Exclusive Details On FSM Ron Jones TNG 14-CD Box Set

Film Score Monthly, producers of the expanded Star Trek II and III soundtrack albums, have recently announced they are working on a big box set of Ron Jones music from Star Trek: The Next Generation. TrekMovie has now got some more excusive details on this exciting upcoming set. 

 

14 CD Ron Jones Box Set Coming In September

Film Score Monthly, producers of the expanded Star Trek II and III soundtrack albums, have announced on their website what will be the largest-ever collection of Star Trek music: a 14CD box set of Ron Jones’s fan-favorite scores to the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. FSM are working closely with Jones to make this the ultimate collection for fans of his work on TNG.

The 14 discs will contain 40 complete episode scores including episodes such as "Where No One Has Gone Before," "Datalore," "Heart of Glory," "Skin of Evil," "A Matter of Honor," "Q Who," "Who Watches the Watchers," "The Defector," "The High Ground," "The Offspring," "Brothers," "Final Mission" and many more. There will also be "bonus tracks" not included on the GNP/Crescendo CD of "The Best of Both Worlds" (GNP/Crescendo otherwise has exclusive rights to that soundtrack), a disc of alternates and outtakes, and Jones’s two computer game scores, "Starfleet Academy" and "Starfleet Command." A 60-page booklet will contain an introductory essay and track listings (illustrated with TNG stills and artwork), and the entire collection comes in a sturdy gold slipcase.

The box set will be a limited edition of 5,000 units retailing for $149.95. It is expected in early September 2010. FSM is not yet accepting orders but invite those interested to join the mailing list of their retail partner, Screen Archives to be notified when the box set is available: www.screenarchives.com/joinlist.

More on the Ron Jones box set, including a first look at the artwork, coming soon exclusively to TrekMovie.com.


Composer Ron Jones – FSM working on 14 CD box set of his TNG work (photo: Fred Seibert)

 

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This is great and hopefully will open the door for a complete release of all the music from TOS. One can only dream.

Holy CRAP!!! Must have and WILL get!

And yeah…it’s me: SciFiGuy! ;-)

First! I hope the team of producers launch expanded soundtracks to the rest of the movies’s original series. It would be fascinating!

That’s all very cool, if a little overwhelming. At $150 its not my cup of tea, but I can imagine lots of people really digging it.

…..14 discs? 14 DISCS?! My library will break 10k at last!

Still want those unreleased TOS scores too!!

Definitely buying this!

Any word on releasing other expanded movie soundtracks, IV and on?

This is proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy. ;)

WANT.

Congratulations to Ron Jones. His scores contained strong melodies and themes. Not only did his scores pulse with rhythmic energy, they also served the emotional needs of the show. He’s a fine composer and let’s hope he’s brought back to the Star Trek world for more compositions hopefully for games, any new video that I recommend to be made to whet our appetites for 2012 and my suggestion that he be given the job of re-writing the theme to “Enterprise.”

Below is a clip of of his fine work for the episode, “The Nth Degree.” Note the rhythmic energy as an alien probe endangers the Enterprise. There are also leit motifs that will be used throught the episode. None of this interferes with the show but greatly enhances the action yet the music can stand alone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP-tHl1NYes&feature=related

Yeah, I want that entire TOS soundtrack boxed set, too, but rumor is that something that starts with a “G” is the holdup.

Yeah, an ultimate boxed set of all of the main and incidental TOS music is so far overdue that it’s shameful. Hopefully we’ll see this come to light soon. It’s sorely needed.

In the meantime, I’ll be snagging the TNG set!

This is great. TNG had great music, especially the 3rd season. Lots of great snippets, themes, and motifs. This is awesome!

Mind-boggling why waste 14 CDs instead of 1 single DVD or USB key in MP3.

It’s 2010.

In fact… a USB key designed to look like a TNG IsoLinear chip would’ve been a way cooler and cheaper way to produce this set.

But that would require forward-thinking.

I don’t mind paying $149 for such a massive music compilation … and I will buy it…. but they are just wasting my time because I’m putting it all to MP3 anyway so that I can actually listen to it while I work instead of swapping CDs out.

I can’t imagine anything but the smallest percentile of buyers actually utilizing it CD by CD by CD by CD by CD….

