Jerry Goldsmith THE MUMMY Intrada 2CD set!!!

[Holko 9,516]

Rewatched the movie following the cue assembly, and the one piece of music I'm not sure is on the set is a teensy synthy mood piece between Giza Port and Night Boarders, 2-3 seconds long.

 

Looking at the slates and take numbers, the "Sommers locked Goldsmith into a hotel room until he wrote 20 more minutes after he thought he was done" theory seems irrefutably debunked, since Rebirth, an obviously planned and important piece, was among the last things recorded - takes 142, 144, 148 and 152 (the last included take), whereas big competitors for last-minute afterthought cues like "Off Balance", "The Warden's Bag" or "Alley Attack" are takes 120, 116 and 67, respectively. The Credits also seems like something that was always planned, and it's made up of takes 130 and 112. The Locusts, another big bunch of important music is takes 126 and 150 (for the revised end).

 

Airplane Ride looks like a perfectly possible bunch of cheap pickup shots - put a plane on the ground, wind machine in front, film it from a low angle so you can only see the sky - so that could be a cause for tracking, and it must have been included for completeness' sake as the only tracked piece.

 

More liner note mistakes: "The love theme plays for Rick and Evy as the couple meet just before Rick's would-be hanging in "Giza Port""... What? I think they meant after, rather than before, but then "would-be" seems inappropriate. Fake also says the album excluded most of Reel 11, which comprises of My Favourite Plague and Crowd Control, both included on the OST. Unless he doesn't count the original version of MFP to be a part of Reel 11 (even though the cue assembly says it's just a different mix of the same takes, which doesn't seem right), but even then saying 4 minutes out of 7 is "most" is weird, I'd rather use "more than half".

[Richard Penna 3,679]

13 hours ago, Holko said:

Tried pillaging the 5.1 channels for the kitty piano overlay, but there's way too many sound effects to extract anything worthwile, maybe two of the notes out of the 5-6 could come out cleanly.

 

Are you trying to get the piano overlay on its own, or over the score cue? You can get the latter from the iso score.

 

It took me a while to get used to the new mix, but once I did I made the following changes:

 

- Edited a section of Tuareg Attack from the OST for the first shot of them approaching on horses. The racing strings to the left side are buried in the new mix.

- Joined Regeneration, Alley Attack, and The Flies.

- Got The Sand Volcano and End Credits cleanly separated by using the end of Volcano from the end of the suite. First half of the love theme from the suite, then switched to the OST for the brass part because (again) the beautiful string work on the left is more audible.

[Holko 9,516]

13 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Are you trying to get the piano overlay on its own, or over the score cue? You can get the latter from the iso score.

 

 

Oh, wasn't aware of that, might look into it. Watching the movie again made me realise I don't really want that in a playlist, though.

 

Mumia Attack is named confusingly - until now I thought it underscored the deleted scene where mummies pop out of the ground before they open Imhotep's Sarcophagus, but it's actually the Medjai attack, so I renamed the track appropriately. I find this kind of strict adherence to the composer's original cue titles unnecessary, especially when he made mistakes like this and misspelling Tuareg. The cue assembly has the original titles anyway, just correct the final track titles! Will the eventual SW sets have The Great Dual and call the iconic baddie Vadar, too?

[Brundlefly 2,385]

21 hours ago, Holko said:

Rewatched the movie following the cue assembly, and the one piece of music I'm not sure is on the set is a teensy synthy mood piece between Giza Port and Night Boarders, 2-3 seconds long.

It's tracked from Never Stop, I think.

[Holko 9,516]

I recreated the isolated score, and it made some choices on this album even more confusing. The Prep Room and Finish the Job both collect 3 short cues which are not supposed to be together - meaning there's at least 10 seconds of silence between them. This is no biggie, at least we don't have 15-40 second cues hanging around, and enough of the fadeouts are left that we can separate them OK. But then why on Earth are Regeneration, Alley Attack and The Flies on their own?

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Deliberate creative decision?

[Richard Penna 3,679]

When I was condensing the smaller cues down a few weeks ago I tried rather a lot of ways of joining them together. To go Thor-like for a moment, I forgot about the film and just looked for the most musical way of joining them. It's not the same way Intrada chose, but I did my own assembly of the cues they did present standalone and it all works fine.

 

Also, the purist in me wants clean openings/endings for some cues whereas I'm not bothered about others.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

Why is having clean endings so important? It's a good thing that Intrada joined these tracks, it's just exeptional that they gave every track just one cue title.

[crumbs 14,306]

Geez, Matessino will really struggle to keep everyone happy when he finally gets to tackle Temple of Doom.

 

Almost every cue in the first act is designed to lead straight into the next cue but, as we discovered with Concord's expansion, it doesn't make for a great listening experience.

 

But then... I'm not sure I want giant combined tracks ala the ROTJ SE. I hate those 10-12 minute tracks with a passion and much prefer the separated tracks as presented in the Anthology sets.

[Holko 9,516]

Temple of Doom absolutely has to have 12-20 minute tracks!

[crumbs 14,306]

Yuck.

