Shunsuke Kikuchi (Japanese Music) or Bruce Faulconer (USA)?

[cRookie_Monster]

After looking through some Bruce tracks for shits and giggles I stumbled upon a song I forgot about which is strange because it's the one dub track I really enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrWndS5 ... re=related
Does anyone have a list of instances where this song was used? I know for sure when Gohan goes SSJ2 at the Tenkaichi Budokai and obviously Ginyu's body change ordeal.

Any moment where a villain or major character is killed.

Ben rocked.

[caejones]

Hm, that interests me because I've often wondered if a large number of those who buy the CD's got into it first via the later dub (or at least anywhere on Toonami). Me, personally, I only like a few themes and really wouldn't buy the CD's. But I know there are people, like yourself, who love 'em. And while I and some others around here may not "get" that, I know if someone were to put out a "Best of the Thundercats" CD I'd pre-order it in a heartbeat. And I'm 26 years old. I'd probably have a hard time explaining that to an older cousin or younger brother.

I saw the original dub (seasons 1-2) first, but never watched it with any true interest until I discovered season 3 on Toonami. Actually, I remember recognizing that the voice acting and script weren't that great back when I first watched season 3 in 8th grade (I'm just shy of 23 now), but the music was such a highlight for me that it alone kept me interested. When I used to play on my tennis team in high school, I'd actually hum some of the fighting themes from the dub while playing. I checked the Faulconer Productions Music website almost once a week waiting to see if a new CD was being released, and in the days between ordering one and its arrival, I would print out the tracklist and try to figure out from the names exactly which pieces of music were included that time around.

I think the big thing for me is that I've always loved video game music, and Faulconer's dub is very reminiscent of an SNES-era action game soundtrack in terms of style. It just sort of stuck. However, I recognize and appreciate that a lot of people don't like the dub score (some dislike it for the very same reason that I like it). I think it's kind of funny that it was used extensively in the second and third games in the Legacy of Goku GBA series, and reviewers often praised the music in that context (IGN called it "pleasant" when reviewing both games, though the reviewer didn't seem to realize that it was coming from the series).

I didn't put this together until just now, but that makes sense for me in many ways... I've always had this tendency to spend about as much time in the soundtest of games as the games themselves... used some UB22, Gauntlet4 and *cough* another source for BGM in my DBZ action figure movies when the one Faulconer CD I had didn't have what a particular scene called for (oh, wait... I used some Legends music as well...).

You know, now that I think of it. That's a huge mix, there. (For other movies I was far from adversed to using Sonic (mostly Sonic3/Knuckles) music as BGM, but I don't think that happened with the DB-fic stuff).
My actionfigure movies (One of these days I'll get around to putting them online. Heh.) wound up... egh... I'd call it Six parts, except 2/3 aren't divided very clearly (the first "3" are effectively one arc, while the last three are more like the movies we get with the series). I think I stuck with the Best of DBZ CD (Either 1 or 2, whichever featured Heroic Trunks / Garlic Jr / Perfect Cell / Pikkahn's themes) up until a specific character, for whom I had BGM picked out long before made an appearance, with the exception of Mr. Satan's theme, which I had to play myself (and poorly XD). It was a mix of Legends / dub / UB22 / two specific tracks from MMPR:The Movie for Genesis (when showing these to someone several years after the fact, I mentioned that he might recognize one of these, and he didn't if not for a specific melody that didn't dominate the song).

Once I'd figured out different techniques for using different BGM sources, I used more genesis music in part 4, from Gauntlet 4 (Which I kinda tend to think has some pretty blasted high-quality sound to it, and was composed differently from a lot of Genesis BGM I've heard, to the extent that I'd say it's better than the BGM in Gauntlet Legends on the PS1), with dub/Legends/UB22 all over the place as well.

I stuck more to the dub score in part 5, with my MMPR tracks making a brief reappearance (actually, there were a couple others briefly appearing as well, though one of these doesn't have an analogue in the TV series, and the other is ... well... special. ). I really had no idea where the story was going with this one, and it was mostly experimenting with effects and such (I tend to think it looked the best of all of them, but remember who's talking here). If I had to put just one online, it'd probably be this one, since other than a couple OCs who don't do much (and are easily replaced by characters I couldn't include for lack of figures if need be), it's fairly self-contained and show-offy (the "WTF lol" stuff... Heh).

The last one was me wanting to do a few more things and building a storyline that just wouldn't stop around it. It was pretty much all dub BGM, if I remember correctly (my self-played Mr. Satan theme again makes an appearance ).

