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Harry Potter Teaser Music Recreated


Skelly

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These past few months I've been going through a bit of a Potter phase and have been taking a close look at the work Williams did for the films. Williams was hired to write the score to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone early enough that he was able to write original material for the film's teaser trailer. He recorded the piece November 18, 2000 at, I believe, the now-defunct Sony Music Studios. The teaser was released in March of the following year.

 

The master tape apparently was sent to John Sponsler and Tom Gire, production music specialists, for help in temping future Potter trailers, and they promptly broke it, so it's very possible that the cue may be lost unless WB kept the audio splits for the trailer or something. Bill Wrobel, while rummaging about the music sheets for this film, found something called "MX 8 & 10" that ran 36 bars, and I think perhaps that is this teaser cue.

 

I realized that much of the track - in which Williams established Hedwig's Theme - was adapted directly to the "Mail Delivery" scene in the film itself. Actually there's only one outstanding part of the teaser cue that didn't make its way into the full film score, and fortunately there were no sound effects to cover it up! So I gave recreating the cue through the film score's audio a shot and overall I like how it turned out. The trailer audio and the film score aren't mastered similarly at all, so at times you may be able to point out where I made edits. But hopefully you can still enjoy it a little and get an idea of how this track acts as an interesting precursor to the film's score.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx_2TC4QmNqkNzdWY3UtdE1SZXc

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36 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Of everything Williams records there should immediately be made at least 4 exact copies just in case the tapes get damaged in the process. One copy MUST be stored in a hollowed out volcano near the south pole!

Quite!

 

Although with bad luck that volcano will be the lair of some supervillain bent on world domination.

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People find stuff in their basements every day, so I would hesitate to say that the track is lost forever. But Magic Box Music has a little blurb on their site about the time they broke a John Williams master tape.

 

“You’ll be doing the trailers for the biggest franchise in Warner Brothers History, and by the way, here’s a recording of John Williams’ new theme that you have to use”. Two days later when our DAT machine ate the master tape of this recording we thought our career was over. As it turned out, this would be the first of a continuing saga of trailers that would keep us busy for the next 7 years and counting.

http://www.magicboxmusic.com/virtualresume/details.php?id=HPTSS

 

It's possible the master tape they're referring to was actually for the "Trailer #2" cue Williams wrote (in which he established the Flying Theme).

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This trailer music alone proves JW's genius. He was able to define the music of Harry Potter so early on and he got it exactly right. I remember the first time I watched the trailer, that music instantly sounded perfect.

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I've always loved that little moment at :44 here:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx_2TC4QmNqkNzdWY3UtdE1SZXc/view

 

It's too bad it only made it into this teaser, the trailer, and the end credits (and was the credits bit tracked from the trailer?).

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Not tracked, per se, but Williams did directly adapt/copy several measures directly into the film score (a piece of "Mr. Longbottom Flies", for instance, borrows a dozen or so from his earlier "Trailer #2").

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They're both awesome.This music in this trailer was the entire reason I saw the movie. I knew fuck all about Harry Potter, but I knew the score would become classic iconic Williams.

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