Your Favorite 'One and Done' Composer...Poll

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  • Posts: 572
    Also, I'd argue that Bill Conti's score is just as dated but equally as enjoyable.
    Seconded.
  • Bill Conti was the best. Consider the variety of action music, the Oscar-nominated "For Your Eyes Only" and the beautifully haunting track "Take Me Home." Why was he not asked back? Instead, we are baffled why David Arnold continues to churn out boring, non-melodious, forgettable scores. True, John Barry is the King of Bond scores. His scores were great separate of the film, but David Arnold MUST GO! Too bad he's scoring Bond 23! Don't Michael Wilson & Barbara Brocolli remember that more often than not, when they mixed up the composers of the 007 films, it generated top ten hits. David Arnold couldn't compose a memorable soup commercial!
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    Posts: 15,718
    I totally agree with douglas007 on David Arnold !! :-bd
  • When it comes to music, my personal opinion is that the most important thing is melody. If a song has a good, catchy, memorable melody (what makes a "hummable" song) then the arrangement doesn't matter. Or, you can fiddle with the arrangement around the melody to create a different mood. That's why I don't like Arnold's scores - he doesn't write memorable melodies that he can then use as lietmotifs throughout the score, like Barry did.

    It seems to me that part of the early appeal of Arnold was his aping of the Bond-y, Barryesque horns (which really, is a tiny part of Barry's Bond scores). It's like he took the most obvious element that people associate with Bond and ran with it. But any composer could do that - listen to the similar music used in the first season of Alias. Why not hire a composer who could write memorable melodies and then tweak the arrangement to sound more like Barry if you think that's important?

    I think that Arnold can write some good stuff - his main title for Stargate was wonderful, and I love the CR score but the problem is that his batting average is pretty low.
  • Posts: 2,599
    A difficult one. I don't own the LALD, LTK and Dr No soundtracks so I can't really make an informed decision. Out of FYEO, GE and TSWLM however, I would say Conti's FYEO is the best. I particularly like the Cortina tracks -suspensful and original. If I had the power to change the course of historical events with the opportunity to make it so Barry scored FYEO instead of Conti I would not take this opportunity. I think Conti gives FYEO a very fresh, unique flavour. The demerits of his score are just one or two of the action scene tracks.
  • Posts: 50
    Bill Conti was the best. Consider the variety of action music, the Oscar-nominated "For Your Eyes Only" and the beautifully haunting track "Take Me Home." Why was he not asked back? Instead, we are baffled why David Arnold continues to churn out boring, non-melodious, forgettable scores. True, John Barry is the King of Bond scores. His scores were great separate of the film, but David Arnold MUST GO! Too bad he's scoring Bond 23! Don't Michael Wilson & Barbara Brocolli remember that more often than not, when they mixed up the composers of the 007 films, it generated top ten hits. David Arnold couldn't compose a memorable soup commercial!
    Word. B-)
  • Posts: 11,189
    I think people are getting kind of silly when it comes to slagging off David Arnold to be honest. I think the man is doing a fine job and yes he can compose a decent melody. Someone above mentioned Stargate but also his score for Independence Day was excellent IMO.

    Who honestly can say they didn't get chills at the end of CR during the final scene? A lot of that was thanks to Arnold. I also liked Vesper's Theme.

    Sure, maybe it would be good to mix things up a bit with other composers but I don't think that means Arnold should get the kicking he does from hardcore fans. He seems to genuinely care about the franchise and respect his predecessor. I'm actually going to go and see a John Barry tribute concert next week where Arnold will be there. I think its going to be great.

    Anyway, don't want to get too far off topic.
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    BAIN123 - You have to know that Arnold has never attended a music Academy... You have to know that Arnold uses a lot of help from his orchestrator, Nicholas Todd. A considerable amount of the music of TND-QOS can be attributed to Todd, not Arnold. Arnold is one of the composers who uses the most of help from his orchestrator.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,188
    Also, I'd argue that Bill Conti's score is just as dated but equally as enjoyable.
    Seconded.
    And while we're at that subject, can I just say there's nothing wrong with a dated score. We needn't hide the fact that FYEO was released 30 years ago. Plus, Bond films celebrate the era in which they were released. It's part of their charm. Hence, I can appreciate Martin's, Hamlish's and Conti's music, three scores which I think most obviously reflect the trends of their days.
  • Posts: 11,189
    BAIN123 - You have to know that Arnold has never attended a music Academy... You have to know that Arnold uses a lot of help from his orchestrator, Nicholas Todd. A considerable amount of the music of TND-QOS can be attributed to Todd, not Arnold. Arnold is one of the composers who uses the most of help from his orchestrator.
    ...and yet Arnold was recommended by John Barry himself

