avevale_intelligencer: (self-evident)
avevale_intelligencer ([personal profile] avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-01-18 07:34 pm

Watching Andromeda

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.

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

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2014-01-19 08:39 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] jahura.livejournal.com 2014-01-19 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
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.