Bear McCreary

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Bear McCreary (born 1979) is an American composer of score and soundtrack music. He studied music at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, and his mentor was Elmer Bernstein. McCreary learned piano, and taught himself accordion. His style of music is unconventional compared to other scores, featuring a mix of classical instruments, ethnic instruments, rock, electronica and vocals. He has said that the smaller budgets force him to be more creative, and it shows, as he has garnered extensive praise for his music. In the summer of 2010, he married his vocalist, Raya Yarbrough.

Scores composed by Bear McCreary include

• The Angry Video Game Nerd (the episode How The Nerd Stole Christmas)
• The 2004 Battlestar Galactica: collaborated with Richard Gibbs on the pilot miniseries before taking over as sole composer.
• The Cape
• Caprica
• Chillerama
• Dark Void
• Eureka
• Human Target
• Knights Of Badassdom
• Rest Stop and its sequel.
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles
• SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs
• Step Up 3D
• Titan Rain: Anime film to come in 2012 from the same people behind Ghost in the Shell.
• Trauma
• The Walking Dead
• Wrong Turn 2 Dead End

His website is here and his blog is here. Excellent resources for music fans.

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Bear McCreary and his music demonstrate

• And Starring: By Season 4, Bear's name was shown on the opening credits as tribute to his importance to the show.
• Awesome McCoolname: Bear McCreary.
• Autobots Rock Out: "Apocalypse".
• Badass Beard
• Bilingual Bonus: "Battlestar Operatica". Woe upon your Cylon heart / There is a toaster in your head / And it wears high heels / Number Six calls to you / The Cylon Detector beckons / Your girlfriend is a toaster / Woe upon your Cylon heart / Alas, disgrace! Alas, sadness and misery! / The toaster has a pretty dress / Red like her glowing spine / Number Six whispers: "By your command" / Woe upon your Cylon heart.
• Blues Rock: "Dirty Hands".
• The Cast Showoff: Alessandro Juliani sings "Gaeta's Lament" in BSG and part of "Capricoperatica" in Caprica. Kandyse McClure hums her own theme music in "Funeral Pyres".
• Creator Breakdown: Bear almost broke down trying to compose "Diaspora Oratorio".
• Cult Soundtrack: Bear's music is very distinctive, especially the Battlestar Galactica score.
• Cyberpunk Is Techno: Not Caprica itself, but the virtual world of New Cap City. And also his score to The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
• Doing It for the Art: The production of "Someone to Watch Over Me" went to ridiculous lengths in order to realistically depict a man playing and composing music on an old and beat-up piano. Having a basic knowledge of how to play a piano was a casting requirement for Dreilide Thrace. This enabled the crew to film from any angle without having to hide the actors' hands or use a "stunt performer." Because the prop piano was intentionally left out of tune and due to the specific acoustics of the set, any re-creation of the sound in post-production would've sounded incredibly different (and thus rather fake). As a result, composer Bear McCreary sampled every note on the prop so that he could later duplicate the sound of that exact piano in that exact room. Once they actually arrived at post-production, it was pointed out that production recordings of the prop piano were in mono, while any music re-created would be in stereo. What did Bear McCreary do? He rerecorded every piece of music played by the actors down to the last note, syncing his recordings with the actors' exact hand movements at the same time. The final product is amazing.
• Echoing Acoustics: "Something Dark Is Coming."
• Everything's Better With Bear: Much better.
• Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: "Battle on the Asteroid," "Storming New Caprica," "Assault on the Colony."
• Fading Into the Next Song: "Colonial Anthem" -> "Baltar's Dream". "Reuniting the Fleet" -> "Roslin Confesses".
