. And if I haven't made a lick of sense, fair enough. I'll probably read this again sometime tomorrow to see if it still reads logically, and likely agree with you.

I can see what you mean FrDougal. The work was intended to be exactly what was created because if they intended something differently, they would have done so. That works to some extent but given the technological limitations of games especially in the era of Suikoden 1 and 2 and even going up through Suikoden 5 generally left the composers with limited ability to utilize an orchestra to present the music. I only had limited exposure to earlier Suikoden games, never got into Suikoden 2 or 3, and really enjoyed Suikoden 5. Anyway, I agree with OrchestralGamer in that I find this to be the way the composers would have wanted to present the music if they had sufficient budget and technological capabilities. Few would intentionally substitute a synthesizer for a real instrument except for certain artistic choices. I really hope this orchestral Suikoden collection gets released in the US because I don't want to pay Japanese import prices to get a copy. I am especially glad to hear the music from Suikoden 5 because that is the game I played, twice through I believe. The story is really quite engaging.

Not at all Father, from my persepctive it comes down to having to work with limitations can bring forth great things but while its true soundchip music was first and can have its charm, let's not forgot, as nostalgic and as fond we can grow of soundchips, ultimately they were substituting or emulating real instruments. Not always orchestral but very often. Nowadays its just a quirky sound you can conjure up to evoke that era. But I don't miss the days when soundchips were the wall you had to climb. Its good to remind ourself that cultivation of Video Games are a Japanese invention and they have shown time and time again with those chiptunes that a good melody is key to success, a good chiptune composition even has all harmony implied so you have it very easy to arrange a basic piece for it. A good example is the Zelda piece from A Link to the Past, at 3:25 its clearly emulating brass play by an orchestra, Koji Kondo is a professionally trained composer after all.

My go to choice to illustrate this is of course Kohei Tanaka because what he did with a soundchip beggars belief:

Final Battle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnifk0y68CM)
Bounty Sword Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCAwkjRO9A0)
Eroica, Legend of Heroes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omDTwreK2A4)

It's all there. Without compromise. With a little imagination you hear it like one of his scores with live players (It also demonstrates he was on a whole other level than many of his contemporaries at the time)
Limitation is a driving force for creativity but you can clearly hear the orchestra he had in mind when he wrote and programmed it into the soundchip.

It's all too easy to forget he also has been a game composer since the very early days of soundchips and is pretty much the only game composer to live through all eras and still is active. He's the perfect case to illustrate he used soundchips not because they were his means to express himself but he had only these necessary tools to work with. Because given his recent game work, is he using soundchips now if he can use real players? Only for synth tracks and as sweetening tools at most. But is he still using them now for orchestral pieces? Not at all. He uses real instruments, a real orchestra because thats what he has in mind when he writes music and when he wrote his early game work. The hard truth is Soundchips were/are a limitation that has to be overcome. A score like Gravity Daze 2 from the perspective of the early 90s is an unthinkable marvel, as is Valkyria Revolution or Kid Icarus Uprising. Ultimately I think that era has its place in musical history but soundchips were a product of their time and if they had the possibility of using live-players they would have done it back then on many, many occasions, even going to absurd technical constructions to play real orchestral music for early games:

Pacific Theater of Operations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wogVemLbgkw) (This is the very first orchestral game score in history)

If you listen to a lot of old games back then, they emulate a real orchestra:

Ultraman Great (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6mVRhtFK0)
Jet Force Gemini (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1GLBzZd6RY)
Skies of Arcadia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0pfQ40o7LE&list=PL44BA2DDC90692AEF&index=7) (Orchestral Rock)
Tactics Ogre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KatHQ583UbY)


The best recent example is a few post above, here's Sheik's Theme in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRKAZrMXm4c
And performed by a symphony orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X5o1stArdE&t=1h5m02s

I get the impression "this is what it sounded like all along".

Nowadays I anticipate what the NJBP and JAGMO can conjure up from the various chiptunes. Btw remember when I said eventually JAGMO will also be working as a recording unit... well it already happened, they performed the music for the smartphone game Last Idea (courtesy of nextday).

Kaiju Crescendo - a Kickstarter by Michiru Oshima: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kaijucrescendo/kaiju-crescendo

a live concert conducted by Oshima herself featuring her music from GODZILLA and a brand new work

rewards include a recording of the concert and a 2 CD album

Vinphonic: I've been thinking about your post for a while, to the point where I've got a couple of things to say. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to tie them all together into a coherent post, so I'm going to split them into numbered points.

1. I've had more time to think about what I was trying to say with my previous, and there's something I want to add to it:

I think that when people say "this is how the song was meant to be played", what they're really saying is "this is how the song deserves to be played." It's admittedly a bit pedantic, but there's a big difference between the two phrases - the first phrase suggests that a particular arrangement is so good that it makes the original song redundant, while the second phrase is so good that it enhances the key qualities of the original song and makes for a worthy piece in its own right.

My perspective when it comes to these rearrangements is that there isn't a definitive arrangement of a piece; only countless equally valid interpretations of it. Each interpretation can speak to a listener in a unique way, enough to where the listener might consider it their favourite take on a song - but it doesn't supplant any other take. Instead, they all stand together, as songs to be enjoyed and celebrated.

A good example for this is Fisherman's Horizon from FFVIII (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeQRZZIpMwA). This is one of my favourite songs from all of Final Fantasy, and one that's had as many covers and rearrangements as a popular FF tune can be expected to have - but there isn't one that I could call the definitive version of the song. The reasons why I like the original rendition are different from why I like the orchestral/choral arrangement from the Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec album (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKTBDhT55ns), or the Piano Collections version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ryiSk995Q), or this chilled guitar cover by Songe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0YJqe3xEPU), or this relaxing jazz rendition by The Consuls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6n5INwdu7o). And to me, that's something to celebrate - that you can have so many different takes on the same material, and that each of them has something unique to offer that can speak to someone far more meaningfully than any other.

And yes, that can even include versions using synthesized instruments, soundchips, or what have you. Which I guess leads me on to my next point...

2. I really have to disagree on your thoughts regarding synthesized music.

I understand where you're coming from, and the various examples you posted do help to emphasize your point in that game music had always tried to emulate orchestral music, so why not use actual orchestras instead(also, I had no idea that Jet Force Gemini had such a good theme song - thank you for posting that!). But I just can't agree with your stance on the place of synthesized instruments, or more specifically the idea that we should move on from them unless we're going for a specifically retro/nostalgic feel. It's true that they were likely trying to recreate or emulate real-life instruments, but I don't think that means that they should be ignored now that pre-recorded music is now the rule and no longer the exception to composing video game music.

To me, these synthesized instruments and programmable sound waves are as much instruments in their own right as those in an orchestra; instruments that each have a unique tone that convey a specific feeling in a way that no other instrument can. In the same way that the particular sound of a trumpet can be used to play a gorgeous melody that stirs the soul, so too can the distinct timbre of a synthesised PS1 trumpet be used to define a melody - yes, it's not quite the 'real thing', but it is still a thing. Or what about the sound waves? Yes, an oboe or a cello can be used to create beautiful songs with a specific mood, but so can the square sound wave from an NES soundchip or the bass line from the SEGA Mega Drive's Yamaha YM2612.

Of course there are songs that would likely benefit from being played with a live ensemble/orchestra, and probably should if the resources are available (and if the orchestral arrangements already exist coughcoughDragonQuestXIcoughcough). But the "fake" instruments can do just as much to provide their own unique feeling. While the synth strings in the old Broken Sword and Tomb Raider games sound pretty dated and betray the fact that they were made in the mid-late 90s, they're just as important to the sound and quality of the music as the compositions themselves.

If you disagree with what I've said, that's fair enough. Maybe I've used bad examples, maybe I've misinterpreted what you've said, or maybe it's just more of a general philosophical agreement that can't really be resolved (like how you and Tango often disagree on the state of Japanese soundtracks). I'm more than willing to agree to disagree if that's the case. I guess I just want to say that I think there'll always be a place for fake instruments and programmable soundwaves; that it doesn't have to be used solely for deliberately old-school efforts; and that it's a bit silly to consider them redundant just because they aren't a necessity in most circles these days.

I like music, no matter what the sound, as long as it's good. :)

(Also, I just realized that this is my 100th post on this forum. Aces!)

Congrats! :)

You made some good points I must say and be more confident in your posts, there's nothing incoherent about it. In fact I completely understand your (and not you alone I bet) point. One thing, I still like to refer to a music track as a "piece" or "cue" rather than "song" because "song" implies a certain musical structure not many soundtrack tracks have. Granted nowadays everyone calls every piece of music a song, including many composers but originally song was just a form of structure for a piece of music. A piece is far more accurate in describing soundtrack music and it saves one the trouble if a composer uses any form under the sun in a track and you have to label it.

Aside from that, I got you. Of course, I did not mean soundchips should stop being used for any kind of music, whether for sweetening or only usage or that they should be forgotten. There's plenty of room for soundchip music in the gaming landscape still. I've only talked about a selection of chiptune games that would have been performed live because an orchestra was clearly in the mind of the people who programmed it. If I had the option of using real human beings, professional musicians, I would always go for them over a digital instrument if I can (whether it is an orchestral instrumet or an E-Guitar). Problem is, try playing chiptunes in a modern AAA video game with cinematic techniques and cutscenes and convince me it doesn't sound goofy. The only recent 3D game I think succeded in making chiptunes sound "natural" was Nier:Automata and in that game every bit of chiptune is contextualized (from a sound design perspective the music is great) and the very screen transforms into oldschool 2D. Yes, in 2D games chiptunes still work just as well and are still valid but in every other piece of media I know chiptunes are either played for comedic effect or when someone is playing a "retro" game.

I did not mean to discard it alltogether. You can sweeten your music with them or create some unique instruments or play with them for nostalgia or 2D games, its your choice. I own many VSTs with soundchips but what I really think they are perfect for, coming from streich's school of thought, is as a test if your music is good or not. If it sounds good and catchy with a retro soundchip, chances are high it will sound good everywhere else. The reason Fisherman's Horizon is a good tune is because of the limitations, Uematsu had to focus on melody as the center of the piece and melody is the lifeblood of music, you can translate that to anything and any genre and it will be playable and sound good. There's many things about the era of chiptunes that are worth studying :)


@Sirus: Didn't say it before, but its good seeing you around again :) Code Geass also got an orchestra concert and it will be released on CD in June, might be worth getting: https://vgmdb.net/album/85302 ;)

@cal.: That's adorable, and its good seeing a composer as great as Oshima having a good media presence. And is she seriously teasing us with a wink about how she knows certain people crave her music :D
I believe I shared the symphonic fury album with Kow Otani's music somewhere back.

Speaking of Otani, a bit of new music coming our way aside from his fantasy anime.
And I'm pleased that next season we already have a soundtrack with the Warsaw Phil again: https://vgmdb.net/album/85054

Wada, what are you doing? And what is up with this video's editing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqd18Bzre_k

I like music, no matter what the sound, as long as it sounds good.
I guess that’s why I like as much as I do. With preferences and biases and all that; except Opera. If a song is Operatic that’s cool, but straight Opera no. Iwasaki is about all I tolerate in terms of Opera.
I Know I it’s not Orchestral but the Soundtrack to Devil May Cry 5 is lit as fuck.


Uematsu had to focus on melody as the center of the piece and melody is the lifeblood of music
I Think That’s What I focus on the most.

Also, is Iwasaki doing Episode Ardyn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y00UywSuhkw

Since they fucked all the other DLC OFF, A OST release would be probably be digital.

Also, is Iwasaki doing Episode Ardyn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y00UywSuhkwHe didn't say anything about it on his social media. I'm assuming his involvement is very slim- maybe Lotus Juice asked him to write a song for him. Whatever the case, other than Lotus Juice, nothing the trailer sounds like Iwasaki. It might as well be Shoji Meguro.

Yo guys, I wanted to apologise for not being around much, but I've been like crazy busy lately. Right now I'm catching up with the thread and downloading all the things I missed since last time. Thanks massively for the music, as usual, and see you in a few hours.

You're all good, man! Sometimes, stuff just comes up and you gotta deal with it as best you can, and you did say that things have been crazy busy on your end of things lately, so that's fair enough. Do what you can, and I hope you're doing well! :)

Quite well, my friend, thank you! :)

Well... if you except the fact that a few days ago I heard the loud noise of an object falling from my bed. It happened to be the one of a great friend of mine, Mr. Verbatim, aka Blue (refering to his color), or simply F: as he liked to be called. Blue served me very well for more than 2 years. He strongly, courageously held for me about 2 terabytes of precious data inside him.

And now he passed away. The poor fellow didn't survive his fall...

I had an insane amount of rare, old stuff in Blue, some of it dating from more than ten years, the kind of stuff I don't even know how I found it since they're so obscure and hard to find! This includes very rare albums (there was about 500 GB of music), and collections of music / discographies that I have unhearted in sites or networks that don't exist anymore.

But wait! Here's the really funny part: I have NO backup of 95% of it! YAAAAAAAAY!!

I knew very well that it's *essential* to backup your important stuff, but since I'm so busy nowadays, I just postponed that arduous process many times... Too many times, obviously.

Trust me, that won't happen again. I just bought a Canvio Basics from Toshiba (which, according to various articles, seems to be a brand of HDD less prone to failures than others), and I use it EXCLUSIVELY to backup important data, i.e. there will be at least 2 copies of each precious stuff, one in it, one elsewhere. That should be enough for the moment. When I'll have more free time to devote to this, I'll do a massive overhaul of my data, with multiple backups, just to be on the safe side.

So the lesson today is: don't wait until it's too late to protect what you treasure.

Oh no! Sad to hear about that. I recently got a new desktop PC and it has more limited inside storage than what I was used to. So I kept a lot of music I don't listen to as much on an external hard drive and didn't copy it over to the new hard drive. Mostly I have FLAC of anything I bought on CD recently copied over but not all the massive library of MP3s of stuff I have over the years. So to create a backup of those things, I bought a second external hard drive and copied everything over. That way it is unlikely that both of them will fail. All the FLAC files are on both externals plus on the current PC and I have the CDs. I'm giving the details mostly so that people can understand a practical way of backups.

Sorry for your loss, arthierr... I know what's losing a friend like that. That's why my new friends runs in RAID1, so if anything happens to one of them, I'll always have the other one. And I don't even have to remember to do a backup.

Thanks for the nice comments, guys!

On the same subject, I remember having read a very useful post written by Tango in this thread, where he described his personal backup methods. Now would be a good time to read it again, but I don't know where it is! (I stumbled upon it by chance while browsing this HUMONGOUS thread, months ago)

If Tango could re-post it or quote it, this would be very helpful.

My condolences arthy, that shouldn't happen to anybody. I have enough backups and cloud saves since the last time a harddrive died so I think I'm good now but I also advise everyone to back up some precious data, in 2019 there's no better time.



Newsflash


Keiji Inai on a roll in summer (I'm still disappointed by a lack of a soundtrack release for Arrow of Orion but maybe later this year when season 2 of Danmachi drops in July):

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?



Sure I do... (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x74obdz). Nothing screams big orchestral score like nonsense titles and late-night anime fetish-bait. The only way they could make me fall out of my chair these days is if that thights and foot fetish softporn () has Hirano and the Warsaw Philharmonic.


DoReMi



Holy hell! Keiichi Oku might return for new DoReMi (film) projects. Drops in 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHphSHS8zPo)


ReZero



OVA + Second season confirmed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YANqqz0qS8). Suehiro is actually becoming a selling point in a trailer for the new ReZero projects (and its really good).
Also, Granbelm and a second season of Hataraku in summer.


Fujisawa's next project is in NGNL Zero style again (show looks like a typical shitty light novel trash adaption so can't blame him for not caring but perhaps the medieval fantasy scenario yields some good results again): Maybe good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVIdUuUCZUU)

More of Ruka Kawada's best work (if you like hypercharged cutesy chamber ensemble which is both fluffy and classy): OVA + Season 3 confirmed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=mOtU-yOBt9Y)


Dinoknight Ryusoulger



A mix of real orchestra and synth orchestra and the usual silliness, there's Kaijuu brass and a lovely fanfare and some good tracks straight out of an 80s TV show amidst the usual rock and banging: Ex (https://picosong.com/wbPcu/)
It will be a year until the full picture with three more sessions and a movie so who knows what it will be in the end. But aside from the banging drums it sounds very retro: Practical Effects + Digital effects is always a good combo but the rest is too much ADHD for me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUO0KeiBhw&t=29s)



Spring Season 2019 Preview

From the spring season I have high expecations of:


Fafner Beyond



Warsaw confirmed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYXL2yzDMhc)
It's an established sound at this point. You know what you get, some first-class anime music.


Twilight



Preview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-C3k_t-EzI)
After a long absence, Souhei Kano is back again with his second anime score.


Million Arthur Season 2



More of Go Shiina's orchestral rollercoaster (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZnwLI3ATLI)
A soundtrack should not be far off now. It has a good chance of being his best work.


Pazudora: Progamer Arc


Kaoru Wada together with Masatsugu Shinozaki whose string group plays on pretty much any Anime soundtrack ever made.

Wada condirmed a new session and plenty of brass play in february.


Stray Dogs 3



Iwasaki and even more Opera would be reason enough to love it. I consider his work for the TV series among his best and if he can add and expand on the orchestral and operatic pieces of the previous scores, then we have a winner.


Kenja no Mago



Popolocrois Reloaded (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXDk-isqLE&t=30s)

Kow Otani, like many of his veteran companions, returns on the scene.


Worth a listen:

Birthday Wonderland

:small.jpg

Harumi Fuuki's first anime film score. Orchestra confirmed.


Lupin III: Fujiko's Lie

https://u.livechart.me/anime/poster_images/9198/0ec4421141cf9f3e972170208f41dc3a:small.jpg

It's still a bit surreal to see Lupin having his renaissance in the late 2010s but here we are.


Kimetsu no Yaiba

https://u.livechart.me/anime/poster_images/3311/07479cf41ac8f58a3d5d4139a0e83f32:small.jpg

A collaboration between Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina, an unexpected combination but I'm interested.


Shin-chan: Movie 27

https://u.livechart.me/anime/poster_images/8229/02141bb275fd0269a61afb0e8cacad98:small.jpg

I wonder if they take after Doraemon and release the movie scores now but I doubt it. SOmeone from IMAGINE scored it no doubt.


Shimajirou no Hero Land

:small.jpg

Speaking of IMAGINE, Shingo Nishimura is at it again with wonderful music. Shame its such a short score like last year.


Pandora to Akubi



Preview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9fnVoU3Uhw)
The year Takahiro Obata launches on the scene with three projects in spring. He's classically trained with a focus on Jazz composition.He also composed music for a baseball anime called Cinderella Nine.


Hibike Euphonium: Finale

:small.jpg

I anticipate what concert work Matsuda will conjure for the finale.


Gundam Origin

:small.jpg

Gundam Origin might not have any new material but I really expect a continuation after the first season ends, so perhaps Hattori will continue to write some more.



I doubt this list will change much but since there's TOO MUCH anime this season, there might be more worthwhile music.

that thights and foot fetish softporn

Never mind this orchestra crap... what is that show and how can I watch it? ;)

I don't why, Tango, but your post reminded me that Masamichi Amano once scored anime porn back in 1996 with Legend of the Blue Wolves (and for anyone just tuning in: yes, he seriously did - and with some aplomb if I remember right*). And now that's got me thinking about a question I'd like to ask members of the thread:

What's the best orchestral score you've ever heard that was made for either an incredibly suggestive fanservice-filled show/film or outright pornography? I know a couple have been mentioned on this thread recently for fanservice shows (the only one I remember had an anthromorphized boob with arms and legs and Wind Waker eyes; it was terrifying), but I'm curious to know what the rest of y'all think.

The idea of giving a grand, beautiful orchestral score to something that's mainly made to get people off really fascinates me (and not in a bile fascination way either; I have a general fondness towards erotica or other suggestive material that puts a lot of artistry into making everything look, sound and - forgive the expression - feel as good as it can be), and I'd love to hear some examples.

*I don't know why, but I have an old post of Tango's talking about Legend of the Blue Wolves saved somewhere, so I thought I'd quote it for newer members of the thread. Enjoy:

WARNING: Mentions of sexual acts. Keep reading at your own peril.

Really awful piece of gay pornography glued hamfistedly together with a drab sub-plot about the army trying to wipe out a race of killers on Pluto...Right, this scene is where a fat man attacks some guy, then his mates come in and they rape him. Then the guy's boyfriend shows up and cuts off the fat guy's cock. This scene is about some spaceships flying around. This scene is a blowjob. You can have a 70 piece orchestra. Enjoy!

The rape scene is track 10. The key change at 0:58 highlights the removal of the protagonists underpants and the debut of his enormous penis. Yes, folks - Amano actually acknowledges the appearance of a penis with an orchestral flourish. At 1:21 the blowjob continues apace and the other gentlemen appear and begin molesting the protagonist. At 2:37 his boyfriend runs to rescue him; in the mean time he is penetrated by a fat man (2:57) and forced to perform fellatio on yet another man (3:20) and then the fat man (3:50). At 4:05 the protagonist's angry boyfriend appears with a knife and at 4:20 uses it to remove the rapist's penis.

I wish I were joking. WTF, Japan???

I wonder if the orchestra knew what they were recording? Or did they just play it safe and say "Right, chaps - this is a score to an animated film. Let's go!" and leave it there? I'm guessing they weren't scoring to picture!

I can't imagine a respected classical symphony orchestra populated with sixty or seventy devout Catholics particularly relishing the subject matter of this show...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOd3Gbe1Abg

Suehiro's next work will be Fire Force. Doesn't sound too bad from the trailers so far, the orchestra is quite substantial.

