To have a little bit of background on my own thoughts coming into this, I am someone who has a degree in composition, so I might be coming from a place that'll make me sound a little harsh.
Now, this is supposed to serve as an introduction to anime soundtracks, and it does a somewhat decent job at describing some of the roles of a soundtrack (both to service what is going on screen as well as to subtly add to the scene's already-existing emotion or to give some other sort of feeling to a scene). My major complaint here comes from slight nitpicks, namely in terms of understanding how the production side of things is done (claiming the composer is in charge of sound usage in a show, which is the role of the sound director). Small nitpick, but whatever.
As far as what I found to be the major problem with the panel as a whole (which I commented on kinda bluntly at the very end, when the gent running the panel asked if anybody had comments/questions): a lack of musical variety. Much of what the panelist described in terms of "notable anime music" never ventured too heavily beyond weeping violins or pensive piano, with the occasional wailing choir or music box. Featuring at least 5 Yuki Kajiura pieces (done for the most part in similar compositional styles), only one piece from Yoko Kanno, a cursory glance at Joe Hisashi...yeah, many of the pieces were all done in very similar styles with very few exceptions.
I appreciate the intent of this panel a lot, and have a few suggestions to help it flow a bit more smoothly:
- Less anime name-that-tune. A small portion of this focused on openings and repeats of composers that were touched on earlier/later in the panel (Kajiura). Maybe stating the intended purpose of an opening/ending in a show very early on and then not covering it later (or just cutting it out entirely, since it's primarily about BGM) and cutting down on this segment could allow more time to explore other composers.
- Focus on some common composers. If Kajiura is going to see a lot of focus in the panel, keep it all in one place. This allows you to showcase the typical style/usage of various players in the composition game.
- Recognize other melodic instruments. It's too easy to use violin and piano. More fully-fleshed-out orchestral arrangements and jazz arrangements don't use them as often and are fully capable of eliciting fully-realized emotion. This is also not an excuse to ignore electronic composition, which can elicit interesting effects on scenes on the same level.