I know I know. It’s a bit off topic for the tunequest, but I couldn’t help myself. Here’s a bunch of the new "enhanced" Star Trek footage of the new revised special effects from Balance of Terror 
for folks who are having trouble locating a station that’s showing the new episodes. Enjoy.
Myself, i’m refusing to pass judgement on them.
In 1996, LucasFilm embarked on a multi-channel marketing project in an effort to make more money off the aging Star Wars franchise. The result was Shadows of the Empire, a venture that involved all the machinations of a movie marketing and tie-in campaign, without the production of an actual movie. In total, the endeavor included a novel, comic books, video games, trading cards, toys (of course) and, most relevant to this site, a soundtrack.
Not surprisingly, John Williams was approached to compose the score, but he declined, instead recommending Joel McNeely for the job.
McNeeley’s results are quite surprising and offer a unique look at Star Wars music. In contrast to Goldsmith’s approach with SG-1, McNeely almost completely abandons the established music for the franchise. Beyond the opening titles, there’s scantly a mention of any Star Wars motif or cue. No location cues for places featured in the films, and no character motifs save for a short mention of Leia’s theme. There’s a single quote of the "rebel fleet" cue from the end of The Empire Strikes Back and brief blast of the force theme. The Imperial March makes two brief appearance. Beyond that, the music is wholly original.
Listening to the soundtrack this past week, I couldn’t help but hear this music as I would some romantic-era "program music." Indeed, that’s what Shadows of the Empire essentially is. As a soundtrack without a film, each track works as a symphonic poem that exists to convey the ideas, settings and emotions of the story, without being tied literally to the images on a screen, leaving sonic imprints of peoples, places and events that can only be imagined.
Easily highlighting the score is track seven: The Seduction of Princess Leia, which is built around a fabulous freakin’ waltz, a first for Star Wars. The rest of the album is equally intriguing, invoking fantastic settings in a way reminiscent of the late romantics. Imagine Debussy or Holst writing music for Star Wars; the results would probably be similar to this.
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. While it’s not terribly inventive, it does an excellent job of continuing David Arnold’s themes and motifs from the original film. Rather than re-invent the wheel, the SG-1 score is a nearly seamless transition to the small screen which keeps the Stargate universe cohesive. The re-use of the original cues also gives the score a much larger sound than is typically found on television program, where budgets for music are limited.
SG-1 assumes that the viewer knows the premise of the show. Thus, the show spends less time than the film did unraveling a mystery and concentrates more on action and spectacle. The TV score reflects that, providing 50 minutes of compelling music.
Starship Troopers is one of many film scores sitting in my library that haven’t received much more than a cursory listen from me. For more than four years, Basil Poledouris’ score has gone unappreciated by me and, and damn, I regret that. I don’t remember the film well enough to judge the music as it’s used on screen, but alone, this is some robust stuff.
Sweeping, stirring, rousing and vibrant, this score is fittingly thematic and action-packed. It makes particularly good use of low brass. But avoid that last song; it’s terrible.
Another new feature of the newly-minted iTunes 7 is that the program now features a built-in back up system, similar to that originally found in iPhoto. The function allows you to copy either your entire library or just your iTunes Store purchases. However, you are limited to backing up to either CD or DVD, no external drives and no networks.
Select "Back up to disc…" from the file menu.
In addition to all the hullabaloo about the new iTunes 7, here are the minor enhancements and changes I noticed while exploring.
There’s a new music tag called “album artist.” I’m not sure what it’s used for yet, but it could be for compatibility with windows media files. UPDATE: From glancing around the interweb it seems as though album artist is in fact used by wma files, but i think iTunes 7 still doesn’t play them (i don’t have one to test). within iTunes, however, it looks like the tag is most useful for when a song has a guest artist in addition to the main artist, like Basement Jaxx featuring J.C. Chasez. Under the iTunes 6 scheme, I had been putting that info in the comment field. I’ll let you know how it works, when I try this method.
It could also be useful for classical music in situations where a soloist or vocal is featured in addition to the orchestra. On that note, please allow me to plug my classical music tagging article, which was written for iTunes 6, but still applies today because of the iPod’s shortcomings.
From Apple’s support page:
iTunes 7 includes a new attribute for song files called Album Artist This allows you to assign a primary artist name for an album that many includes songs by several artists. It is important that all songs in the album have the same Album Artist name. To assign an Album Artist, select all the songs in the album and choose Get Info from the File menu. Next, type a name in the Album Artist field name such that it will apply to all the selected songs. This field can optionally be left blank if all the songs have the same album name.
Album Artist is not respected by the iPod, however, at least not iPod Software 1.2. Songs continue to be sorted by the Artist tag alone, which of course makes the new tag almost useless. I say, “almost” because I did find one use for it. Also, I have additional criticism of the Album Artist tag with regards to the iPod.
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The album column in list view also sports new sorting options. Click on the Album header. It’ll switch between Album, Album by Artist (each artist’s album sorted alphabetically), and Album by Year (each artist’s album sorted chronologically). Click the triangle to reverse the sorting order.
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And it looks like you have to tell iTunes that your songs are gapless. If you’re using Crossfade playback, click “Part of a gapless album” to keep seamless songs together. Look under the song options. Thanks Brian!
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Hold down option (or alt) when opening iTunes to choose from multiple libraries. You can also create a new library from scratch and save it in a new location. iTunes will use this library as its default until another is selection using this same method.
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Then there’s some new smart playlist criteria, including the afore-mentioned album artist, as well as the brand new last skipped and skip count.
Also, iTunes now lists all the problems it has syncing files with an iPod.
Please allow me to recommend Crunching Numbers, by The Polish Ambassador, everyone’s favorite electrogroovin emissary from a far-away land, who will save you from internet electrocution by harnessing the incredible powers of space.