And to think I was going to take Sunmer off... Well I am but it’s difficult when you have a staff list like Dr. STONE and all that other stuff you mentioned.

I'm looking forward to the music of Kenja no Mago.

There hasn't been an official anime tv series soundtrack release by Kow Otani since The Pilot's Love Song...in 2014!

It's a nice surprise to see Souhei Kano's name in that list; I've listened to Fractale countless times.

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Blue Stinger AKA the start of Sahashi's glory years.

It's a nice surprise to see Souhei Kano's name in that list; I've listened to Fractale countless times.
it seems to be only a small ensemble sadly. he posted a recording picture on twitter last week with only a few strings players.


also on the topic of twitter, michiru finally made one yesterday: https://twitter.com/OshimaMichiru

Damn, such a nice collection :D. Great contribution guys.

it seems to be only a small ensemble sadly. he posted a recording picture on twitter last week with only a few strings players.It's a common practice in Japan to record separate ensembles and then mix them together due to the country being a tincan and having no room for large recording studios. 10 string instruments is pretty average for your typical Japanese ensemble. I also hear woodwinds in the trailer, so I'm certain Souhei got himself a decent budget. Certainly more than Iwasaki did with Ulysses for a similar approach.

I wasn't half as impressed with Fractale as some other members here, but I do look forward to hearing this. For something recorded in a tincan, the sound mixing is surprisingly spacious.

It's a common practice in Japan to record separate ensembles and then mix them together due to the country being a tincan and having no room for large recording studios. 10 string instruments is pretty average for your typical Japanese ensemble. I also hear woodwinds in the trailer, so I'm certain Souhei got himself a decent budget. Certainly more than Iwasaki did with Ulysses for a similar approach.

I wasn't half as impressed with Fractale as some other members here, but I do look forward to hearing this. For something recorded in a tincan, the sound mixing is surprisingly spacious.
the track you are hearing in the teaser trailer is from the image album, which was all synth except for 1 violin.

https://picosong.com/wb2Dk/

it is hard to say whether the image album is close to what the soundtrack will sound like. but on kickstarter budget it wouldn't be surprising.

the track you are hearing in the teaser trailer is from the image album, which was all synth except for 1 violin.Ouch, it's painfully obvious in the full piece. But, my original point still stands. Besides, In This Corner of the World was also crowdfunded, and had a fairly sizeable orchestra. I see no reason why this wouldn't.

Some good news for Vin: Endro gets a soundtrack release, albeit on bonus CD with the second volume of the Bluray release - it should release on April 24th. It should make a short but fun little suite. Certainly not worth 6,800 yen for perhaps ten minutes of worthwhile music but I'm sure it will turn up here.

Hakubo: It's Souhei Kano. His first scoring assignment in eight years. He could record this with Didgeridoo, Alpine horn and Whoopee Cushion and I'd still be interested. Image Albums are rare these days, and when they do appear, they don't command large ensembles or even orchestras as they used to. The music is truly wonderful, even if the performance is cheap. The picture Kano tweeted of a small chamber string ensemble is a little concerning - real instruments are at least confirmed, but not a full string section and not an orchestra. It wouldn't be the first time that a small ensemble is recorded at one session with a bigger ensemble turning up at a later session. Even though it's crowdfunded, I don't think Yamamoto would compromise on the music. We will see. The film is on release in just under two months. It looks like a slow-moving, introspective romance so I'm not expecting orchestral virtuosity, polychromatic brassy action, or furious fugues - I think it's going to be tortured and tragic, and I think it's going to be splendid - orchestra or no orchestra.

Never would have expected to see the day Oshima casually tweets about her work on FMA (I recently listened to it again and still one of the best scores ever written).

@BladeLight: Since its the 20th anniversary of his glory years, a few words from the man himself:


When I was twenty, I went to the cinema to watch 007's "The Spy Who Loved Me" and somehow I thought, "I want to be involved with this kind of work (cool movie with cool music)." It can be said that the dream came true. However, the pressure at the time of contracting is extremely large. There are many times when the number of requested tracks is unusual, especially SF animation and special effects require more than 50 pieces in a music menu. Meet with the director and the producer, decide the whole musical concept for yourself (in my case this will take quite some time), prepare a specific motif, and "sure, the score!". In most cases, the number of pieces you have to write per day = chills (sweat). Well, I don't think there is anything in the world that says "Let's go on a fun job" etc. and other composers are writing with the same conditions, and I'm going to get over at full speed. It's quite painful when I'm wandering on the battlefield in the shunfield with my assistant. However, if you go out in front of the enemy, you will notice a marked difference in the finish, and when you go to the studio and make a sound, you will end up tasting the "I can't say anything." So I want to avoid that. But the deadline is approaching every moment.
The reality is that you have to spend a few thrilling days, and this is the only hard part of this job, and if you can endure it, the composer's own composition itself has the fun of traveling to various places. In fact, the feeling when I went home after finishing recording in the studio is similar to when I traveled for the same number of days and got home.
Start reading the script of the work you are working on, and follow the path where the scriptwriters and directors walked while watching the content and materials. They walk around to discover the world they saw and bring back the sound they heard there. Or come find what they missed. Of course, it does not always work well, and you get lost, or you can not go on a scheduled journey due to an accident or something. Sometimes I can come home with a good feeling of souvenirs, sometimes I become so frustrated and "Oh, I didn't do it like this." But you know! It is certain that something will be completed. I'm a professional composer, so I have to go home with something, but when I bring home the finest souvenirs, I'm glad. It's like when the protagonist of a Hollywood movie gets over the crisis. Is it just over? But the roots are so honest that I feel like that. ... several times a year.
After working myself to the bone, I took my first long vacation. My affiliation office understood my own aspirations with pleasure and adjusted the schedule, so I spent a fairly long time without doing anything. Because I was raised in a mother and child family and I was not economically wealthy, I have always been working since school days, so this vacation was for my life. I felt that the system went down temporarily while I was taking photos, walking away from music and watching movies. It's just a reset. And after going up to date, I'm going to work again, and of course I'm continuing my 'composition trip' at the same pace as before, but I feel like I was able to find a bit more of a good souvenir than before.


@FatherDougal: Cream Lemon: Episode 40 has some good music and Joshiochi!!'s final sex scene is a concerto with a big orchestra and the climax in sync to the music, its the closest to Blue Wolves Japan has come, it also has art by freaking Satoshi Urushihara. There's many more I'm sure and I remember some porn parodies having good music


@Tango:

Some good news that is :)
Since I also adore the irish folk tunes in it, there's more to it for me. If my ears work there are a few new pieces in the later episodes (and I guess one new for the finale). Its a short and often formulaic show but there are a few episodes I adore (Fujisawa and the episode director plays no small part). I doubt it will get a continuation but then again, I don't understand what makes a mega hit among CGDCT shows these days. I would love for Fujisawa to write more in this style, his next cutesy show this season seems to have a chamber-sized ensemble and sound lovely but I doubt an orchestra is present.

The recent episode of Kotobuki might be the biggest aerial battle I've seen after Independence Day. There's a certain wonderful moment when hundreds of enemies come in and its just so great. There's also a piece I swear was inspired by Secret Weapons Over Normandy (coincidentally, it is played when a "secret weapon plane" appears). The finale packs a punch for sure and I wonder if he has written a choral piece for the last episode. Needless to say only a week left until the soundtrack and this series needs 3 seasons and a movie. I imagine Mizushima's word alone (with GuP fame and prestige) is enough and if he wants to make a movie it will get made (he's fully booked until 2022 but perhaps a movie project for Kotobuki is on his shedule). I can only imagine what Hamaguchi could do in this style if they go the extra mile for a movie.

In regards to the Orville, I still have to catch up, but I remember being somewhat disappointed in Indentity Part 2 since they switched composers and went for typical cliche (80s) Hollywood action style instead of a dramatic and operatic battle for earth. Oh well, at least it looks and "sounds" bonkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHsBPoXJOP4

My own personal taste combined with the general "thrust" of this thread makes me discount a lot of the score, but you're right - it's all really good fun... I could just have done with A LOT MORE orchestral score. But that a show like this even HAS an orchestra is a miracle, and what there is... is awfully infectious, so I'm not complaining. It's still not worth 6,800 damn yen though. ;)

The Orville... yeah... I don't know what they were thinking. Identity is clearly one big episode. Why the hell did they change composers for part 2? It's like having a movie change composer half way through. Both episodes should've been scored by Andrew Cottee. Why on earth did he get the "score-lite" episodes?

Oh well, the score was still good... and I'll take 80s Hollywood Action Cliche over ANYTHING else... I want more theme in these scores, though. The melodic content is dropping.

Kotobuki continues to make me very, very happy. Hamaguchi of the Ah My Goddess movie is still there and waiting for another big Warsaw project.

for anyone interested, here is the full image album of hakubo/twilight: https://mega.nz/#!zo5EUIRI!Qtj0R_tG67IWPlE--o-u50t0O3TV9YSFAc1gJlcvogE


Never would have expected to see the day Oshima casually tweets about her work on FMA (I recently listened to it again and still one of the best scores ever written).
one of her tweets says that "Bratja/Brothers" was a last minute request by the director. he asked for it right before the recording in russia. she says she composed it in only 30 minutes. and to think it ended up being one of her most well-known compositions.

Considering Sugiyama wrote Japan's unoffical anthem during coffee break and composers from Ifukube to Hattori have on many occasions just a few days to score a feature-length film, this doesn't knock me it out of my chair as much as it should but its still impressive and a testament to the heigh skill ceiling the best of Japanese composers operate.

You should also give Souhei Kano's image album more spotlight, a wonderfull little score like that deserves it ;)



Turns out Endro is not the only CGDCT show with an orchestra in winter. I checked the final episode of "An Angel flew down on me" on a whim since I heard some nice music in the first episode and by god, they are killing me with this stuff. This outclasses whatever Ruka Kawada did for the finale of Kiniro Mosiaic tenfold. A standalone fifteen minute stageplay/musical with wonderful orchestration/sound in parts and relativly big ensemble. The only way they could have made it more impressive is if they got a composer of the caliber of Tanaka or Asakawa to give it some more gravitas, but then again, this is a moe show:



An Angel Flew Down on Me - The Stageplay (https://vimeo.com/326723534)

Warning: If you have no high tolerance for sugar, you will not survive. Music composed by Takuro Iga, another young classical composer with a Jazz background.

Its undeniable there's a lot of passion and artistry put into this genre, another small microcosm within the vast Japanese media landscape of microcosms, a little bubble filled with passion and love, and I'm sure there's some wonderful music in the making in it for these type of shows. Not that its anything new, just listen to this: Ex1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN63Tzfj-H4) / Ex2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I8xhHM4lC4) / Ex3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3f3ygmuyl0) / Ex4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbKiZcsP4qY)

It's a blessing we get to hear it, considering these shows are originally made for a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people and yet they somehow get an orchestra and real highly skilled composers, illustrators and animators love to participate in it. Actually, I prefer it that way. Put it in a glass jar and don't touch it. Let them do their thing, no matter how much global exposure they get. It could go places...


And since Father Dougal mentioned erotica, we live in the age where you can actually have expectations of erotic shows:



Not Simoun (https://picosong.com/wbgZ9/) / And Mr. Coda begins to grow a beard (https://picosong.com/wbgZS/)

If the show also had flying seashells and a war between two nations, it could have been something, but a soundtrack for Radiant was announced and his Conception will release as enclosure shortly so a little romance score ain't bad. Especially since he stepped up his game a little.

I'll admit that this is a bit of an odd question, but I've been thinking about it for the last couple of hours, and I'm killing time so I may as well ask:

Do you have any orchestral soundtracks that energize you just from listening to them? Where listening to a particular favourite fills you with joy and enthusiasm and all other kinds of positive feelings that give you the energy that's been sapped by day-to-day tedium, shitty nonsense in your life/elsewhere, or whatever goes on?

I'm feeling a bit like that today, and I'm thinking of maybe putting on either the Last of the Summer Wine soundtrack selection by Ronnie Hazlehurst or the End of Evangelion soundtrack by Shiro Sagisu at some point during the week to cheer me up. But I'm curious to know what other people listen to in order to feel reinvigorated again; maybe I'll check them out and find some new favourites. It can't hurt to try, after all. :)

(Also, Vinphonic: I decided to listen to the Domekano Main Theme you posted while writing this, and it's a shockingly good theme. The slow piece combining strings and accordion from 1:59 to 4:00 is especially great. Thank you for posting that! EDIT: And the Summer Night Dream piece as well; just listened to that and it's similarly great! This is the first time I've ever listened to Masato Coda's work, but he can make some damn fine music!)

Turns out Endro is not the only CGDCT show with an orchestra in winter. I checked the final episode of "An Angel flew down on me" on a whim since I heard some nice music in the first episode and by god, they are killing me with this stuff. This outclasses whatever Ruka Kawada did for the finale of Kiniro Mosiaic tenfold. A standalone fifteen minute stageplay/musical with wonderful orchestration/sound in parts and relativly big ensemble. The only way they could have made it more impressive is if they got a composer of the caliber of Tanaka or Asakawa to give it some more gravitas, but then again, this is a moe show:



An Angel Flew Down on Me - The Stageplay (https://vimeo.com/326723534)

Warning: If you have no high tolerance for sugar, you will not survive. Music composed by Takuro Iga, another young classical composer with a Jazz background.

https://www.twitter.com/igatakurou/status/1110573961744515072

https://www.twitter.com/igatakurou/status/1110573961744515072
this is actually how all anime music is made

new sakura wars game announced for release this winter with music by tanaka

Here's the trailer: Project Sakura Wars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXKcXeJjeUg&t=1m)

It will be PS4 exclusive like Bloodborne, Valkyria Revolution and Gravity Daze 2 so I expect the usual sony budget which means luxurious ensemble.
Second, I hope the new version of the theme is just for the anniversary of the franchise in general but since this looks like its going to be a "reset" rather than sequel, I expect it has some themes from the original game. Lets ask Tanaka:


New Sakura Wars finally announced! !

Today, the details of "New Sakura War" have finally been announced.

Fivteen years of cherry blossoms, and several years after the last revue show

At this time of the year cherry blossoms in Japan are in full bloom and I feel it in my heart.

Finally, I am very happy to be able to report to you.

For all Sakura fans in Japan and around the world, I am really sorry to have kept you waiting.

And you waited for a long time.

Thank you very much for your support of the game and my music.

Again, it's Sakura time.



I have composed a reworked version of the original theme song in the trailer "の! Including the Imperial Opera Group ~ New Chapter ~

I have composed everything for the game. The music I finished takes you to the age of romance and sacrifice and its comparable to previous Sakura entries.

I have the utmost confidence in every little piece of music I wrote. Hopefully, these pieces and songs reach your heart, and for all Sakura fans around the world, I hope that it will be an important piece of music.



From now on, until the game release date, more details will be revealed.

Anyway, I hope you have been waiting for this and I hope your expectations will be fulfilled just like you imagined.

I have to respond! Because all the staff do their best.

Thank you very much for waiting! !

I will keep my feelings of joy for myself (for now) considering I once started visiting this thread in earnest with shares from this franchise and I still hold its music in high regard, but it looks like I'm not the only one whose excited ;) I always thought Tanaka found his spark with Sakura Wars, very much like Star Wars (the original three movies) played to Williams greatest strengths, a perfect match. I hope it will go multimedia with a new anime series and movie (still, its a bit bizzare they go full on global marketing when it was pretty much a Japan only franchise). At the very least I have to prepare myself to work on one of his game scores on a sleepless night yet again :D

Of course Tanaka also attended the Anime Gala Concert as a special guest and hey, music from Gundam SEED was finally performed in concert... baby steps ;)






In other news Oshima reports again she is busy as ever with new projects in Paris, New York, Budapest and Moscow.

And are my ears decieving me or has Inai a BIG ensemble for Royal Tutor. K�niglicher Familienlehrer: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07PPLLB7S/

Wow, see Cheburashka as ambassador of this concert it's so cute and adorable, but also very joyful for me as Russian man :)

And are my ears decieving me or has Inai a BIG ensemble for Royal Tutor. K�niglicher Familienlehrer: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07PPLLB7S/
since there's no rip yet, you can listen to it on spotify for free: https://open.spotify.com/album/1f47iVv1gw1Lid8FMTBxa5

seems like usual inai

Another present from strk_freak I had the pleasure of working on:



Hiroshi Takaki
Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger
Tokyo Studio Orchestra



Grand entrance of the noble thieves (https://picosong.com/wbt6M/) / March of Villainy (https://picosong.com/wbDwD/) / Battle Spirit (https://picosong.com/wbtbq/) / The noble thieves depart (https://picosong.com/wbtbY/)

Download (https://mega.nz/#!L0IwEaCD!zbFmmWhTd_xNpyE4w1s6NW3NXryRF6onNiLOJ10GLhc)

I've also included his Precure-style orchestral beat-action tracks. You can include them to the original folder with no problems if you fancy them and truely make this his largest Precure score to date (There's also a little bonus inside ;)).
Another year, another Sentai, again with asinine music presentation but that's how it goes. I've worked on it to present the score in its best light. A full-on jazzy Sentai is a welcome change of pace but of course the orchestra remains the backbone for Takaki. It has all checkmarks, hero theme, villain theme, march, and swelling final cue. Its by all accounts what a new season of Precure probably would have sounded like if he continued to stay on board but since Tachibana joined the series its actually listenable again: https://picosong.com/wbtQz/

The credit for the albums belongs to strk_freak





EDIT: lol, Tanaka wrote a mini-opera for One Piece episode 877: Time of Parting! Pudding's Last Wish! (https://picosong.com/wbtvG/)


Episode 877, have you seen it?

The tears filled naturally in real time as I made it.

After that, everyone's response is great!

I'm really thankful to you.

All the staff of the wonderful original work of Mr. Oda, How is it best to express? I thought.

One day, I want to realize it with a live orchestra. Please expect it.

He also redesigned his blog for Sakura Wars and keeps on gushing and gushing (he didn't do that for anything One Piece) and will tell some stories of the music-making along the road (he talked a bit about the new theme song and how he choose certain keys based on the vocal quality of the VAs). Part of the new theme song can actually be heard in the SEGA presentation where Tanaka appears on stage to give a little insight into the musical direction along with a (I believe) new lovely arrangement of the Asakusa district and there's a story reason for original themes to appear: New Chapter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57QcTxgUhIs) (He sure likes to torture Miyashiro :D). The game will also be cutscene-heavy but I don't think they were scored to picture (would be the icing on the cake though).

Btw, Akifumi Tada is involved with the arrangements for Tanaka's compositions.

I knew I recognized it from somewhere http://jeremyrobson.com/refigaro.mp3

I knew I recognized it from somewhere http://jeremyrobson.com/refigaro.mp3

I feel like I'm missing some context. That song you posted sounds familiar, but I can't remember where it's from, or why it's been posted. Would you mind elaborating on it, if that's okay?

I knew I recognized it from somewhere http://jeremyrobson.com/refigaro.mp3
i don't recognize this but it sounds very hattori

I just reserved a ticket for this event coming up in a couple of weeks in LA:



Was wondering if anyone else in the thread was planning to attend or if anyone has a question they'd like me to overcome my introverted personality and ask.

Oddly, I'm perhaps most excited about finally picking up the CD without CA sales tax or those specialty label shipping charges. It's the little things that add up in life.

I would LOVE to go to that. Suffice to say, unless I win the lottery that's unlikely... :(

Precure Star Twinkle: I like what I hear!

Harmony Gold TheaterSorry, wouldn't give them my money even if they brought back Wagner from the dead to perform.

Sorry, wouldn't give them my money even if they brought back Wagner from the dead to perform.

I am probably going to regret asking this, but...

What in the world did the Harmony Gold Theater do to your family?

What in the world did the Harmony Gold Theater do to your family?
https://kotaku.com/why-you-havent-seen-any-new-macross-in-the-west-for-nea-5990702

Long story short, Harmony Gold is an extremely corrupt real estate company that's been holding the Macross license hostage internationally for decades. From what I've heard, they also have ties to the mafia.

I didn�t think they were still around, then again we�d have Macross if they weren�t.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G1rjzMLRSQ
Feat. Akihiro Honda, Akifumi Tada (Beast), Yasunori Nishiki, Shingo Nishimura and Kenta Higashioji (Who will do big things I guarantee it)

Also, I wonder who orchestrated RELEASE THE SPYCE �cause it sounds really nice.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.monstersandcritics.com/anime/high-score-girl-season-2-release-date-2019-ova-episodes-13-14-15-confirmed-high-school-girl-manga-ending-hi-score-girl-2-netflix/amp/

Hopefully the next season will have real brass.

As the recent trailer for a new chapter for Sakura Wars dropped, it got me to reminisce about my first series of shares I made many years ago and the thought that this is perhaps the most musical franchise for a composer ever created. So let's take a little detour into a franchise that started with a poem about blooming flowers.




If I had to explain what Sakura Wars is in 30 seconds, this would be my go to choice:

THIS IS SAKURA TAISEN (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynAHiMu9Pe8&t=47s)

I have to say, its one of the greatest theme songs ever written. For me, it clearly surpasses GaoGaiGar, King Gainer or even Sakura Wars 3. There's an elememt of panache, romance and bashfulness in the chorus that is among the most powerful things I've ever heard. Its especially noticable in the final piece of the movie, a musical "fuck yeah!!!!!!!!" moment. Of course, later in life, I would learn about his adoration for Ennio Morricone and how much he influenced this particular score:


Sakura Taisen: Katsudō Shashin
Kohei Tanaka and Members of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
[Masterpiece Edition]



It still gives me goosebumps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZ9klncr2M)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!2pZCUS4a!M1TDS5148aM9-40-rxtZQmknPJ6CL2jZe58Kn_iTDmw)

I urge everyone to replace the old folder with this one. At the very least give it a listen. It's up there with scores like Fullmetal Alchemist and showcases what a master Tanaka is with a full orchestra.
For me this is his highest point and if there's one piece I would have to chose from his career to send him to the heavenly pantheon, the ending of this movie would be it.