A problem I had was that there was a lot of exposition, and often times I couldn't do that so well, especially without music to eat up some of the "Bwaah it's just my acting in this scene!" anxiety. So my music-less scenes are often poorly acted, and my music-having Exposition is... ... ... Bleh. I only had one decent exposition track (the quiet bits from call out the dragon, I think?), which I tried not to spam, but gave up on by the last part, which has a good 5-10-minute scene with a minute-or-less song on a loop... Gah, the frustration!

(I also didn't bother reshooting much, other than a couple scenes that I had to redo because the camera died and I had to start recording from the VCR directly. So at one point I'm using an ancient GI Joe talking backpack thingy to provide machinegun sounds, and accidentally hit the button in which a random high-pitched voice yells "Come on, let's go!". So I took that opportunity to try and explain the text that appeared at the top of the screen when I switched to the VCR. "It's Her-cule paying pilots to fly around and write things in the sky to distract people!". )

I feel compelled to go back and find a video of the Dub as aired on Toonami and see how I'd compare the BGM choices there to some of my crappy movies. Probably should go for the Cell arc since there's a lot of shared BGM there. Hmm.

[Oolong215]

I've never liked Faulconer Productions' music. It just isn't DBZ to me. Shunsuke Kikuchi's score is beautiful, but it's not my favorite. My favorite is the score for the international Ocean Group dub of episodes 108-276. I know it was mostly recycled from Mega Man and Monster Rancher but I love it, particularly this theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IlcID2t3M

[Daijuken]

I've never liked Faulconer Productions' music. It just isn't DBZ to me. Shunsuke Kikuchi's score is beautiful, but it's not my favorite. My favorite is the score for the international Ocean Group dub of episodes 108-276. I know it was mostly recycled from Mega Man and Monster Rancher but I love it, particularly this theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IlcID2t3M

Jesus Christ, man.

[Levlik]

...I stuck more to the dub score in part 5, with my MMPR tracks making a brief reappearance...

It's kind of strange and funny to note that I SWEAR by the second season of the Saban dub, a lot of Shuki Levy's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers BGM is recycled. I can't confirm this, though.

[Oolong215]

I've never liked Faulconer Productions' music. It just isn't DBZ to me. Shunsuke Kikuchi's score is beautiful, but it's not my favorite. My favorite is the score for the international Ocean Group dub of episodes 108-276. I know it was mostly recycled from Mega Man and Monster Rancher but I love it, particularly this theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IlcID2t3M

Jesus Christ, man.

What?

[cRookie_Monster]

Wow that reminds me a lot of the DeadZone theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRTZv2KSIjo&fmt=18

[Daijuken]

I've never liked Faulconer Productions' music. It just isn't DBZ to me. Shunsuke Kikuchi's score is beautiful, but it's not my favorite. My favorite is the score for the international Ocean Group dub of episodes 108-276. I know it was mostly recycled from Mega Man and Monster Rancher but I love it, particularly this theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IlcID2t3M

Jesus Christ, man.

What?

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

[cRookie_Monster]

Jesus Christ, man.

What?

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

I seem to remember a lot of people who liked the Ocean score back at the time when the Faulconer version was brand new. The Faulconer Productions music took a lot of heat from them. Maybe most of those people have moved on now? Or maybe the changed their mind?

[Daijuken]

What?

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

I seem to remember a lot of people who liked the Ocean score back at the time when the Faulconer version was brand new. The Faulconer Productions music took a lot of heat from them. Maybe most of those people have moved on now? Or maybe the changed their mind?

Wait, are you taking about Levy's score, or the recycled Mega Man and Monster Rancher stuff?

I'm assuming you mean Levy...

[The Tori-bot]

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

I seem to remember a lot of people who liked the Ocean score back at the time when the Faulconer version was brand new. The Faulconer Productions music took a lot of heat from them. Maybe most of those people have moved on now? Or maybe the changed their mind?

Wait, are taking about Levy's score, or the recycled Mega Man and Monster Rancher stuff?

Levy's score, I assume.

Quote train, choo-choo!

[Puto]

What?

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

I seem to remember a lot of people who liked the Ocean score back at the time when the Faulconer version was brand new. The Faulconer Productions music took a lot of heat from them. Maybe most of those people have moved on now? Or maybe the changed their mind?

He was talking about the score in the UK/Canada dub of the later seasons with the Ocean cast, which was basically recycled music from previous anime shows.

[Onikage725]

How could he be talking about that? The UK dub, if I'm not mistaken, didn't kick off until after the in-house Faulconer-scored dub started. So unless people were comparing DBZ to Mega Man and such, the only thing to compare the early Faulconer score to (dub-wise) was the Levy score.

[cRookie_Monster]

Oops, yeah I was talking about the Levy stuff.

[dagame10k]

My overall thoughts of the scores over the years, and my opinion

From the beginning, the Saban(Shuki Levei/Ron Wasserman) score, it was one of the truly unique music scores I've ever heard, do not know how to exactly explain it, but the music has an organic feel to it, it felt alive. Along with the voices, the score was one of two highlights out of the FUNimation/Saban/Ocean dub, mixed with the voices and SFX, the general sound of the show felt enhanced in a way.