#14:
Because CDs are far, far higher quality than mp3s are.

Wow. 149 bucks for music from Season one. Fantastic.

@3 You deserve teleporting to the delta quadrant for posting “First!”, tool.

@15 I think his point still stands, there are plenty of lossless formats that could have been used on a usb stick. The FLAC/mp3 Beatles USB edition comes to mind: http://www.amazon.com/Beatles-USB/dp/B002VH7P4O

“but they are just wasting my time because I’m putting it all to MP3 anyway so that I can actually listen to it while I work instead of swapping CDs out.”

So you’re argument is that you’ll be importing 14 discs worth of music from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a process that for all intents and purposes is a ONE TIME DEAL! I have a movie score library of over 9,000 song, and when iTunes had their iTunes Plus import setting, I rallied up all of my CDs and reimported every single one of them into my library, a process which took almost a week and a half. I enjoyed every minute of it.

And you know what the best part is about having CDs is? Backup. When I import them into my iTunes library, I now have a back up incase anything were to go wrong on either formats. I have always used CDs and will continue to use CDs. And besides, when they’re digital, they’re DRM’d up the wazoo and that just flat out sucks.

150 dollars is like asking people not to buy the music…

I bet they’d make more money selling the music online, and selling it per track or per episode. I’d really like to get one of these if they ever had it on the iTunes store.

$150….ouch! CRAP. Limited Edition…crap crap crap.

Dangit! Shoot! Son of a gun! I’ve been waiting for years for something like this.

I gotta find some way now to squeeze this into my budget.

Shoot shoot shoot….

PS: I also greatly enjoyed Jones’ score to “Data’s Day”

TNG’s background music always sounded the same…14 discs of redundancy. For $150? Gotta pass.

#14 – Maybe your ears can’t tell the difference between a lossy compressed version but a lot of people can, especially through a great set of headphones and a high-end 7.1 system.

You’re free to rip & do whatever (as long as it’s legal) but we need to leave the originals as is. The iTunes generation has forever degraded music.

#21 – Jones was fired mid-4th season because he didn’t subscribe to the “sonic wallpaper” music the producers wanted. His scores were different, and used a wide variety of techniques and themes.

You people that want MP3s are destroying the quality of recorded music. I won’t be buying this set – though I’d JUMP at the chance to get a TOS box set of soundtracks – but kudos to them for caring about QUALITY and releasing this on uncompressed CD.

From memory-alpha.org:

— Jones looked at each episode of TNG as though they were a feature film rather than a serial and scored them accordingly, giving each episode “its own unique orchestral palette and themes.”

— Despite the success of his work, Jones was fired from the crew of TNG under controversial circumstances near the end of the fourth season. His firing was supposedly because his music was thought to be “too noticeable” by Rick Berman. Jones has since been a major critic of Berman-era Trek. [5]; he cited the music of the subsequent Trek spin-offs as “less melodic and more pad-like.” [6] Furthermore, he thought the theme for Enterprise would have been better used for the opening ceremonies of the WNBA.

Ron Jones = awesome!

Agreed on the uncompressed CD format. If you’re going digital, it’s about the best you’ll ever hear outside of a concert hall.

Of course, few if any of the under-40 crowd has every actually been in a concert hall to hear live musicians perform, let alone develop the refined ears necessary to thrill to them.

Pity.

(In fact, this has me contemplating the renewal of my long-lapsed AFM membership!)

Oh blast it all – I hit enter without thinking!! Please read “ever” for the mistyped “every”. Apologies.

Sincerely,
C.S. Lewis

They ought to include his TNG-like FAMILY GUY score for the FANTASTIC VOYAGE-style episode, just for completists.

Except for TIN MAN, all of my fave TNG scores are from Jones. Still very ‘lite’ compared to the majesty that was TOS scoring, but if you consider how blah the TNG visuals were, at least Jones gives them some energy, and occasionally even poignancy.

#21 wrote: “TNG’s background music always sounded the same…14 discs of redundancy. For $150? Gotta pass.”

Funny and true.

#28

Tinman was one of TNG’s best, both in story and music. Did Chattaway do the composing on that one? Anyway, it’s a shame Jones was fired midway through the show’s run. I can just imagine the sort of excitement he could’ve injected into the last couple of seasons (which really needed it).