It was music I discovered at the right time, back when Japanese aesthetic, sound, instruments and tones were still exotic and not commonday experiences for me. I actually don't know anymore how I got in contact with the OSTs for the series but somehow I found myself a copy of Sakura Wars the Movie soundtrack along with some used cds of the TV and OVA score. Back then I only heard about Tanaka-san from a TV-broadcast of One Piece and was hooked.

In retrospect, these series of scores got me into the whole "Japanese music exposure trip". Naturally I wanted to find out about the series as well and I quickly got my hands on various information.

The first game was set in a fictional steampunk version of the Japanese Taisho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taish%C5%8D_period) era and if you list the facts, its just the best possible musical opportunity ever:

- Steampunk
- SciFi
- Mecha (with swords)
- Romance / War & Peace
- Evil Organizations battle Secret Military Protectors
- Fantasy
- Revue/Theater/Opera

Especially noticable is the fact that this series has its roots in Japanese poetry, literature and classical aesthetic. There's a certain sense of panache and gracefulness that is best symbolised with the sakura (cherry blossom) theme and there seems to be no greater inspiration for romantic themes considering Yamashita's theme for Chihayafuru was largly inspired by such a scenery.
There's just something about the "Sakura aesthetic" that is such a perfect fit for classical romantic music.

But the series also covers different national and geographical themes, from Tokyo to Paris. A sixth game based in Germany was planed but cancelled:


Tanaka's music sounds just as great in France as it does in Japan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpRleOldM6g). If the franchise is successful again, the possibilites are endless.

And thus, Tanaka wrote the best scores ever written for Dating Sims because, at the end of the day, Sakura Wars is a Dating-Sim visual novel... with tactical strategy (which largly inspired Valkyria Chronicles), and it took the nation by storm in the late 90s. Sakura Wars was as popular as Dragon Quest in the country and the revue/theater program of this franchise had a run until a few years ago. To give you an impression, the theme song on youtube has over 25 Million views. Sakura Wars is a big deal in Japan. During the period of its success, Tanaka wrote his heart out, as a crossmedia franchise he wrote hours of revue songs, operatic pieces and tons of orchestral material, full of vigor and passion and exhubertant joy:


Ex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoCJMy2Fg0E)
Kohei Tanaka, one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived

All this culminated into a movie production back in 2001 with Production I.G and a luxurious budget was given for the music. Tanaka went above and beyond the call of duty and took on the mantle of operatic film composer, commanded a full symphonic ensemble, reprising many pieces and songs from the game and wrote a rollercoaster. Figuratively and literaly, as the movie features the greatest symphonic rollercoaster ride in cinematic history (https://vimeo.com/215999547).
Sakura Wars is one instance where "now on the big screen" actually meant something. It is the culmination of Tanaka's work for a franchise he has great personal affection for, not only for the music but for everything else.


Many news reports have one thing in common. They noticed that the person most excited about the presentation were not the fans behind the camera but the composer in front of it.

After years and years of waiting for a continuation all hope was long gone but after years and years of waiting, finally, things were set in motion three years ago, a revival of the series was brought to various important business venues and production was greenlight. Many of the original staff are no longer working or were replaced for various reasons (but I sense the same sense of panache with the new staff), however, there is one aspect you can always count on in Japan to be given the highest priority: The composer and his music. Tanaka finished over 50 BGM pieces, 40 cutscenes (which would actually suggest locked-picture scoring) and revue songs for Shin Sakura Taisen and together with his friends from IMAGINE, this will hopefully be the first of many new scores for a franchise that deserves a resurrection. Let me finish with the words of the banner in the SEGA office and the words that hang among the entire production: Restart to revive your dreams!


Shin Sakura Taisen, in devlopment for three years, releases in 2020.

So here's to a revival of an important video game series for Japan (for many representing an era of Japanese video games) with some kickass music (and I hope that continues). Inspired again for the new chapter, Shin Sakura Taisen most likely symbolises the beginning of the new era of Japan, in similar vein as the pure expression of music that started in 1996, inspired by a poem about blooming flowers:

Reiwa (The era of happiness and peace).

I can now say that 1996 was the year Tanaka grew a beard. I dare even say that the entire franchise is his magnum opus.

I got Sakura Wars TV for $10 and bucks and it was fun enough. I haven't seen anything else though.
Good to see Tite Kubo still around.

i found this video uploaded by senzoku gakuen today: Yui Arimoto / Piano Concerto in F Minor "Recollection" (https://youtu.be/qU3ia_FwHG0?t=51)

only in japan can a student write a piano concerto and have it performed by an orchestra of their peers

there's also some new videos of toshiyuki watanabe, kosuke yamashita, and kohei tanaka

only in japan can a student write a piano concerto and have it performed by an orchestra of their peers
I'd say it's fairly common to have student orchestras perform works by students. I had a few of mine performed, though I can't say they came close to the quality of Senzoku Gakuen's performances.

toshiyuki watanabe, kosuke yamashita, and kohei tanaka

Wow, only took them two years. Shame there's no new concert pieces but that Mothra suite, that's my jam... Tanaka is as always energetic, laughing and adorable.



Toshiyuki Watanabe / Kohei Tanaka / Kosuke Yamashita
Senzoku Gakuen Composer Festival 2017 -Contest of Dreams-
[Heisei Medley] Performed by the Senzoku Gakuen New Philharmonic Orchestra



01. Heisei Medley - Toshiyuki Watanabe
02. Heisei Medley - Kohei Tanaka
03. Heisei Medley - Kosuke Yamashita
04. Encore - Kohei Tanaka
05. Encore - Kosuke Yamashita
06. Encore - Toshiyuki Watanabe

Sample (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1qwKd1-UE&t=1m36s)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!zhZxxCSZ!W-T7RXg8TWOOAbizH8WFEnd1SW5hrBjXgNOcToIPSDo)

So here is a question that had just occurred to me.

How do you guys keep track of the soundtrack releases? I looked up the IFMCA's 2018 nomination list, and I was floored by just how many soundtracks I had missed from last year. Some soundtracks that I knew about but wrote off without listening, but mostly I just never heard of them. First Man, Suspira, Max and Me, The Sisters Brothers, all great scores that I didn't even know existed. It's even worse when it comes to Japanese soundtracks, because unless you actually watch the anime shows or keep up with the movies coming out, you will have no idea they exist.

Sites like VGMDB helps, but only so far. They cover just the spectrum of Japanese releases and video games, but don't cover Western film and television scores. I would say Filmtracks is decent, but the layout is horrificly dated, and obviously designed by someone with only an adequate knowledge of site design. Film Score Monthly has that same problem; I have no comment on the zine itself. Never subscribed.

I used to just follow along on FFShrine, keeping up with the download releases, but with more and more uploaders using sites with 24 hour limits and <100 KB download speed over sites like Mediafire or MEGA, as well as the increasing amount of off-limit labels and artists, that method has started to show it's age.

Coming Soon... A new restoration of an old score by a British/French composer that has a magnificent re-recording by the crack Stromberg/Morgan team, but which was never properly released in its original soundtrack recording...

A recent Bluray had an (almost completely) isolated score option which provided a better quality "source" from which to work... It will never be perfect... but I think this is as good as the original recording has ever been heard, by a long shot:

https://picosong.com/wQedC/

Thanks Tango! Now I don't have to doublepost to link to my newest complete soundtrack!

It's for From Software's newest game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Thread 231666). Contrasted with all the previous "SoulsBorne" games, Sekiro has music for each area of the game, as well as combat music for both the regular enemies you face as well as the various minibosses. The emphasis is still on the boss music, which let's be honest, is some of the best in gaming, so I don't think anyone is complaining. Yuka Kitamura proves to be the best at bringing out the story of the fight - the personality, the difference in tone and style, the narrative - through the music. Nobody else knows how to let the music tell half of the story with boss fights half as well as Yuka Kitamura. It's no surprise she has become Miyazaki's musical half after Dark Souls 2.

Thanks doublehex.

But I have a confession to make:

Is it bad I switched out the game ost for Inuyasha and Samurai 7? For me it enhances the experience (sorry Ms. Kitamura, I appreciate the effort but your no match for a master of Japanese orchestral sound). I mean bosses even have a clear mark when you're winning the battle, since there's various "area, boss and heroic variation with Inuyasha theme" music its perfect to use it for Sekiro and blast the Inuyasha theme when you're slicing a Samurai. For example Lady Butterfly fits Naraku's theme like a glove and has three variations for the stages (normal-intense-heroic). Samurai 7's music on the other hand is perfect for such a beautiful place as Ashina (Camp/Battlefield). When it comes to Fromsoft games the only OST I didn't switch out was Bloodborne. To showcase what a perfect fit it is for Sekiro, here's the music I use for the hub (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jg4pjyDcVY&list=PLOixOMHapOfRCUfUFszxyOnlcyt367bVz&index=23&t=0s) / Normal Battle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGOYPtDUfrs) / Miniboss (Second Phase) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1BC-uBz2Ks) / vs Genichiro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV_yctA3y6w&list=PLOixOMHapOfRCUfUFszxyOnlcyt367bVz&index=28)

Just my humble opinion of course. As for your other question... this may shock you but I don't follow western releases anymore (I check out when something gets mention here but if I learned something in the past years its that 99% of things that come out of LA these days are toxic for my ears, even regarding Japan). Time is short, so much music out there so I have my safe haven of a few dozens of favorites I follow. Then music I like/love regularly appears in Japanese anime shows and movies, sometimes in games, sometimes in live-action and they could appear anywhere in the enourmous amount of projects that get made, so I don't have time for anything else (with life getting in the way).

Then there's my first and old love for classical film music (nowadays I prefer composers like Korngold, Elmer Bernstein, Legrand or Goodwin). I made a decision to no longer follow or pay attention to Hollywood (and everything else) past the early 2000s and I consider most of the working composers not interesting and/or lacking the skill to make the best possible music they could make (brutal but my honest feeling). Then there's the severe limitation of artists in American/Western movies (and various other bullshit), so since I don't want to hear music that is severly limited by a lack of freedom and/or skill anymore, I have now a very selective field of interest. I have found my pool of composers I love, even idolize and most of them still are in good health and working. If I can, I only surround myself with media which has music I love (sometimes I have to inject said music into something else if I can). Thankfully, that also included nearly 100 years of entertainment (and they made some damn good stuff in that period of time). Nowadays I have not even a clue anymore what the next big RC movie score is. In this particular moment in time I feel great not giving a damn. Wake me when something has moments like this again: Musical "Fuck Yeah" moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJWlPGKe5s).

If you like any of the recent stuff I would have no clue how to get on top of things as well (I agree it must be a nightmare). But I think it speaks volumes that a (relativly) small niche interest has better presentation and care put into the preservation and exposure of its content than necessary (I guess I'm guilty of it as well). Thankfully, we live in a time where there's so much content being made out there, you can make yourself a nice cosy home, the only trouble is that these days you have to find it yourself ;)



@TazerMonkey: Sorry I'm a bit late but I actually do have some questions:

1. Why did they switch composers in Identity?

2. Why isn't Broughton brought back for some episodes?

3. Could they get David Newman or David Arnold for season 3?

4. When is the next soundtrack coming out?




And since I brought up Wada, the new season has started and I already can't wait for OST 2: Progamer Arc Preview (https://picosong.com/wQCQp/)

But this is the season Go Shiina takes the lead, this collaboration with Kajiura could be something, and you have a dramatic scene with a whole family slaughtered and the music plays the main role and makes the drama, just like it did in STAR WARS in 1977: Kimetsu no Yaiba (score of the season candidate) (https://picosong.com/wQCEK/)

Another OST 2 I anticpate: Shinkalion S2 Preview (https://picosong.com/wQCQW/) (a glorious cue at 0:46 appears as the new Shinkalion will start next week).

Million Arthur Season 2 sounding good as well (if I turn my brain off I also like the new funky stuff): Million Arhur S2 Preview (https://picosong.com/wQC8c/)

Non-orchestral but I like some cues in Fruits Basket, noteworthy that Masaru Yokoyama is getting better as well: Fruits Basket (2019) (https://picosong.com/wQCAA/) and Monaca's new composer Hidekazu Tanaka makes some pleasant music: Hitori Bocchi (https://picosong.com/wQC8t/)



@Tango: Definitely looking forward to that.

Another OST 2 I anticpate: Shinkalion S2 Preview (a glorious cue appears as the new Shinkalion will start next week).

0:00 Wow, this is great!
0:05 Oh, tits... ;)

Time to get your medicine ;)



Score of the Winter Season 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyv3kCZX8Wg) (The original music sounds a bit too dry for my taste but its not noteworthy. I'm still not satisfied with the results and may discard this project but have it anyway)

Btw I won't do a post/review soon since I still am waiting for my cd and I know someone who could far better sing its praises ;)

:happycroc:

I actually rather enjoy the recording of the score as it was released - my only real complaint is that the snare drum is too close and has no room ambience, so it sounds like someone tapping on the back of a CD case... (I've only heard iTunes samples so far.)

I unreservedly agree with you; this is the score of the season - not that it has much competition... but it really, really makes me happy. The orchestral parts are a bit action-heavy for me - I think I'd like to have a bit more of a balance, but I'm not complaining. Things like 30:47 make me very happy; listen to that controlled, elegant, classy mood change - and the noble dignity that it conveys. It's not a "Oh, everything's fine now!" moment; it's saying there's still work to be done, we're not out of the woods yet, but we can do this. Hamaguchi has written a deceptively good theme here; it's recognisable, it's distinctive enough that you can sense it even if you're only given a couple of notes or even just a chord progression. This is the first score in quite a while that feels like it was written with a genuinely symphonic (as opposed to merely orchestral) thread and a desire to be melodically consistant. It's a theme and variations.

More thoughts to come later, but thank you - I like this, and it gives me great amounts of happiness to be able to concur so readily with your assessment. That's the way things used to be. :)

@TazerMonkey: Sorry I'm a bit late but I actually do have some questions:

1. Why did they switch composers in Identity?
2. Why isn't Broughton brought back for some episodes?
3. Could they get David Newman or David Arnold for season 3?
4. When is the next soundtrack coming out?

5. Why did Andrew Cottee, arguably the best composer of the four, get the two most "score-lite" episodes of the season? He should have scored both parts of Identity.
6. Where the hell is Ron Jones? If there were ever an obvious candidate for scoring this show, it's him. How quickly we forget Brian Griffin's House Of Payne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mixip1h3kVs
7. Why does the "Orville" theme hardly ever turn up in scores?
8. If you get a third season, will you aim for more thematic scores as the last season has been pretty heavy on the 80s sci-fi cliche and pretty light on the melody?
9. Is the endless plagiarism in almost every score a deliberate homage, are the composers being lazy, or do they really have that little creativity left as a result of wasting away in a musically baren Hollywood?
10. How do the players respond to this type of music, and do they ever express sadness over the way the scoring industry has gone?

Don't worry, I don't expect you to ask these questions... ;)

But I'd sure like to know the answer to them.

Musical "Fuck Yeah" moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJWlPGKe5s).
Gotta love those horn rips when the missile fails to fire.

Yesterday I went and watched Robihachi. It was made by the same director who worked on After War Gundam X, which perked my interest of it. Seems to be a parody on the older space adventures. Similar to "The Irresponsible Captain Tylor", and I'm enjoying it.

I haven't been able to find who composed it. MAL seemingly left most of the credits empty and I don't have any other idea of where to look. But I'm taking a wild guess that it's Kouhei Tanaka. Mixing orchestral, rock and jazz. I don't know who else would compose this sort of music. It's great either way. First track (https://youtu.be/MV8AQQDzN68?t=7) was disappointingly short. Felt as if they suddenly stopped right on the climax with that. Can't wait for the full version in the soundtrack. The combat theme (https://youtu.be/MV8AQQDzN68?t=1323) reminds me of Planet With's "Nebula Soldier" (https://youtu.be/30DVg7D8FKU?t=1331).

Whoever is doing it is doing a good job. And hopefully both the show and soundtrack turn out to be great.

I haven't been able to find who composed it.
yamazo
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobiHachi
https://www.twitter.com/yamazoo/status/1109296696956059648

@streich: Yep, horn effects are awesome: https://picosong.com/wQSLs/


@Zeniatus: lol, Disco (btw a Yamato sequel project to 2202 was announced so chances are good it lives on some more). This show has charm, nice sax music.

From the next batch of this season, I'm more taken in by Senko-san. Fujisawa (like his companions) definitely grows a beard these days. Its less moe (cute) this time and more Iyashikei (soul-healing) and he just nails it. From start to finish, its music to sooth the soul with much Japanese flavor with some excellent writing. On that note, Endro has two soundtrack volumes on the BDs, the first is out with vol. 2 in a few weeks. Still a bit disappointing it gets no offical release (like Egao no Daiga) but it could still happen in time down the road.

Kow Otani sounds like he's never been away (soundtrack already announced). Btw his Shadow of the Colossus Piano & Orchestra concert is available for purchase, courtesy of nextday: https://vgmdb.net/album/85802 (Every Music4 Gamer concert has been released so far.)





Shiro Hamaguchi
Kotobuki Squadron of the Wilderness
Tokyo Studio Orchestra (Remastered)



Sample (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyv3kCZX8Wg)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!rwImTaCI!LrmnkeQgPS-53j3g65obm9TsIaKEc5RPToPzCdxRybQ)

Well, here's Shiro Hamaguchi's big one. I've decided to get my remastered version out anyway (if you can't wait for your cd to arrive). Needless to say this is one score a classical film music lover should have in his collection. For me Hamaguchi sits right alongside composers like Elmer Bernstein and Goodwin. He seems to be time transported right from that era of filmmusic, especially if you consider his early anime work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Shg6zol51A

With Princess and the Pilot Hamaguchi wrote an elegant romantic score in the skies and its a stroke of luck he got to also write a furious action counterpart for Kotobuki (or Girls with Wings if you prefer). It is a naturally evolution of his Girls und Panzer style. In fact the recent OVA series sounds like an extention of Kotobuki's score as well. Hamaguchi wrote another catchy theme that outshines GuP by being part of an almost filmscore of the era of Dambusters, Battle Over Britain or Squadron 633 (or Indiana Jones which at the time it came out was already paying homage to that era of film music). If you take to the sky its naturally bound to be of a higher energy than on the ground and Hamaguchi delivers on this front with excellence. Theres many big score moments in this, particulary "the heroes arrive" moments and the glorious victory march and final cue.
But the thematic interplay between the sections of the orchestra makes it truely great. Writing like this takes serious chops, refined taste and livelong dedication to music (and complete freedom of expression which this little playground called anime scoring kindly provides).

With Mizushima, Hamaguchi found his director that values him and lets him fly (once more). He has a quite a number of projects in the works and I hope for a sequel project. At least they already announced that the journey of Kotobuki continues and they want to make this a universe, so maybe a movie sometime. One can only dream what could happen. Mizushima and Hamaguchi seem to burn for this project so I hope they make something grand in the future. At the very least I hope for the obligatory rerecording of this score with the Tokyo Philharmonic ;)

The Kotobuki style in any case continues with Girls und Panzer: Das Finale and since I already massivly adore the Panzer musical universe (energetic patriotic music and Elmer Bernstein homages), I wonder whats next on the "Girls and..." flipchart in Mizushima's mind. With anything they do, I'll give it a shot.

Absolutely nothing interests me so far in the new season, but I'm still enjoying Kotobuki so much that I barely notice. Just the right mix of optimistic cheer and serious, straight action scoring - and so little of it blighted by slamming noises and silly genre-ripoffs ("Kotobuki Squadron, Take Off!" in Vinphonic's album) that I can happily delete those tracks and enjoy the real meat of the score beneath. All said, an excellent score, a genuinely interesting composition, and a fantastic standalone listen, all at once. It hinges on essentially one theme, and it's a real earworm theme. It works when heard in its entirety, and it works when it's split into pieces and tossed around the orchestra in that playful, virtuosic way that nobody really does any more. It's an action motif, a love motif, a reflective motif, a suspense motif, a hero motif, and a grand finale. It's very easy for mono-thematic scores to outstay their welcome (Gridman, I'm looking at you) if they're badly written, but Hamaguchi keeps the momentum going and the creativity flowing, allowing theme to do what themes in film scores do best - act as an emotional hook. Would the finale of "Dance In The Sky" (again Vinphonic's title) with the major key restatement the theme work half as well if we weren't already intimately familar with the melody beforehand? This is scoring at its best. Musical storytelling. Music that's planned, and has a start, middle, and end.

So, from optimism to the exact opposite...

I was thrilled to see Andrew Cottee back for his third Orville score of Season 3 - I wasn't expecting that... then I listened to the bloody thing. Maybe my enjoyment of the music is being hindered by my total hatred for the episode, but I hear very little more than fantastically bland, thematically barren orchestral freewheeling. And then deciding to accompany an unnecessarily brutal scene of a military conquest squad beating the living daylights out of defenseless women, getting their asses handed to them, and then a little attempted genocide that moves into a balletic space battle with Dolly Sodding Parton... I mean, COME ON SERIOUSLY?!

No, I hated this. With a passion. For me, the poorest Orville to date. The episode was a sequel to About A Girl from Season 1, and had some wonderful old-school Trek issues - real, HARD STUFF... and then it also undermined the whole thing by wedging in genuine moments of cringe. This is The Orville's major misstep - a modern day "Code Of Honor" - and I genuinely hope that it doesn't represent a theme.

