But seriously, how did the Falcouner soundtrack even make it to air?

[Hellspawn28]

I do think people liking the music because they saw it as kids is a bad argument. I saw the Season 3 dub of DBZ back in 1999 when I was 8 and I hated it. I thought the music and voice acting was awful. I remember that I hated DBZ for a while because it left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Bardo117]

My honest analysis of all of this is that I have never seen a kid complain about a show or movie for voice acting and music. Unless it's dubbed, I remember complaining all of the time when I watched Godzilla movies in English.... But hated watching them in Japanese because I didn't want to read subtitles because I wanted to focus on the action. Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting. As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

[Gaffer Tape]

Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting. As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

And if that was true, it would indicate that there was never a need to replace the score. Again, you can't argue that the score needed to appeal to '90s American kid tastes while claiming kids don't notice the music. Those two ideas are incompatible.

[Bardo117]

Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting. As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

And if that was true, it would indicate that there was never a need to replace the score. Again, you can't argue that the score needed to appeal to '90s American kid tastes while claiming kids don't notice the music. Those two ideas are incompatible.

Sure they're compatible. Kids don't pay detailed attention to the music, BUT there are elements that are subconsciously appealing. Same way radio music somehow appeals to the masses, there are elements within a children's cartoon that have to appeal to the masses. One of those things was the music had to fit, and they deemed the music too far off from what kids shows had at the time so they made the change. They could've easily saved money and just left the score untouched, but they spent money and altered it to fit how they thought would suit the show. Worked out just fine IMO.

There's nothing to complain about really for me. I have no gripes on them changing the music because we could argue all day that leaving the original BGM would've made the show less appealing to audiences...(That soundtrack was too outdated for American Audiences tbh) and their job was to make the show feel new.

[dario03]

The show was already a success before he was ever brought on board. That's what gets lost in this. People forget that there was another cast and it was still popular. And while I agree that it's an awesome fighting cartoon, it's also quirky and funny. That also gets lost in his music. You would've remembered the show as being awesome if they stayed with the Ocean Group or even kept the original music.

You could apply that to a lot of things though. It would probably have been successful in Japan without Kikuchi too. Toei even changed it for Kai until the whole plagiarism thing.

Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting. As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

And if that was true, it would indicate that there was never a need to replace the score. Again, you can't argue that the score needed to appeal to '90s American kid tastes while claiming kids don't notice the music. Those two ideas are incompatible.

Sure they're compatible. Kids don't pay detailed attention to the music, BUT there are elements that are subconsciously appealing. Same way radio music somehow appeals to the masses, there are elements within a children's cartoon that have to appeal to the masses. One of those things was the music had to fit, and they deemed the music too far off from what kids shows had at the time so they made the change. They could've easily saved money and just left the score untouched, but they spent money and altered it to fit how they thought would suit the show. Worked out just fine IMO.

There's nothing to complain about really for me. I have no gripes on them changing the music because we could argue all day that leaving the original BGM would've made the show less appealing to audiences...(That soundtrack was too outdated for American Audiences tbh) and their job was to make the show feel new.

I always thought the change was to save money. They couldn't get the score for free, it wasn't part of the deal and thus was cheaper to replace it. Or was it they could charge stations for using their music? Either way it was financially better for them to use the replacement music on TV.

[ABED]

You could apply that to a lot of things though. It would probably have been successful without Kikuchi too. Toei even changed it for Kai until the whole plagiarism thing.

It would've been a success regardless and was in fact. The show remained popular even after it moved to a cast that was clearly inexperienced and hired because of a cost cutting measure. Doesn't mean they should've changed it.

That soundtrack was too outdated for American Audiences tbh

The Faulconer score didn't sound any more contemporary and the show wasn't a contemporary show. Their job was NOT to make the show feel new. The show was already new by virtue of nothing like it being on the air.

Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting

I noticed when they changed the actor playing Ronald McDonald. So that's flat out wrong.

As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

And yet somehow they would find the music too offputting?

