When and where did each composer peak?

[Ryu Taylor]

The dub's had more than one person working on it, and fairly recently even the JP version handed the job of composer to someone else. They all had their low points, but they also had their points where they were awesome.

Yes, I know there were assistant composers and arrangers. This question applies only to composers who got top billing (John Loeffler, Ralph Shuckett, David Wolfert, and Ed Goldfarb for the dub; Shinji Miyazaki and Yuki Hayashi for the JP version): when did they peak?

FYI: John Loeffler was the main composer for the 4kids dub of the TV show. Ralph Shuckett did most of the work on the 4kids soundtracks to the first three movies. David Wolfert joined Loeffler in being the dub composer for TPCi's dub from Battle Frontier to BW. Ed Goldfarb started at XY and has been the dub composer ever since.

 

[mehmeh1]

Not entirely sure of who composed what for the dub aside from Goldfarb, but for whoever did the dp dub ost, that was probably his peak. For Goldfarb, I'd say SM, though I haven't watched much of Journeys' dub. I like many of his calmer scenes in dub SM (I really like the dub ost for SM20 for example), though I'm not really a fan of his battle themes.
For Miyazaki, I haven't watched much of pre XY jp, but I really liked the little I've watched of DP jp, and both XY and SM were also great (SM 144 having two of my favorite Miyazaki tracks overall). Finally, for Hayashi, since he's only been in 1 series so far, I'll say that my favorite track from him has probably been the riding on lugia one, matched a bit by the

Spoiler: Jp spoilers

goodbye raboot one

 

[Leonhart]

Shinji Miyazaki peaked in Jouto from my viewpoint. While I still appreciated some of his background music in AG and DP to some extent, I felt that the Jouto saga was the last saga where his original compositions were catchy and memorable. After that, he was only good at adapting in-game music into the anime.

 

[Applecorp]

Goldfarb was bad from the beginning aside from a couple tracks he produced so he peaked early. Miyazaki peaked after the Mewtwo movie soundtrack came out because that was around the time that his music became boring and started sounding the same.

 

[Leonhart]

Goldfarb was bad from the beginning aside from a couple tracks he produced so he peaked early. Miyazaki peaked after the Mewtwo movie soundtrack came out because that was around the time that his music became boring and started sounding the same.

While I don't necessarily agree that he peaked immediately after the first movie, I will say that one of the most ironic things about his music to me is that 4Kids removed his score from the first movie's English dub, yet they had no problem keeping a lot of that soundtrack in future episodes.

 

[Ryu Taylor]

Just updated the first post with info on each dub composer's work.

Anyway,

Shinji Miyazaki was consistently good during OS, started faltering at AG despite that being the point where he made my pick for his best overall OST (the Lucario movie soundtrack), went further downhill at DP despite making his single best track (Oracion) for that saga's first movie, and...well, we know the rest. So since OS was where his hit/miss ratio was overwhelmingly in favor of the hits, I'm designating that as his peak. And quite an early peak at that.

Yuki Hayashi's peak was episode 2. The whole episode's JP music was good, but it was the Lugia montage that stole the show.

John Loeffler's peak was the first three movies, without a doubt. No matter what anyone says, those tracks are iconic.

And finally, Ed Goldfarb's peak was I Choose You (the BGM and the dub ED of the same name). So much heart and soul was put into that.