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Spaghetti Western Soundtracks... Your thoughts? Sounds?

Spaghetti Westerns... what's not to love, right? For whatever odd reason , I recently got really into the soundtracks from these films. It's a pretty interesting genre of film music. Some random observations about it;

Overwhelmingly, most of the best in this category is from composer Ennio Morricone. If you're not familiar, he's the guy who did the iconic music for the "Dollars Trilogy" starring Clint Eastwood. From what I've read, he composed most of that stuff BEFORE they actually filmed, so they shot with the score in mind. This is why some of the scenes and shots are a bit long. Also, apparently he didn't have the money for a full orchestra when they recorded, which is why the soundtrack itself features a lot of other elements, like electric guitars, chants, sound effects (whip cracks and gun shots). etc. Speaking of the electric guitars used, the melody lines and guitar tones are pretty much just Surf Rock guitar lines played over a galloping rhythm (to signify horses, maybe?), instead of the steady rock/r&b rhythm that Surf Music used.
Even without Morricone, there are a gang of other composers who've done some great work in this genre. Riz Ortolani (who also scored Cannibal Holocaust), is one of my other favorites on this list.

What's also interesting is how diverse a lot of these soundtracks are. They range from the obvious Orchestral, to some jazz-pop silliness that my boy Riz did, mentioned above. If you get deep enough, you also notice a lot of crossover between the various other "grindhouse" and B-movie genres from the same era. It's probably also worth mentioning that Hollywood Western movies (IMO) consistently missed the mark in comparison. the American Western soundtracks were just never as cool. In the 50's, Hollywood had the bombastic Orchestral style, which the Italian soundtracks were a contrast to. By the time the 80's rolled around and Hollywood crept back with a few more big Western flicks... they still had big Symphonic scores. By that time, Ennio Morricone was scoring "The Thing" with mostly synthesizers... so things had moved on, I guess.

So, being the weirdo that I am, I really had to get to work on a Spaghetti Western movie score. The music for "A Fistfull of Dollars" was made before there was a movie, so why not. I guess I have the score ready to go if I ever want to shoot a Western flick. Realistically, this is mostly just for fun.

https://youtu.be/UzyRZTULeew
This is probably the most "Ennio Morricone", although tracks 1 and 5 are in the same vein.

https://youtu.be/zMyXMLTO934
This one is probably my favorite of the bunch, but it might be the least "authentic" Spag-Western.


You can hear the rest at https://soundcloud.com/studiobeats/sets/spaghetti-western-soundtrack-vol-1 if you want. There's some variety, but all of it has a heavy Western vibe. For instance, track 7 is a Narcocorridos that I used Google translate to write the lyrics for (I don't actually speak any Spanish). Funny shit, for sure. To anyone who actually gives this a listen, thanks a lot! Let me know what you think about it.

Also, if anyone else has any "Western" soundtrack music they've composed, I'd love to hear it. Drop it in this thread if possible.
 
Love Ennio Morricone (for his non-western scores as well).

A little hidden gem is the old LucasArts "Outaws" PC game score. The game was shipped on two discs where the initial tracks were game data and the rest were the audio CD. I can't remember who orchestrated the score but for it's time it was pretty dang good.

https://youtu.be/YL-h41b1ADQ
 
Love Ennio Morricone (for his non-western scores as well).

A little hidden gem is the old LucasArts "Outaws" PC game score. The game was shipped on two discs where the initial tracks were game data and the rest were the audio CD. I can't remember who orchestrated the score but for it's time it was pretty dang good.

https://youtu.be/YL-h41b1ADQ

That's a really cool soundtrack that I wasn't aware of. Thanks for posting!
 
That's a really cool soundtrack that I wasn't aware of. Thanks for posting!

It was intentionally orchestrated to mimic/copy/homage Morricone. Some tracks are more obvious than others but it has a nice mix due to the game having a railroad level, a mine level, a native american level, etc.
 
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