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NEW Star Wars Soundtrack Box in 2007


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Williams getting a producer credit on releases like the UE are probably there for nothing more than legal reasons.

:;cough cough:: private message/not on topic ::cough cough::

If you think that's off topic you haven't seen off topic around here. :)

John- who realizes we haven't had a good pointless rambling thread in a good long while

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Actually... one thing I don't understand... With the LOTR Dvd - why didn't they place all the alternate cues and all of the alt recordings, etc on the dvd? It's not like they were short on room... Then you could choose an option to listen to the complete score... Or goto a menu and listen to it...

Actually...that's how they should release complete scores on a dvd... Like Star Wars...

They could have one option to listen to the full score... Then you could goto other menus and listen to every recorded take of every cue. It's not like it would take much additional time to do it and there is plenty of room on a dvd. It could be done along the lines that the ANH SE was done with every recorded take of "Main Title". For people that want to listen to the full score, that option is there...for people that want to listen to every take individually at some point, it's there... It wouldn't be hard to piece together...

~Andy

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oh...my dream! lol

I'm sorry but I'm a big fan of the whole process... from composition to final product.

It's why I'm more accepting of the edits done post-recording. I'm sure that even after the music is recorded, John WIlliams leaves notes on possible edits or changes they can make...

I'd love to be able to have a 2 DVD set, 1 of footage of the entire recording sessions, and the 2nd the recorded session plus the introductions (ie: "Reel 2m7 Mark." )

now THAT I would Pay BIG bucks for.

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Here's my thoughts:

First, I believe you have cues together on an album because that's the way they were recorded in session. For instance, on the Original Phantom Menace release, you have "The Arrival at Tatooine and The Flag Parade" as one track. As the last tones from the basses are drawn out, the fanfare begins for the next part. It sounds like they were recorded together, though I suppose they could have crossfaded them.

Personally I want the cues the way they were recorded in session. If Williams kept the baton going, keep the track going.

Now can we talk about something truly important? Like a complete Temple of Doom score? How about an Indiana Jones box set? I'm tired of having to pay $80 for a Japanese version if I want it.

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Here's my thoughts:

First, I believe you have cues together on an album because that's the way they were recorded in session.  For instance, on the Original Phantom Menace release, you have "The Arrival at Tatooine and The Flag Parade" as one track.  As the last tones from the basses are drawn out, the fanfare begins for the next part.  It sounds like they were recorded together, though I suppose they could have crossfaded them.

They did crossfade it. Those two cues don't even follow each other in the film.

Personally I want the cues the way they were recorded in session.  If Williams kept the baton going, keep the track going.

But the thing is, final cues are always made up of several takes. As we probably all know, the Main Title from Star Wars was comprised of 3 out of 5 takes recorded.

Then there's cues recorded seperately that are supposed to flow into each other, inserts, overdubs, and all that stuff. It's really not that simple.

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But the thing is, final cues are always made up of several takes. As we probably all know, the Main Title from Star Wars was comprised of 3 out of 5 takes recorded.

Mmm i had never read that.

Do you mean the SW (now ANH) main title was made editorially, like for example, the main titles of Superman?

I always thought williams composed several variations and they chose one...

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As I understand it, for the final cue only parts of several takes are used and edited together. For instance the trumpets from take 2 and the violas from take 1.

Wrong?

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But the thing is, final cues are always made up of several takes. As we probably all know, the Main Title from Star Wars was comprised of 3 out of 5 takes recorded.

Mmm i had never read that.

It's in the SE liner notes:

As a special bonus, all five recorded takes of the Main Title are presented at the end of track 13 on Compact Disc One.  At the conclusion of "Binary Sunset (alternate)," two minutes and forty-five seconds of silence precedes the continuous presentation of takes 16 through 20, complete with slate numbers and incidental noise.  Take 16 has particular historical value, as it is the world's first recording of the Star Wars theme.  In it the wind section provides prominent flourish, which was then toned down in take 17 after Williams and Lucas evaluated the playback. The addition of brass to the second half of the cue distinguishes takes 18, 19, and 20, portions of which wre utilized to create the edited Main Title as heard on track 2 and in the film.

- Marc

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F**K.

Note: I own the official SEs CD with booklets, i swear. I must have selective-read that paragraph, since i dont remember at all the last sentence...

