About crossfades...

kenisu3000 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 28, 2012 2:46 am **Posts:** 41

Hmm. I guess it could be a cultural thing - most of my imported anime soundtracks refrain from crossfading the cues. Pocket Monsters: Original Soundtrack Best Vol. 2, for example, even has a section on its first disc that's made up of several 10-second-ish cues in a row, none of which are crossfaded, and all of which have their own tracks instead of being lumped into suites. But the opinion among score-lovers on this side of the pond seems to be that if you're going to have a bunch of bridges/stingers/whatever-you-want-to-call-them in a row, make a medley out of them.

I don't understand the idea that a score would be "un-listenable" unless everything, or everything contained within a track, was strung together. That's like saying a film score just isn't palatable in its raw form.

Anyway, I'm definitely up for a poll; this interests me greatly. So I added one to the thread. If I crossed my boundaries somehow, please let me know!

fordat1 · **Joined:** Wed May 09, 2012 11:20 am **Posts:** 29

OK, let me offer an opinion that might upset some of you....

This has got to be one of the most inane discussions I've seen here in a long time.

Crossfades of cues is some commonplace and part of the process of film scoring and album producing that I'm rather surprised that it's even being discussed

I for one HATE albums that have every single cue as a stand alone track, I don't need a CD with 57 separate tracks.

IMHO, John Williams is the master and assembling his scores for album release, now do I wish he'd be some stuff on that I'd like that he leaves off, YES.

But, as ALBUMS to listen to apart from the film,his CDS are some of the best i've heard.

Crossfading cues is most helpful on TV Scores because the cues tend to be short and assembling 3 or 4 pieces into a single 3 or 4 minute track tends to help show off the score in a better light (Good examples are the TNG and DS9 box sets for an example).

Composers I've worked with love to do this sort of thing, For the most part I agree with this approach.

Ford A. Thaxton

Neil · **Posted:** Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:45 am

Crossfades are my pet hate.

It's crazy to go all that trouble of locating this long lost material, laying it all out in chronological order,
and then go and blur all the tracks across eachother,
I don't want ALBUM-ISED versions of the music, if it's a C&C release.

Music colliding into eachother, which it often is, is very jarring.

Douglass Fake · **Joined:** Sat Nov 19, 2005 3:48 pm **Posts:** 2773

To make sense out of disliking any crossfades, one first has to accept that many cues are written and recorded that way to begin with. Even what you hear in the film itself is an assembly of multiple shorter pieces and pickups recorded in shorter bits for economical reasons: it costs way too much to have to go back and do another take of a six-minute cue if there are timing, synchronization or performance issues (including music editors re-setting programs, film footage being re-screened and players sitting through the cue again). So even here, cues are recorded in pieces.

In many cases, though you never hear it in the finished film, the composer may have written an "A" portion requiring just strings, then a separate "B" portion requiring the entire orchestra, a "C" portion for the strings again and so forth. These separate pieces will be recorded in entirely separate sessions, even on different days, all based on economics. They are assembled during post production and appear finally as one cue in the film. I would HATE to listen to an album prepared in this manner just as I would hate watching a movie with several seconds of blank film inserted between all the various takes of the movie.

Without crossfades, you often haven't even got a finished cue, yet. So you can't just rule out crossfades!

Regarding crossfades for musical reasons beyond the film itself... I will usually go with what composers tell us to do. There are always exceptions, but I prefer music to prevail. I don't typically think of a CD as just a souvenir of the movie (I can get the DVD for that) but as a musically satisfying experience away from the dialog and sound effects. If all the music is there, but assembled for "better" listening experiences, I'm a happy camper. But that's me.
--Doug

kenisu3000 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 28, 2012 2:46 am **Posts:** 41

Nicolai P. Zwar · **Posted:** Mon Apr 01, 2013 3:48 am

I definitely prefer longer, well assembled cues over a collection of short snippets, particularly if there are breaks in between. I mean, I don't need a collection of seventy unassembled one minute snippets on an album? What am I gonna do with that? I want to listen to music, not play music assembler myself. :-)

Composers like Rozsa, Poledouris, Williams, Goldsmith, etc... have at times composed cues that are -- even when they are separated in the movie -- obviously designed to be a single cue, so I think they should then be represented as such.

Overall, I have to say that the way Intrada releases albums tends to be as perfect as can be.

Nicolai P. Zwar · **Posted:** Mon Apr 01, 2013 3:54 am

Yavar Moradi · **Posted:** Mon Apr 01, 2013 8:13 am

I think a lot of film music albums achieve the flow Doug refers to without much crossfading -- combining cues onto one track with barely any silence in between (but not overlapped) is usually preferable, and in general by varying the degree of silence between cues even indexed separately that flow can be achieved.

Yavar

bruce marshall · **Joined:** Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:16 pm **Posts:** 775

I hate it in films where one scene fades into another!
Also, don't you hate where a scene is created by cutting several shots together.

Films should be constructed of individual shots, seperated by 2-3 seconds of blank screen.

bruce

kenisu3000 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 28, 2012 2:46 am **Posts:** 41

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