Minority-to-Majority Opinion of Faulconer

SSJ2bardock · Post by **SSJ2bardock** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:05 pm

The Majin Buu tracks were always one of my favorites.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:06 pm

The conversation is turning into people simply noting which songs they like. Please read the beginning posts and stay on-topic. Thanks!

Kid Trunks · Post by **Kid Trunks** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:46 am

JulieYBM wrote:Equally as scary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYyooJq2oUA

Yes, believe it or not people are mixing the Faulconer stuff over the Menza stuff (not always to great sucess).

I actually like what they were trying to do there. I think partly because hearing Z music during GT reminds me of the goodness that is Dragonball, rather than the lameness that is GT.

caejones · Post by **caejones** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:15 am

Meh, I guess I kinda ignored most of the music in the Freeza saga, though I could tell rather plainly that it had changed from the first two seasons (hence, it was apparent that the original score was even more different).
Honestly, though? I've never particularly cared about expressing my opinions with regards to these things (I didn't get to the internet in a "do my own stuff" capacity until 2001 or so... and didn't mess with online community-ness until 2002). So nya, never heard anything about the music, and never put too much thought into that (Though I did pay attention to the faulconer score from Garlic Jr onward... and I won't pretend it hasn't influenced some of my own music (though so did the music from the Japanese games, and eventually from the series )).
Though, the dubbed Freeza saga is nigh unwatchable for me now that I notice fricken guitars and basses bouncing all over the place while Gohan is just standing around doing nothing...

I'll risk slipping from topic to bring up my younger cousin (9 years old now, though he was into DBZ early enough that we had to translate his "I'm only just starting ot talk" versions of characters' names...).
He hasn't seen much of Z in japanese, or with the japanese music, or whathaveyou. His reactions ot hearing not-Sabbat Vegeta speaking (instead of just yelling attack names) was "That sounds nothing like Vegeta!" for a while... And I think there were only a couple instances where the different music (I'm not sure which scenes, though, as there weren't many...) got his attention.

... Except for GT, of course. XD. When he was three or so, he did this random rap-type song for Darth Mawl; and presently, he greatly prefers DanDan over "Step into the grand touuh, biscuitheads!". (Nine year old born every day indeed...!)

Meh, so I guess my answer is that I never particularly cared, but got a Faulconer CD anyway. (Ok, so my dad may have had a good deal to do with that as well... *doesn't remember exactly where it came from* *might have gotten it at Disney world, of all places*).

... Oh, and there's always Hikari No Will Power, which I think everyone in the house has heard plenty of times... and not by my design alone. XD

JAPPO · Post by **JAPPO** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:08 am

I used to like faulconer... until I found out his songs never shut the fuck up. It goes on and on, the same song over and over again, the same fucking notes all the time...

But then again, I'm not a HUGE fan of the Japanese score either. But it's definitely better.

TheGreatness25 · Post by **TheGreatness25** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:02 am

I actually like Fualconer's music. Some of it is just plain terrible. But then, some tracks are really good. I think the downfall is the instruments used. Sounds so cheap.

Innagadadavida · Post by **Innagadadavida** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:08 am

TheGreatness25 wrote:I actually like Fualconer's music. Some of it is just plain terrible. But then, some tracks are really good. I think the downfall is the instruments used. Sounds so cheap.

He uses MIDI on a lot of them (Gohan's power up music, YUCK). Later I think he uses real instruments. There's some real sounding Guitar Solos during the Majin Buu saga.

caejones · Post by **caejones** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:42 pm

Innagadadavida wrote:
TheGreatness25 wrote:I actually like Fualconer's music. Some of it is just plain terrible. But then, some tracks are really good. I think the downfall is the instruments used. Sounds so cheap.
He uses MIDI on a lot of them (Gohan's power up music, YUCK). Later I think he uses real instruments. There's some real sounding Guitar Solos during the Majin Buu saga.

I think there are some 'real' guitars before that, maybe even in Season3... (though I sorta think Gohan's music there would sound worse with more "real" sounding guitars... O.O.).

I don't think there's any problem with midis if they're used properly. The question is, are they used properly in the Faulconer score? <Oh, wait. "midis" isn't a real word... Bah, I use it anyway!

>.
That, and there are many different midi soundbanks out there. It might be interesting to compare the sounds of different scores on different midi devices (Oh, wait. *looks at the first few notes of ChaLaHeadChaLa* *and Unmei no hi* *and so on*).

... But... I guess we're still off topic.

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:26 pm

Growing up on the dub mostly, I enjoyed and still enjoy a lot of the Faulconer music. Hell, I even liked “Rock The Dragon”… it was the very first DBZ theme song I ever heard, and I was a kid, so the “extreme” aspect of it appealed to me. I remember going online and being baffled by some of the negative opinions in regards to these particular tunes, because I personally didn’t see anything wrong with them.