@1

True….bring that TOS stuff out.

Don’t know Ron’s stuff from TNG but doesn’t he do the Family Guy stuff? I like his work on there.

Hey Andy at 31, according to Wikipedia, he did score the Family Guy series. Check out my post number 10 for praise of Ron Jones. Since you dont’ know Ron’s stuff, below is a clip of his most famous TNG score , “The Best of Both Worlds.”

This is the first battle between the Enterprise and the Borg. First check out the strings during the conference room scene. Note how they give tension of the impending battle. Then when the Borg appear, Ron uses leit motif or a theme to represent an idea or alien race. In this case, the choir will represent the Borg. And of course there is all that energy during the battle that gets your blood going. And yes, I have a degree in music. Anyway, enjoy the clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q6jZC1sn1A

28,
Yeah, that’s Chattaway, but it was nearly his first&last, because the producers had a fit over his stuff sounding too much like music. Most of his later scores were so watered down that, well, they sounded like TNG. But you could track the TIN MAN music over just about anything and make it work, it really feels right.

@31: He also did the extremely awesome scores for the Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Command games. Definately worth listening to:

http://www.youtube.com/user/StalwartUK#grid/user/1E34D15A932A0537

http://www.youtube.com/user/StalwartUK#grid/user/E5BBA150F52D8A88

Oh, man I didn’t even read that his computer game scores would be included! AWESOME! :D

@32

Cool, thanks for the back ground.

“And yes, I have a degree in music. Anyway, enjoy the clip.”

Are you starving like me?

Ron Jones’s music was the only stuff on any Trek spinoff series that was worth a damn. The scene in The Best of Both Worlds where the Enterprise first confronts The Borg still gives me goosebumps!

A shame there can’t be a cheaper two-disc option for those of us who can’t pay $150? I’m also surprised that the discs aren’t being released in dual SACD format, as that can still be played on normal CD players or in higher quality on an SACD player!

There’s a lot of posters here who are obviously technically challenged.

Read up online on CD audio specifications and the digital format it’s in.

How the hell do you think the music is getting ON THE CD’S IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?

It’s from the digital FILES they are mastering with.

There are no less than FIVE universal lossless file formats that music can be released in.

Do you know what LOSSLESS means? I bet you don’t, fellow “semi-retarded-Star-Trek-fan-shooting-off-your-mouth.”

Yes, MP3 is not lossless…. but I was specifically referring to releasing the set as ready-to-play DIGITAL FILES on ONE SINGLE DISK OR USB-KEY type format.

Rather than the WASTEFULNESS of 14 DISKS of a 30-year old archaic music transport format.

Someone posted they love the process of transferring from CD to MP3.

Glad you want work created for you when you buy something, but I don’t/

Someone else posted that the CDs are good as backup.

Wha?

I’m STILL BUYING a USB-key or single DVD….. that is still my original backup.

I don’t need 14 coasters.

Sounds like there’s a lot of posters here 50+ years of age.

Maybe they can also load up all the music on an Amiga 500 and deliver it to you that way, you’d like that too.

This is Lukas at FSM. Thank you all for your questions and feedback. I’ll answer at greater length later, but to make a long story short, this is a very expensive production and we can only produce one version of it. Otherwise, we are competing against ourselves!

We chose to do 14 CDs (with over 16 hours of music) because it is the most widely accepted format, and we figured complete presentations of the scores would make the most people happy. We are doing one box set at $149.95 to save YOU money. Seriously, these collector edition CDs usually retail at $19.95. If we produced 14 volumes at $19.95, that’s $279.95. Even at $16.95, it would be $237.95. Our retail price comes out to $10.71 per disc!

To Captain Krudge, two things for you to weigh for your very innovative ideas:

1) The cost of pressing the disc is actually one of the smallest amounts in the production. If you search the web, you’ll see disc replication available for as little as 50-60 cents per disc. 14 * $0.60 = $8.40. We are NOT using a wasteful format — rather, we are using a widely accepted format — and we are NOT passing those costs along to you. Perhaps it looks wasteful as far as physical space — I would agree with you there — but it is highly cost effective. It is the contractual royalties (to CBS, the musicians union and the publishing) that are the largest costs we have to cover. Plus the transfer costs and mastering.