[Hellspawn28]

My honest analysis of all of this is that I have never seen a kid complain about a show or movie for voice acting and music. Unless it's dubbed, I remember complaining all of the time when I watched Godzilla movies in English.... But hated watching them in Japanese because I didn't want to read subtitles because I wanted to focus on the action.

Funny how you mention Godzilla because I grew up with the old Showa movies from the 50's-70's as a kid too. When I got older, I enjoy them better subbed because I felt like most of those movies had better stories and characters than what most people give them credit for like Mothra vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Monster Zero, Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Terror of Mecha Godzilla.

I also did saw Godzilla vs. Mothra: Battle for Earth on a fansubbed VHS tape in the late 90's and I enjoy it even if it's in Japanese. As a kid, I thought it was cool to see something now in English.

Point is, as a kid you don't notice things like music, or voice acting.

It depends on the kid's age. I guess if you are three or four, I could see that. If you where a big kid that is 8 or 9 years old back in 1999-2000, I think you are old enough to tell if something is shit. I remember how I thought the story, voice acting and music was to me when I try to watch DBZ as a kid for the first time. I hated it and I even thought Digimon & Pokemon where better shows as a kid.

While everyone was watching Season 3 of DBZ back in 1999, I was watching stuff like Gunsmith Cats, Sol Bianca, Battle Angel Alita and Twilight of the Dark Master on Encore Action. Those had better voice acting, music and writing them compare to the Season 3 dub of DBZ in my opinion.

As a kid you could be watching your favorite cartoon on that crappy television that your grandmother has with bad antenna signal and you'd still love it.

And yet the original Japanese music would turn kids off? If kids can enjoy something on a crappy TV then they can enjoy something with the original music too. It seems like a lot of you guys as kids had really low standers on what you enjoy. When I was a kid, I like anything that was entertaining. There was movies and TV shows that I hated as a kid too because I thought they where bad.

[Bardo117]

Standards obviously change as you get older, but I just honestly don't remember caring or hearing anybody else care about stuff like voice acting and music. Like I had said earlier, I think music has to subconsciously be appealing. Not that you would notice it particularly as a kid, but the BGM has to be contemporary to what kids are use to hearing in their television shows and I think having the show with an 80's soundtrack would have the show feeling out of place and unappealing in certain aspects for kids. Might not be 100% true, but I'm sure that's what FUNI was thinking at the time. They played the music and thought it was too outdated to play for modern audiences(Or American Audiences in general)

[cRookie_Monster]

I haven't listened to it in years and it's worse than even I remember. I'm not knocking the musicial IDEAS, I'm knocking the horrendous production. This is the most unprofessional soundtrack I have ever heard. Shit on the Saban and Westwood music all you want, and rightfully so, but at least they were professionally made and sound as such. The Falcouner OST literally sounds like 16 Bit Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis music, it's all cheap sounding MIDI, especially the earlier seasons. There's geninuely good ideas hidden in the OST but everything is just shit on by the production. How did this make it to air, even with the fact that Funi had no money? The way the music sounds is completely embarrassing.

Honestly even when I first came on in 1999 I was surprised at some of the synths used on the soundtrack. I wasn't getting paid much, so at first I wouldn't even bring my own gear in. Eventually I changed that and started bringing my own stuff in(including real guitar) and also introduced some new methods of processing the existing synths to make them sound better. Some people really seem to like that old synth guitar though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Many of the patches meant to approximate acoustic instruments always bothered me, depending on which unit they came from. The purely electronic sounds I kinda like, still to this day. I mean, a saw wave with FX sounds pretty much the same back then as it does today on new synths. There's a lot of products that really try to recreate old synths actually.

But believe me, as someone who worked on the soundtrack, it bugged me too. I had stuff played by real symphony orchestra in college, before DBZ...so yeah.

Before DBZ, live orchestra (sight read by students, no rehearsal)
http://morganstudios.com/SweetOrch.mp3
http://morganstudios.com/ViolentOrch.mp3
http://morganstudios.com/HeroicTheme.mp3


(btw, shouldn't this be in the music forum?)