And I really hope Cottee pulls his thumb out his arse.

Kaiju Crescendo - Kickstarter project by Michiru Oshima and John DeSentis is successfully completed and there are 6 days left to support them: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kaijucrescendo/kaiju-crescendo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyv3kCZX8Wg
This is really good, thanks! Lots of imitative counterpoint and fugal writing. It seems Hamaguchi graduated from the Giacchino school of "one theme will do". I wonder why he doesn't attempt to recapture the magic of the FF8 arrangements more often. Does he just prefer not to write an abundance of melodies, or is that a skill that comes only after years of writing for 8-16 bit mediums?

Thank you so much! I'm not a fan of Otani at all, but I'm really enjoying this! :)

The recording quality is shameful, however - just look at this waveform of Track 14. Pure auditory claustrophobic.



Edit: Looks like Kentaro Haneda's Grand Symphony Yamato is getting another re-recording, conducted again by Naoto Otomo, with the same soloists and soprano as his 2009 recording, but this time with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. It's a recording of a live concert performance given last summer. Don't get me wrong, it's a GREAT piece... but WHY???

The original NHK recording from 1984 (with Haneda himself playing the solo part) sounds very good after it was finally remastered properly a few years ago - and the 2009 studio recording is par excellence.

The recording quality is shameful, however - just look at this waveform of Track 14. Pure auditory claustrophobic.
it's a transcode too... hard shelf at 16 khz



i think the source audio must have came from a video recording and that's why it's low quality

now i wonder about the "hi-res lossless" version they are selling japanese shops for 3500 yen... that's not good

Hisaishi's Ni no Kuni movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogu3x99khC4

Not really any new music yet from what I can hear. Doesn't help that this trailer makes the film look like crap (that CGI is seriously worse than some currently airing anime), with little left of the Ghibli magic that was infused in those animated cutscenes in the first game. But this is the first new Hisaishi film score in years, alongside Children of the Sea, so I'll take what I get.

Speaking of Children of the Sea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVGbgBy_yo4

I really like what I'm hearing. It sounds more minimalist than his usual animated works, but since I'm a fan of his Kitano scores that were of similar character, this is a welcome change.

Yeah, nothing new so far. On the other hand... this is their trailer music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUFO5uE2FeM
Even if they use the music from the symphonic suite, imagine the movie/scenes actually structured around it, that would be something (and hearing freaking Sugiyama on the big screen is event for me enough).
Presenting an idea with the original composer of a long-running and beloved series... who in their right mind would do anything less... (...) ups.

And I agree that's some jarring CGI (looking at you as well Maquia but likewise the background art is still stunning). I will still go see it I guess.

I don't think I've really clicked with Hamaguchi much before but wow this new score is lovely! Girls with Wings. Thanks for sharing!

I've got a bit of a request, if anyone is willing to indulge me.

I'm making a short collection of orchestral songs featured in Shiro Sagisu's Shiro Songbook albums* that I'd like to upload on this thread at some point, but I'm terrible at identifying when a song has been arranged by Sagisu, and when it's been arranged by Amano or whoever's been credited for that particular arrangement from the albums. So I'd really like someone who knows their stuff to help me figure out who did what in terms of arrangements so I can more accurately credit people.

If anyone's up for it, just reply to this and I'll get into contact with you with more details and information.

*The songs will be either purely orchestral or orchestral with a solo vocalist and the occasional four-person choir. No electronic percussion or guitars. It's gonna be as purely orchestral as I can find.

Sorry for the double post, but I finally ended up playing Intelligent Qube a couple of days ago on my sister's PlayStation Classic (say what you will about the quality of that thing and the overall strangeness of its library, but in hindsight I'm glad as hell they put it in there), and I desperately want to talk about the music.

I've listened to a few soundtrack cues before, and while they're quite good, it's a completely different experience hearing it within the context of that game. The pieces and the way they're constructed fit what's going on so well, despite initially seeming like such a strange contrast - especially if you have a certain idea as to what puzzle game soundtracks should sound like. The juxtaposition of these giant blocks rolling towards you, hurriedly trying to capture them, avoiding the crumbling rows lest you fall into an endless void with this soundtrack is indescribably fitting, hysterical and goddamn compelling.

It's one of the few soundtracks where I honestly urge anyone reading who isn't already familiar with it to go and play the game. Don't listen to it on YouTube; just find whatever reasonable means you have of playing Intelligent Qube (physical copies, legal emulation, PS Classic, piracy) and play it right now so you can experience the music in its proper context. Believe me, it works much better as a part of the game than as something to listen to on its own - even though it's a damn good soundtrack either way.

Yikes. We now know why Iwasaki is no longer working with Imaishi after Gurren Lagann. He thought it was a personal failure ("I burned my wings with Gurren Lagann"), because Imaishi forced him to use music in a more traditional thematic, scene-matching manner. This was revealed at a recent event.

https://twitter.com/Kirabochips/status/1117064075731718144
https://twitter.com/Kirabochips/status/1117071849265991680

A bit ironic considering freewheeling with random insert songs and no thematic connection is exactly what Sawano did with Kill la Kill, also directed by Imaishi. In fact, this approach is something of a norm in anime, so Imaishi deliberately asking Iwasaki to write in a somewhat cohesive filmic manner for an anime score is very unusual. The few rare times we receive such scores from Japan, it's done with the intent of the composer, not the director.

Iwasaki... continues to be himself. A difficult man who somehow still has a career despite burning half the bridges he's worked on. He still has that snobby contemporary music student air with him from his days in university ("Writing basic thematic film music? Such nonsense is below me!"), but what he wants to do is ultimately no different from what more commercial pop composers like Sawano already do. What a paradox.

Oh, you mean these? ;)


Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend

Music composed by Amano Masamichi

Thanks a lot to Zero Kyori


Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend Complete Collection I

(http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=uro001gt3.jpg)

Disc 1 - Legend of the Overfiend
www.megaupload.com/?d=5YH7EZ1I

Disc 2 - Legend of the Demon Womb
www.megaupload.com/?d=KJLBXUO1


Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend Complete Collection II

(http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=uro2001rrqm7.jpg)

Disc 1 - Future Story & Wandering Story (Return of the Overfiend & Inferno Road)
www.megaupload.com/?d=LY3LBKT1

Disc 2 - The Wanderer (The Urotsuki)
www.megaupload.com/?d=EM4NXT0L

I know this post is 10 YEARS old LOL, but would you mind posting these soundtracks again in FLAC format? Thanks in advance!

A nextday / Vinphonic Co-Production
Music 4Gamer #4


Hironori Anazawa
ORCHESTRA KATSUDO! [Aikatsu! TV Anime series Orchestra Concert]
The Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hiroyuki Mito and Keigo Hoashi



Cards are Life Itself (https://picosong.com/wQ7w9/) / From the Moon to the Stars (https://picosong.com/wQ7wd/) / We are STARS!!! (https://picosong.com/wQ73s) / Four Star Academy (https://picosong.com/wQ73q/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!6tp2WA4C!5TkCJZL-4QFRcrGjy5f-Qkhr6pZpDBj2HHmOK1UKyNI)

Recorded live at the Showa Women's University Hitomi Memorial Hall (Tokyo). Published by the new SUNRISE Music Label.

Hironori Anazawa is another rising star in the Japanese arranger scene and he arranged track 8, 10, 12, 13 of the Shadow of the Colossus concert. He also arranged for the Anime Gala Concert and the Macross Frontier concert. He graduated from the University of South Alabama and University of Southern California in music and music production and loves "Hollywood orchestral arrangements". He studied under Alan Silvestri and learned mixing from Dennis Sands. He's a composer, orchestrator, production assistant and mixing engineer and waits for his first big project.

http://www.rebirth-music.com/_src/sc752/8ECA905E.JPG

He's part of the Japanese music company "ReBIRTH Music" which has established ties with various big orchestra units in Tokyo as well as business ties to SEGA, Square Enix, Sony, Lantis and Face music.



He is company pals with Takahito Eguchi (Rental Magica, Trinity Blood, D・N・ANGEL) who on most occasions works with him on arrangement duties. I wonder what the next anime concert they work on will be, I think you know what I anticipate ;)



Akitasu is quite popular (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU1QFZUP7nI)

Enjoy the sweet little music.

Yikes. We now know why Iwasaki is no longer working with Imaishi after Gurren Lagann. He thought it was a personal failure ("I burned my wings with Gurren Lagann"), because Imaishi forced him to use music in a more traditional thematic, scene-matching manner. This was revealed at a recent event.

https://twitter.com/Kirabochips/status/1117064075731718144
https://twitter.com/Kirabochips/status/1117071849265991680

A bit ironic considering freewheeling with random insert songs and no thematic connection is exactly what Sawano did with Kill la Kill, also directed by Imaishi. In fact, this approach is something of a norm in anime, so Imaishi deliberately asking Iwasaki to write in a somewhat cohesive filmic manner for an anime score is very unusual. The few rare times we receive such scores from Japan, it's done with the intent of the composer, not the director.

Iwasaki... continues to be himself. A difficult man who somehow still has a career despite burning half the bridges he's worked on. He still has that snobby contemporary music student air with him from his days in university ("Writing basic thematic film music? Such nonsense is below me!"), but what he wants to do is ultimately no different from what more commercial pop composers like Sawano already do. What a paradox.

I've just gone thru Gurren Lagann again as part of my Iwasaki relisten (did one for Kanno, Imahori, and Higuchi prior to him, people I'd broadly consider my favorites in the japanese scoring business) and it's funny, there are huge swaths of that score that could slot into one of Sawano's no problem. Wouldn't be shocked if Iwasaki's output at this time was a big influence as he formulated his style and sensibilities, if not his formula.

I dunno how to characterize Iwasaki exactly, cuz aside from the basic text, the music he actually sits down to write, it's hard to get a handle on what he enjoys and wants to write. Did working on Soul Eater, Persona or Katanagatari satisfy him in a way GL apparently didn't? Listening to these tracks, I don't feel much of a sense of compromise so much as the beginnings of a newer, more modern sensibility beginning to creep out, but in light of his dissatisfaction, little things like choosing to use rap for a main theme, leaning on hard rock and nu-metal tropes for new inspiration and mixing genres in weird ways elsewhere feel like attempts to fight back against suffocating restrictions and expectations. The slower stuff on both discs, outside of the strong main theme writing(and the two "What is Moe" themes, which I love), feel a bit tired and uninspired compared to his action cues, taking his already ostinato-heavy Hollywood-y style and imo perfecting it. But it's not like he slept on those themes he DID turn in, either. It's a shame to hear about Iwasaki's dissatisfaction while working on it, but I'm glad he feels the space and clarity to speak about it now, and nobody would argue the final score wasn't a huge success for Imaishi and fans. Ya know what they say about design thru adversity.

That he was getting tired of strictly orchestral writing and variations on a theme isn't so shocking. He'd demonstrated for the better part of the decade he ruled at it at that point, gone thru idea after idea, finally got to work w Warsaw, and by his account had a rough time of it; maybe that affected his development more than was apparent at the time. Clearly his inspiration was taking him elsewhere and we were just along for the ride.

Let's talk about that rap for a sec. Using the genre as bgm in anime wasn't such a big deal by this point, even Kanno had done it years prior. But its use as one of the bigger and more prominent main themes, that for Team Gurren, is strong and classily implemented, climbing to big orchestral heights and then a sad downtempo version for when Simon gets taken away and the question is raised whether his team's hoo-rah manly energy is really what's best for the people at hand. And then of course, the opera hybrid. The way the theme is used pushes right up to the line of diegesis without actually going there. None of the cast ever listens to rap or talks about rap or even just rap themselves, there's no reason in the text for it to be a thing. It's just a fun idea Iwasaki decided to roll with, and the cheeky track titles help to create that association in fans' minds alongside the clever thematic use in context. Tons of GL fans who also bought the ost had ROW ROW FIGHT THA POWA locked in their heads as a central part of the show's identity. Which a pretty nifty work on Iwasaki's end, considering it's maybe a rung above how Sonic games just rolled w using rap for Knuckles levels. Why? I don't get it, nobody gets it, it's just a thing Sonic Team came up with, and it doesn't take much to accept stuff like that and just roll with it.

That he was getting tired of strictly orchestral writing and variations on a theme isn't so shocking. He'd demonstrated for the better part of the decade he ruled at it at that point, gone thru idea after idea, finally got to work w Warsaw, and by his account had a rough time of it; maybe that affected his development more than was apparent at the time. Clearly his inspiration was taking him elsewhere and we were just along for the ride.
Thing is, Iwasaki had been complaining about the restrictions of standard thematic and scene-matching scoring as far back as his debut solo work in the liner notes of Kenshin:


If I do listen to a soundtrack and don't get anything out of it more than a vicarious experience of the original, then I don't think I should be listening to the music at all. The scenes in a film establish an image clearly, and music works in a far more vague fashion. Along the lines of the old saying 'A picture is worth a thousand words,' hearing something requires much more imagination than just seeing something. Therefore, since it lacks the concrete reality of a visual image, it becomes very easy to subordinate the music to the pictures. This is generally known as music 'that goes with something.' When I listen to music that is just a slave to a corresponding image, I get the feeling that doing so is indulging in a form of mental masturbation and I don't get much enjoyment out of it.

With that said, I wanted this score to be both connected and unconnected to the scenes. While it would by necessity be bound to the story and scenes in a somewhat mechanical fashion at points, I refused to let it all revolve around the bland surface pleasantness of most scores and tried to weave threads of imagination between the images and the story.

I suppose Gurren Lagann was where he really wanted to take this idea to the next level, but Imaishi got in the way. Even then, it was far from the first time he had been experimenting with his genre fusing. People tend to forget that his love affair with rap started in Kekkaishi, opera from Black Cat, jazz from ROD, and so on. If anything, Gurren Lagann was something like the culmination of all his ideas up to that point that included a bit of everything, but done in a far more cohesive manner than his previous albums after his work on Kenshin. He wanted to create a melting pot musical work free from the restrictions of having themes or following any specific genres, but still having its own distinct identity. But the end result was a fairly standard orchestral soundtrack with thematic development, and some separate insert songs. The "rap-as-a-motif" was something he has never done since, which leads me to believe that it was never his intention to have it be the main focus, but a compromise between him and Imaishi. In that sense, I feel as if what he wanted for Gurren Lagann was something more sporadic like Soul Eater, which we know he was pleased with because he would later work with its same director on Stray Dogs. But nowadays, soundtracks like Soul Eater have become the norm in anime scores. Not just Sawano, but others like Yuki Hayashi, Yugo Kanno, Kevin Penkin, Taisei Iwasaki, and many many more- are now all using that same style of 50 genres with no cohesiveness and a lot of vocal pieces to be a soundtrack. And many of these soundtracks exist not to present new ideas or interesting mixes, but merely as standard pop soundtracks for sale- especially evident on something like Taisei's BBB.

As for Warsaw, I don't believe for a second that he struggled writing a standard symphonic score for Agito, even with the temp track. What he did seem to be upset with was the performance. There is a reason Iwasaki decided to re-record half the Warsaw session using a smaller inferior ensemble in Japan- and that was because Warsaw wasn't good enough. I'm not sure what happened that day, but Warsaw was not at the top of their game. Compare "Soukougeki (https://picosong.com/wQvcL/)" to "Chikara no Bousou (https://picosong.com/wQvcb/)". They are the exact same piece, except that the latter was the one recorded at Warsaw conducted by Mario Klemens. And it's a mess compared to Iwasaki's piece. The orchestra was out of breath, out of sync with its timbre, and sluggish with its tempo in unusual areas- especially those horns from 1:55 onward. What the hell happened? Iwasaki is quite literally the only composer I know who broke Warsaw- a feat that shouldn't be possible. I suspect it was because he was meddling too much with Klemmens (in the behind the scenes videos, he sat right next to him in the conducting booth to give orders- something usually considered to be in extremely bad taste because composers are supposed to sit either in the audience or studio and let the conductor do their business), but regardless, it's an experience that basically made him completely lose trust in giving his music to others to perform. Paired with his own neurotic tendencies in the recording booth and his strict micromanagement of his performers, it's easy to see why the usual working methods for Japanese composers recording overseas doesn't sit well with Iwasaki.

I'm not sure what Iwasaki "enjoys" writing, because he's often so facetious and sarcastic it's difficult to take what he says at face value. What I do know for sure from his music though is that Iwasaki has never cared much for making orchestral acrobatics for the sake of acrobatics. To him, it's just another tool, albeit one he uses with incredible skill. When you have other composers like Amano, Asakawa, Tanaka, Kanno etc, there's always a sense of enthusiasm when they approach the orchestra that is very audible in their music. I just don't hear that with Iwasaki. Iwasaki writes his music with complete conviction, confidence, and skill- but he has no love for it. He doesn't let the orchestra have fun like Ne-Zu-Mi from Escaflowne. Like everything else, it's just something he imposes his will on and expects a certain sound to come out of. And in that regard, he has never failed. The dude managed to make a sax quintet sound like clarinets...

It's odd. That quote you posted seems to be the words of someone who doesn't like writing film music. If, as a composer, you don't like the idea of concerns other than your own imagination shaping the music, why on earth get into media scoring? That's what scoring is. That's part of the job - sometimes you're a character in the story, but sometimes you're just an accompanist, and the best film composers find ways to be very good accompanists and write good music at the same time. If you're writing film music and you're voluntarily going to push your ego higher than the requirements of the job at hand, you're doing it wrong and you should find another job. Writing good music and a good film score simultaneously is a fine art, and it does not appear to be one which Iwasaki has mastered, or has any interest in mastering.

Dozens of Japanese composers have demonstrated the professionalism and humility necessary to take scores to Warsaw (or other overseas orchestras) and leave with world-class results. Some conduct their own music, some leave it to local conductors, but you're right - Iwasaki's Warsaw score shows this fine orchestra at its worst - though not because Iwasaki's music is so deliciously complex that the orchestra just can't keep up with his genius. But because he meddled, interfered, acted unprofessionally, wasted time and money, repeatedly allowed his ego to take centre stage, and as a result became perhaps the only Japanese composer in history to screw up a Warsaw session and have to book additional pick-up sessions with a domestic orchestra to complete the score.

Writing music for performance is a collaborative effort. The score for Agito sounds like Iwasaki just dumped a thousand sheets of manuscript in front of the orchestra and started telling them what to do - these are musicians who are routinely performing the world's finest music, scored by orchestra-savvy composers who understand what they have to do, and what they have not to do, to get a good final result. And then, suddenly, here's some guy with an ego bigger than Jupiter who wants to have absolute control over every single aspect of the performance. Iwasaki's good, but he's not Mozart. Score writing is not easy, and he almost certainly insisted on doing it all himself. Perhaps another problem is that he's just not good at writing scores for symphony orchestras. His domestic orchestras seem to know how to handle him, but Warsaw wasn't able to. It's the first and last time I've ever heard them sound less than pristine on a recording, and if the same orchestra sounds good fifty different times with a dozen different composers and sounds out-of-breath, confused, with crappy intonation and haphazard tempi... the music isn't all that difficult. The only other variable is a composer who is known to be difficult, controlling, unreasonable, obsessive, and who had never orchestrated for a professional, classical symphony orchestra before.

Listening to the score, the stress levels at the session are almost palpable. We can only speculate over what, precisely, happened - but I'd put money on this: The session would have gone a whole lot better if Iwasaki had handed over the score sheets to an orchestrator for checking over, and then stayed away from the session, or merely attended as a spectator.

Perhaps another problem is that he's just not good at writing scores for symphony orchestras.Nope, don't agree at all. There is nothing technically wrong with Iwasaki's music in Agito. He was clearly very aware of what he was doing with a large symphony orchestra, and I highly doubt it was his first time writing for and orchestrating for one. Heck, I remember years ago that you were the one praising the music and its orchestration as being exceptional. Performance and what's on paper are two very different things. The music is sublime. If the music were bad, it would have sounded bad even if he didn't meddle with the performance.

Comparing Warsaw's performance to Iwasaki's domestic one is a clear indication that what happened with Warsaw is not what he wrote. The tempi is waaay off, notes are slipped, sections of the orchestra are out of sync- it's bizarre how bad it sounds for Warsaw. And a lot of that boils down to the horrible communication between Iwasaki and the conductor. It's bad enough that he doesn't know a word of Polish, but then to sit right next to the conductor and add unnecessary stress to his job and make it easier for him to screw up? I'm pretty sure the whole time, Klemens did not feel like he was welcomed there by Iwasaki, and the orchestra, probably appalled by the arrogance of this 30-something year old composer treating their conductor with little respect, lost respect for Iwasaki's music as a result, as well as the motivation to play it well. I'm reminded of Herrmann's Obsession, which was a similar mess of out-of-sync, note-missing recording where one of the horn players threatened to leave in the process, and probably the only time the National Philharmonic actually sounded almost amateur- and it was also because of the terrible attitude of the composer.

Iwasaki can obviously write for the symphony orchestra- but he can only accept his way of performing it. That, paired with communication problems, simply doesn't make it viable for him to go to other countries and work alongside conductors and orchestras who have their own take on his music.

(Something also worth mentioning is that the mastering on the Warsaw sessions sounds like absolute muted crap. Compare it to Kanno's where every instrument sounds pristine, here it sounds like one of those cheap phone recordings of someone going to their first concert.)


