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E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial La-La Land MUSIC Discussion


Jay

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I wonder why The Kiss is on CD2 if there's plenty of room on CD1 for it, where it actually belongs. Did JW read "Kiss" and thought it was the band Kiss that made a song that they didn't use?

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There was no room for additional tracks on disc 1.  LLL had a 78:59 cap for any disc they release.

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When I get the score in ripped, I'll be restoring the additional tracks into the body of the score.

 

Still need to finish listening to CD 2 on the drive home this evening.

 

The OST CD so far is simply sublime ...

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28 minutes ago, Jay said:

There was no room for additional tracks on disc 1.  LLL had a 78:59 cap for any disc they release.

The back cover says 77:57 for CD1, and Kiss has 0:41. It would fit.

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It's a source cue and a rearrangement of another composer's work. Also, it's short and adds nothing to the thematic/musical narrative. It doesn't belong on Disc 1, It belongs right where MM put it on Disc 2.

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17 minutes ago, phbart said:

The back cover says 77:57 for CD1, and Kiss has 0:41. It would fit.

 

Oh give me a break.  You can burn your own CDR the way you want it

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14 minutes ago, Muldoon said:

It's a source cue and a rearrangement of another composer's work. Also, it's short and adds nothing to the thematic/musical narrative. It doesn't belong on Disc 1, It belongs right where MM put it on Disc 2.

Isn't it "Suo Gan" from EotS from another composer? Yet, it opened CD1.

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27 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

Oh give me a break.  You can burn your own CDR the way you want it

And they said we could discuss the music here... :mellow:

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Well, we can debate all day back and forth whether Main Title should have been moved to CD2 in order to move The Kiss and The Levitation to CD1, but there's zero point to doing so: The release is out and is the way it is, and any end user can flip flop any tracks around they want in their own personal digital music player of choice and/or burned CDR disc.  I mean, what more do you expect people to say on this issue here?

 

Personally, I listen to this score with The Kiss and Levitation included in their proper spot, and skip past Main Title and The Encounter almost every time.

 

I also like the alternate Michael's Search more than the revised opening version; I like the "start of act 3!" feel the original opening has.

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36 minutes ago, Muldoon said:

It's a source cue and a rearrangement of another composer's work. Also, it's short and adds nothing to the thematic/musical narrative. It doesn't belong on Disc 1, It belongs right where MM put it on Disc 2.

It uses the E.T. theme at the end.

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29 minutes ago, Jay said:

 I mean, what more do you expect people to say on this issue here?

No issue at all. I just thought it'd be better on CD1. For me, it flows better with the soundtrack, not on the extra section. And it's totally inside the limits you mentioned for LLL to manufacture the CD. Anyway I'm really happy it was included here, along with those opening bars I had no idea JW recorded (as it wasn't part of the '96 LD iso score), and it's already on CD1 of my playlist.

 

So, next subject... why is Levitation on CD2 when it could fit CD1???

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16 hours ago, rough cut said:

 

Granted, I know nothing about waveforms, other than to recognize clipping, but can you really tell by looking at a wav that effort has gone in to the remastering process?

 

2

Yes, you can.

 

-Erik-

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I've always thought E.T. was one of the best-recorded Williams scores, and this edition confirms that for me. It has to be one of the best all-around performances by an LA session orchestra, too. Of course they routinely do really good work, but E.T. feels like music they lived with before it was recorded, rather than just spending a week with it for the scoring sessions. One of the things that really struck me--out of nowhere--on listening to this is how great the percussion sounds, especially the brighter things like triangle and glockenspiel.  The brass are present without ever being painful at their loudest or highest, and there's an incredible amount of detail to be heard, even though the orchestrations aren't always as intricate as something like a Star Wars or Indy score. @Jay, I haven't had a chance to fully absorb the notes yet, but it looks like Mattessino read my mind and really broke the score down for the booklet. I am really excited about his CE3K, whenever that comes along.

Hmm. I had never heard Botanicus before. It's definitely related to the film score, but I think I may have heard a bit of Debussy in the orchestrations. Interesting.

