You can find anything on YouTube nowadays. I mean, frogs eating hamsters, plane crash flight logs, porn stars golfing—you don’t want to know.
To my delight, there are numerous channels featuring reductions of film scores (the written music). For example, a user named Dominic Sewell is doing the entire Phantom Menace score.
Some people post the full orchestrations, but I prefer the reductions (easier to see on the screen).
Is this legal? Well, certainly not, but, uh...life finds a way?
On that note, I wasn’t too crazy about the Lost World score at the time—outside of the main title theme which I loved. Maybe because I wasn’t too into the movie, either.
However, listening to the La-La Land complete-score release—which is now out-of-print—I was blown away by the underscore tracks with John Williams’ almost jazzy use of jungle percussion underneath his large orchestra.
I mean, the G.O.A.T. strikes again! And “Ripples” (a one-hour loop from YouTube, presented above) was the best.
It’s like a 1950s bebop crossed with Martin Denny crossed with bone-splitting avant-garde action. Plus a hint of the old Irwin Allen “Johnny” Williams. Thrilling!
So this is a plea to all those folks doing the score reductions on YouTube: could you please do “Ripples” next?
Thanks!
There are more interesting musical ideas in the 5 minutes of this cue than there are in most other composers' entire film scores.