LOL! Nice, Blasterboy. Nice.
(Though if you were one of my students I’d question your definition of brilliance. No accounting for taste. I love those tracks too. Gaeta’s Lament is probaby my favorite and IS brilliant. It actually prompted me to write Bear McCreary with a compliment and an idea.)
Not snobbish. It’s a valid complaint. It feels tacked on…like the ending in the episode, which is my one complaint about Daybreak.
Haha my definition of brilliance kind of changes depending on what kind of thing I’m calling brilliant. TV? Movie? Music? Performance? Always different 
I didn’t mind the epilogue in Daybreak as much because while it didn’t seem tacked on a bit, I liked the content of the epilogue and the “All Along The Watchtower” usage was awesome. But a huge grin on my face. The “epilogue” for the CD, though, is basically a repeat of something I’ve heard before, and it seems pretty anti-climactic, and that’s basically why I have an issue with “The Passage of Time”.
re: The passage of time. I appreciate it’s different (there’s a richer orchestration) but at the same time… I really appreciate that Bear left those 30 seconds of silence after “An Easterly View” so I can get to the off button in time 
I don’t HATE the epilogue, but it is tonally off from the rest of the episode (and series). But it’s the very end of the show and stands outside of its timeline, so it serves a sort of “moral of the story” or “Puck’s soliloquy” kind of function not just to “Daybreak” but to all of BSG. So it’s all right.
Now, I just spent the day at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and it got me thinking about the BSG finale and how FRAKKED those guys are. They’re going to have to wait a LONG time for humans to be civilized once again. :rolleyes:
After all the action and character wrap ups, and the not bad but rather empty Starbuck ending, I found the present day coda thoroughly satisfying and more than a little bit hilarious.
I can’t even listen to “An Easterly View” or “So Much Life” because I tear up.
Kara’s Coordinates is pretty neat though, and Diaspora Oratorio is pretty bittersweet now that we know how that ends.
I’m having a Bear-tastic week as my CD of the Caprica soundtrack arrived a few days ago, and the BSG S4 soundtrack arrived today. Needless to say I was tragically over-excited.
I’d gone as far as cutting the audio from the DVDs for my favourite sections of the score so that I could listen to these on my iPod prior to the release of the music (with dialogue, which actually was rather good). These parts of the score turned up on the CD as Gaeta’s Lament (vocal and instrumental), Diaspora Oratorio, and Kara Remembers. So I can state on a fully empirical basis that these were the pieces that grabbed me during the season itself. On listening to the finished product I’m just as taken with them now. But So Much Life is an absolute belter too - BSG even manages to address ecology and the environment in the end, and powerfully, through “just” one scene, one comment by Adama, and a great track (at least that’s how my green-filtered eyes saw it).
Otherwise I have nothing really to add to the positive comments so far. Another frakkin’ masterpiece.
Anyway, I just wanted to share in the enthusiasm, given my long absence from the forums. Hope you’re all well, and a special hello to Armando and Casilda as fellow old-timers (but more reliable forum members than myself).
All of this discussion on the BSG soundtrack has made me wonder: how would we react to this music if we didn’t have the visual associations of the TV show to go with it? Anyone want to go first? Is it even a valid question?
I’ve thot about that. I always enjoyed that the John Williams soundtrack was released before each Star Wars film. You can appreciate the music better. If it wasn’t any good I don’t think you’d listen to it on its own, though. I can sit and listen to those soundtracks all day.
With BSG, I think the same is true. Having seen the visuals I think it’s impossible to not have them play in your head while listening, as well as pick up the emotional queues. But I also think the music stands on its own. FWIW, my daughter hasn’t seen any BSG but she really liked ‘Kara Remembers’ and ‘Diaspora Oratorio’.
I’ve also wondered about that lately.
With the visuals the emotions that the music conveys are multiplied and we know exactly that emotion the scene is supposed to have on us.
Take ‘Kara Remembers’ as an example. At the climax we got the connection between the cues that are played when Kara punches the coordinates into the nav computer and then when the ship finally jumps. The editor even cut it so that it was in synchrony with Bears track.
Most of Bears tracks would also stir emotions to people who haven’t watched BSG, but not in the same extent as without the visuals.
I’ve played the music to people who liked it without having seen the show, and most of it I’m sure would stand alone as great music (however you choose to interpret that subjective term) outside of the context of BSG. However, I can’t really decouple the music and the visuals - or even the music and some of the dialogue. When I hear a lot of the music I see the scenes, and I hear some of the dialogue in my head. They are all one really. I really like Pascagalia and Allegro from Seasons 1 and 2, and I always associate them with the long opening scenes of the episodes for which they were created. There is a certain monotony or repetitveness about them, which might mean that they won’t grab you on a casual listen, but which suits the visual narrative perfectly. When I listen to Passacgalia I see Apollo and Adama boxing and Helo shooting Athena, and when I listen to Allegro I see Roslin and her gang trudging through the forests of Kobol. The music is the narrative as much as the visuals are. This works across the board - when I listen to Kara’s coordinates I hear Leoben say “what I see is an angel”, which is delivered as a flashback in this scene. For me the music is a way of activating the memory of the whole experience and reliving these parts of the show. Maybe I’ve just watched these episodes way too many times, sad fan-boy galacticgeek that I’ve become!
Yeah, the best film music (or any theatrical music, for that matter) can do that. There are so few composers working in film, TV and games these days that can pull this off, in my (ehem, professional–i.e. snobbish) opinion, that it makes Bear that much more special.
But there I go, bringing subjectivity into this.
My mother does NOT watch sci-fi. She’ll tolerate it if she’s in the room. She has never watched any BSG at all. She did enjoy some of the Season 1 soundtrack while Iw as playing it in the car. She asked me what it was & said she really liked it. So, I guess that answers the question, somewhat.
Actually, the way that works is that Bear writes his cue so that it matches the editing. There’s a technical term for that, but I’ve forgotten what it is. It’s really cool, though.
I don’t think it’s a fanboy thing. I’m a professional composer and have the same reaction to this and other soundtracks to films that I’ve gotten to know well (like Star Wars, say). It’s part of music’s role in film. I’ve found that it’s the rare film score that works in the concert hall. I think Bear’s might (I’m hoping to put that hypothesis to the test soon), as John Williams’ does. That’s why I think he’s the most interesting film composer working today.
Normally your right, but this time it was different. From Bear’s blog
Paul and Andy agreed that my idea was the best approach. Shortly before the final mix deadline, I took my cue into the Editorial Department and sat in Andy’s cutting room, helping him re-cut the sequence. I showed him exactly where I envisioned each note to hit and where I thought the fingers should line up. Andy expertly tweaked the picture right before my eyes. The sequence was finally finished.
Cool! That has got to be one of those sweet gigs that really comes around very rarely. It’s the kind of team that I would want to be a part of if I ever got a chance to do a film score (which I would love to do at least once in my career). Having some measure of autonomy and your work respected and loved enough that the rest of the creative team will work your ideas into their work (and vice versa, of course). So nice!
you’re a music composer? That is awesome-opossum!!
Maybe the next Bear. Oh…Armando’s ego has left Earth’s atmosphere.:D;)
Nope, not the next Bear. I don’t work in film or TV. I couldn’t. I have too strong a sense of what I want to do with my work and a big part of being a film/TV composer is being willing to adapt to a director’s vision, which usually limits what one can do stylistically. (Plus, I couldn’t deal with their crazy deadlines.)