Cartoon Soundtracks

next one is from an animated movie i feel is very underrated.

next one is from another underrated animated disney movie. Personally I like this one because it takes place in my home state.

here's another animated movie with a damn good soundtrack.

here's another one from one of my favorite animated disney movies.

That's one of my favourite soundtracks for any movie. I wish there'd been a sequel.

me too man me too.

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next one isn't a soundtrack but one bad ass theme song.

next is the theme from my favorite tmnt series

say what you will about scooby doo but they had pretty good theme songs during their chase scenes.

next is a song from one of my favorite scooby doo movies.

I reckon SpongeBob's background tracks are pretty underrated. They usually only play for short snippets in the show for are actually fully-composed songs that tend to go for two to three minutes.

This is one of my faves, but Real Western Steel and Chill Out are also great themes.

damn i completely forgot about spongebob's music. Yeah it had some pretty good stuff on there.

Crap didn't notice that awful typo. I meant "They usually only play for short snippets in the show for about 20 seconds but are actually fully-composed songs that tend to go for two to three minutes."

Here have another one for that screw up.

They actually planned to have a sequel, but it never got off the ground.

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here's an oldy but goody

do you guys like this one?

for me this is one of the things that stood out in the bakshi lord of the rings. The scene with the orcs marching on helms deep and chanting.

They're very iconic.

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My nigga.

Both Ren and Stimpy and Spongebob had iconic music.

The vast majority of the Holla Forums music I've heard has been bad, embarrasing, nondescript or just adequate, and I think people are running it through a "good enough by Holla Forums standards" filter. Instrumental music is in most threads not even brought up, and people just post cartoon and comedy style songs. Instrumental music has always been considered unimportant in Western animation.

Live action movies have much better soundtracks, but Western soundtrack music has this on-going tradition of making the music follow the action closely without drawing too much attention to itself, which results in functional but bland music. Obviously there's a lot of soundtracks that don't do this, but it's still common and probably affects animation disproportionately. And on the other hand the thematic and emotional range of Western animation is constricted enough that composer have less to work with than in live action. American television seems to have mostly disregarded music outside of the theme songs, and the bar is set far lower there than in film.

I've also noticed that people will often post the full soundtrack to something rather than a specific track, like they have the idea that the soundtrack is good but can't point to anything specific.

I posted certain songs because some of the soundtracks only come in play lists and not single videos. That and apparently I can't embed play lists so I put songs that I liked there. Yeah movies have gone down in terms of soundtrack and I do miss the days when cartoons actually had opening intros.

Playlists on YouTube are just sets of individual YouTube videos. The playlist stuff can be edited out of the URL.

thanks for letting me know user.

Specifically, all the background music in TMNT '87 was pretty great, but I'm partial to 12 seconds in.

I'd like to find isolated tracks without any noises but I guess that ain't happening :(

I once saw a thread (not on *chan but some forum) where people repeatedly lamented that this or that TV show soundtrack had never been officially released.

Nigger you can apply that to all music, most of it is uninspired/mediocre garbage with some real good stuff that stands above the rest of it. The difference is that with Holla Forums there's a much smaller pool of music to pull from, and most of the people doing music for a children's show are either not good or are dead inside.
That's why people like Shirley Walker stand out, she writes legitimately good music that has themes, movements and motifs that persisted through over 10 years of the DCAU. If you watch JL/U you'll notice that all the characters, especially Batman and Superman, have little themes specific to them.

Did you miss the SpongeBob stuff?

You say it can be applied to all music, but then you go on to argue what makes Holla Forums music different. If you compare Holla Forums music to live action soundtracks, video game soundtracks or anime soundtracks, there's clear differences in quality.

A leitmotif is overrated. It's nice to have and can improve the music, but simply having one doesn't mean anything.

What do you mean?

In the context of something like JL having a theme for each character is important since it does a lot to make each character distinct. It also helps that the various character themes are catchy as fuck.

If your music is mediocre then your characters just have mediocre music specific to them. If your music is good then leitmotifs are just a bonus.

Like I said, you have to understand the kind of people who are likely working on the soundtracks of children's shows. TV show soundtracks are already weak in comparison to movie/game soundtracks thanks to the short turnaround times, but in television working on kid's cartoons is probably the lowest job you can get.

You said that everyone posted the full soundtrack and no-one pointed out specific songs, but the SpongeBob stuff was specific songs and there were other songs mentioned by name.

It's a question of what the producers/executives value in their show (do they think the music even matters?), how attractive the show is to composers (does it have aesthetic, thematic and emotional depth to it?), and how attractive television animation is compared to live action and video game work. The fact that something is a children's show does not by itself mean much.

youtube.com/watch?v=WS5ev6MeeV8
youtube.com/watch?v=G9WSbNBTv34
youtube.com/watch?v=OISf13WXcF4
youtube.com/watch?v=4sOULmKUhFM

But considering that not even live action American shows are setting the world on fire with their music, I assume the main culprit is that people just don't think music matters.

I didn't say everyone posted full soundtracks.

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Best soundtrack ever. I lament the fact that CtCD never got a soundtrack CD out.

Hey Arnold was pretty aesthetic. Wonder if the new one will sound the same.