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So, E.T. was recorded at MGM by Lyle Burbridge and Bruce Botnick. Temple of Doom was also recorded at MGM by these same guys. And yet the 2008 ToD managed to sound the worse of all in that boxset. That's why say Botnick and Matessino were real miracle workers on this release.

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11 minutes ago, phbart said:

So, E.T. was recorded at MGM by Lyle Burbridge and Bruce Botnick. Temple of Doom was also recorded at MGM by these same guys. And yet the 2008 ToD managed to sound the worse of all in that boxset. That's why say Botnick and Matessino were real miracle workers on this release.

 

 

Lyle Burbridge was a brilliant recording engineer.  I don't think they (the remixing engineers) had the best elements for the TOD release.  If you want to hear another brilliant recording by Burbridge around the same time, listen to The Last Starfighter.

 

-Erik-

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4 hours ago, Fal said:

It uses the E.T. theme at the end.

 

Yeah, as like a 5 second stinger.

 

To address phbart, Suo Gan isn't music for a movie within a movie not is it some cutesy sketch like Mr. DNA in Jurassic Park, it's the fricking opening of the movie.

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14 hours ago, Seth said:

I haven't had a chance to fully absorb the notes yet, but it looks like Mattessino read my mind and really broke the score down for the booklet. 

 

Yea I love the liner notes, they are my favorite ones to come around in a while. I was so pleased to read an actual discussion of the themes in the score, not a lot of liners do that any more.  Good stuff.

 

Quote

I had never heard Botanicus before. It's definitely related to the film score, but I think I may have heard a bit of Debussy in the orchestrations. Interesting.

 

Reminds me a bit of The Last Crusade, too.

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22 minutes ago, Erik Woods said:

 

Lyle Burbridge was a brilliant recording engineer.  I don't think they (the remixing engineers) had the best elements for the TOD release.  If you want to hear another brilliant recording by Burbridge around the same time, listen to The Last Starfighter.

 

-Erik-

 

Oh my god, The Last Starfghter sounds SO. GOOD. One of the best recordings of the 80s!

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15 minutes ago, Erik Woods said:

Lyle Burbridge was a brilliant recording engineer.  I don't think they (the remixing engineers) had the best elements for the TOD release.

But they still managed to screw it up even more than it probably was. We've seen elements in bad shape sound really good in the right hands. ToD sounds very unbalanced, excessively reverbed, not the mention the pitch problems of some cues. How they managed to do that with DIGITAL recordings is beyond anything I can understand

 

20 minutes ago, Muldoon said:

To address phbart, Suo Gan isn't music for a movie within a movie not is it some cutesy sketch like Mr. DNA in Jurassic Park, it's the fricking opening of the movie.

.I thought we were talking about "other composer's work" being the reason for not being included.

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4 hours ago, Darth Porkins said:

I just uploaded the CDs to the dynamic range website. Very dynamic, especially Disc 1.

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/136592

Have you also done this with The Lost World? For example Rescuing Sarah and Ripples

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18 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

Have you also done this with The Lost World? For example Rescuing Sarah and Ripples

 Its up at the website. It too is very dynamic. It seems LLL learned it's lesson after taking some heat for compressing the heck out of Superman Returns. 

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2 hours ago, phbart said:

But they still managed to screw it up even more than it probably was. We've seen elements in bad shape sound really good in the right hands. ToD sounds very unbalanced, excessively reverbed, not the mention the pitch problems of some cues. How they managed to do that with DIGITAL recordings is beyond anything I can understand

 

.I thought we were talking about "other composer's work" being the reason for not being included.

 

We were talking about it being a piece of source music that additionally, yes, wasn't even written by Williams. The E.T. theme at the end might as well be an afterthought it's so brief and inconsequential.

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4 hours ago, phbart said:

But they still managed to screw it up even more than it probably was. We've seen elements in bad shape sound really good in the right hands. ToD sounds very unbalanced, excessively reverbed, not the mention the pitch problems of some cues. How they managed to do that with DIGITAL recordings is beyond anything I can understand

 

They were just mixed digitally, the recordings were done to the usual tape elements. I guess the first true DDD recordings were done in the second half of the 80's ('EOTS' might be one?)

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4 minutes ago, mstrox said:

Got teary-eyed listening to track 2, so god help me in 45 minutes or so.