Also, as good as Warsaw is, they do have their strengths and weaknesses. I do think Iwasaki's music actually posed a challenge for them to play. A piece like Agito to Kain is very similar to what Kanno would write, with its playful dance-like rhythm and general vibrancy and clarity of orchestration- and Warsaw hit that piece out the park. But the rest of the music is more typical of Iwasaki- that is demanding of very specific harmonic combinations and slow-moving chords that require the orchestra to be in complete sync, where each mistake would be VERY noticeable to the ear- and that is something that I don't think is a particular strength of Warsaw. Warsaw and its conductors are all about big and bombastic with fast tempi, with emphasis on individual sections of the orchestra, and that is what they do best- orchestral acrobatics. But those traits are the complete opposite of how Iwasaki approaches his music- where he will often do something like weave horns and strings together in way where neither one particularly overpowers the other (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaOvH13zS-Q), in order to attain a certain specific sound unique to him.

I don't think Tango was disputing the quality of Iwasaki's music. I think what he's saying is that Iwasaki doesn't have the ability to clearly communicate to the performers how the music is meant to be played. It doesn't really matter how complex or simple your music is; if it's written in a way that makes no sense to anyone but the person who composed the piece, it's still going to be difficult for other people to try and perform it. When Tango says:


...(Iwasaki)'s just not good at writing scores for symphony orchestras.

He means that Iwasaki isn't good at writing scores for other people to perform. If Iwasaki felt he had to constantly nag the orchestra into getting what he wanted exactly right, then that's his fault on some level - not for writing bad music, but for not clearly communicating within the music how it should be played. And the more people you have to deal with (especially in another language), the more things can go wrong - that might be why he can work with small ensembles okay, but somehow managed to break Warsaw.

If I've misinterpreted what Tango said, I apologize. But that's how it read to me.

I absolutely did praise the music; it's exceptional, and the orchestration is exceptional too. When I use the term "writing scores" I mean the physical act of preparing manuscripts for performance. I wasn't going after the music or the way it's arranged though I see how my words could be misinterpreted. Nonetheless, maybe ask for clarity in such cases instead of leaping straight to "Now this is a ridiculous statement."

For some reason, whenever Iwasaki comes up in conversation everybody always seems to be on high alert. Cool your jets, TZ, please... We can figure this out. :)

Anyway... I'm talking about real-world performance considerations. Preparing a piece of music for another conductor to perform with a homogenous symphony orchestra used to performing classical music, and preparing a piece of music for you to conduct in a studio environment with session musicians... are different things, and Iwasaki didn't really have any experience doing the former. It shows in the way the Warsaw session fell apart, but the domestic session got him pretty much what he wanted. It's a reasonable conclusion to draw - that the different environment didn't work too well with Iwasaki's skills and preferences; in short, that the guy is good at a lot of things, but preparing a score for performance by a large orchestra in a concert-hall environment with a hired conductor isn't one of them.

The Warsaw Philharmonic isn't some tinpot little ensemble who only specialise in certain types of music. They're one of the finest classical ensembles in the world. Yes, they've got their strengths and their weaknesses, but Agito the performance ranges from fairly competent to almost cringe-levels of badness.

The horn/string interplay thing you mention is a prime example of things that can be relatively trivial to achieve in the domestic studio, where you've got control over absolutely everything, a room full of musicians who speak your language, isolation booths, overdubs, and what have you. It's another thing to try to achieve those balances when somebody else is conducting the music, and you've got 80 people in a big room playing all at once. This is where real orchestration skill comes in - in recognising the different environment and making sure you know the best way to fill out your music so that it works there. Iwasaki didn't do that, and that's why I think what happened in Agito is his fault. He wanted the same level of pre and post-production control in Filharmonia Narodowa as he got in a Japanese recording studio and it just doesn't work that way. Did he change his way of working to fit the environment? Or did he doggedly stick to his guns and produce a poor recording as a direct result?

Apparently not. He behaved unprofessionally, didn't adequately prepare for the sort of session that Japan has been pulling off with massive amounts of aplomb for some twenty-five years, and it shows in the final score - a mishmash of pretty decent Warsaw recordings, pretty awful Warsaw recordings, and domestic pickups. The music remains exemplary, but that's not the whole story.

I'm reminded of an interview with composer Howard Blake. He spoke of a passage in a piece of music he wrote (I don't recall which piece) which he initially composed with the view to being recorded in a studio - it called for a solo piccolo to compete with tutti strings and brass, and be clearly audible. He mentions that it was pretty trivial to achieve in the studio (put a spot mike on the piccolo, fiddle with the levels a bit, done) but when the time came to perform that piece of music live in a concert hall, there was significant amounts of re-orchestrating going on to make it work. This is what I'm getting at - keeping your mind on physical practicalities, understanding that composition and performance is not all about the composer but about the orchestra, the conductor, the performance venue, the medium for which the music was written, the intended audience, and so on. This is where Iwasaki's personality works to his detriment.

Edit: FrDougal, yes, that's exactly what I meant, thank you. :) If you write your manuscripts well, you consider the practicalities of a live performance in a concert-hall environment, you hire a conductor who can conduct, and you get out of his way and let him do what he's good at doing... then your score will turn out good.

^Even if that is what Tango meant to say, the problem with that interpretation is that it's about communication, not the act of writing music. Because ideally, composers aren't supposed to micromanage conductors, who have a far better understanding than they do of what works best for the orchestra they are conducting. Iwasaki was imposing his will on the orchestra and conductor to play it how he would play it- and they couldn't do it, because they aren't supposed to to begin with.

The interpretation I would agree with is that Iwasaki's attitude to handling a large symphony orchestra is terrible. It shows no respect for the unique features of the orchestra, and doesn't build on what it's capable of doing. He can get away with that attitude in Japan, where the language barrier isn't a problem, and he's more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses if the ensembles he does work with. But there's a reason these big Warsaw scores are always handed over to conductors who've worked with it, and Iwasaki is living proof as to why that approach is necessary.

EDIT: ugh, was meant for Father Dougal, but Tango jumped me...

Sorry to answer when you're probably already answering me, creating a strange interleaving out-of-order posting situation. ;)

I agree absolutely with what you wrote, and that was pretty much where I was going.

Writing scores is communication - writing bad scores is poor communication.

For a point of discussion: Amano conducted Warsaw himself with his first Warsaw score in 1993. (Giant Robo.) Kanno herself conducted Macross Frontier. It can be done, but it's definitely a better idea to have a specific idea in mind with these Warsaw scores to hand over the duty to a staff conductor. It happens all the time. A composer needs to know what he needs to contribute, and then he needs to get out of the way and let the other contributors do their part. That's where Iwasaki cocked up and his apparent unwillingness to understand this or compromise his sensibilities in any way is why his only Warsaw score to date sounds terrible.[COLOR="Silver"]

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 PM ----------

[Edit: Bloody duplicate posts...]

Anyway... I'm talking about real-world performance considerations. Preparing a piece of music for another conductor to perform with a homogenous symphony orchestra used to performing classical music, and preparing a piece of music for you to conduct in a studio environment with session musicians... are different things, and Iwasaki didn't really have any experience doing the former. It shows in the way the Warsaw session fell apart, but the domestic session got him pretty much what he wanted. It's a reasonable conclusion to draw - that the different environment didn't work too well with Iwasaki's skills and preferences; in short, that the guy is good at a lot of things, but preparing a score for performance by a large orchestra in a concert-hall environment with a hired conductor isn't one of them. You make it sound as if the orchestra was badly arranged, like Iwasaki didn't know how many horns he needed or where to place them- and that is what I was getting at you for in my original post. Because the orchestra is balanced (albeit poorly recorded/mastered). Never once do horns overpower woodwinds or anything amateur along the lines of that. I already touched upon this- but being aware the acoustics of the environment the score is being recorded has nothing to do with awkward tempo or notes being outright missed- there is no excuse for that in ANY recording environment, especially an orchestra with the stature of Warsaw. What such a large orchestra does require is someone who understands its individual nuances and can make the best out of it. When you have performers playing out of sync with each other- it's something that is attributed to the performance and communication, not the paper nor the recording environment.

Amano is the exception to the norm because he knows enough Polish to conduct, and has enough cred to be taken seriously by the orchestra to allow him to conduct. I'm sure the Warsaw sessions would have sounded better if Iwasaki were to conduct himself. But trying to conduct by using Klemens as a sock puppet like he did- it would be a disaster if any composer tried it, living or dead, no matter how talented they are. And that's why usually nobody does it. Oshima, Kanno, and others respect the conductor enough to leave them alone when they do their work. Iwasaki does not. And once again, that's an attitude problem, not a musical one.

I think it speaks volumes that Yugo Kanno and Masaru Yokoyama have gotten better results from foreign orchestras than Iwasaki... and I sincerely doubt either of them understand orchestral balance on the same level as him.

Aah, no, not at all - I mean, the orchestra is a perfectly standard arrangement.

A recording session is expensive and you want everything to go smoothly. The orchestra arrive, they sit down, they start playing, they finish, they go home. If everything is sorted out that way, you get a good, efficient session, everybody's happy, and the recording gets made and sounds good.

If you start titting around, your score is calling to achieve odd balances that work in a studio acoustic but can't work in a concert hall environment, you start pushing your conductor around and wasting time on things you should've thought about before the session was even booked, time becomes short, tempers become frayed, orchestras become tired, and sloppy performances creep in.

My blaming Iwasaki's score-writing ability was one of many reasons I proposed why the session went wrong.

Despite the weird 'postal' situation (which I've unintentionally contributed to, and might still be doing so with this post - sorry about that), I just wanted to say that this conversation's actually been quite fascinating. You can debate as to whether or not it's good that Iwasaki makes people really passionate/tense/whatever when talking about him on this thread, but it still makes for a lot of interesting points, some cool information, and ideas to consider that I might not have otherwise considered. So thanks for that.

(I guess I wanted to chime in with that since I don't really have much to say on Iwasaki. I adore the work he did in Uncharted Waters Online and enjoyed parts of his GL soundtrack, but I've not listened to much else from him. From what I've heard about him, he does seem like a strange man who does a job he seemingly dislikes, but I don't know enough in that regard to say anything more without disingenuously diluting a discussion.

On a side note, and I might talk about this later if anyone's interested enough, I finally saw Jurassic Park for the first time yesterday and have a thought or two regarding the music.)

I think we've come full circle so I'll just say this- Iwasaki is the type of composer who wants full control of everything, and every single time would build his orchestra from scratch rather than using a pre-established symphony orchestra like Warsaw. That Chinese movie he recorded for a year ago was a prime example of that- he made a 60 piece ensemble using nothing but freelancers, instead of going with the much more affordable option of using something like the Tokyo Philharmonic. He can write for the symphony orchestra, but it has to be HIS orchestra, under HIS baton. And I'm sure he's come to same conclusion himself, hence why he never touched a foreign recording since.

Iwasaki discussions are always dramatic because the composer himself is so dramatic, and his difficult reputation among Japanese musicians is so well-known that it even spreads to those outside of it. You can witness his attitude in the same Agito video with Klemens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlugB_pnh4), where the contempt he expresses towards the director as well is even more palpable and disturbing, without saying a single word to him. More than that, Iwasaki's music and his intent are always difficult to pin down. What does he like? What is really his goal? Nobody knows for sure. We just know he's an exceptionally talented composer who doesn't like composing- or at least composing the way we typically associate with an orchestra.

Not to mention, why did he decide to release the Warsaw pieces and his own pieces on the same soundtrack for Agito, when many of them are the exact same piece? What purpose does it serve to include what are basically bad outtakes? That video I posted included some pieces from Warsaw that weren't included in the soundtrack- why weren't those placed in there instead of the ones that got replaced? It's these sort of things that make Iwasaki so infuriating.

I would express the same kind of contempt...


Originally, I wanted it to be like an opera. Tom and Jerry came to mind. When Agito and Cain are climbing down, it should be in the style of Tom and Jerry. That enough satisfies me.

What a wally...

Aah, no, not at all - I mean, the orchestra is a perfectly standard arrangement.

If you start titting around, your score is calling to achieve odd balances that work in a studio acoustic but can't work in a concert hall environment, you start pushing your conductor around and wasting time on things you should've thought about before the session was even booked, time becomes short, tempers become frayed, orchestras become tired, and sloppy performances creep in.

My blaming Iwasaki's score-writing ability was one of many reasons I proposed why the session went wrong.I didn't see this post until now, so you'll have to excuse me for chiming in late. But what you're talking about- the balance of orchestral dynamics in different acoustic environments- is exactly what I was talking about. I think what you're trying to suggest is that the orchestra performed badly because Iwasaki's music was inherently acoustically ill-suited for the performing environment of the recording hall, and so he had to take evasive action to make it playable with the orchestra, and so interfered with the conducting as a result.

Once again, I don't agree with this at all. Because we've established by now that what went wrong with the recording was not the acoustics, outside of the recording and mastering process. I don't know how many times I've said this, but the performing environment has no effect on tempo and lack of synchronization of the players in the orchestra. And I'm not talking about whether one horn will overpower a flute, I mean something like how the horn players actually missed notes and ran out of breath in the middle of a section and limped along behind the rest of the ensemble. Iwasaki's domestic recording actually includes quite a few scaled-down orchestration differences from the Warsaw recording- he obviously took the different environments into account. But never once the do the players actually lag behind one another like Warsaw. If anything, it should be a testament to his orchestration talent that he could downscale his score to merely 40 musicians and achieve similar results to an 80-piece ensemble. Those arrangements were made after the Warsaw recordings, not before. Yugo Kanno's Gunshi Kanbei had Warsaw performing better than any one minute of Agito. And I don't know who would insist that Yugo Kanno has better understanding of orchestration acoustics/dynamics than Iwasaki.

Controlling the pace of the orchestra and which section plays what is ultimately the job of the conductor- and that was why Warsaw sounded so bad that day. The paper is not to blame. But Iwasaki really should have just let Mario Klemens do his job.

I'm pretty sure I've answered the points you've made numerous times - indeed, even in the part of my post you quoted above, so I'll conclude my contribution to this subject at this point. :)

[Edit: More damn double posts.]

RVW should write an NHK drama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxASybrHjdk#t=17m58s

Got nothing to say except this is a wicked interesting conversation about something I didn't even think about. Makes complete sense in retrospect - of course music redorded in a studio can be played differently than versus a live performance. You can record and re-record until it's all good. You can edit the sound levels. You can't do that with a live performance. It's the difference with film vs theatre.

Anyways, carry on. I'll probably have something useless and stupid to say eventually. Just waiting for inspiration to hit.

I'm pretty sure I've answered the points you've made numerous times - indeed, even in the part of my post you quoted above, so I'll conclude my contribution to this subject at this point. :)Fair enough. I think we've repeated ourselves enough times that anyone reading the conversation would understand what our points are.


One last interesting thing I wanted to mention before I let this go- but Iwasaki's Kenshin, his debut solo soundtrack, wasn't conducted at all- it was done completely via click track. That's why no conductor credit is listed. Here's a video of the string recording:

https://twitter.com/6652_duck/status/913387173352587265

Of course music redorded in a studio can be played differently than versus a live performance. You can record and re-record until it's all good. You can edit the sound levels. You can't do that with a live performance. It's the difference with film vs theatre. The thing is, with stereo recording technology, you can do all of those things even to a 100-piece symphony orchestra. It all boils down to microphone placement and mastering. You should give one of those Decca Phase-4 albums a listen sometime- they don't sound natural in the slightest. Even though many of them were recording in a concert hall with an entire symphony orchestra, the balance is completely thrown out the window in favor of extreme clarity of every instrument playing, so you can do something as unusual as having a bass flute overpower an entire string ensemble. And that all boils down, again, to microphone placement and mastering. Not everyone wants the concert hall to sound like one, and today, any album that sounds off-balance generally has to do with poor mastering. Sound Inn doesn't suck simply because it's a tincan, but because the mastering job tends to be sloppy with a mountain of artificial reverb to simulate the orchestra being larger than it is, while also muddying the sound of the instruments.

Here's a good video on how Phase 4 works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mSselTZySM

Edit: d'oh, pressed the reply instead of the edit button, sorry for the double post

I must not have an ear for recording flubs, cause the bigger, more booming Warsaw ver of that Agito piece has always been my favorite, and the tighter, more uniform Iwasaki-handled ver hits my ear as a bit flavorless, but that's probably just bc I usually hear it later.

The impression I've always gotten of the man is someone who was powerfully bored of the material he was hearing around him and strove to do something different w every new work, and eventually this boredom crept into the notion that one has to use an orchestra all the time to get the right sound directors are looking for. However difficult that makes him, and however unsuited that leaves him to trusting his work in the hands of others or how far it takes him form using the palette this thread favors, I can't take fault w the results. Dude wrote some of the best bgm, orchestral or otherwise, in the 00's without slowing down, and what makes his dispassion about GL interesting in retrospect is how clearly GL was a real cut above what he was doing before not just wrt coherency or genre experimentation but just the caliber of action cue writing, leaning into harder forms of genres he played before(Nikopol) and turning dalliances w rap into full-blown main themes(I'm firmly of the belief this was mostly Iwasaki's idea; if it were Imaishi, it would've been more diegetic.) When put against the wall and forced to consider and work within expectations, the results are very good for him, regardless of how much he grumbles after the fact, so he's clearly a composer who can rise to the occasion. Even in the scores he complains about working on the most, I never hear cold dispassion in his music.

I guess my only point is, Iwasaki's long been a net positive for the Japanese scoring industry, so he can grumble as much as he wants for all I care. It only makes him a much more interesting figure to anaylze beyond just some unknowable foreign face who produces amazing music like magic. It makes me pine to hear what he feels is powerful about film scoring, what he feels only it can accomplish.

Regardless of what Iwasaki writes, the one thing I've been getting sick of is the constant insinuation throughout the years by many people that "Iwasaki doesn't make more symphonic orchestral scores because he doesn't have enough skill to write for a symphony orchestra". I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular in this thread, but rather this questionable attitude that exists against him that I've seen frequently pop up, like back when Jojo came out and some got upset that the "cheap electronic game composer" Iwasaki was replacing the "classically informed" Hayato Matsuo. This recent accusation of Iwasaki's apparent lack of orchestration talent or understanding of how to acoustically balance a symphony orchestra is not only objectively false, it's also beyond insulting to his talent, and is just one out of dozens of similar accusations thrown at him in the past decade. People don't have to enjoy what Iwasaki writes, or his attitude. I know I certainly don't always. But anyone that denies his musical skill because he uses electronics and seemingly doesn't enjoy writing typical thematic film music really ought to get off their high horse. Iwasaki deserves more respect than that.

Iwasaki doesn't have enough skill to write for a symphony orchestra
who would say that? thought he made his name known for kenshin's orchestra work

however i have seen such comment linked with Sawano

Whoever wrote this sure knows how to write for it ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lky7BAYo67o

I wonder how many people would ever expect to find Goldenthal's Sphere in a Sawano soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/Ow5qyCfAjK4?t=91

He's still a sellout hack, but his actual talent with the orchestra might be far better than any of us realize. But moments like these are few and far between in his repertoire- and certainly not the reason why people buy his music.

Yeah, what's up with that (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDezTtPELg8&list=PL5PW5TdgaMAQ1fWyrLW5tBBRpIVLDZ3f5&index=29), sometimes you wonder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_D6evVTZFg&t=1h04m15s) ... is this the work of an amateur or is he just trolling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjqOchWJb38)


I wonder if its like with a similar (but far more orchestral) epic composer like Go Shiina who just has a musical sense of humor and does the electronic drop, slamming drums and ethnic choirs because its fun to him.

He likes food and fun things. That's about all you need to know about him. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22vMYglPIqc&t=55m43s)

But most of the time he is from the school of the old-fashioned bombast. Big themes, big melodies, much unison but damn effective. And his epic ballads... damn they are so delicious.

But he has a softer side to him evident since Tales of Legendia and it really blossoms in the last few years which have been incredible for him:

Mountain Tales (Classical Shiina) (https://picosong.com/wEnLN/)

Awakening (Classical Shiina) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkiCCOVaWNk&t=1h08m59s)

Yaiba (Epic Shiina) (https://picosong.com/wEn2R/)

Code Vein (Epic Shiina) (https://picosong.com/wEn2f/)

Journey's End (Larger than Life Shiina) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2INx5g-Kh1c)

The Wind of Love (Larger than Life Shiina) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j8Lv1OMciA)


And he still loves to post and eat food far more than music...

is this the work of an amateur or is he just trolling

How can we tell if this is amateur? What are the signs?

A few posts earlier, I'm just paraphrasing but we mentioned "the Warsaw is out of their element," or "Warsaw was not on top of their game." Again what do we base on to hear this?

I really don't know much about these sides of the orchestra world, and just asking with the intention to understand, not with the intention to answer back.

GOD EATER ORCHESTRA LIVE at the end of the month: https://www.godeater.jp/georchestralive/

RVW should write an NHK drama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxASybrHjdk#t=17m58s

I KNEW I had heard that part somewhere! Still Kanno at least has good taste when it comes to who she references.

@banoime: Oh, it's nothing major. It's just that the purely orchestral tracks from his scores sometimes suggest he doesn't know how to write for orchestra (because in the west among certain circles the EPIC style and electronic tools is linked to incompetence, dictation from executives and lack of imagination).

Scores like Gigantic Formula and parts of Sawano's epic scores clearly suggest he actually knows his stuff but perhaps builds an image. In a sense it gets old really fast but its an image that is still unique. From a production standpoint and if you like the philosophy of "EPIC MUSICZ" then he's probably still the best in the business. Even if you don't fancy his style, his scores clearly stand-out from other wanabees. It could be he just writes in the "epic" style for a paycheck (because he's typecasted) or for fun and could very well do his Gigantic Formula style (or he had a ghostwriter) but its all speculation at this point.

