Not all of the style of the English-language version
of Dragon Ball Z comes from the actors. One of the largest changes from
the Japanese original comes in the music, with a fresh soundtrack being
written for the dubbed show. The most recent 200 Dragon Ball episodes were
scored by Bruce Faulconer, an accomplished musician who sneaks some classical
licks into the rock and grunge sounds. If you listened closely, you may
have detected a quotation from "Tristan und Isolde" by Richard Wagner in
one of the Dragon Ball scores. And Faulconer's use of themes resembles
both Wagner's leitmotifs and the musical quotations of Warner Bros.' cartoon
composer Carl Stalling, whom Faulconer considers a "genius."
The first difference between the original Dragon
Ball score and Faulconer's music is that the dubbed version has music for
every moment of the show, while the original had patches of silence. That's
a deliberate artistic decision by the producers, and a choice that makes
for an enormous workload for Faulconer, since each episode has 20
minutes of program material which must be scored. And the other difference
is for the new score for the dub. "They wanted music that would better
communicate to a Western audience the drama of this saga," said Faulconer.
"The show is a long form story and you've got to watch the whole story.
It's not like a 30-minute story where it's this safe sort of thing...it's
unpredictable. I think Dragon Ball Z rocks."
Some of Dragon Ball's dub score is performed
by studio musicians, and other parts are played by Faulconer on a synthesizer.
As in classical music, each character tends to have his own themes. "Goku
is like this rock guy. Trunks is from the future so he's techno. Cell starts
off being this little thing almost like a slug and he grows, absorbs people
and gets stronger - his music started out imperfect like grunge sounds
and
later he became perfect and his music got cleaner."