When the big change happened with Season 3, I will admit I thought the Faulconer music was good(at this point I had never heard the Japanese score), at the time I thought it was good but I missed the Aura created by the Shuki Levei/Ron Wasserman score.

Ocean started dubbing the show again with the Android saga with recycled Megaman music, though Canada did not get it until Episode 168 of the Cell Games, and to be truthful, my feeling at the time, I was disappointed. The music sounded weird, voices were different but familiar, I liked continuity so I was just pissed off by another change, but then I started becoming an Ocean fanboy due to the voices, and blindly switched my music preference from Faulconer's FUNimation score to the David Iris/John Mitchell/Tom Keenlyside Ocean score.

Admittingly now after the fact, I think both the Faulconer, and the David Iris/John Mitchell/Tom Keenlyside recycled scores are just poorly executed, unfitting, and for the most part just did not interpret the show every well if at all.

David Iris/John Mitchell/Tom Keenlyside did show a glimpse of a sound that reminded me of the Shuki Levei/Ron Wasserman Season 1 and 2 score with the late Buu Saga recycled Monster Rancher music, and some newly created pieces for the dub(which was rare), but didn't quite reach that level.

All in all Faulconer and the trio of David Iris, John Mitchell, and Tom Keenlyside, were each only able to create a few quality pieces out of all the music they created, they both failed to do a good interpretion.

The first time I heard the Japanese score was the Pioneer/FUNimation/Ocean dub of movie 1 when I watched it YTV, not that I am against the sound of synth, but poorly created pieces output with synth just do not compare to a well written, well composed orchestrated score.

There can only be one score, and the fact that FUNimation was the only language dub that decided to deviate, I can say for sure, Shunsuke Kikuchi's score is the most popular score.

I understand other people have a feeling of Nostalgia for whatever dub music score they love, that's fine, I do have a feeling of nostalgia over the 3 Dragon Ball Z dub scores, but imo when you change the score, you change the intended feel of the show, and I'm against that, and because the FUNimation music change was based on the cheapness, and misunderstanding of an artistic piece of work that Gen Fukunaga had not had a single hand in creating, Gen made this huge mess when he could have simply used the already available Japanese score.

[xzero]

It's just that... virtually no person likes the Ocean "score". It's completely unheard of, to be honest.

I disagree. I loved some of the songs used in the Ocean score ... when I heard them in Mega Man. I guess that doesn't count.

[Onikage725]

@dagame10k

I can understand and to a point second that.
I was disappointed by Season 3's dub as a whole, BGM included. And at the time, while I'd seen a few eps and movies in Japanese, I was mainly comparing to the Levy score. The music itself wasn't anything I'd pick up a CD for, but it did have a way of enhancing the scenes for me back then. I never had a "problem" with it.

Now of days, if I listen back, it feels pretty bland to me. But that's many years later in retrospect. My taste in music in general, as well as my taste in DB scores, has evolved quite a bit since then.

[Chrome]

I'm not sure whether I prefer Shunsuke Kikuchi's music or Bruce Faulconer's having watched most of the episodes with both scores.

Each have their higlights, and each have their downfalls. One thing that I refuse to say about either though is that they're "bad" musicians. It is almost unanimously accepted that Kikuchi is a good musician, I most certainly agree. He creates wonderful pieces of music. But I've often heard Faulconer called a bad musician because people dislike his music. I don't agree with that.

Regardless of your preference, I do not think you can call Bruce Faulconer (or indeed any of the other musicians who worked on the American BGM) bad musicians. Listening to the tracks, you can tell a lot of effort went into making them. To a lot of people it just sounds like "cheap, synthesized" stuff, but I can tell how much effort and thought is put in. I dunno, maybe I have an advantage in that respect since I regularly use a synthesizer myself to create music.

But surely you must at least acknowledge the effort that went into creating over 200 tracks worth of music. The amount of effort it takes to create all those character themes, the amount of work and time taken to make sure all moments of the story had music playing (a very poor directional choice by FUNimation).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not hear to "justify" the obvious flaws in Faulconer's work. But I'd just like some of the people who hate the dub DBZ score to appreciate the effort, at least, that Faulconer and his staff put into making the tracks.

I am not disregarding Kikuchi either. He has created many wonderful pieces that I enjoy listening to. Very often his pieces fit the scene at hand absolutely perfectly, and I know that a lot of thought, time and effort was put into this score too - I would have to say, a lot more than Faulconer Productions.

