tunequest

I've spent the past couple days playing around with Alex King's iTunes Stats program. It's written in PHP/MYSQL and requires a web server to run. With the MAMP one-click server running on my PowerBook, I had little trouble installing the program (though I did have to substantially increase the PHP timeout setting so it could handle my large library). iTunes Stats reads XML files, one can load an entire iTunes ...

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During the Macworld expo keynote a week ago, Steve Jobs made the off-hand comment that Paramount Pictures had joined Disney in selling films through the iTunes Store. Of course, that deal means that all of the Star Trek motion pictures (except the Search for Spock) are now available for digital download, enabling portable viewing on a iPod or streaming to a new Apple TV. Like all movie downloads from the ...

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Something odd happened to me the other day while listening to my iPod. I was enjoying a bootlegged version of Jerry Goldsmith's magnum opus, the score to the first Star Trek motion picture. One of the tracks is raw recording session featuring two takes of the now-famous main title. The theme was just getting going when, at the 1:26 mark, it just stopped playing. The music went silent and the ...

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Well, for some reason, almost all of my Star Trek music got pushed toward the end of the tunequest, and believe me, I have nearly all of the Star Trek music except for the unreleased promo soundtrack to the Starfleet Academy video game. If anyone can point towards that, I'll send you a digital high five or something, so the waters around here will be thick with Trekkin for ...

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Always the maestro; always the master. The track is Introductions from The Russia House. Jazzy and smooth, Goldsmith plays it cool for you. I generally find the timbre of a solo saxophone rather grating. Plus, it's usually too "adult contemporary/smooth jazz" *ahem-kennyG-ahem* for my tastes. But that melody that starts around 2:11 is addictive as all get out. Pure genius. [audio:061101Introductions.mp3]

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This past week I listened to two soundtracks that were spin offs from successful motion pictures. However, neither one was for a motion picture sequel. The first was Joel Goldsmith's score to the pilot episode of Stargate SG-1, the long-running TV show. Joel, of course, is the son of legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith, and is a composer in his own right. I have to give him credit for this score. ...

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Jerry Goldsmith's music for Star Trek: Insurrection is genuinely some of the most beautiful (and powerful) music i've ever heard in my entire life, particularly the thematic elements running throughout New Sight. It certainly is among the top contender for my favorite film scores of all time.

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In the pantheon of composers who have worked on Star Trek, none are more prolific than Dennis McCarthy, who has been working with the franchise since the debut episode of The Next Generation to the final episode of Enterprise. Of course, whether you think that's a good thing or bad depends on your opinion of his music. With the rather large caveat that Mr. McCarthy's composing abilities were limited by ...

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I'm continuing the tunequest at work, listening to the bonus tracks portion of the Star Trek First Contact score by the ever-illustrious Jerry Goldsmith, whose talents and I don't really need to say this are legendary. I found this bootleg online about 3 years ago, around the same time a lot of other of his Star Trek "complete scores" bootlegs were making some rounds on the internet. At just ...

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