I firmly stand by the usage of electronic tools and "epic" style as just another sound influence/color for Japanese composers because in the mentality of Tokyo one sentence had resonated with me strongly "we use whatever sounds good to us". Thats why you can have a score with 50s and 60s influences crossed with something you would associate with a modern blockbuster and a million different genres mixed together. Classical Hollywood for example is for most another influence to draw from, just like modern Hollywood. Its made apparent time and time again they can most of the time do what they want (which is ironically even a bad thing as Sahashi pointed out, because for Simoun he had to come up with the musical direction all by himself, but that makes the score he ultimately recorded even more impressive... its HIS score, from the first note written to the last recorded.

Same with Invisible Victory. I recently listened to it again and liked it even more. The Blade Runner moment still touched me: Blade Runner Love Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRUD2Daz5q8) / Up to Now (https://picosong.com/wEyUj/)

Or this groovy piece that is night and day from the days he started out (https://picosong.com/wEyUS/)

He tried new things and had fun with this one, the orchestral writing is as good as ever and the electronic tools are just the sweetener (its not like he has anything left to prove).


As for "how do you know?". In short, it's mostly time and ear training and listening to a megaton of orchestral music. You can study (orchestral) music and theres certain disciplines that pop up quite often: Melody, Harmony, Counterpoint, Development, Section Interplay, Acrobatics etc. There's masters in any (or all) of these disciplines and they will give you an understanding what good interplay is, what a good melody is and what good counterpoint is. There's more to it than that, not to mention personal style but I kept it short. But that of course doesn't change what you like or love to listen to. Music should not be a cold hard science afterall, but a heartfelt one.

There might be some contention for what Iwasaki said in the previous page about "not matching sound to image"- but it seems to be a common sentiment among many Japanese composers.


Before I even get into emotions and theme... The Hollywood style of using music to introduce characters and explain what's on screen is a method that I don't normally use in Japan.

And guess who said those words- none other than Joe Hisaishi himself (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/laputa/interview.html), the forefront face of the symphony orchestra in Japan. He refers to something we take for granted as being a "Hollywood style". More often than not, the reason most Japanese composers don't use these sort of methods isn't because they don't have the talent to do it, but because they simply don't want to do it. That is something that needs to be firmly established in this thread.

That being said, the actual quality of their music can be heard and judged regardless of whatever techniques they use. But the intent needs to be clearly understood first.



As for Sawano- there's all sorts of clues, now aren't there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke_EKe8IKEs

This isn't the product of something from a Zimmer crony spending all day on his sample libraries.

I properly watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time today with my folks (I'd only seen bits and pieces of it over the years), and I noticed something about the music that I thought was kinda interesting.

In the scene where they're rescuing Dorothy from the Wicked Witch, the music very briefly but very prominently quotes Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain as Toto runs upstairs to the door of the room she's being held in (it's the very beginning of this excerpt; thank you Catriona Laing from YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOcdEFXzF00). It's not an original observation, I know, but it's something that I found rather interesting - especially since the topic of quoting music or being very clearly inspired by other pieces when creating your own has been floating around in my mind lately. Maybe I'll write about what I think on the matter at some point, but it's definitely something that this forum has gotten me to reconsider.

Thanks Vin. I agree with your last comment. I certainly have not listened to classical music as long, or as much as you guys do here in this forum so I can't say much about the competence matter, I certainly don't want to be too analytical that it gets in the way of the enjoyment. In my opinion analyzing should always come second, behind enjoyment. Please keeping doing what you do. A lot of your postings have been amazing found to me :)

who would say that?Ignorant people who think that not constantly writing for a symphony orchestra or expressing joy for writing for an orchestra means you don't have the talent to write for one. People who, by their own standards, would consider Giacchino as a good orchestral composer because he fulfills these two meager requirements.

That being said, Kenshin was a low-budget score (something that consistently haunts Iwasaki's work) consisting of a small 12-piece string ensemble, 4 brass, and 2 winds. This qualifies only as a chamber orchestra, and the soundtrack itself is filled to the brim with electronics. The score's cheapness is very evident when the exact same "Kenshin cuts" horn motif heard in the second track gets played over and over again in other tracks with no variations because Iwasaki had no cash to record variations of that motif. But what separates Kenshin from other Iwasaki scores is that the entire soundtrack is treated as a "themes and variations" similar to most western films, with the orchestra being the center of the focus with the electronics as mere complements. However, it has little to do with what we were talking about, which entailed the technical usage of a large cohesive symphony orchestra, which Iwasaki had never worked with for a commercial work prior to Agito.

The Old Guard of Japanese Media Composers
Contemporary Orchestral Works for Japanese Media



Download (https://mega.nz/#!vtIlUaRZ!tOkIkRqbpIWfkh8FzCTTTaTYLoqHVGwVHou5jdA01lQ)


An index of contemporary orchestral works from the last few years. Simultaniously an introduction/overview about my favorites in media scoring as well as a best-of selection of some pretty great music. It can be said I am a fan of their music rather than the fact they use an orchestra but make no mistake, in some shape or form, they are masters of the craft. Also included is a small collection of things I label "Orchestral Fusion" where pretty much any style of music gets absorbed into their own body of work with a very unique voice, its as much part of their musical personality as their classical writing, whether its orchestral funk, orchestral rock or orchestral pop (The recent composer festival should make it very evident they notate every single guitar and electronic of their pieces in the original manuscript). In fact one requirement I have for a composer is to write me a pop song I can get hooked on. They all pass that test with flying colors. They choose to embrace MUSIC in all shapes or forms. And yes, they all know each other and most of them are friends and colleages, working in universities, concerts, arrangements and media works, a community.

Almost all of them had a huge resurgence in recent years with many returning to the scoring scene and some have their big years right now. Many of my favorites are now celebrated or arrange/perform/conduct in concert halls and the momentum is still increasing.


Gundam concert series begins...

Hopefully they continue to bless us with their presence for many years to come. Like this happy fellow here:



Enjoy!

Ignorant people who think that not constantly writing for a symphony orchestra or expressing joy for writing for an orchestra means you don't have the talent to write for one.

I hope that's not a prod in my direction. ;)

I hope that's not a prod in my direction. ;)Based on my previous posts, I think I made it pretty clear that it was intended as a general statement towards an attitude I frequently encounter. The Giacchino example made it rather obvious who the target audiences are. That said, I sincerely hope it's not a sentiment you hold. Having read many of your posts, I have reason to believe that you're more informed than that.

endgame is much more diverse and emotional than infinity war both film and score,with several huge highlight tracks.good luck trying to hold back tears when movie and score go hand in hand for maximum epicness.

I hope that's not a prod in my direction. ;)

I think it's a prod in my general direction. Not the hugest fan of Giacchino (his Marvel scores sucked) but I do like his work every now and then (Jupiter Ascending, War/Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).

I think it's a prod in my general direction.Nope. It's not directed explicitly at Giacchino fans, though many of them fall into this category. It's directed at the type of people you usually see on sites like JWfans or FSM where they'll praise any score that uses a large orchestra and some meager attempt at replicating that silver age sound, and then have the gall to say something like "Giacchino is the successor to John Williams!" Basically, whom I'm pointing my finger at are orchestral fetishists, who pay more attention to the existence of an orchestra being used than how well it's actually used, and dismiss all other genres as rubbish. There aren't many people like that in this thread- but it's very commonplace attitude outside of it. Here's an actual quote from someone in this very board (who shall remain unnamed) that complained about Iwasaki's music in Jojo:


Opinions I guess, I consider Iwasaki's composition to be very crappy, dubstep, (c)rap and all the jazz that young kids these days enjoy for whatever reason when for me it's something akin to what a Noise Marines from WH40k would listen to.

Yes, even jazz as an entire genre is now considered rubbish by their orchestral standards.

Hi ! Anyone have this version of Yamato soundtrack: "Space Battleship Yamato 2199 - Yamato Ongakudan Daishikiten 2012". Unfortunately, i cant find any links or available products on store ! Thanks !

https://twitter.com/yugokanno/status/1122523305846509568

Yugo Kanno just finished recording his second symphony... in a decently-sized recording studio in Japan that can actually house a whole full orchestra without being too cramped? Why have we never seen this place be used before?

I was wondering when it would show up... I'm really looking forward to it! Yugo can do it if he puts his mind to it. I just wish he would be a little more old-fashioned and focused in his recent TV scores...

In other news, can't stop the Wada:



"Many things have changed since I wrote for it almost 20 years ago but the Inuyasha sound is still there in the studio."

Oshima is a really big fan of the scores and can't wait ;)


I also really dearly wish they would hurry up with the Pokemon TV scores. I will never understand how the biggest franchise in the world has no consistent soundtrack releases.
I could easily compile two hours of good to great music from Tada to Miyazaki to the rest of IMAGINE, what in the goddamn world is taking them so long to release another soundbox???

To give you an example I think the most recent episode is enough to rock your socks off ;)



The Orchestral Score of Sun & Moon, Episode 119 (https://picosong.com/wEEC5/)

Also, my favorite Pokemon ED (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmoKjMseSg8)


And hold on to your seats because could this be the one to finally lift the curse of Ultraman?



Ultraman Taiga (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGCsngMgdhc)

It's an indirect sequel to Ultraman Taro. The first 15 seconds have my interest. That looks very 80s and the trailer fluff after that almost sounds like Ryusoulger (which already has a few gem tracks even before the next recordings and the movie, I also really like the OP).

However, I doubt it will be as good as Ultraman Gaia again, Sahashi had steel nails for breakfast when he composed that theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RijiyCuG6s)



And last but not least, after the most bombastic Auld Lang Syne in history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twl3rXgqrKE) now comes the cutest Auld Lang Syne you ever heard



Masashi Wakamatsu & Columbia Orchestra (CV: Satomi Amano) (https://picosong.com/wEEPh/)

I don't understand why they use legendary Japanese composers music or bring them out of retirement for idol games and shows but they do (Go Shiina on the other hand is very easy to explain... he just loves Idolmaster). Its probably the same reason Japan's best CG and effects artists are working on Precure and turn down any other offers... I guess Isao Tomita pioneered and legitimized that whole thing with his (obsessive) love for Hatsune Miku.

Update: I completely overlooked that Masashi Wakamatsu has actually left this world so they used only his arrangement. I just assumed it, since Katsuhisa Hattori recorded new music for Girlfriend BETA, that he was also still around. A shame.


@namouylar: Hi! Actually, I'm looking for them as well. I also love the covers for the orchestra concerts but I'm afraid I never bought them because they only slightly differ from the regular soundtrack versions. I never checked for them again after a long period of time so maybe they appeared online somewhere...

Anyone know who the composer is for this? Or any hints to who it might be? NHK, why no credits? :/

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/3004523/
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/seaofjapan/?type=tvEpisode&

There's not much going on at the moment, it seems, so I thought I'd write about a couple of things that have caught my interest lately.

Soundtracks on Spotify (UK/Ireland, at any rate): I started listening to Spotify for the first time in a while, and I found out that at least a few soundtracks have been uploaded onto the UK/Ireland Spotify. Among these are:

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, com. Jeremy Soule (I used to love the Oblivion music back in the day, especially when compared to Skyrim's more ambient approach, and I've always been faintly curious to hear Morrowind's music)

SSSS Gridman, com. Shiro Sagisu and Masamichi Amano (I haven't listened to a proper Sagisu soundtrack in quite some time, and I'm really interested to know how this one's turned out)

Little Witch Academia, com. Michiru Oshima (it's the complete collection, so it includes the music for the TV show AND the two short films - haven't given it a proper listen yet)

The soundtrack that's gotten the most attention from me right now is Michiru Oshima's soundtrack for the TV adaptation of Gokusen. Some of the pieces featured in the album are incredibly good, with highlights such as Fukidamari ni Sumu Tenshi and Sensei Shikkaku being particular favourites of mine. (The latter actually reminds me a good deal of Sugiyama's more sombre pieces from Dragon Quest, and it makes me really want to see her compose one of the future games. And while we're on the subject of JRPGs...)

Final Fantasy Arrangements: For whatever reason, I've been listening to a few of these at the moment. While looking into music composed or arranged by Miho Hazama, who's most well known as this point for arranging some of Shiro Sagisu's music alongside Masamichi Amano (her arrangements in the Shiro's Songbook Xpressions album are particularly excellent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ1LBKe_c0w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxuDvsrFD0Y), I stumbled upon a FF7 arrangement album she worked on last year called BRA★BRA Final Fantasy VII: Brass de Bravo.

While I haven't listened to the entire album, or even most of Hazama's arrangements, what's I've heard so far is really good (her take on Cait Sith's theme is such a banger, to the point where I felt pumped when the horns came in full blast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SOGuPraQe4). My favourite arrangement right now is Rika Ishige's take on Descendant of the Shinobi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdKlEmSn_q0 I never heard the original track since I didn't get too far in FF7, but I really love this version of it - there's something that feels just so lowkey and cozy about it, that it evokes the feeling of slowing waking up on a pleasant morning as you go through your usual routine, the world casually carrying on in much the same way as it always does.

I also decided to listen to a bit of Shiro Hamaguchi's Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec album for FF8 back in 1999 while doing some work, and I came across this really good arrangement for Balamb Garden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubd3Hbl_ixI). As to be expected from Hamaguchi's work on FF during this time, it's beautifully arranged and the instrumentation is gorgeous. I especially love how much it feels like a complete suite with different sections and moods before returning to the initial musical ideas despite only being five minutes long.

Vinphonic's Heisei Medley: Recently enough, Vinphonic posted a collection of music representing the highlights of Toshiyuki Watanabe, Kohei Tanaka and Kosuke Yamashita from their work during the Heisei Era, and that collection has recently been posted on Vin's YT channel (which I'd highly recommend you check out and subscribe to if you want to be pleasantly surprised with great orchestral music videos every now and again - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dNpQg-9mYc). I decided to listen to it while working away on other things, and some of the music is genuinely brilliant - Vin, if you're reading this, can you post a list of the various pieces you used for the medley so I can listen to them individually and maybe find some new gems along the way?

It's worth checking out the early FF arrangement albums, even the one arranged by Shiro Sagisu. The best two are the ones arranged by Takayuki Hattori, however: Symphonic Suite Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Densetsu. The vocal collections are pretty good too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Not Final Fantasy, but Symphony Ys (1988) is great, with themes by Yuzo Koshiro. Falcom Neo Classic contains Ys music arranged by Hattori. Speaking of Koshiro, the Actraiser Symphonic Suite is a classic, arranged by Kaoru Wada.

Back in the late 90s when I was getting into MIDI composing I mostly looked at MIDIs of FF music, Chrono Trigger, etc. but discovered Ys by chance and it had some catchy music. I remember specifically there was a doujin soundtrack called Project Ys which was my favourite: https://vgmdb.net/album/3592

It's funny, the guy who made it, Atsushi Fukai, is apparently still active 20+ years later http://mushi.net/index_en.html

You can download a zip of the MIDIs here http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info.php?id_ele=MjkxMg==

The track Guard.mid is particularly well orchestrated. I might try mocking it up sometime.

Asakawa is still writing music for commercials. A very recent one that came out this year:

http://home.osakagas.co.jp/cm_lib/detail/?mid=829&pid=device

It's worth checking out the early FF arrangement albums, even the one arranged by Shiro Sagisu. The best two are the ones arranged by Takayuki Hattori, however: Symphonic Suite Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Densetsu.

I had a good deal of free time today, so I decided to listen to the Symphonic Suite Final Fantasy album, and I want to thank you so much for recommending it! It's a really good album that I'd highly recommend to anyone who loves the music of the NES Final Fantasies, but before I talk about specific favourites, I want to point out a couple of things I found out while doing a little research.

Firstly, I had no idea that Takayuki Hattori's father (Katsuhisa Hattori) was himself a composer, or that Katsuhisa had worked on all kinds of things over the years like the 1986 Fist of the North Star movie or the World Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Tom Sawyer. It's also quite cool that the two of them worked together on this album, especially since this seems to be the earliest project Takayuki worked on if VGMdb is correct. What I particularly like is how Katsuhisa handles the first four pieces while Takayuki arranges (and even composes part of) the last three pieces - it's like the baton is being passed from father to son as the album goes on.

But what really amazed me is that a good chunk of the suite is based on music from Final Fantasy II. This doesn't seem strange at first, but what makes this notable is that FFII was released in Japan in December of 1988, while these arrangements were recorded on May 20th 1989. In other words, most of this album is an arrangement of music for a game that was out for less than six months! I don't know how big FF was in Japan at the time, but it's crazy to me that a game that hadn't even been out for half a year managed to get its music arranged and performed so excellently, when much more famous games produced outside of Japan often have to wait years if not decades before a literal video game rockstar decides to pick their music as part of a concert. Maybe that's not too surprising when you're more familiar with the Japanese video game arrangement scene, where this happens pretty much all the time, but it's only now that I properly understand how insane and amazing that is, and I'm so happy to have finally learnt that.

Now, onto my personal highlights from the album:

SCENE I (com. Nobuo Uematsu, arr. Katsuhisa Hattori) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TknOVLcrhM I don't know why, but listening to this reminds me strongly of the soundtrack for the Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva movie, which a strong use of melody on both the strings and the brass for their specific sections. The choir transitioning from the chords of each bar into singing main motif is especially well done, and a general indication of how well they'll be used throughout the entire album.

SCENE V ~PRELUDE~ (com. Nobuo Uematsu & Takayuki Hattori, arr. Takayuki Hattori) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q5nZwSrdlM Curiously, this piece starts off with an original composition by Takayuki, which begins in a triumphant march before transitioning quickly into a sentimental section, where the violin plays a gorgeous melody backed up by a very beautiful chord progression, and then returning to the march. This is then followed up by what I think might be my all-time favourite arrangement of the famous 'Prelude' - the flute's melody is so relaxing to listen to, and then when a harmonizing woodwind and the strings come in... I genuinely cannot describe how much I love this arrangement. Sadly, I'm not as much into the rest of this piece, which is based on FF1's main theme and the Chaos Temple theme, but I adore the first three minutes so much that I have to recommend it.

SCENE VII (com. Nobuo Uematsu, arr. Takayuki Hattori) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRMe5mAaQJE Surprisingly, this is the track I've listened to the most - I've had it on loop for about half an hour as I'm writing this. Like the rest of the album, the arrangement is really good and the performance is on point, but the most fascinating thing to me about this piece is how it feels like a spiritual precursor to what Takayuki would eventually go on to do with the score for Intelligent Qube. It's not initially obvious, but when the music takes on more of a marching feel and re-introduces the choir to sing the main melody, it really does remind me of that game's soundtrack.

---

Thank you so much again for recommending this, streichorchester! I've try to check out Hattori's Seiken Densetsu album too (along with the Project Ys music; I've never played any of the games, but I love that fans were doing soundtracks to fictional sequels to their favourite games even back in 1996), and hopefully, there'll be something there I'll enjoy too!

https://twitter.com/yugokanno/status/1122523305846509568

Yugo Kanno just finished recording his second symphony... in a decently-sized recording studio in Japan that can actually house a whole full orchestra without being too cramped? Why have we never seen this place be used before?
it's the kansai philharmonic's practice facility. used for their rehearsals and such. that pic is probably from a rehearsal.

ENDRO~?
ENDRO~!

ENDRO~$


So the last symphonic/orchestral work of the Hesei Era turned out to be "Alles ist Architektur" aka Yugo Kanno Symphony No. 2, a "very tonal" work (thank the gods, we've had enough else for eternity).


Btw, Go Sakabe in Sahashi mode again (I guess its no use skipping some anime episodes because all these pieces I never heard before):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRt32KNaNKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCWBFqjYlvs (Epic Wedding March...)

(Fafner's Warsaw release is also on the same date so both fun and serious stuff on the same day :D)

The Kotobuki mobile game actually has new orchestral material, including a lovely playful trombone piece and some cool Jazz (with anime titties). I wonder if it will get a soundtrack (Playerbase is over 2million) ? There's also a new Kotobuki web series on their youtube channel so the series is growing strong :)

And I don't know what they are doing with Idolm@ster but sure, if your goal is to turn it into a 50s musical, then by all means, get Asakawa to arrange for it too, while you're at it (I'm still not sure if they revived the Columbia Orchestra because technically as far as I know Columbia Orchestra as a unit is still legal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6g9ms61jTo



@Father: Regarding Heisei, in order of appearance: Mothra & Majestic Prince (Watanabe) / Gundam 08th MS Team & One Piece (Tanaka) / Nobunaga's Ambition, Xenosaga: Animation, Puzzle X Dragon cross (unreleased) & Chihayafuru (Yamashita)

As far as the era in its entire scope goes, I covered most in my Heisei tribute share. My personal 50 favorites of the era are in a list below, I just can't pick 10 best scores which are essential listens of the era:

Fullmetal Alchemist (Michiru Oshima)
Sakura Taisen: Katsudo Shashin (Kohei Tanaka)
Gundam Symphonies (Toshihiko Sahashi)
Simoun (Toshihiko Sahashi)
Escaflowne (Yoko Kanno)
Naotora (Yoko Kanno)
Turn A Gundam (Yoko Kanno)
Dragon Quest Symphonies (Koichi Sugiyama)
Final Fantasy Orchestral collection (Nobuo Uematsu + Shiro Hamaguchi)
Giant Robo (Masamichi Amano)
Princess Nine (Masamichi Amano)
Super Atragon (Masamichi Amano)
Little Witch Academia OVA 1+2 (Michiru Oshima)
New Light Mythos: Palutena's Mirror (Procyon Studios)
Galaxy Express: Eternal Fantasy (Kohei Tanaka)
MAGI (SAGIMANO)
Orchestral Game Concert Series (VA)
Drifters (Hayato Matsuo)
Katsuro Tajima's Warsaw session (Katamari, Ace Combat, Deadstorm Pirates)
Fafner (Tsuneyoshi Seito)
Ni no Kuni (Joe Hisaishi)
Hellsing (Hayato Matsuo)
Kessen I+II (Reijiro Koroku)
FFXIII (Yoshihisa Hirano)
Ashita no Nadja (Keiichi Oku)
Girls und Panzer (Shiro Hamaguchi)
Glass Fleet (Kosuke Yamashita)
Howl's Moving Castle Symphonic Suite (Joe Hisaishi)
Stormy Wolf (Keisuke Shinohara)
Battle Athletes (Takayuki Hattori)
Pocket Monsters (IMAGINE)
Inuyasha (Kaoru Wada)
Furin Kazan (Akira Senju)
Kan Sawada's Doraemon
Space Brothers (Toshiyuki Watanabe)
Chou Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru (Tomoyuki Asakawa)
Flower Funeral Symphony (Akiko Shikata)
Symphonic Gamers (JAGMO)
Ultraman Great (Sinsuke Kazato)
Candidate for Goddess (Tomoyuki Asakawa)
Mononoke Symphonic Suite (Joe Hisaishi)
Romeo X Juliet (Hitoshi Sakimoto)
Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (Elliot Goldenthal)
Victory Gundam (Akira Senju)
Real Drive (Yoshihisa Hirano)
Eureka Seven: Pocket of Rainbows (Naoki Sato)
Kotobuki Squadron (Shiro Hamaguchi)
Fractale (Souhei Kano)
Aria (Takeshi Senoo & Choro Club)
Yamato 2199+2202 (Akira Miyagawa)


For the new Reiwa era, I wish it to be a time of peace, prosperity and wonderful music (and at least two decades more from my favorites).