Of course, I experienced a sort of “enlightenment” upon discovering the original scores, which happened to be very different from what I was used to—even in a general musical sense as I had not been exposed to many Japanese songs before—but were just as cool and overall, I think, more interesting. I actually made a compilation CD from Napster downloads back around 2000–2001 (which I somehow managed to squeeze around 33 tracks onto), consisting of music from both the dub and Japanese versions. “We Were Angels,” “We Gotta Power,” and FUNi’s Perfect Cell Theme are three of my favorites in the series.

But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.

I think that, in any given situation where two or more versions of a thing exist and are distinctly different, with one having been introduced to a group of people firsthand, the appreciation will tend to shift in favor of that version. The unfamiliarity with the other(s) often brings out a xenophobia in those that don’t expect it, or are unwilling to accept what they view to be a façade or compromise of their “original,” regardless of its actual chronology. This goes for both the older, “anti-Faulconer”s and the newer, “pro-Faulconer”s, though I’m sure there were more of the latter than was probably assumed, since, possessing the unfavorable online opinion, they didn’t speak out. I know that offline, it was certainly the other way around.

Kendamu · Post by **Kendamu** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:41 pm

One thing that I always thought was special about my particular case was that, for the longest time, I liked the Japanese music better but didn't know it. What I mean is that, when watching the TV show with Shuki Levy's music, I didn't think anything of it. It felt to me as if it fit the martial arts space epic genre well enough. However, when watching the dubs of the first three movies and hearing the Japanese music, I didn't know that that was the Japanese music (except the insert songs).

I loved the music from those movies so much more than the TV show music. I noticed this especially during Piccolo's entrance and when he kills that one guy who was attacking Krillin in Movie 1. I'm just wondering if there are a decent amount of other people out there who had a similar experience.

SSJ2bardock · Post by **SSJ2bardock** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:45 pm

Acid_Reign wrote:
But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.

Well this seems to be a prevalent problem here after seeing stories from Kendamu and yourself because I've had the same problem.

I've tried on numerous occasions to get my friends who are self proclaimed "Dragonball experts" who "know everything about 'DBZ'" to watch the show in Japanese with me and they usually can't make it through an episode without having to change it back.

I'm a strong supporter of the US dub of Dragonball, actors and all, but I think in order to be a well rounded fan of the series you need to at least attempt to appreciate the Japanese version for what it is, which is the Dragonball anime at it's truest form.

Vekurotto · Post by **Vekurotto** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:12 pm

Kendamu wrote:I loved the music from those movies so much more than the TV show music. I noticed this especially during Piccolo's entrance and when he kills that one guy who was attacking Krillin in Movie 1. I'm just wondering if there are a decent amount of other people out there who had a similar experience.

Me watching the final 'Z' episode did that for me in a similar fashion. I mean it was the first time that I was actually paying attention to the episode and music rather than when I would catch an episode on TV and the music would fade into the background apart from a few tunes. And I watched those movies when they were on TV but I didn't pay attention to the music. Pretty much I just plain didn't care unless it was Dragon Ball and in front of me.

And I mean, hell, I practically knew full well that the music was different in the dub even before I did research cause that's what I was sorta used to when I was watching fully mainstream-esque anime way back when. Even before that with the 1996-98 dub I knew that the music playing wasn't the original. It just felt obvious to me because, since I watched some non-mainstream anime series and movies, I knew that nobody in their right mind in Japan with creation and placement of Dragon Ball Z's music would, one, make it play for the entire episode and two, never use instruments other than guitars, midis, and the like like the dub did.

I mean at the end of the day I go with the original music because it made the series feel more authentic and anime-esque like how I'm used to. Except for Menza's "kill me" music, I really honestly guess that I don't have anything against either the original dub and Funi's dub music but I just felt like the original music was much better for the series and would much rather hear it than those two.

SSJ2bardock wrote:
Acid_Reign wrote:
But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.
Well this seems to be a prevalent problem here after seeing stories from Kendamu and yourself because I've had the same problem. I've tried on numerous occasions to get my friends who are self proclaimed "Dragonball experts" who "know everything about 'DBZ'" to watch the show in Japanese with me and they usually can't make it through an episode without having to change it back.

Pheesh. I know that whenever somebody comes to my house that they gonna watch whatever I put in front of them and like it

Super Sayian Prime · Post by **Super Sayian Prime** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:33 pm

I live in Canada, and was initially exposed to the DragonBall Z series via YTV's broadcast. So we juggled back and forth from recycled tracks, with a few new ones, to Faulconer's stuff as well. I oddly didn't notice the difference between scores, while I noticed the voice acting changes. Maybe I was just too caught up in the other aspects of the show, or maybe I just thought what I heard felt right with what was going on with the show (Yeah, I just said I thought Megaman music fit with DragonBall Z). The same goes for the Japanese score.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that is something remarkable. Different takes, yet to atleast me, it all fit the show. I guess that also speaks wonders of the kind of show that DragonBall is.

