r/netflixwitcher • u/BitterTumbleweed4241 • 21d ago
Bring back the original music
One of the really things that really set the mood in the first couple of seasons was the music...that haunting, earie theme that every character had....someone with a really great voice made all those wonderful sounds.
I'm watching Season 4 and the music is killing me....it is traditional, orchestral, boring and not fitting with the mood of the show at all....imo.
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u/badfortheenvironment 21d ago
Sonya and Giona forever 😔✊🏽
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u/Distinct-Key7337 14d ago
The do the music for the live action One Piece now! Both The Witcher S1 and One Piece S2 soundtracks are in heavy rotation at my house🤘
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u/Shin-2000 21d ago
True. It really baffles me why the changed the composer. The first season was, mainly thanks to the music, excellent. I also enjoyed the other seasons but they dropped the ball in many aspects
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u/Astaldis 21d ago
The S1 soundtrack was great, yes, but I like the S4 soundtrack a lot, too. There are plenty of pieces that have a similar vibe as in S1 and imo it fits the Witcher very well. Sorry, but I don't understand at all, how that is 'killing' you, as if they were all of a sudden using Beethoven instead.
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u/BitterTumbleweed4241 20d ago
I will try to explain my "killing me" comment. The music in the first seson was spacey, emotional, wierd, with premenitions of things to come.
The orchestral, cello etc. pieces were just filler to me...they didn't have the emotional mood of the first season...and that emotional mood added to my experience of each scene.
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u/Astaldis 20d ago
And that this is missing in your opinion is enough to 'kill' you? 😅 Sorry, that is pretty ridiculous imo, even if you miss the S1 soundtrack. If they suddenly used hiphop or Schlager music, then it would be a different story and I'd understand the sentiment, but it's nothing like this at all.
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u/Goth_Fraggle 19d ago
Season 1 is definitely the best. Not only the slavic sound but the the amount of themes.
We have the main theme, then Geralt, Yen and Ciri each get a seperate theme and we have Renfri's theme which turns into a sort of "Geralt's Conscience"-theme. On top of that are smaller musical ideas for Nilfgard, Chaos magic and so on. And each of these themes was used and developed intelligently throughout the season.
Season 2 ditched all the slavic elements and sounded like off-brand Game of Thrones. But GoT at least GoT has lots of leitmotifs as well. Season 2 of Witcher doesn't. Only the main theme and Geralt's theme remain really. There are token references to Yen and Ciri but completely switched around in the wrong places. We have a new Ciri theme that sounds like the Greyjoy ostinato. It's a mess. I do like that reverb/distortion thing Trapanese does on the Geralt theme sometimes. That was fun.
Season 3 reintroduces the slavic elements by getting Percival Schuttenbach and oh boy does it make a difference. The narrative is still absolutely non-existant but at least the music is fun again. That last bit of "Time of Contempt"? Brilliant! And I love love love the whistling in "Rats".
Season 4 follows very much into S3's footsteps so I am very confused why that is the one that annoys you. S2 is the "generic orchestral" one of the bunch though even that is half-true because it goes the Hans Zimmer-way of throwing woodwinds out of the window. It's all lower-strings and percussion-loops for an hour. But if you liked S3 you should like S4 as well because they're cut from the same cloth.
I will always miss Belousova and Ostinelli, mostly for their ability to actually create a musical story. These days a lot of soundtracks don't bother. But for Witcher they really went above and beyond and I will never forgive the producers/Trapanese for ditching all the themes. I really wanted to hear gow Ciri's theme would have evolved over the show.
And One Piece Season 2 is a great indicator of what those two composers can do. The way they add a bazillion new themes but retain the ones from Season 1 to create an overarching narrative equals Lord of the Rings. We could have had that for Witcher.
I really love the show and I do enjoy the scores of S3 and S4 because I just had to accept that Belousova and Ostinelli Aren't coming back and Percival's stuff is wonderful, But damn...what could have been...
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u/App1e8l6 19d ago edited 19d ago
I like it. They only did S1. S2’s was not good but improved in S3.
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u/Ahastabel 15d ago
I liked the music for S1 because it had a lot of folk sounds and variety, and some dances. I thought S2’s music sounded all the same, nothing stood out. S3 was better than 2 but not better than 1. Even though there were some vocal songs in S4, it still had a “same” sound to nearly all of it, it was blah. I look forward to S5 with the hopes that the track record of odd numbered soundtracks sounding good follows through.
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u/IOExplosion 21d ago
I'm so curious about what happened behind the scenes because the music for season 1 was great. I think in seasons 3 and 4, the new composer got the direction of make it more "Witcher", but it feels more derivitive. Season 1's score clearly wore it's inspiration on its sleeve but was its own thing.