@Zipper: Maybe Oshima should persuade him more intensely...

@Zipper: Maybe Oshima should persuade him more intensely...Yeah, she isn't exactly subtle in her Facebook conversations with him.

Asakawa is generally a laid-back person, but sometimes he delivers painful candid rants like this that give a hint of his frustration with his current position as a composer, and his contempt for the current scoring environment. This was from his recent chat with Oshima:


Now is a time when anyone can work in the world with nothing but unique ideas and strong self-assertion. Not just the music world. That's why in each field, works are created with convoluted ideas that no one thought of before, and anything that deviates from orthodox is praised as exciting. No matter how strong of a foundation there is, nobody is interested, it is worthless. Such a culture is flourishing, and the speed of such a mindset has been made possible by the coexistence with electronic devices.

He's more than aware that his practices are that of a bygone era. The poor guy never even touched music software his whole life until a couple months ago with Pro Tools.

Actually its not a rant I would say, Oshima and Asakawa are discussing just how much praise of machines and synths (who nowadays can compose artifically) and praise of "new sounds" is actually inflating the foundations of music and wonder if the music will be revered in 10 or 20 years. I get the feeling its actually about "the world" as in US and Europe because Oshima wonders about cultural difference and how much important it is to be a person of culture and profession as a composer in Japan.

Given the credentials and abilities of most contemporary Japanese composers (even pop composers) and the general acceptance of 50s and 60s styles, I get the feeling they are talking about the world at large:


Anyway, even if you don't have specialized knowledge, nowadays it seems that anyone can do (or believes he can do) advanced things, and it's very scary and foolish to think that you can do something very professional just because of electronic devices and self-believe. Composing and arranging is a cultural and hard-earned profession.

I think the statements of Keiichi Oku, Toshiyuki Watanabe and Yamashita complement this line of thought with their philosophy of "new things... yes of course... but first learn 2000 years of music". Akira Senju is also very careful to teach his students the right way. I guess it becomes evident with Endro. Fujisawa can do Golden Age, not just as an impression but he can actually write like he was from that era, and I would atest that skill to Kota Yokoseki , IMAGINE's young talents and dozens of young media composers working in Japan.

Its nonetheless fascinating because after listening to "Detective Pikachu" and then back to "Minna no Monogatari" and "Sun & Moon" its like an incredible gap in a display of culture, skill and heart.

The conversation between Oshima and Asakawa really reads like a discussion between Korngold and Rozsa about our (post)modern times. Can't beat the foundations of music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf47W9rXzRM


Music should be more profound, right? Sometimes it takes a lifetime to make a single sound beautiful. Why is a composer called a composer? That's because we think through that first motif (we should never let a machine take that from us). What comes if we forget that or don't uphold our profession is an age of shallow, convenient and cheap entertainment.

Yeah, it's more akin to venting frustration than it is a rant. But I think many of his comments are a reflection of his own experiences as well in the industry. If Korngold was berated almost a century ago for being too "old-school", imagine how much worse it is for Asakawa in our modern environment. I doubt he would appreciate the comments saying his music sounds too much like Disney cartoons, which reflects the public lack of awareness.

One of the other topics they talked about was how problematically eager Japanese society as a whole was to latch onto new things and technology. Even though many Japanese composers have a strong foundational background, they use them merely as tools for more modern forms of expression (see: Iwasaki et al). Asakawa, who is more of a traditionalist, simply cannot keep up with such a mindset.

Oshima put it best at the end of that conversation: if Asakawa feels so strongly about it, he should write more music to remind people of what they're missing. :)

But I think many of his comments are a reflection of his own experiences as well in the industry. If Korngold was berated almost a century ago for being too "old-school", imagine how much worse it is for Asakawa in our modern environment. I doubt he would appreciate the comments saying his music sounds too much like Disney cartoons, which reflects the public lack of awareness.


I still don't get it. You're not the only one with that opinion but I still don't understand it. What makes Asakawa's music so different from everything else you can hear in Japanese media, apart from him being a master at the Golden Age Hollywood sound he does in a particular way NO ONE ELSE does (taking after Korngold). For example, Oshima had some of her best Golden Age moments in this very decade, she just takes after Rozsa more than Korngold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgRxuQusmtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCUULTF_iNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkoJOvwYffw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IZE9XawgqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OakVYe-YDQY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi95LZGn9wM


Kotobuki and Girls und Panzer are prime Bernstein period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyv3kCZX8Wg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok2N_-jZsGw


How about some Herrmann:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n9P1EmK-qY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB4HofOVTl4


I mean, all these Warsaw Works are "Golden Age" in sound, from Drifters to MAGI to Gridman to Fafner. Not to mention all these Slice of Life and cutesy (nowadays even fetish) shows that very much have room for that era of music. Heck, that Date A Live III album I've linked above has so many "outdated/cringy/oldschool" things in it its comical.


And how are these pieces not just as "oldschool" (if not more) than anything Asakawa does?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3i41ypI7JY&t=9m48s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypMQHzOe01U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOFL-aioxFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs9EHPZ4hfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOl-90Cy1w4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VohQY2BmCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLfvRSSEkyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_W-it7AjEw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QplqRE08diI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvCLAD9DrB4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-YiInh6q8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbKiZcsP4qY




So much contemporary anime out there that would fit Asakawa like a glove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22vUOXhtN8

Other than his personal voice missing I don't see how its "the industries" fault he's not working and would rather perform the harp. From the contemporary works I listen to, 90% could be described as "oldschool" in some shape or form. Maybe something is missing in translation here because I personally find it hard to believe that there's no place for him and that's why he resigned. Just my two cents.

What makes Asakawa's music so different from everything else you can hear in Japanese media, apart from him being a master at the Golden Age Hollywood soundNot just his music, but his working methods. Asakawa does -everything- by hand. Composition, orchestration, with no computers involved. Not even Pro Tools. Even other supposedly "hand-written" composers like Hirano and Miyagawa use samplers and Pro Tools to make mock-ups even if their drafts are by hand. They all know how to program and use synths. That's the norm in this day and age. The only living people in the entire world working in media that are allowed to get away with Asakawa's approach are ancient legends like John Williams and Morricone, who have others do it for them. Not to mention, in Asakawa's generation, how many are still working and actively writing music? Higuchi for example is still alive and kicking, but you certainly never hear from him anymore. The landscape has changed so much from when Asakawa was at his most active that I don't know if he is compatible in this more digital environment where composers are forced to show sound directors their full mock-ups orchestrated in VSL. And judging from his fairly negative attitude about "machines", he is not willing to bend himself over and change his approach. And that means less jobs.

There's also the matter of his music. Sure, many others can sound Golden Age- but the general rule of thumb for Japanese scores is that they are not to be written in a symphonic and leitmotivic manner like western films. Very few Japanese scores are bound by genres, they all tend to be a potpourri of different styles and the maybe contain some bits that can be strung together to create a symphonic suite of sorts. Kanno, Amano, Oshima, Hirano, Tanaka, and whoever else we name rarely write fully symphonic scores. They all have little forays into other genres and hybrids and occasionally use electronic touch-ups like the banging percussion loops. Even Higuchi never really wrote any fully symphonic scores outside of Pheonix. In something like Gundam X, only 1/3 of the music can be construed to be either orchestral or leitmotivic. The rest was pretty much the same as what others had at the time- loads of 90s rock and electronics and synths. And it's the approach that is taken for granted because the way the shows are structured, music has to be used more like a sample library of sound cues and effects than for matching the dramatic context on screen.

Iwasaki is the prime example of just how off-beat the scoring environment is in Japan, because the shifts in his music are by far the most extreme compared to others even within his individual soundtracks. In Persona Trinity Soul, he moves from Ghost and Mrs. Muir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tl9_DLueY8) to Jason Bourne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KmcSMVIR1k). To him, there is no difference between modern Hollywood and Golden Age approaches, they are all merely tools of expression.

Asakawa, as a rule of thumb, writes almost everything in symphonic and leitmotivc manner. Even when he touches other genres like jazz, the construction remains the same as his orchestral pieces. You will never hear him suddenly freewheeling with an e-guitar for some slice-of-life filler. Think of Wataru, and why Sahashi was brought in- it was because Asakwa's music featured none of those filler pieces. Everything was written for the sake of some dramatic context. You could glue together all of Asakawa's pieces in Wataru and get yourself a fairly cohesive symphony. The same can't be said about Sahashi's contributions, which are more "typical anime sound database".

Why does Oshima have a career now while Asakawa doesn't despite both being strongly influenced by Golden Age music? It's because unlike Asakawa, Oshima has no problems with doing something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJuLWIl_6E

And remember when Sahashi, in his arrangement of Elfman's Batman, decided to suddenly shove in an orchestral version of Prince's Batdance in the middle?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNb4Fo2k9Q

It's this very Japanese mindset of complete musical freedom that makes Asakawa so out-of-place, even with his contemporaries, because he refuses to follow it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEymb_YDGgk


What's amazing about Asakawa, even in his scores for cheesy J-Dramas, is that he never once bends over to the J-Drama formula, even in how the music is structured. He treats the music with as much respect as he would a symphony. Just like how Korngold refused to compromise the musical standards of his film scores from his concert music just because they were film scores.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x6jTC9bIFw?t=195

Just listen to that majestic build-up and crescendo as the puppy gets picked up, how often is that heard in J-Drama scores?

Yeah, it all makes sense and I even touched upon some of the points you made myself. The question remains, for a man with his reputation and connections (who can score commercials however he likes), he could simply be more picky with his projects. Take Violet Evergarden... pretty cohesive and the director even wanted an "oldschool" sound. Could have worked.

Its true that one of the reasons I'm attracted to Japanese music in the first place is the complete freedom, which I take over form, all things considered because you can very much write a leitmotific score inside the requested material (if you want).

On the one hand I have the utmost respect for him, on the other its no wonder then he doesn't want to work if he refuses to get with the times (and on paper, there's nothing negative about electronic devices and mock-ups... if you know what you're doing). Its very true he was an enigma, even among his peers at the time. Katsuhisa Hattori was playing with hiphop and was very quick to get with the times, Higuchi played the 90s cliche game too, as did Watanabe and Tanaka (and as their recent scores have shown, they never abandoned it truely). Oshima (at least outside of scoring) is a huge metal nut and Sahashi at the time was a funk musician and if you would have shown me his Gundam Symphonies I would have never believed he wrote them. Kow Otani was so bathed in synths and electronics at the time it makes many of the young composers today seem quaint by comparison.

Only Senju and Wada were some sort of traditionalists but nowadays Wada put his stiff-upper-lip persona behind him and finally has fun and embraces all forms of music (if you ask me his orchestral/symphonic material is all the better for it).

Speaking of electronics, I made a MIDI of a track from Naotora. (http://jeremyrobson.com/dan.mid) It's probably the easiest one to transcribe due to the repetition, but I really like it. It sounds like an 80s "training montage" like something you'd hear from Bill Conti. Here are some interesting observations I made while listening to it 100+ times:

1. The thumping bass rhythm is a counting pattern:

11--1---1---1---
1---11--1---1---
1---1---11--1---
1---1---1---11--

2. There are no winds or orchestral percussion.

3. The brass sounds like sample libraries in spots. Only the trumpets sound real. Strings are definitely real.

4. Kanno often does this trick where she keeps the bass line on a single note until a pivotal moment that necessitates a harmonic change. The harmonies are changing throughout, but the bass is the same until around 1:40; a technique called a "pedal point" which is great for building tension.

5. Around 1:10 the violins play triplet ostinatos, which Kanno has used in other action pieces (Turn A Gundam, Macross Frontier).

6. The reason it sounds like Conti (maybe Silvestri), or I should say, the reason it sounds more like a Hollywood score than something written for Japanese media is that the harmonies are ambiguous and unstable, thanks to that pedal point. The first chord you hear is a second inversion C major chord that falls to a D major chord. This suggests the Lydian mode, which is the mode that formed the basis for a lot of 80s scores https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6FbC96CX4E

The other ambiguity is that you can't tell if it's E minor or C major. If you combine them, you get CMaj7 which when blasted by a brass section tends to sound somewhat jazzy, or John Williams-ish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6FbC96CX4E#t=4m0s

7. Despite the ambiguities in harmony, the chords are actually very simple. It's a piece written in C Lydian from beginning to end. The tension is built by keeping that steady bass line and string ostinatos going against those Lydian chords.

That's really cool! I downloaded the MIDI and listened back to it via Synthesia, and it's fascinating to read your observations and then see them within the music. Combined with what I've learnt about music theory recently, it helps me to understand how to better put together an orchestral piece, and I really adore that. Heck, it actually makes me want to try my hand at trying to create some kind of orchestral piece with in MIDI (I've never written in that style before, but I'd more than happy to give it a shot) - if anything happens on that front, I'll post it on here.

Hello, hello, ladies and gents!

I've been a little (a lot) busy lately, particularly because of that wasted hard drive I talked about last time. I spent a lot of time sorting things out and trying to re-download what I could. During this (ongoing) process I made sure to treat with particular care my most precious data, which of course include many scores of all types.

Then I said to myself, since these albums now get stored so carefully (instead of the random mess that were my hard drives before, just full of quickly downloaded stuff not verified due to lack of time), I should as well re-post them in the thread for others to enjoy. Great idea, right?

So here I start today with one of my personal classics:



Yuri Poteyenko
Age Of Pirates: Caribbean Tales

Original Game Soundtrack
Moscow Symphony Orchestra & Kastalsky-Kapella
2005 - MP3 -V 0



https://www24.*****.com/v/wZmTCuGc/file.html
*****=zippyshare


The first time I heard this score (in-game), I could barely believe my ears. The quality is so much above your usual game score, even an orchestral one. It also easily beats the vast majority of film scores coming out these days.

What you have here is pretty much a kind of "Sea-faring Symphony" or "Pirate Symphonic Suite". It certainly does sound more like a modern symphonic work (not "modern" in THAT way) rather than a game score. The orchestra is quite large and the compositions are really "symphonic", in the sense that can you feel that they've been thought out directly for orchestra rather than for piano and then later translated to orchestra. This is a truly magnificient gem that deserves a much wider recognition.

If you like this score, please consider buying a physical copy at keepmovingrecords.com (or elsewhere maybe, I haven't checked) to support the composer and this small label.

And if you're a director or producer, and want a first-class score for your movie / TV show / game, make sure to contact Yuri Poteyenko, a very talented and skilled composer that will make you a score so good people will talk about it 15 years later!

On the one hand I have the utmost respect for him, on the other its no wonder then he doesn't want to work if he refuses to get with the times (and on paper, there's nothing negative about electronic devices and mock-ups... if you know what you're doing). Its very true he was an enigma, even among his peers at the time. Katsuhisa Hattori was playing with hiphop and was very quick to get with the times, Higuchi played the 90s cliche game too, as did Watanabe and Tanaka (and as their recent scores have shown, they never abandoned it truely). Oshima (at least outside of scoring) is a huge metal nut and Sahashi at the time was a funk musician and if you would have shown me his Gundam Symphonies I would have never believed he wrote them. Kow Otani was so bathed in synths and electronics at the time it makes many of the young composers today seem quaint by comparison.That's exactly what I'm talking about. We keep saying that he's "retired", but he isn't- just not as active writing for the orchestra as before. He's certainly indulging himself with the other styles of music that he likes, like the light relaxation arrangements with piano and harp, samba, tap dancing, etc. But unlike the others, he doesn't want that to mix up with the orchestra. In the context of Japanese composers, he's definitely unusual in that regard. I certainly hope he has bigger plans in his foray into Pro Tools than just having it be a source of personal amusement.

I know I've said this before, but we often associate Asakawa with the "Golden Age sound", yet his talent with the orchestra goes far beyond that. Some of what he's written would sit right at home in any contemporary concert hall performance:

https://picosong.com/wEvFk/

If he wanted to change his "sound" to match the dramatic needs of any work, I seriously doubt he would have any trouble. But is he willing to change his way of working to more modern practices and ease up on his purist mindset? Well, that's another story.



He's still going at it:


(While rehearsing) the singers get switched out every once in a while, and we performers do as well. If nothing gets switched, it's meaningless to be in this studio. It's not a machine!

How do the likes of Masaru Yokoyama and Yuki Hayashi work with this man and not shake in complete fear of his judgement every time they hand him a manuscript?

@arthy: Certainly one of my all-time favorites and my favorite western game score (when was the last time one of those impressed me on the same level...). It's very true: Great music is forever.


@Zipper: You know what's interesting, Asakawa (according to my knowledge) has never performed for Iwasaki...

And Meanwhile


Now I'm 57 years old but I feel like I'm in the prime of my (musical) life. I will give my best.




Yesterday I wrote a song on my computer and accidentally deleted it ;_;




How do the likes of Masaru Yokoyama and Yuki Hayashi work with this man and not shake in complete fear of his judgement every time they hand him a manuscript?

What manuscript? :P

But in seriousness, Yokoyama is better than you think and his NHK Orchestra work was throughly professional so he didn't fall on his face (still not good enough for me to care):

https://picosong.com/w8n5W/
https://picosong.com/w8nLn/
https://picosong.com/w8nLY/
https://picosong.com/w8nLZ/
https://picosong.com/w8nA9/
https://picosong.com/w8nLQ/


But back to business (on some scores he even did perform), I catched some pieces I really like from last year:




Kenichiro Suehiro
Golden Kamuy: Orchestral Selection



There's no need (https://picosong.com/w8nXN/) / Edo Shellfish (https://picosong.com/w8njP) / Lepun Kamui (https://picosong.com/w8njS/) / Acha (https://picosong.com/w8njD/)

He probably thought, so with "Golden" I need some pieces with that vibe. The piece "Acha" is an alternate take from ReZero ;)



SUPA LOVE
Seven Senses of the Reunion
Studio Orchestra



Main Theme (https://picosong.com/w8nVN/) / Action (https://picosong.com/w8nVr/) / Waltz (https://picosong.com/w8nXy/) / Parade (https://picosong.com/w8nXk/)

Download (https://mega.nz/#!ftAHnaBB!nv47GZ5qTtKjbSWi52aaa6EAFaxPzBvvGlrRnWpQUSw)

Debut of a new composer and arranger unit similar to MONACA with their own facilities.



Hideakira Kimura
Gundam Build Divers: Orchestral Suite



Divers Suite (https://picosong.com/w8nuC/)

Very reminiscent of Gigantic Formula.

If you like this score, please consider buying a physical copy at keepmovingrecords.com (or elsewhere maybe, I haven't checked) to support the composer and this small label.

Ordered along with Sea Dogs. Figured these were both long OOP, but even after shipping less than $22. Too good to pass up.


And if you're a director or producer, and want a first-class score for your movie / TV show / game, make sure to contact Yuri Poteyenko, a very talented and skilled composer that will make you a score so good people will talk about it 15 years later!

Incidentally, I am going to need a composer for a short film I'll be making later this year. Unfortunately since I'll be paying all out-of-pocket, I'd say an orchestral score is not in the cards unless I am extraordinarily lucky in the next several months. Although considering the scale of the story, something like a trio or a quartet would probably be more appropriate anyway.

I've got a bit of a strange question/request, if anyone's willing to indulge me.

I want to find more music by Ronnie Hazlehurst (who I previously covered when I uploaded a Last of the Summer Wine soundtrack album of his in 2017), and something that I found quite interesting is an album called Sixteen Small Screen Greats (https://www.discogs.com/Ronnie-Hazlehurst-His-Orchestra-Sixteen-Small-Screen-Greats/release/2943193), which primarily features various theme tunes he did for BBC shows during the 70s such as The Two Ronnies, The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em - along with contributions by other composers like Dudley Simpson and Alexander Farris.

I'd really like to get the album and rip it, but it's a vinyl-only album and I've got no way of recording/ripping music directly from a vinyl. I know a couple of folks on here are able to do that, so I was wondering if anyone would like to indulge me and rip the album for me. I'll happily pay for the album and have it be directly delivered to wherever you can most easily acquire it. I'd just like to get more of Hazlehurst's music out there, along with music by other composers that might not have that much exposure otherwise. If you're interested, please reply or send me a PM. Thanks for reading, and have a good day!