  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,188
    BAIN123 - You have to know that Arnold has never attended a music Academy... You have to know that Arnold uses a lot of help from his orchestrator, Nicholas Todd. A considerable amount of the music of TND-QOS can be attributed to Todd, not Arnold. Arnold is one of the composers who uses the most of help from his orchestrator.
    ...and yet Arnold was recommended by John Barry himself

    I think that was based on Shaken And Stirred, which indeed I think is a great little CD Arnold put out.
  • Posts: 11,189
    I remember that album. It was indeed very good.
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    BAIN123 - You have to know that Arnold has never attended a music Academy... You have to know that Arnold uses a lot of help from his orchestrator, Nicholas Todd. A considerable amount of the music of TND-QOS can be attributed to Todd, not Arnold. Arnold is one of the composers who uses the most of help from his orchestrator.
    ...and yet Arnold was recommended by John Barry himself

    And ? Doesn't change the fact that Arnold has 1) never attended a musical academy, and 2) is one of the composers who uses the most help from his orchestrator. Honestly, Todd should be given more credit than Arnold. This is the same as those 'ghost writers' who write books for politicians and what not - Todd is Arnold's ghost writer, and is more responsible for the end products of TND/TWINE/DAD/CR/QOS scores than Arnold himself.
  • Posts: 11,189
    If thats indeed true then your right. DODD should get equal billing.
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    Thanks BAIN123 for correcting my on DODD !! :-bd

    But alas, 'ghost writers' never get the big publicity.

    The thing with Arnold is, he is not trained to orchestrate his scores, which is 50% of the job. Writing a melody is relativly easy - anyone can do that. Orchestrating, however, is much more difficult. As Arnold never went to a musical academy, his knowledge of different instruments is relativly small - compared to John Barry, for example. So, it is DODD who is responsible for the numerous re-writes of the tracks when an instrument doesn't fit... So I would say Dodd makes a good 60%, maybe even 70% responsible of the scores.

    In other words - Arnold, with his limited musical knowledge, is responsible for the general 'outlook' of each track. Dodd does the majority of the rest of the work.

    The reason why the orchestral diversity of Arnold scores is small, is because he simply doesn't know a lot of instrument - and doesn't want to see Dodd almost completly rewrite Arnold's melodies during orchestration. If for Bond 23, the range of instruments were to be bigger, it would mean Arnold almost did nothing on the score.
  • I think an important qualifier regarding Shaken and Stirred is that Arnold was working with music that someone else had already written...so I can see how someone could have an informed opinion about his *arrangements* based on that disc but not on his skills as a composer (literally, someone who composes the music).

    My take on Shaken and Stirred was quite split. For the most part I really liked the arrangements, although some were so close to the originals that I thought "What was the point?". If something is a carbon copy then why not just listen to the original? Some of the arrangements were slightly different, which I liked - I thought Arnold's take on Moonraker (music, not vocal) was nicely updated, as was We Have All the Time in the World. I also quite liked his version of From Russia With Love - much more changed, but really suited the idea of the song. HOWEVER - I liked the arrangements as they worked on this disc which is quite different from a film score. None of the songs sounded...orchestral, which could be a problem for a film score.

    Where I really thought the disc fell apart was the vocal performances. Some of them just pushed way too far in my opinion. Moonraker would have been awesome but the singer sounded like she was doing a song from an animated Disney film in the 90's - over-doing everything and doing a lot of vocal gymnastics in each line. Same with All Time High - I get the idea that it's almost like someone whispering to his lover under the covers in the middle of the night, but the execution is nowhere as good as the idea.

    But back to Arnold as someone who *writes* music - I realize that he (nor anyone!) is John Barry but where are the sweeping melodies, the leitmotifs, the music that strongly identifies each film as a distinct entry in the series? Think of how memorable each score was from say, GF, YOLT, OHMSS, DAF...wow. Think of how cohesive each score was and how identifiable each is to their films. There's nothing from any of Arnold's scores that sticks in my head other than the score to CR. That's one out of five. Is that really the batting average that a film series like Bond deserves? Maybe I've been spoiled by Barry, who I don't think any composer could live up to. But that doesn't alter the fact that a lot of Arnold's work is unmemorable filler to me.