• Gangsta Rap: "Voices of the Dead" from Caprica. Since the Taurons are similar to Greeks, their rap song is in Ancient Greek. Awesome.
• Last Episode Theme Reprise: The theme to the classic Battlestar Galactica appears in the finale in "The Heart of the Sun".
• Leitmotif: "For a show that set out to avoid themes, Battlestar Galactica has certainly ended up with quite a few" (Bear in a 2009 interview). These are also seen in Caprica, Human Target, and Dark Void.
  • Number Six's theme, later used as the BSG prologue music.
  • The Opera House theme.
  • The Adama family theme.
  • Starbuck's Destiny.
  • The metal percussion of the Cylons contrasted with the traditional drums of the humans.
  • The religious theme, used for Roslin, Kobol, and anything associated with them.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Battlestar Sonatica", "Elegy" and "Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1". The 2011 2-part album The Music of Battlestar Galactica for Solo Piano is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and features pianist Joohyun Park playing rearrangements of Bear's score.
• Musical Episode: "Someone to Watch Over Me", featuring the piano. Weirdest Musical Episode ever.
• Musical Spoiler: "Heeding the Call," "Kara Remembers" and "Kara's Coordinates."
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: Bear is an expert at mixing genres.
• Notable Original Music: "Prelude to War," "Number Six Theme," "Wander My Friends."
• Ominous Chanting: Chanting in Anglo-Saxon, Armenian, Gaelic, Greek, Italian, Latin several times, Samoan, Sanskrit, and Sinhalese.
• One of Us: Bear is proudly a fan of anime, scifi, comics, and video games. He even quoted Avatar: The Last Airbender in the comments section of a blog article ("Flameo, hotman!").
• One-Woman Wail: Raya Yarbrough has the perfect voice for wailing to Bear's music.
• Orchestral Bombing: "Prelude to War" is the most famous, with "Apocalypse" coming in a close second.
• Playing the Heart Strings:
  • The "Opera House theme" heard in "Passacaglia", "The Shape of Things to Come", "Allegro", "Violence and Variations" and the endings of "Assault on the Colony" and "An Easterly View".
  • Starbuck's theme from "Forgiven" and "Deathbed and Maelstrom".
  • Starbuck and Apollo's love theme from "Violence and Variations", "Under The Wing", also briefly heard in "Deathbed and Maelstrom" and "Starbuck Disappears".
  • The "Roslin and Adama love theme" heard in "Roslin and Adama", "Adama Falls", "Roslin and Adama Reunited" and "So Much Life."
  • Bill and Lee Adama's theme from "Wander My Friends", "A Good Lighter", "Reuniting The Fleet", "Farewell Apollo", "Grand Old Lady" and "The Heart Of The Sun".
  • The "Starbuck and Anders love theme" heard in "A Promise to Return" and "Goodbye Sam".
  • "Refugees Return" and "Gentle Execution".
  • "The Hub" is a funeral dirge for the Cylons, who are mortal once more.
• Power of Rock: "Lords of Kobol", "Gaeta's Lament (Instrumental Version)" and "Apocalypse".
• Production Posse: Raya Yarbrough (vocalist), Brendan McCreary (vocalist), Laura Kalpakian (lyricist), Chris Bleth (woodwinds), Paul Cartwright (strings), and many others.
• Real Life Relative: Wife Raya Yarbrough (vocalist), brother Brendan McCreary (vocalist), mother Laura Kalpakian (lyricist).
• Rearrange the Song:
  • Bear remixed "All Along the Watchtower" into a version sung by his brother Brendan.
  • Bear rearranged the old Galactica theme into the Colonial Anthem.
  • He also had Shirley Manson sing a version of "Samson and Delilah" for The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
  • In fall 2011, he released the album The Music of Battlestar Galactica for Solo Piano where award-winning pianist Joohyun Park plays rearrangements of McCreary's Battlestar Galactica score.
• Retraux: His soundtrack for Dark Void Zero.
• Shout-Out: "Battlestar Operatica" quotes Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, "Battlestar Sonatica" quotes Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," and "Theme from Dark Void (Mega Version)" evokes the spirit of the old Mega Man themes.
• Sorry I Left the BGM On: "Kara Remembers".
• Theme Music Power-Up: "Kara's Coordinates."