 

Oof!  I'm manly enough to admit that I have wept in my car listening to "Adventure on Earth" before.

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11 hours ago, phbart said:

But they still managed to screw it up even more than it probably was. We've seen elements in bad shape sound really good in the right hands. ToD sounds very unbalanced, excessively reverbed, not the mention the pitch problems of some cues. How they managed to do that with DIGITAL recordings is beyond anything I can understand

 

Temple of Doom wasn't a digital recording, though.  It was recorded to analog, and whoever made new transfers of the original tapes for the Concord boxset didn't do the transfer right, and we ended up with many cues transferred at the wrong speed.  The whole box set is fairly slapdash, and a new Matessino edition of these scores would be sooooooooo welcome some day.

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Mine too. But the Concord, flawed as it is has provided me with almost the full score. A few things missing of course. And the production was unfortunate. But when we'll get a proper one it won't be like a completely new introduction to the unreleased music. Like the Concord.

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The excessive reverb added to TOD just kills that release for me. It's soooo distracting with the brass when each note seems to echo itself. WTF were they thinking?! Was it just an attempt to hide audio problems created by a poor quality source? Or were the session tapes damaged to an extent that the score might actually be beyond repair?

 

And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they just take the original OST tracks and mix them with newly transferred cues? If so, just another terrible decision that resulted in a terrible audio presentation.

 

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9 hours ago, publicist said:

 

They were just mixed digitally, the recordings were done to the usual tape elements. I guess the first true DDD recordings were done in the second half of the 80's ('EOTS' might be one?)

EotS was recorded analog by Shawn Murphy and remixed digitally by Armin Steiner for the OST album. Every recording sessions that Botncik was involved after Star Trek '79, it was recorded on both analog and digital. At least with Jerry Goldsmith, that was the case. Dunno about JW, but I'd bet it was like that too,

 

1 hour ago, Jay said:

 

Temple of Doom wasn't a digital recording, though.  It was recorded to analog, and whoever made new transfers of the original tapes for the Concord boxset didn't do the transfer right, and we ended up with many cues transferred at the wrong speed.  The whole box set is fairly slapdash, and a new Matessino edition of these scores would be sooooooooo welcome some day.

On an FSM interview with Bouzereau (vol.13 issue 12 https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/fsmonline/story.cfm?maID=1706), he said that for ToD 1/4" three track digital masters were used, along with the OST master. Hence the mistery of the wrong speed. Anyway, a proper ToD release is definitely on my list of first-minute buy. :)

 

7 hours ago, Stefancos said:

Wasnt The Black Hole the first digitally recorded score in 79?

Yep, it was that one. The story on the booklet of the 2011 Intrada release on how they managed to "rescue" this digital recording is fascinating.

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E.T. OST album for this LLL release was remastered from 1/4" analog sources too...

 

11 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Geez, 1/4” inch masters?! What's wrong with the 1/2" inch masters?

I think for digital recordings of those days, when the only medium available to record was tape, it doesn't really matter the size of it, but the resolution of the recordings. I believe that at 44.1kHz 16bit three channels, like he claims ToD was transfered, 1/4" tape should be enough. Anything beyond that, like more channels, higher resolution 96kHz 24bit (which I doubt existed back in the 80's), then I larger tape format would be necessary.

 

9 minutes ago, Baby Jane Hudson said:

Isn't quarter inch essentially audio cassette?

They're a bigger a runs a lot faster, usually at 15ips. An interesting release comes to mind, Elmer Bernestein's "The Great Escape" was mastered from 1/4" tapes running at 7 1/2ips, and it sounded excellent.

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30 minutes ago, phbart said:

On an FSM interview with Bouzereau (vol.13 issue 12 https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/fsmonline/story.cfm?maID=1706), he said that for ToD 1/4" three track digital masters were used, along with the OST master. Hence the mistery of the wrong speed. Anyway, a proper ToD release is definitely on my list of first-minute buy. :)

 

Bouzereau might have simply misspoke when he said that about TOD

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Indeed it doesn't sound digital at all. Not only he chooses the wrong takes for his releases, but the wrong sources too. I wonder how he didn't put "music composed and conducted by James Horner" on the cover.

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