Last year I was asked to co-host on an episode of a podcast called The Baton: A John Williams Musical Journey, where host Jeff Commings and I discussed John Williams’ iconic score to the film Jaws.
Jeff recently finished making his way through all of Williams movie scores in an effort which took over two years to complete. In our discussion we go over how Williams programs tension into the music by using different compositional techniques such as dissonant intervals and harmonies, syncopation, extreme ranges of the instruments, ostinato, and dynamics. We play many of the more famous cues and discuss them in detail. Jeff recently organized a roundtable I got to join where all of his previous co-hosts joined him to discuss Williams and his legacy.
E.T.
For fun, I learned the wonderful end credits piano sequence to the film E.T. where John’s soaring theme takes flight.
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