Luke, hating 'Star Wars Main Title and Rebel Blockade Runner' right now. Hey Lucas, couldnt' you have spent some fri**in' $$$$ re-recording the cue as you liked?? :angry: U phukin' sux!

wow, i hope the anger is off tomorrow..., this cannot be good for my inner programming...

Luke, going to re-hear all the actual recorded main titles and maybe decide again which one is the best...

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I beleive that if you read the chart at the end of the ANH SE you'll find that the vast majority of final cues are taken from multiple takes. As Marc said, it's the way it's done. In fact, it's just like filming the movie itself.

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Are these five takes present on the 2004 Sony release? I always wondered why Binary Sunset (alternate) was running for 16 minutes. I've never checked it out.

I'll do it right now.

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I had never realised this...

I never thought they would mix several instrument soundtracks from different performances to make a 'new' one. I just thought they may record some parts sepparately and add them later, but always intended them.

Shocking news.

The more i learn, the more i realise the little i know...

But well i suppose i dont want to know what the prequels have appart from the ovious cut and paste of whole cues... :angry:

Are these five takes present on the 2004 Sony release? I always wondered why Binary Sunset (alternate) was running for 16 minutes. I've never checked it out.

I'll do it right now.

yes, if its that long, then it features it.

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Guest macrea

I think we need a little reality check here. Anyone surprised by the "revelation" that multiple takes have ALWAYS been combined together in film scores needs to get the DVD of "The Wizard of Oz." There's nothing more iconic in movie history than Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," right? Well, the DVD has as a bonus feature EVERY selected take from the scoring of the movie. And in the take used for the start of the song, Judy Garland gets through the first line and then COUGHS and says, "Sorry." But it turned out that her reading of the opening line in that take was the best, so it was used, and simply combined together editorially with other takes to complete the song.

This is how it has always been done over the past seventy-five years of film scoring. It's a matter of both nailing the correct performance as well as making sure that certain parts of the music are timed correctly with the on screen action. If one area is good in one take, and another area is good in another, then the two (or more) are combined together, with as many edits as may be necessary. Performance is also an issue, as takes or sections thereof are also selected to avoid bum notes, etc. AND... all of this is BEFORE further changes to the music are made necessary by editing to the film that happens after scoring is done, including dropping out music, tracking, looping, etc.

Up until the 80's the music was always cut on film or tape... both the performance/timing edits and subsequent editing to fit a recut picture... so what we ended up hearing came from something that had physical taped splices in it; hence the presence of audible analog edits and bumps. Digital editing makes the final result a lot smoother, which is why some people unfamiliar with the score to TPM don't have a problem with the UE.

By the way, the combination of takes is just as common in classical and pop recordings. It's basically a long-accepted tried-and-true practice in the recording industry, common for everything except "live" performances or releases with such a low budget that only one or two takes can be afforded.

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Having all the recording sessions would be excessive and messy. I say, give us the complete scores and the alternates, but keep non-essential recording sessions off.

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Yes. It's the best of three seperate takes put together. It's how creating a film score usually works, you know.

Not just film scores. It's also the way classical recordings are normally created (at times, particularly in older recordings, you can actually hear the edits). Even most live recordings are done that way, edited together from several performances of the concert, to replace the minor flaws that inevitably happen in live performances.

Actually... one thing I don't understand... With the LOTR Dvd - why didn't they place all the alternate cues and all of the alt recordings, etc on the dvd? It's not like they were short on room...  Then you could choose an option to listen to the complete score... Or goto a menu and listen to it...

There's 2 GB of space left on the disc, so perhaps it would have been possible. But I guess there are several arguments against it: Only people with DVD players could play that content, so all the others would complain. We don't know how many alternates there are, so we don't know how much space would be needed (though the regular talk about "a special alternates disc" makes it sound like the important ones would fit on one disc). TTT, or at least ROTK, may be longer than FOTR, and need the entire space on the DVD - what would people say when they had to leave out the alternates on those scores after they had included them with FOTR? And finally - we might have been waiting several months longer if they had more material to work with.

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So i suppose the cymbal clash edit in the imperial march is a side effect of this.

Really, i thought they re-hearsed the cue and when they got it right, it was recorded. Not that they recorded everything and choose the best part of every recording.

But well, if it has always been that way, i think it is useless for me to be upset, or complain about.

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what about the edits on ROTJ? I'd always assumed they were because of obmissions... but they may be ebcause of editing...

I believe that "Battle for Endor III" has one in the last few moments during the horn fanfare...

