Danny Elfman
Danny "I write the music for Tim Burton's films" Elfman.

Danny "I used to be in Oingo Boingo" Elfman.

Danny feotid cunt-splatter on mould-fried bread in the shape of the devil's arse-pimples Elfman.

Woo. Minor chords. Wobbly Mono-synth arpeggios. Tinkly toy-piano vapidity. Modal melody fuckery like no-one else has ever heard of John Coltrane. Fucking sub-raffi ethnic percussion which sounds like a man claiming he loves the far east as he once had sweet&sour pork with half-and-half out of the carton in Cardiff at 11.45pm.

I know - why not build suspense with... oooh, I know, low marcarto strings. No-one's ever done that before ever in the history of film music. Cunt.

And those fucking Oompa-Loompa songs. That is not what Oompa-Loompa's sound like. Stop raping my childhood.

And then, just to cap it all off, hearing him claim that the songs in "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" were "rough demos". Yeah, really rough demos with 48 tracks of your own pitch-shifted yawping. You sweated blood over them. Yes, they were shit, but you tried, and that's the important thing. Don't claim you are some kind of one-take savant.

And in "9". The puppet one. "Themes by Danny Elfman". Themes? You whistled a minor key arpeggio in the bath, some soft cunt goes ahead and scores it for you in orchestro-vision and who gets the credit?

Oh - and learn to write your own orchestral parts. Seriously. You are the best selling orchestral composer working in the 21st century and you can't event write notes on a stave?

You stinking blob of week-old horse jism. Fuck of and die, and don't write any music for it either.
(nordelius, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 14:39, 9 replies)

Orchestration
It's quite a well-known fact that major film composers generally whistle a tune whilst a minion notates it, and then gets another bunch of minions to orchestrate it in the composer's style. Danny Elfman used to do his own orchestrations of course, and always attributed his "unique" sound to using three trombones.

The exception to the rule is Hans Zimmer: he doesn't even have the talent to think up his own tunes, he just rips them off dead composers who can't object (Faure Pavane in The Rock, Holst The Planets in Gladiator etc).
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 14:47, closed)

Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer did the music to this doctor who charity single in the 80s. cant think why it never made top 40
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1yW8FrrXAA
(discowho?, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 14:50, closed)

Fair...
...enough, minion-use is rife in the film-score industry, though less so with the advent of better software. I think the majority of my point stands though, and I think that he's always used Steve "I also used to be in Oingo Boingo but mysteriously have a hell of a lot less money" Bartek to orchestrate and, y'know, do the hard bits.

I would maybe offer an alternate source for his "unique" sound as well :-)

I think my central point is that most recent film music sucks butt, and people offer up Danny as the saviour of film music or something.
(nordelius, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:03, closed)

Oh aye.
I'm not disagreeing with your original post! I like listening to Elfman music as background 'muzak', but if one tries to concentrate on listening to it for music's sake, one realises it's always ethereal choir sounds slapped on top of some 'menacing' percussion, and some unoriginal cunt slaps it with the label 'alternative'.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:43, closed)

^^this
* several million. Completely

However, I can't turn my "music ears" off at night - so even as background to an actually very good film it just grates and grates and grates...
(nordelius, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:50, closed)

Have you heard the soundtrack to There Will be Blood
by Johnny Greenwood? I think it's fantastic
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:53, closed)

Yes -
... and love it. Ditto Nick Cave/Warren Ellis on "the Proposition", A.R Rahman's "Slumdog Millionaire" stuff (perfect for the film!)...

There's a few really, really good soundtracks still happening. Not many. But a few.
(nordelius, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 17:21, closed)

"Unique" sound?
Do you mean "unique" in the sense of "everything he's ever written sounds exactly the same"?
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:36, closed)

Yep.
that's exactly what I mean - hence the inverted commas.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 4 Feb 2010, 15:43, closed)