avevale_intelligencer: (self-evident)
[personal profile] avevale_intelligencer
For research purposes, but also because, in common with (EDIT: almost) nobody else ever, I like it.

And yet, once again, I am brought face to face with the inexpressible...naffness (there really is no other word) of the first season opening music. This was apparently composed by Alex Lifeson, guitarist of the band Rush, so at very least it should have been big and swelling and impressive. I read somewhere he used twenty thousand layered guitar tracks, which if true can only give rise to the question "where did they all go?"

Say your friend Hamish the bagpiper arrives unexpectedly at your doorstep. He's got a wedding to play and he's very nervous about a particular passage. He asks if he can use your loo and you direct him to the one on the second floor (third for Americans). While locked in there, he limbers up and begins to practise two lines of music over and over again. And what you hear from downstairs, filtered through floorboards, is kind of what this sounds like.

Something went wrong, somewhere along the line. It's a shame.

Date: 2014-01-18 09:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] donnacat60.livejournal.com
I liked Andromeda too.

Date: 2014-01-18 10:18 pm (UTC)

Date: 2014-01-19 02:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jahura.livejournal.com
Ahem.

*points over at rarely used userpic which has been in her library since whenever*

I actually like the theme, too. Then again, my taste in music is questionable to many. Bagpipes in general are like Marmite.

Date: 2014-01-19 08:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
I'm very fond of bagpipes myself. They can have a lovely, full-bodied, powerful, aggressive sound. Guitars that sound like bagpipes are also good. And the tune isn't bad either; simple, certainly memorable. As I said, it should have been great. I don't know what went wrong.

Date: 2014-01-19 08:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jahura.livejournal.com
Speaking as someone with no musical proficiency or ear, they chopped up the beginning and ends to fit into a 20 second slot. Pipe and drum marches generally start soft and build up to emulate an approaching unit even if they are standing still in one place. Here's the whole thing: http://mp3skull.com/mp3/andromeda_theme.html

Then they dumped it in Season 2 for a theme that sounds more generically Star-Trecky and blah so one can concentrate on the credits. I didn't like the change, but that's television.

As for what else you think is wrong with it, please feel free to enlighten me. Maybe I'm missing something.

Date: 2014-01-19 07:07 am (UTC)
howeird: (Default)
From: [personal profile] howeird
IMDB lists Lifeson as the composer for the main theme, but Matthew McCauley for "theme music".

Date: 2014-01-19 08:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
I think McCauley did the far more conventional end credits music which later replaced Lifeson's theme at the beginning as well.

Date: 2014-01-19 11:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dickgloucester.livejournal.com
I like Andromeda a great deal. So there.

Date: 2014-01-19 11:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
Yay! Testify, sister!

I may have gathered a misleading impression that Andromeda was not well liked from reading things like SFX, which was very down on it. I remember their "News Roundup" column, whatever it was actually called at the time, once contained the following entry, quoted in its entirety:

"Andromeda...oh, who gives a ****?"

Since I did, I wasn't best pleased with them. Not very professional in my view.

Date: 2014-01-21 12:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ci5rod.livejournal.com
I wanted to like Andromeda, and I did love the characters and their various interactions, but it all started going herring on me. It never seemed to get anywhere in storytelling terms. I know the original writer had a very different plan to what the final series ended up with, but I disagreed with both storylines vigorously, and anyway I'd got bored with it long before. As you said, something went wrong, somewhere along the line.

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