I just dont understand why they would merge two blatantly different versions... I mean, they should merge them if there is a problem with a performance, but not two versions that are quite different in that regard... seems... to only lessen the overall experience rather than enhance it...

I guess the technology has changed enough that now, I can merge tracks at home better than they could in the studio..

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As I understand it, for the final cue only parts of several takes are used and edited together. For instance the trumpets from take 2 and the violas from take 1.

Wrong?

Just a little note, I'm quite positive that this doesn't happen (usually). Cutting the music is like cutting the film, in a chronological kind of way, not cutting the performance of one actor out and pasting it into another take together with the performance of another actor there... (hey, don't start one bluescreen etc., that's a different matter, comparable to overdubs).

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what about the edits on ROTJ? I'd always assumed they were because of obmissions... but they may be ebcause of editing...

I believe that "Battle for Endor III" has one in the last few moments during the horn fanfare...

Where is that at? The edit in "The Fleet Enters Hyperspace" is a little rough, too.

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A rerelease of the original trilogy soundtracks would be welcome if it had major enhancements over previous releases. What I would like to see:

    to two channels, thus a loss of depth and separation. A CD can never carry an original "film mix" because a film mix usually has at least three channels (left-center-right).Previous soundtrack releases performed this reduction in different ways: the original 1977 release mixed the center channel at approx. minus 3 dB (^=at 70%) --- Tomlinson: "diminishing the centre track a little bit - and you've got your two-track" --- into the left and right channels, whereas the Anthology and SE mix the center at approx. minus 6 dB (^=at 50%). Since the center carries direct timpani and woodwinds plus string and brass reflections, this is one reason why the later releases have quieter timpani and drier sound than the original album release.
  • No dynamics compression, multiband or otherwise. Please! You're not mastering a Britney Spears CD.
  • Original Tomlinson live mixes for all tracks. This should not be too hard, as they all seem to be available, as seen in the Special Edition (although it's unclear why Risner remixed some of the ESB cues).
  • Proper Kenneth Wannberg edits of the best takes. The Special Edition got this *mostly* right, except for the start of "Imperial Attack" and "End Title". (Supposedly they used Wannberg's original paperwork --- either they didn't follow it properly, or the paperwork was incomplete in those cases.)
    Ideally, his edits would be re-done in digital to prevent the kind of clicks and dropouts heard in ESB's End Title and ROTJ's "Brother and Sister".
  • No editing otherwise.
  • Every recorded cue on a seperate track. If that means the album has 40+ tracks, so be it --- I have Japanese CDs that seem to have no problem with this. Yes, I also want to hear the "Throne Room" seperate from the "End Title" --- the End Title's beginning sounds really cool without the last note from "Throne Room". Anyone who wants to hear them together can always edit them together by himself, or listen to the film or previous releases.
  • Original cue names found on the conductor's score, not renamed ones.
  • And of course all cues, including the Max Reebo and Lapti Nek cues. Alternate versions/take only if they are fundamentally different, like "Binary Sunset". No need to include all eight takes (98-105) of "The Trash Compactor" :mrgreen:
      (1) will of course only be possible with SACD or DVD-Audio. I personally prefer SACD, as creating a hybrid CD-DA/SACD will reach a wider audience. I think they already did an SACD version of E.T., so this should be not out of the question.
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Sounds good to me - or it would, should something as good as what you descibed ever make it into our (SA)CD players.

Come on Lucas and Sony! What are you waiting for? Oh, yeh - every opportunity to make more money from self-serving film/score releases.

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The source music would be nice, but it is my understanding that the masters to ROTJ were lost or irecoverably damaged. All they had to go on were copies made of the masters for editing the prior releases... hence why little material outside of the prior releases is on the SE... and why that which isn't on a prior release sounds bad.

Personally, I agree with everything except 1.

I think that since ROTJ sounds so bad...and is so far gone, they should call in John Williams and the LSO to re-record the score. It's not like he's busy right now...

And what irks me is that they called them in to record new music for ROTJ anyways, but didn't bother to have them re-record ths score. What? You couldn't keep them in the studio for a few days longer?

That way, ROTJ would have a proper sounding release and would be a definate release. They should re-record everything... including alternates and unused moments. Inserts and whatnot.

As far as Lapti Nek goes, it would seem that Joseph Williams has lost most of those tracks... The Rebo Band songs, I'm told, are lost forever as is the film version of Lapti Nek.

But I have some nice edits of Latpi Nek... so if they don't release that it's ok... but I would love for the Rebo Band songs to be found and released... or even re-recorded like they had originally been done... (authentic instruments).