Anyway, my love for both scores presents a bit of a dilemma. There are tmes when I watch with Faulconer's score and I'm just thinking "man, would they please turn that off! Why couldn't they use the Japanese track or silence". For example, the beginning of Episode 75 (Password Is Porunga). I hate that scene with dub music, it's simply Gohan messing about and they play some random guitar theme (it sounds like the Ginyu Force theme and the Opening Theme mixed together). It sounds ridiculous and recks the scene completely.

On the other hand, there are times when the opposite is true. When I'm watching with the Japanese Audio and I'm thinking "man, this music is too outdated for this scene" or "the silence doesn't feel right here, I wish I had some of the modern Faulconer rock". A great example is Vegeta transforming into a Super Saiyan for the first time. The Faulconer Productions version of that scene wins hands down. It sounds epic, it fits Vegeta perfectly and it was choreographed to the situation very well.

A song I like in both versions is the end narration song. I think both the American and Japanese scores work well here - in different ways. The Japanese score has a nice "wrapping-up" feel to it, and is also quite tense and builds up the suspense at the end. The American Score succeeds differently. The segment before the guitar piece has traces of the "wrapping-up", but I think the guitar is good as it helps create the feeling of excitement, of wanting to see the next episode. I don't know whether that was the intention (seems to me the track was only composed to fit the ending of Episode 68 ). There is actually an unreleased variant of the track I feel works much better than the regular version.

So, anyway, those are just my views on the two main DBZ scores. Not much to say about Shuki Levy, I don't like it as much as Faulconer. It's not as thematic (although it never sounds silly, which Faulconer's score often sounded). As for the recycled Megaman music. It wasn't so much that the music was bad, it was just repeated endlessly.

Btw, I know I foccused a lot on the dub score. If you want to know my opinion on Kikuchi's, believe me, I could write pages.

[cRookie_Monster]

Wow Chrome, you hit the nail on the head man. You echoed my sentiments on so much of it!!

And "cheap synthesized music" is really part of the whole balancing act between what people want:

Fast Results vs Quality vs Quantity vs Affordability

I think we were pretty delivered supremely on:

Fast Results, Quantity, and Affordability

Does it mean the studio sucked cause we didn't have time or money to get a live orchestra?

Granted there were definitely other problems ^^

[Chrome]

Wow Chrome, you hit the nail on the head man. You echoed my sentiments on so much of it!!

And "cheap synthesized music" is really part of the whole balancing act between what people want:

Fast Results vs Quality vs Quantity vs Affordability

I think we were pretty delivered supremely on:

Fast Results, Quantity, and Affordability

Does it mean the studio sucked cause we didn't have time or money to get a live orchestra?

Well, to expect a fledging production company with little money to hire a live ochestra to perform pieces for a "kids TV show" (well that's how FUNimation perceived it) is a just little unreasonable, most would have to agree.

I think one of the biggest gripes with Faulconer Production's score is the nature of the synthesizers themselves. I don't know what patches were used, but some of them were ropey. For example, the "Kame Sad" theme. A good piece of music, recked by rubbish sounding patches.

Also, the first episode with Faulconer music didn't make a good impression. If somebody was to start watching from the Android Saga or Buu Saga on one of the better-mixed episodes, they most likely wouldn't have too many qualms. It has to be said, that the first episodes were not stellar in terms of music. I think the Ginyu Force Theme was over-used and some of the Frieza synth, it didn't really sit well with me. Even the Vegeta Theme (an excellent piece - one of my favorites) didn't really particularly fit the first scene it was used in. (There is one Frieza track I love - the King Vegeta flashback track, I think it suits him so well. The patches were a little dinky, but I wish it had been released - I love that track.)

There were also moments (like after Jeice gets blown up) when I could tell you guys were dying to use silence.

One of the good features of Faulconer Production's work, that isn't as apparent in the Japanese version, is the way sagas are defined by their music. The best example, and perhaps my favorite one, is the Garlic Jr Saga. It isn't... eh-hem, the best saga in the series, but the music gives it a distinctive feel, a feel unlike any of the other sagas. With the exception of the circus music, I feel the music worked quite well throughout. Garlic's theme fits him quite well.

A problem I personally have with the dub music is constant theme swapping. I appreciate what Faulconer was trying to achieve, but sometimes it gets on my nerves. Now don't get me wrong, there are moments when it works beautifully. Episode 161 is a prime example. It goes from Cell Walking to Piccolo thinking to Goku and Gohan training back to Cell Walking, with the music changing every time. And they blend perfectly despite all being very different songs.

But there are times when it's just "eugh". For example, in the Garlic Jr saga, I can think of two occassions where the music just changes into the Garlic Jr Theme without any kind of transition, and it sounds terrible.

However, the Japanese episodes aren't free from that. Watch Episode 2 and see how the theme swaps when Raditz has just grabbed Gohan. It doesn't sound too good.