The Hobbit

Abbey Road is the most famous recording studio in the world. It is a very historical building in the music industry. This week I will present to you some music that was recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

The first installment of the Hobbit trilogy was the last film based on J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy world that Howard Shore conducted and orchestrated. He did an excellent job giving us beautiful music. It is easily some of the best music in the film score world. The Lord of the Rings trilogy along with the first Hobbit film was all recorded at Abbey Road.

Doug Adams, a film music journalist, was brought on my Howard Shore to document the work and final product of the music from the Lord of the Rings. If you own the Special Edition of the score for each Hobbit film, you will find that there is included a little notebook with some brief insight on each score as well.

There is such great depth to Howard Shore's music that I could never explain to you. Shore perfectly maintained the unforgettable themes from The Lord of the Rings, but also managed to bring to the table new music, yet still keeping the same feel and sound. If you do not have the score already, track back to my first post to see the booklet pages. I highly recommend adding this to your collection. I always am not sure about writing about scores such as this one because of my limited knowledge.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Special Edition)

It's been exactly a year and a month since the first Hobbit movie was released in theaters, so I thought it might be good to talk about it.
The Lord of the Rings films are an outstanding series. The quality of the films is amazing, and the music is just incredible. Howard Shore is a great composer, and I like him more after realizing he was going to continue the series by composing music for the new Hobbit movies. Just like the Lord of the Rings, there is a special soundtrack release for each movie containing more music than the original soundtrack. I am not quite sure if it is all of the music, like the complete recordings for the Lord of the Rings, but it includes a good amount for me to be satisfied. You will find Exclusive tracks and extended versions, and a nice booklet with nice pictures and some insight on the music. The London Philharmonic Orchestra played the music for all of the films. The songs are also very well done, especially for the special edition soundtrack: "Blunt The Knives" which is exclusive and the "Song of The Lonely Mountain", which is extended.

The album begins with “My Dear Frodo”, which starts off with the theme from the shire, a peaceful tune. It then goes into dark themes like ones in the Lord of the Rings before the battle begins in the Two Towers film, and the Uruk Hai theme. The tune of the shire carries on in the track “Old Friends”, which is extended in this CD. “An Unexpected Party” is light and not very serious, and that is also extended. Thorin’s old enemy, Azog, has his own theme: “The Defiler”. This song is a little chaotic, and it has a little hint of the theme from the Uruk Hai from the Lord of the Rings. Now I will skip through to the track “Riddles in the Dark”. This track starts off with some familiar themes, quiet. The intensity rises and time goes by because of the intense conversation Bilbo has with Gollum.

Below are the scans of the album, and to complete this post, I will include a link to download the soundtrack.

So here's the download link: http://tinyurl.com/kgrqdxe

It is a compressed .7z file, but I can upload a standard .zip file if you want. Download the simple program 7zip to extract it.
What do you think about this soundtrack? What are your thoughts on it? Do you like it? Leave a comment below on your thoughts about Howard Shore's work.