    Just because Arnold loves Bond and Barry isn't a good enough reason to keep him IMHO. I'd rather have a composer who writes great music than one who loves Barry. Maybe hire a new composer but have Arnold do the arrangement if that's a compromise that works.
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    thelordflasheart - Yes, Shaken and Stirred was only arrangements on Barry scores... So did Arnold even *work* on the album ? Arnold doesn't do arrangements, his orchestrator does. So it seems Arnold was only the supervisor on that album... So why was he even approached for the films after doing almost NOTHING on that Shaken and Stirred album ?? Clearly it would have been better to hire Dodd himself (but he isn't a composer), or someone else with better musical knowledge...

    I've never seen a musical supervisor getting chosen as the main composer for a film... so it seems Arnold was only chosen because of his respect/admiration for Barry, probably because he is a friend of Barbara Broccoli...
  • edited June 2011 Posts: 11,189
    You make a very valid argument flasheart. Arnold's score's aren't as "sweeping" as Barry's booming melodies but I think they are solid and have a Bond feel to them nonetheless.

    I do rather like this piece of music though - it has a "melody" and memorability to it IMO. Although I admit it does sound similar to the ending of TWINE

  • Bain123 - that's a pretty piece of music but I don't think I'd call it memorable - I can't picture myself humming it to myself a couple of days from now.

    I think that there are two reasons why Barry's scores are memorable to me. The first is that he uses leitmotifs in his scores - repeating certain melodies and lines so that they're really stuck in you're head (that also gives each score a very distinct "personality"). The music he uses can be simple at times but the overall impact is powerful. The other thing is that he isn't afraid to "go big". Big is more memorable than small, and I think also contributes to why we think of Bond as such important/memorable movies.

    A good example of the two things I mentioned above is the music from the raid on Fort Knox in GF:

  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    @BAIN123 it's not that the track you mentioned sounds similar to the end of TWINE... It is the exact same music, note per note.
  • To continue on from what I was saying above, I think the only time that Arnold came close to what I described Barry doing was the first bit of Miami International in CR and parts of Blunt Insturment (starting around 1:15 and really kicking in at 1:40):

  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    I strongly disagree, thelordflasheart - Miami International is extremely horrible. It's devoid of everything, just random notes and sounds for 12 minutes. It is one of the worse tracks composed for the last 20 years, non-Bond scores included. It's track like this where Arnold should never have been hired, and is not worthy of being called a composer. Even I can do better music than Miami International. This is why I rank CR at 21/of 22, with a note of 1.5/10.
  • Posts: 11,189
    Barry also tended to work the title song into his music. I think Arnold did do this sort of in TWINE and CR.

    That "Fort Knox" track is a good example flasheart of why Barry was so good at his craft. Another example is this:



  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    BAIN123 if you noticed, Arnold worked the title song of Surrender, TWINE and CR into the score... because he actually wrote those songs. He didn't use Madonna's song, or TND's main song, as he didn't write it.
  • Posts: 4,762
    Hmm...I'd never really thought about this before! Great discussion! I'd probably have to rank them:

    1. Eric Serra- loved the GoldenEye music; very fitting for the tone of the movie
    2. George Martin- again, very fitting for the tone of the movie, bonus points for excessive funk!
    3. Bill Conti- loved his work on the pre-title sequence, escape from Gonzaleas' estate, and the Cortina ski chase
    4. Michael Kamen- awesome gun barrel music, a great new version on the James Bond Theme, and some beast music during the escape from Sanchez's cocaine labs
    5. Marvin Hamlisch- despite being really annoyed by TSWLM's music, there were some good moments, specifically the underwater Lotus Espirit scene, the Liparus battle, and the Bond '77 Theme.
    6. Monty Norman- extremely dated and boring; simply not enough, and very annoying when the James Bond Theme plays during every scene!
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    edited June 2011 Posts: 15,718
    00Beast, at the start of the franchise, it was Cubby and Saltzman who decided where to put the Bond theme. Everytime you hear the Bond theme full blast in the early outings, it is Cubby and Saltzman who decided to play it in this or that scene. It wasn't the composer's decision.*

    * Most notably true with the original version of the Bond theme heard until OHMSS. Only Cubby and Saltzman decided where to put it in the films.
  • Posts: 4,762
    Oh, thanks for clearing that up for me, DaltonCraig007! I didn't know that.
  • NicNacNicNac Administrator, Moderator
    Posts: 7,582
    The Bond theme was effectively the Dr No theme which is why it was used prominantly through out the film.
  • Posts: 4,762
    It's not like I hated it being used again and again, but in some places it was a bit out of context and repetitive.
  • DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
    Posts: 15,718
    Yes, DN's soundtrack is horribly bad... Even worse than Arnold's scores !! But it should be said DN had a very limited budget, and it shows !!
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