To the initial topic; I do believe that a small but very vocal community influenced FUNimation in some regards towards the score, but to me, it doesn't matter, I would have liked DragonBall as long as I felt I was hearing something that matched what I felt was going on on-screen.

With that said, I don't have a preferred soundtrack.

Raki · Post by **Raki** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:11 pm

SSJ2bardock wrote:
Acid_Reign wrote:
But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.
Well this seems to be a prevalent problem here after seeing stories from Kendamu and yourself because I've had the same problem. I've tried on numerous occasions to get my friends who are self proclaimed "Dragonball experts" who "know everything about 'DBZ'" to watch the show in Japanese with me and they usually can't make it through an episode without having to change it back.

So much is lacking the in the dub that I would dare say they don't know the show at all if they haven't read the manga or given the Japanese version a chance. Not being biased or anything.

SSJ2bardock · Post by **SSJ2bardock** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:59 pm

Raki wrote:
SSJ2bardock wrote:
Acid_Reign wrote:
But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.
Well this seems to be a prevalent problem here after seeing stories from Kendamu and yourself because I've had the same problem. I've tried on numerous occasions to get my friends who are self proclaimed "Dragonball experts" who "know everything about 'DBZ'" to watch the show in Japanese with me and they usually can't make it through an episode without having to change it back.
So much is lacking the in the dub that I would dare say they don't know the show at all if they haven't read the manga or given the Japanese version a chance. Not being biased or anything.

Didn't take it as biased, you have a totally legitimate point actually.

I'm not afraid to admit that you're definitely getting an altered story with the US dub, it really actually astounds me sometimes. The other day I was talking with a group of my "typical american DBZ fan" friends and Dragonball came up. One of my friends claimed he knew "everything" there is to know about Dragonball, so I thought he'd think it was cool if I start playing some Head Cha-La, but it turned out he'd never even heard the song before. So I started quizzing him on some trivia and I was clearly the one with a vast amount more of Dragonball knowledge.

It was really a big shock to me because I thought I had been a very knowledgeable fan way back when I was a dub only guy ( mainly because I had no access to Japanese Dragonball ). Since learning more about the Japanese version ( and coming to Daizex

) my Dragonball knowledge has increased more than I'll probably ever know. It's almost like I spent a year in the Rosat or something.

Dammit I'm getting off topic again!

DBHighDefinition · Post by **DBHighDefinition** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:10 pm

SSJ2bardock wrote:Dammit I'm getting off topic again!

I'm telling Mike!

DevilKingBaal · Post by **DevilKingBaal** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:13 pm

I do not care for Faulconer's music that much.

NeptuneKai · Post by **NeptuneKai** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:15 pm

Raki wrote:
SSJ2bardock wrote:
Acid_Reign wrote:
But, this type of joint-appreciation did not really translate for the rest of my friends. I remember specifically putting on the Japanese version with subtitles of whichever of the FUNi movie DVDs was out at the time, for a close buddy of mine and fellow fan of DBZ. The goal was to show him everything he was missing from the original version. Well, as soon as “Head Cha-La” started up he had already basically had enough. A bit like Kendamu’s experience; I forget exactly what he said but it was just a generally dismissive attitude about “the Japanese.” Per his request, I switched it back over to English shortly afterward, realizing the futility of the endeavor.
Well this seems to be a prevalent problem here after seeing stories from Kendamu and yourself because I've had the same problem. I've tried on numerous occasions to get my friends who are self proclaimed "Dragonball experts" who "know everything about 'DBZ'" to watch the show in Japanese with me and they usually can't make it through an episode without having to change it back.
So much is lacking the in the dub that I would dare say they don't know the show at all if they haven't read the manga or given the Japanese version a chance. Not being biased or anything.

All n' all I actually think you can know the show based off of the dub, it's not like the show's footage or point is awfully butchered and uncut DVDs are much more prevalent then the cut ones. Sure a few things get lost with the dub but nothing that would make anyone ignorant to the shows true point.My friend is a dub fan and I'd say he's very knowledgeable about the anime.

I have to say the Japanese music does NOT blend with the dub at ALL. It's like a WWF wrestler fighting to opera. I can definitely see why a dubbie would not like the Japanese music if he's only heard it mixed with the dub voices.

Vekurotto · Post by **Vekurotto** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:23 pm

NeptuneKai wrote: I have to say the Japanese music does NOT blend with the dub at ALL. It's like a WWF wrestler fighting to opera. I can definitely see why a dubbie would not like the Japanese music if he's only heard it mixed with the dub voices.

The best example of that was Season 4. Ever since that point I plain stopped caring what the dub without the dub music would sound like since the dub sounded way way sillier without it.