[ABED]

the BGM has to be contemporary to what kids are use to hearing in their television shows and I think having the show with an 80's soundtrack would have the show feeling out of place and unappealing in certain aspects for kids

Says who? Why does it have to be contemporary?

They played the music and thought it was too outdated to play for modern audiences

But the animation was so modern?

[Forte224]

If Sabat is 100% accurate when he says the reason they didn't use Kikuchi was because the sound quality was so bad when they got it (this was in the Geekdom101 interview, I never really believed that explanation but whatev) then that would make sense. But yeah the higher ups tend to underestimate what kids can handle. Somewhere down the line someone said "There needs to be constant guitars and "awesome" sounding music that never stops or kids will lose attention quickly" and it stuck. I honestly believe that if they had used an accurate dub (with maybe some edits so moms didn't freak out and it could hold the same time slot) and the original score from the outset, DBZ would still be just as popular today. Faulconer has a few good tracks but I don't attribute the show's success to him or his team at all, really

[ABED]

Kids like cartoons even if they are old.

[Hellspawn28]

Standards obviously change as you get older, but I just honestly don't remember caring or hearing anybody else care about stuff like voice acting and music.

I was 8 years old when Season 3 of DBZ aired on Toonami and I thought it was garbage. I still remember when I was a kid on how I was turn off by the voice acting, music and the story. I remember that I hated DBZ for over a year because it left a bad taste in my mouth. I remember as a kid, I thought the voices sound very weak and the music was annoying. Kids know if they don't like something and they are not going to like everything that they watch.

Kids like cartoons even if they are old.

That is true. Look at the re-runs of old 40's-70's cartoons that CN would play back in the day. Heck Toonami even had re-runs of Thundercats, Robotech and Voltron in the late 90's.

[Bryesque]

I still don't buy this idea that the score was so "outdated", especially considering the English dub only began 7 years after DBZ premiered in Japan (and the in-house Funi dub was just a few years later).

Even now... y'know, I've said this already, but the original score holds up just fine. I don't see what's particularly dated about it, especially compared to many other cartoon scores of the time and since.

[MajinMan]

I agree that most young kids won't notice the music or voice acting nearly as much as older kids and adults. Hell, I can't really remember ever giving a shit about the music as a kid. The thing I'm confused about is the whole "Kikuchi was really dated" statement. What the hell does "dated" music even mean? So if songs are old, they automatically suck now? Or is it that it feels too "old?" If a score was created for a specific show, then how can that score be dated? So is the music for an old movie considered dated and unfitting now? Of course not. Kikuchi's OST was created specifically for DB/Z. That doesn't mean you have to like it, but it is the score of the show, it was always the score of the show, and it will always be the score of the show.

And about Faulconer, you can argue that his OST was also created for DBZ, but I would argue that it WASN'T created for DBZ. It was created for the "modern" American KIDS so they won't lose their focus on the show. The constant music and loud noises kept kids looking and interested because something was going on at all times (in Funimation's mind, at least). Why else would a company decide to have constant, jarring music play at all times? Did they think it fit the show? Probably not. They probably knew damn well that Faulconer's score was not really representative of the show they were releasing to the public, but they didn't give a damn as long as kids were watching their show.

That's my take on that particular subject.

[cRookie_Monster]

I still don't buy this idea that the score was so "outdated", especially considering the English dub only began 7 years after DBZ premiered in Japan (and the in-house Funi dub was just a few years later).

Even now... y'know, I've said this already, but it holds up just fine. I don't see what's particularly dated about it, especially compared to many other cartoon scores since.

The Japanese score is clearly based on 60's film music. I had a thread a while back on this. To an older person who is familiar with that music it's very apparent, to some younger people it sounds new and fresh because it is so far forgotten I think. The Wuxia vibe could be a decent excuse for some of it. I still don't get all the wacky things like musical saws, Vibraslap, and theremin, but it's what those older timers did I guess. It's not about when it's produced, it's about who it's by and what they brought with them. Kikuchi definitely harkens back to an older time, just like I'm definitely rooted in the 80s even though I might be writing new music in the 2010's, I definitely still have an 80's vibe because that was my childhood.