2) The musicians union, whose players need to be paid a portion of their salaries in order to put the music on a soundtrack album, has an “archival” rate we are using (otherwise we would never be able to afford this) that is applicable to CDs only. Not to “new media” or downloads. So there is simply no policy we could use to release this even on itunes at the present time. (I have tried to request a new media policy but these things take time. A lot of time. And I don’t want to look like I am picking on the union because they have been super cooperative for a long time.)

Thanks again for all your great feedback. Did I mention our box set comes out to $10.71 per disc?

Incidentally, to the various bloggers and message board users: you are welcome to reprint this as you please.

Ron Jones says hi and is very excited about this project!

Lukas

@ 36 Andy, I am not making a living off my music composition degree. But I use it to enjoy music. For example, I think Michael Giacchino’s main theme for Trek ’09 was kind of dour. (It’s introduced at the very begining of the movie and used when the kids first see the Enterprise.) I’m not sure but it sounds like it was written in a minor key which is very unusual. If I got that wrong, it’s been some time since I analyzed keys so cut me some slack. :) I did love Giacchino’s score for “Up.” So, what do you and the rest of you, think about Giacchino’s main theme? Andy, good luck to your musical endeavors.

@ 39 Thanks for the information. Tell Ron Jones we greatly admire his work. I’ve praised his work in posts 10 and 32. Plus, I wish Paramount would resore the main theme for “Enterprise” and hire Ron to do it. Hey, the show’s cancelled and Rick Berman can’t say no. :)

#39 – Awesome work there.

Is “Data’s Day” on there? How soon before we get a list of contents?

Thanks again!

40,

Giacchino’s stuff was better than the rest of the movie, but for me that is saying almost nothing at all, since I found the Abrams pic almost unwatchable when I finally got the dvd for a buck, and I will not even attempt a second viewing. I think his score for INCREDIBLES was marvelous, and his UP score was great as well.

One of my favorite episodes of TNG, “Q Who?” had a great score. I can’t remember which scene it was in that episode, but there was a musical piece that reminded me of “Alien”. I don’t know if that was intended or not, or whether I’m even right about that so I’ll have to re-watch the episode and the “Alien” movie.

The music from the fifth season through to the other spinoffs were pretty plain. Not bad, but not great. Just not interesting. However, I thought the DS9 episode “The Seige of AR-558” had great, haunting music which delivered a lot of emotion to an already emotional and gritty episode.

Just an observation, as I have no intention of getting this in ANY format, but Captain Krudge #38, you sir, are an ass…and in no less than 5 lossless formats to boot! Just thought Id pass that along. :)

@40: I thought it was teriffic, especially in the film, but it becomes kind of overused listening to it on the soundtrack CD. I only listen to snippets here and there — and I wish they’d included more of the beautiful theme for Spock. Erhu FTW!

@44: Maybe during the scene where the away team is exploring the Borg ship for the first time?

Another great bit of music from that episode is when they zoom in on the Borg ship repairing itself, and this demented music with strings and woodwinds starts playing — it’s like the perfect soundtrack for “you are SO screwed”.

Way to strike while the iron is hot.

#46

“Maybe during the scene where the away team is exploring the Borg ship for the first time?”

LOL! Of course, you’re right! And I totally agree with your statement about the music during the scene where the Borg cube repairs itself. “Q Who?” was a classic episode and was a great way to introduce a new villain.

I wonder how many cd’s it would take to complete the TNG cd sets?

7 years!! wow that is alot of music!

I wouldnt mind if the TNG episodes are remastered on Blu-ray while the music is being complied. Just a thought.

I will pay extra if the rest of the TOS gets released. I would rather have the cd’s while I’m still able to hear. Waaaaa.. :)

#38 — stop be-rating everyone here. Your original post (#14) was poorly worded and gave the impression (apparently mistakenly) that your primary use of this would be based on down-converting to your MP3 player. When I first read you original post, my thought as well was why would this guy want this high-tech approach when he is going to mainly use it on his MP3 player?

Write a better and more clear post next time to get your point across.