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The source music would be nice, but it is my understanding that the masters to ROTJ were lost or irecoverably damaged. All they had to go on were copies made of the masters for editing the prior releases... hence why little material outside of the prior releases is on the SE... and why that which isn't on a prior release sounds bad.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Many or all of the ROTJ cues on the 4 CD anthology sound better then the same cues released a few years later on the ROTJ SE.

The same can be said for the original CD release.

Also I believe Ford A. Thaxton once commented that a superiour source of ROTJ recordings was found after the SE's were done.

There is absolutely no factual basis for your assumption at this time, and I would like to stop this turning into another stupid Internet rumour (like the dumb TOD Mastertapes are lost forever shit we have been suffering through.)

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I'm sorry... I wasn't trying to start any rhumors.

It's what I was told and it made sense. But as you said, the true masters were found after the release, so there is some truth to what I was told.

Yes, the original material from the Anthology sound better, but the problem, as explained to me, was that since they were copies of the masters, the quality is somewhat lost. And then when they went back and "Digitally Remastered" them, they used the copies of the masters...

But eaither way, the point is, Rotj sounds like shit... if they found the masters, then they need to release that music in this set... not the stuff they've released before...

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I'm sorry... I wasn't trying to start any rhumors.  

It's what I was told and it made sense. But as you said, the true masters were found after the release, so there is some truth to what I was told.

They were working from inferiour material for the ROTJ SE. As for the state of the masters I don't know, it was a post by Ford Thaxton and it was a few years ago (I tend to take Fords comments with a grain of salt most of the time)

Yes, the original material from the Anthology sound better, but the problem, as explained to me, was that since they were copies of the masters, the quality is somewhat lost. And then when they went back and "Digitally Remastered" them, they used the copies of the masters...

Explained to yiu by whom?

But eaither way, the point is, Rotj sounds like shit... if they found the masters, then they need to release that music in this set... not the stuff they've released before...

All 3 scores could do with a severe nip tuck if they were ever going to get the SACD treatment.

However they still won't sound brilliant. Blame Eric Tomlinson for that.

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Actually I always thought Tomlinson's recordings were "brilliant-sounding" --- while there were some flaws, as in tape hiss and overmodulation, he always managed to make it sound exciting and punchy, and that's what counts. No single rerecording, be it Charles Gerhardt's or Erich Kunzel's, or Williams' himself with Murphy engineering, manages to do that --- they all sound muddy, lightweight and just too... "ballet-like". In fact, the "Skywalker Symphony" recording, with Murphy as "Balance Engineer" ranks among the worst versions I have heard.

Had Murphy rerecorded ROTJ completely during the "Victory Celebration" session, I'm sure I would have hated it.

Also with regards to point 1 in my list, keep in mind that none of the soundtrack releases present the music as it was originally mixed.

It's what I was told
Who exactly told you this about the lost tapes? Chris Malone's article suggests bad Azimuth alignment as well as bad Dolby A calibration as reasons why ROTJ SE sounds so bad, and that explanation makes a lot more sense. To me, ROTJ SE basically sounds like the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade bootleg (minus the denoise artifacts), and since those tapes aren't lost, I would assume the same kind of incompetence in the ROTJ SE case as was in the LC bootleg case.

Also, while using a copy of a copy does degrade the quality, it's nowhere as bad as losing almost all frequencies above 8 Khz.

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Hey its almost September which means 8 more months until this puppy!

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The only thing I want from the OT is RotJ in pristine sound.I really want to hear all the stuff going on in Dark Side Beckons.It 's a shame that some techincian back in 1997 didn't flip the switch to Dolby A properly or whatever and ruined the sound for everyone.

K.M.

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Whilst I agree with most of NewRisingSun's suggestions, I think that the ultimate sounding versions of the Original Trilogy scores can be met by adopting the following simple points:

1.) Use the original film mixes – no extra reverb or trickery

2.) Involve Eric Tomlinson – he would no doubt appreciate being involved

3.) Let Steve Hoffman master – only the best will do

4.) Issue hybrid SACDs – LCR 3-track would be nice but 2-channel would also be quite acceptable

I would then be confident that the end result would be an awesome treat for the ears, with point #3 being the salient one. Those who like dynamic range limiting and are scared of tape hiss can continue to listen to their dehissed, muffled sounding, slammed 1997 ROTJ Special Edition discs!

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