To me the Faulconer score has some bad MIDI parts in it and is very 80s. The Japanese score has a jazz band 60's esque film score with a mediocre group performing it. The Faulconer score plays way too much, the Japanese not enough. Faulconer score over heavies things at times (it's not all hardcore though, not even close), Japanese score underplays things too much (though it's not all light floofy stuff). Each has their issues and strengths. I think people tend to polarize too much. It's not like the Japanese score never used synths/guitars and the Faulconer score never had pretty orchestra stuff.

[ABED]

I still don't buy this idea that the score was so "outdated", especially considering the English dub only began 7 years after DBZ premiered in Japan (and the in-house Funi dub was just a few years later).

Even now... y'know, I've said this already, but it holds up just fine. I don't see what's particularly dated about it, especially compared to many other cartoon scores since.

The Japanese score is clearly based on 60's film music. I had a thread a while back on this. To an older person who is familiar with that music it's very apparent, to some younger people it sounds new and fresh because it is so far forgotten I think. The Wuxia vibe could be a decent excuse for some of it. I still don't get all the wacky things like musical saws, Vibraslap, and theremin, but it's what those older timers did I guess. It's not about when it's produced, it's by whom and what they brought with them. Kikuchi definitely harkens back to an older time, just like I'm definitely rooted in the 80s even though I might be writing new music in the 2010's, I definitely still have an 80's vibe because that was my childhood.

To me the Faulconer score has some bad MIDI parts in it and is very 80s. The Japanese score has a jazz band 60's esque film score with a mediocre group performing it. The Faulconer score plays way too much, the Japanese not enough. Faulconer score over heavies things at times (it's not all hardcore though, not even close), Japanese score underplays things too much (though it's not all light floofy stuff). Each has their issues and strengths. I think people tend to polarize too much. It's not like the Japanese score never used synths/guitars and the Faulconer score never had pretty orchestra stuff.

Where is the theremin played?

What moments do you consider underplayed by the JPN score?

[cRookie_Monster]

The Japanese score is clearly based on 60's film music. I had a thread a while back on this. To an older person who is familiar with that music it's very apparent, to some younger people it sounds new and fresh because it is so far forgotten I think. The Wuxia vibe could be a decent excuse for some of it. I still don't get all the wacky things like musical saws, Vibraslap, and theremin, but it's what those older timers did I guess. It's not about when it's produced, it's by whom and what they brought with them. Kikuchi definitely harkens back to an older time, just like I'm definitely rooted in the 80s even though I might be writing new music in the 2010's, I definitely still have an 80's vibe because that was my childhood.

To me the Faulconer score has some bad MIDI parts in it and is very 80s. The Japanese score has a jazz band 60's esque film score with a mediocre group performing it. The Faulconer score plays way too much, the Japanese not enough. Faulconer score over heavies things at times (it's not all hardcore though, not even close), Japanese score underplays things too much (though it's not all light floofy stuff). Each has their issues and strengths. I think people tend to polarize too much. It's not like the Japanese score never used synths/guitars and the Faulconer score never had pretty orchestra stuff.

Where is the theremin played?

What moments do you consider underplayed by the JPN score?

I'd need to go hunting for both answers. Sorry
The underplaying thing is frequent though. I feel a lot of action or dramatic sequences are really not very exciting because of it.

[Hellspawn28]

I don't get how the music being outdated would turn off kids, but not the animation? DBZ was already 10 years old by the time when Season 3 aired in 1999 and DBZ was already popular in 1998 on CN when it aired on Toonami. The animation looked by 1998-1999 standers.

[floofychan333]

I guess janky techno was what was considered "cool" then or whatever, and of course who doesn't love music THAT NEVER SHUTS UP ONCE IT STARTS AND IS MOSTLY JUST ONE GODDAMN SUSTAINED NOTE? Yep, I have nothing but contempt and disapproval for the English scores.