Blazing Strings

It's Day Six of my cold and the only thing I can think coherently enough to post about is the realization that I love, love love the combination of string instruments such as the cello and violin with powerful electric guitars. I've been listening to Henry Jackman's rousing score for X-Men: First Class; there's a track called "X-Training" that exemplifies this kind of pulse-pounding, fast-paced, almost melodramatic music. Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) does this sort of thing well, as does Ramin Djawdi on the Iron Man soundtrack.

I love this sort of music; it's powerful, bombastic, perhaps even a little macho. About ten years ago, while listening to an Internet radio station, I heard a electric guitar-based rendition of Jerry Goldsmith's main theme to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. Alas, there was no announcement of the cover artist, and I've searched in vain for the track in the intervening years. Sometimes it feels like a figment of my imagination.

So, strings and guitars. Soundtrack composers, more of that, please - I can't get enough. Oh, and throw some heavy percussion in there too.