I can do that for you. :) I'll drop you a PM. :)

@Zipper: You know what's interesting, Asakawa (according to my knowledge) has never performed for Iwasaki...Interesting thing to mention. Outside the question of whether the two would even get along with each other, it's very unusual because the harp is one of the most prominent aspects of Iwasaki's orchestration, especially used as arpeggios below his strings and to create that hard-to-describe murky undulating harmonic effect that's one of his trademark sounds. It's hard to think of a single soundtrack (with an orchestra) where Iwasaki doesn't use the harp. The few times he doesn't have one, he substitutes it with piano (https://picosong.com/w8FTZ/). In C, he even used a small harp ensemble of what sounds like 3 or 4 harps (https://youtu.be/Lzr3Ey6V-1I?t=131)- something I don't recall any other Japanese composer doing. I suspect his standard usage of the harp is another of the many things he learned from Herrmann, who also loved the harp, though of course he had far more of them to mess around with.

And bizarrely enough, he has never credited a single harpist in any of his work. Even when they are prominently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVM0zQ4yQGQ) featured (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-m-x7nybk4) soloists (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzWAN5rx84). We know he uses live players because it's mentioned in the Sound Inn blog. Another one of Iwasaki's many mysteries, I suppose (along with why a handful of his soundtracks have entire ensembles of credits missing- like the brass on Black Butler II and the woodwinds on 009-1). I don't think Asakawa has ever played harp for Iwasaki, because they aren't friends on Facebook- and Asakawa is friends with literally every other notable composer in Japan on there who he's worked for.


I also did a cursory google search and found something very interesting- Iwasaki and Asakawa had actually worked together(!) before on a 1996 J-Drama (with two other composers- one of which, MOKA, Iwasaki would work with again on Noragami) that ran ten episodes long:

https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Natural_Ai_no_Yukue

The only soundtrack that exists is a drama CD... what a shame. Can't find any clips online of the show either.


Yokoyama's NHK drama isn't bad, but at his best he's still watered-down Yugo Kanno. Didn't he record something in Italy recently? And it sounds no different than what could have been tossed out of Sound Inn.

Tazer: Thank you, kind sir!

When you do good, good comes back at you, in one form or another. This is a principle I personally verified many times.

Also make sure to give some feed-back on your film project. I am already a little familiar with your writing skills (which we don't see enough anymore in the thread, and that's a shame), now I'd be curious to know more about your talents on the filmic side.




Vin: So much new music! Perfect, because I have a new very hungry hard drive to feed, and he's going to be very, very happy with this!

You have no idea arthy, that was just the warm-up. Those are all nice and good but now its time for something really exciting. With helping hands, a sugary pink storm of orchestral wonders is coming up ;)


But first, a little trivia:


Four people I respect from the bottom of my heart:

Kentaro Haneda, Shigeaki Saegusa, Shiro Sagisu, Yoko Kanno.

I know them well.

It was really worth listening to their works again, I studied "Characteristics" "policy" "artistics" "goodness (to the weak point)". I have learned quite well.


There are two types of composers.

“Melody oriented” and “Sound oriented”.

Which one comes to mind first when making music?



Haneda-san and Saegusa-san are definetely "Melo oriented"

Sagisu-san is "Sound-oriented".



And Kanno-san... a very unusual person of "Melo and sound simultaneously!"

In other words, when you start working, it's like you already have everything completed in your head (like me).

It's like magic, but it's normal for her, so keep it up!


A pity she was sick on the Flying Dog Festival day. I would have loved to perform together with her again.

ladatree presents:



Yoshiaki Fujisawa
ENDRO~!
SPECIAL QUEST Orchestra



It can't end with an Endroll (https://picosong.com/w8Rd8/) / The Ancient Ruins run deep (https://picosong.com/w8Rdz/) / Farewell (https://picosong.com/w8Rr9/) / Yusha Party Returns (https://picosong.com/w8Rra/)
Download (https://mega.nz/#!7pwyTAZK!DSKbsyWRf7fJO1R9E-eZrTOG712t1B1BOON1XuLqPQs)

All the credit goes to ladatree, who goes out of his way to bring you wonderful music you probably never heard before (at least I didn't know so many wonderful scores existed I never heard about).
You should give him a big rep :)


Love it, show and score. It has some forgettable episodes but those special few where the score takes over, just wonderful. The piece "The Ancient Ruins run deep" is my favorite of them all. You will have a tough time finding music this playful, elegant and rich anywhere else anymore. It very much reminds me of Drilands "Adventure Princess" (https://picosong.com/w8qjX/), a personal favorite of mine.

Everything about this show is endearing, its not even an adaption but an original work with some heartwarming ideals and stellar character designs and music:




"I wanted to make a show where you come home exhausted from work, grab a beer and have fun with these girls and appreciate the European cultural influence and we succeded. We designed everything and worked hard to bring you a smile and appreciation of the culture of "ancient Europe". Dragon Quest was our main inspiration and its very similar in its philosophy.

I hope the fun daily life of these girls warms your heart that may be tired. Since this is my first original animation, I was very nervous but also excited with a sense of adventure. I hope you find that reflected in the show.

Everyone of the staff, from the character designer to the composer had a smile on their faces and the working environment was great. I feel confident in saying we made something that brings people joy and something so cute I was moved to have been part of it. I may be a maniac, but I think it would be nice if you could also pay attention to such differences in body shape and features of the girls. Like how Yusha is chubby in all the right parts and we made sure to emphasize that or how Phi's skirt has a hole where you can see her panties. Surely the viewer should see and find his favorite figure (laughs).

Like Dragon Quest, music plays perhaps the most important role. Since talks with KING RECORDS were finished, I definitely wanted to work with Mr. Fujisawa. I gave him my request for rich and elegant Medieval Fantasy Europe music with a rich ethnic flavor. I asked for lovely melodies in a theatrical context with many variations to support the picture and gave him also a request of music I want to listen to carefully. It was a very elegant and productive atmosphere. Certain episodes have music that shines at every point. I really want everyone to pay attention to the music.


The best part is that its just the first soundtrack, I recall at least 3 or 4 orchestral pieces missing (including a major action setpiece) and that's excluding the possibility some pieces weren't used. Who knows, there might even be a surprise on the second one ;) It drops in late June but this one is so packed it should be enough to satisfy for now. There's also a "Special Quest" event and something extra going on behind the scenes. Of course a concert would be dope.



Enjoy!

Thank you very much ladatree for this one!

EDIT : I just noticed on vgmdb (https://vgmdb.net/album/86533) that Evan Call has released a movie OST on February. By any chance, does anyone here have it?

I take it back; there's a lot more in Endro than I thought there was through (admittedly not very carefully) skimming the episodes.

It won't win any prizes for originality, but this music is interesting - and I didn't expect that from Fujisawa.

I really dig the counterpoint in "Trial Entry" - and the ever-so-slightly daring (for a TV anime score) dissonances add spice. The beginning sounds distantly inspired by Hirano.

Rona Pricipa O'Lapanesta is harmonically lovely, the theme is very good - likewise Purple Black... that one is almost impressionistic.

Fight to the Death at the Demon Lord's Castle is, if I'm not mistaken, the first piece of music heard in the series - mixing dark action with some playful orchestral acrobatics that keeps things just the right side of light.

No slamming, no electronics.

This makes me happy.

Thanks to you both for posting. :)

Edit: I just realised that the tracks are all mixed up from their order on the soundtrack album. What happened? :(

Four people I respect from the bottom of my heart:

Kentaro Haneda, Shigeaki Saegusa, Shiro Sagisu, Yoko Kanno.

I know them well.

It was really worth listening to their works again, I studied "Characteristics" "policy" "artistics" "goodness (to the weak point)". I have learned quite well.


There are two types of composers.

“Melody oriented” and “Sound oriented”.

Which one comes to mind first when making music?



Haneda-san and Saegusa-san are definetely "Melo oriented"

Sagisu-san is "Sound-oriented".



And Kanno-san... a very unusual person of "Melo and sound simultaneously!"

In other words, when you start working, it's like you already have everything completed in your head (like me).

It's like magic, but it's normal for her, so keep it up!


A pity she was sick on the Flying Dog Festival day. I would have loved to perform together with her again.
Of course it's Kanno who doesn't show up...

I'm surprised Tanaka is acknowledging Sagisu and not Amano here, since anytime Sagisu sits with an orchestra, the brunt of that work is Amano's. I would have expected a composer of Tanaka's caliber to make that distinction.


Endro is a lot of fun! Fujisawa went all-out with the orchestral acrobatics even though at some points it sounds more like a j-pop orchestral concert. I suppose it's because the melodies and transition points are very run-of-the-mill. Purple Black stands out compared to the rest and might be my favorite piece on the whole album, but of course I'm biased toward that kind of harmonically rich tapestry- and it sounds a bit like Iwasaki in that regard. Whatever the case it's a big step up from his previous works like Land of the Lustrous.

That's a very tall horse you're sitting on but be careful if you dizz Sagisu, man. Miyashiro will come and get you:



Also, Sagisu worked since the 80s and he's always been an amazing pop composer... and Tanaka loves all music (as a composer should), he isn't talking about orchestral music here. Also, he knows them personally. Whether you like or dislike Sagisu is just personal preference. He makes/made some good music. Not to mention he can't exactly go into detail in a "tweet" (short blog post).


@Tango: ? The thing I always do... you know because my brain craves "narrative/dramatic" structure and having a "big finish/climax" piece in the middle throws me off (plus I know how soundtracks are made and in general the composer gets no say in what order the tracks are released and most of the time its just random which pieces get picked and it has been that way with Anime OSTs since forever). Be assured nothing is omitted, just rearranged and packaged into something I fancy for my own enjoyment. In general I share stuff from my collection so in this case it was already "processed" so to speak. I can however provide the soundtrack unchanged if you need it for archiving or something.


Speaking of my style, perhaps some of you who enjoy the game "Sekiro" may find this custom soundtrack interesting, its done entirely with tracks from my Wada collection and it gives the game a big boost as far as my enjoyment goes. The game really feels like playing a violent Samurai/Ninja flick/OVA so I needed some appropiate music (I think it becomes obvious how perfect Wada is for such occasion considering he's the master of that type of sound). You may find it interesting to try another playthrough with this (I have customized media buttons on my PS4 controller and play on PC, I also kept spoilers to a minimum):



Sekiro (Alternate Soundtrack - Playlist) (https://mega.nz/#!71ZggQrK!JGfVT-9aVA6R2eaX9VJ14Se6G8rRzYmWJwrpIVRaOg8)

You know, slicing some Samurai to dark brooding music is a nice contrast to the sweet diabetes but this dichotomy is what lifes all about (and I love them both).

The reason for my doubt on his claim was because Tanaka labelled him as being "sound-oriented". Sagisu has never been about dense orchestration or harmony. Prior to Amano, most of his music was very blatantly inspired by John Barry, who is as streamlined with his orchestration as you can get- but makes up for it with exceptional melodies. You can hear the Barry inspiration (and at times plagiarism) all over the likes of Eva, Nadia, and Orange Road. So what does Tanaka mean by "sound"? I understand Sagisu was very much into jazz, and it shows in his music- but his music isn't the kind of thing that's rich and layered in "sound".

I am certain Tanaka is referring to his recent work- where most of the "sound" is that of Amano's- at least all the portions in involving an orchestra. And since Tanaka is talking about orchestral composers here, I have no reason to doubt he's talking about how they use an orchestra.

(on a side note, Tanaka has a Twitter? I thought it was just a blog)

When Tanaka labelled Sagisu as "sound-oriented", I assumed he meant that Sagisu is the type of composer who prefers to convey a vibe or mood through the music to creating a specific melody, as opposed to a certain degree of orchestration and harmony. For example, this song from the End of Evangelion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo_vggbteVU) has a fairly repetitive melody, but the arrangement of the strings and the choir do a great deal of work in conveying a haunting, messed up "sound".

I remember someone here once talking about how Sagisu's songs tend to be quite repetitive when he's in charge of the arrangements and the very simple melodies (was it Zipper who said it? Or was it Tango?), and I think that makes a fair bit of sense if Sagisu's focus for writing orchestral music is on providing a certain atmosphere, even if the arrangement is fairly complex. I'd almost argue Sagisu's own arrangements are minimalist; compare the above piece to this one from Michael Nyman's Enemy Zero soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrQRN5nB7xk) in terms of how simple the melodies and arrangements are while still creating a palpable mood; but I don't know enough about minimalism in music to confidently suggest it.

Also, that's just how I interpreted Tanaka's description. I could be wrong about that, and I'll cop to that without hesitation.

I don't know if I would call Sagisu's melodies "repetitive"- but they are very simple and straightforward. If anything, he writes a melody and simply doesn't develop it in an interesting manner with his orchestration. I tend to think of pieces like this as being very typical Sagisu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O58LpUYTYBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9_IKTUilFI (it is a bit repetitive, but far from minimalist)

In my opinion, his style has a bit in common with Sahashi. Both are Barry afficionados too, and fans of big band jazz. But Sahashi has much more exuberance to both his melodies and orchestration than Sagisu. I do see your point, but as far creating an atmosphere goes with minimal motifs, I don't hear much of it in Sagisu's music. Bernard Herrmann or John Adams he is not, nor is he attempting to be.

THIS is what it means to have music that truly revolves around "sound"- and in a jazz idiom too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ohtpzmN8yI

The melody is extremely repetitive, but just listen to the richness of those chords, and the depth of the dynamic range- none of which are present in Sagisu's music.

And I, for some reason, thought that by "sound-oriented" Tanaka meaning Sagisu's pop music primarily :)

Those dead 3 days killed the momentum for what was shaping up to be an interesting conversation.

I wish I knew how to make like a doctor and try to revive this conversation, but I don't really know what to say in response to your previous post (other than to comment on the fact that you picked a Mancini piece for something that's truly sound-oriented, since Sagisu sometimes reminds of Mancini). On the one hand, it might be due to the killed momentum, but it might also be due to the fact that I'm actually quite bad at articulating myself when it comes to discussing music. I'll admit that I'm not entirely confident in what I said in my last post, and that's mainly due to my concern that the terminology I was using didn't properly express what I wanted to convey.

I love all kinds of music, but I always feel at a loss when it comes to trying to explain why or what I think about on anything deeper than "I liked it", and I worry that I'm talking out of my ass when I do try to say something (like with Hattori's FF arrangements on the last page). And considering how much I'd love to talk about music with people who are just as passionate if not moreso, I can't help but find that really frustrating (my inability to do so on this thread specifically is actually one of the reasons why I've been attending a music course for the last year or two). I know I should only really say what I feel like saying, even if it isn't a lot, but it bothers me that I can't figure out how to say anything more.

Sorry if this came out of nowhere; I've had a weird couple of days where I find myself having a harder time than usual articulating music-related things, and I needed to talk about it somewhere for a bit.

To hell with that, just say how the music makes you feel and think, analysis comes after the fact (but you have learned quite a lot about discussing technicality if I say so myself so don't be shy now and more confident) ;)

I can bet you all my savings that Tanaka for example doesn't write with an analytical mind, he just goes with the flow of his mind and puts it down: https://picosong.com/w8J43/ (gasp, a hint of some new Tanaka you probably have never heard?!)

At base level its an energetic, humable, romantic, sea-faring adventure piece with some gorgeous moments. That's all that needs to be said (and probably what Tanaka will say what he thought about when he wrote it). Then comes the analysis with his usual tropes and likes, harmonic language, influence, melodic development etc. For us "in the know" it's really cool to get the knowledge of "oh, that's how he did it and at bar 27 he makes this modulation here and this inversion there... and that counterpoint... what a genius.

My point is, sometimes just go with the flow and let us know your inital reaction... more often than not its exactly what the piece expresses (My life philosophy: Music is no cold-hard science but a heartfelt one :))




Btw, how about some new Sahashi, the first episode is not heavy on score but he has an orchestra and afficionados of his discography will instantly recognize what he based his music on this time: https://picosong.com/w8uat/

I expect a soundtrack.

And to all fans of Go Shiina (like myself) you will be pleased to know Million Arthur gets a soundtrack release and Code Vein is revived from hiatus. His contribution to Yaiba will be on a bonus cd.




Oh, and good thing we're back! After ten years you just accept it like a normal thing and just hope this time it won't be the last (I'm good at this "hope" thing).

For the next absence of this thread I thought maybe its time to write a book, I don't know, maybe something about this:





“Creation is alive” – The culture of “Animism”
or how Shinto-Buddhism and decades of peace and cultural homogenization shape the idea and reception of creations by artists in all field in Japanese Media.



I would be addressing the fact that many Japanese anime and game creations are in fact "real" for the Japanese, so much, so they put their lives and skill into it and even celebrate the birthday of fictional characters in concert halls and public events because of homogeneous culture and Shinto-Buddhism (Ghost in the Shell).

Lets go by example of "Yusha":



To a certain subculture and small niche of "fans" she is very much "real". A creation with a "soul" or "spirit". Its the reason the Japanese also perform funeral rites for robots and earnestly celebrate their birthday at public events. The question if a machine or even drawing has a soul is not a huge deal because from a certain Japanese perspective it already has a "soul" when we create it (Ghost in the Shell).

To a westerners' perspective it seems perhaps like cheap commercialism or a cheap toy but its not, far from it (not to mention its made for 30+ old Office worker). Its really hard to explain if you are not "in the know" but there is a stark difference between media entertainment in Japan and the "west". Even the million "light-novel trash adaptions" can have some serious skill and heart put into them (see ReZero and the upcoming Milf Isekai). It happens when a production committee fully commits to a creation (see Kotobuki or Endro). The wonderful music you sometimes hear is a result of that.


Anime is not for the single-minded – The (musical) celebration of creation in subcultural events and adoration in everyday life



No shame btw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlYAoIOgmU)

Well, I think that one I already did write ;)

I just think it's a good to remind yourself, all these wonderful scores you heard in this thread (from my side at least) were made for a very small niche audience with shows on a shoestring budget (even Escaflowne looks incredibly cheap in parts and is full of "cheap Anime tropes" and yet it has the Warsaw Philharmonic blasting two hours of some of the finest symphonic work ever written. Hearing "Gloria" during the moments its played is still absurd from a westerners' perspective. I mean "this is some of the best music ever written" and not some cheap throwaway underscore it would have if it was a cartoon show.

A show like Kotobuki and Endro is made for a few thousand people and everyone on the production worked their butts off to make it the best it can be for those few thousand who appreciate it. They go to public events and concerts, buy the merchandize and celebrate the creations, also as a form of gratitude to those who made it. Be assured, the people who worked on Endro did it because of their love for their "creation" and there's no cynicism involved in any of it (like anything Mizushima does). If the words of the director, or the composer, or the character designer or the voice actors don't convince you they all had a great time making it and put their heart into it, the music certainly will.

I rewatched my favorite episodes of Endro again and there's far more missing than I thought, including a piece clearly inspired by Tanaka. Can't wait for the second soundtrack.

Aside from this little excurse in cultural anthropology, my point is I could write two books during all the forum disconnects and I would have finished them by now...

Btw, how about some new Sahashi, the first episode is not heavy on score but he has an orchestra and afficionados of his discography will instantly recognize what he based his music on this time: https://picosong.com/w8uat/[/CENTER]

Wow! That's some major news to me!

Vinphonic: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your words of encouragement. Like I said in my previous post, I've been in a weird state of mind recently, so to have someone try to encourage me to change that mindset means more than I can properly articulate. The funny thing, I was actually wondering to myself a while ago that it might not be such a bad idea to just say something, even if it isn't a lot (that was more to do with discussing animation, which I've been meaning to do elsewhere, but haven't really done due to my worries on not saying enough). So to have someone else suggest the same perspective was validating in a weird way; it made me think that I wasn't alone in my head or weird for thinking that (which I'm very much aware is a dumb, illogical thought process, but it's also one that's hard to avoid when you're stuck in the middle of it), and I can't thank you enough for that. With that in mind, I thought I'd try this by writing about something I stumbled across a couple of weeks ago...

Kulta's Theme (com. Michiru Oshima, from Kulta: The Adventure of a Golden Dog) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw5izLhC8sA I don't know anything about this film, and I've not listened to the rest of Oshima's score, but I adore this cue. It reminds me of the kind of music you'd hear in Disney films from the 60s and 70s, particularly when George Bruns was able to go for something a bit more serene and melodic than "crazy cartoon hijinks" (and I may as well post an example of that while I'm here - https://picosong.com/w8QaY). There's something so nostalgic about the melody and the way it's arranged that it makes me grin like an idiot, but the way the flutes rise and descend at 1:08 help make it more than just a throwback.

From what I can find, the film's name seems to be the Japanese title for the 1995 film Napoleon, which had its music done by Bill Conti. With that in mind, I really want to know what the deal is with Oshima's soundtrack - was it a soundtrack made exclusively for the Japanese version (like the English dubbed anime for US children's networks)? If so, that's such an awesome thing to do, especially if the music's as good as this particular track!

Birthday Wonderland [Film Suite] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97648styN90)

Movie Magic Moment included
Give her a few years ;)


And Hitoshi Sakimoto did actually work on another game last year besides VC4:

Main Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emYiAVetums)
Adventure Start (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzQX3hdVk60&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=12)
Town (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQDMKUZvjT0&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=8)
Romantic Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYRxFlhRJ_U&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=11)
Dragon's Crownesque (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8wDParstAE&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=16)
Battle Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddx1YRtoIgA&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=7)
Jingle Bells (Sakimoto Style) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG8iHzfRQxc&list=PL2xV2FBhuLYR7l0my-8JihXud0QHe58_Q&index=5)

Give the man his orchestra pls. Listening to Booklove (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfPyxG-ZbFM&t=28s) again I'm pretty sure its him.