 

I think they avoid tracks longer than 10 minutes nowadays anyway, due to union fees/mechanical rights or something. Maybe that's only recently recorded scores though, not sure.

[Kasey Kockroach 2,344]

Madrid Finale from Ferdinand.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

The way they're represented on the Concord expansion is fine I think.

[Holko 9,516]

I currently use an edit which has the complete score in 13 tracks. There are some edits I could see being separated, though, so perhaps 6-8 min. tracks could work.

From Deal with Lao-Che to the end of Fast Streets of Shanghai is just a few seconds over 10 minutes if everything is edited as intended.

From Map until arriving at the village is 7 minutes, maybe the old man could come off from Slalom on Mt. Humol.

From Ghost Story to "Short Round's Theme" it's 8:30.

The 20 minute track from Nocturnal Activities to Sanskrit Sacrifice could be broken into separate segments.

From Taking the Stones to Short Round Escapes it's 14 minutes, maybe there's a few break points.

From Indy Returns (with sanskrit chant for Willie being lowered at the beginning) until the end of Short Round Helps, it's 12 minutes that I refuse to see separated.

The transition between Sword Trick and Bridge Drums could be separated, but it's 15 minutes from then until the end of the credits which is another stretch I don't want to give up.

Everything else I didn't mention could be separate tracks.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

Why?!

[Holko 9,516]

They were always written to be coherent musical stretches, just recorded in pieces for convenience's sake and it's incredibly jarring to hear intended continuous flows separated. I'm the same way with the Battle of Endor, which also has some sptos where it could be separated, but the SE doesn't even always recreate the intended transitions properly.

 

I'll post some ToD examples tomorrow just showcasing some transitions.

[publicist 4,643]

11 minutes ago, Holko said:

I currently use an edit which has the complete score in 13 tracks. There are some edits I could see being separated, though, so perhaps 6-8 min. tracks could work.

From Deal with Lao-Che to the end of Fast Streets of Shanghai is just a few seconds over 10 minutes if everything is edited as intended.

From Map until arriving at the village is 7 minutes, maybe the old man could come off from Slalom on Mt. Humol.

From Ghost Story to "Short Round's Theme" it's 8:30.

The 20 minute track from Nocturnal Activities to Sanskrit Sacrifice could be broken into separate segments.

 

All of that sounds awful, actually. 

[crumbs 14,306]

Surely we've learned from ROTJ SE. Super long tracks just suck. It's incredibly annoying going through a 13 minute track just to listen to a 2 minute cue you really like buried in the middle of 3 other cues.

 

Superstructure Chase and The Dark Side Beckons being obvious examples.

[Holko 9,516]

It's a bloody CD, you put it in and listen to it. Sure, let's fuck up all the tempos and the entire intended flow of the piece just because 1 person wants to listen to 1 segment he could edit out or skip to!

 

Most transitions I mentioned really are one written piece, the end on one leading into another in buildup, orchestration and tempo. If you break that up, you end up with a track with a buildup to nothing at the end, a second or two of silence, then another cue in the same tempo (which was broken by the silence already) starting abruptly, often with a weak first note, because it was always intended to be buried under the last note of the previous cue and is just there for the tempo. This instead of a simple, smooth, satisfying transition.

[publicist 4,643]

They aren't, it's just another case of guy having watched a movie too many times.

[Holko 9,516]

Yes they fucking are, that's how they were written.

 

Though I shouldn't be surprised somebody who buys releases to throw tracks out after one listen can't be arsed to actually listen to the music and feel it, or care how the freaking composer meant to use it.

 

I won't upload any examples after all, y'all wouldn't bother to listen and understand what I'm talking about, no longer tracks on a CD that's 70-78 mins either bloody way and you put it in, sit down and listen.

 

Sorry for this hostile mood this evening, but this just seems incredibly obvious and beyond debate to me.

[publicist 4,643]

No they weren't. Which just shows you have no fucking clue how film scores are actually written. The overlaps are just necessitated by the constant barrage of score. Of course WIlliams wrote i. e. 'Nightclub Brawl' as ONE CUE, regardless of those other cues around it which were also written as single numbers. 

[Holko 9,516]

He wrote Nightclub Brawl as one cue,  as well as the others, but he did not give it a musically satisfying opening or ending because it was always meant to be joined with the surrounding pieces, regardless of whether they were already written or not. They were most probably spotted to be a single long stretch. If it's not joined with Indy Negotiates and Fast Streets of Shanghai, it will be a terrible stop-and-start listening experience, because the first two cues end on a buildup to nothing, and the latter two cues begin abruptly, with silences inbetween. Regardless of in what order they were written, these are facts, that's how they end and begin because they were meant to be a single musical flow written and recorded in parts for convenience.

 

 

Begone, foul spirit! I hereby banish thee:

The power of tempo, musical flow and coherence compells you!

[publicist 4,643]

No, that's just not true. You saw the movie too often and now have this weird idea that cues begin and end 'abruptly' which, i wager, would be a total non-issue if you wouldn't know they run into another. Because Williams actually wrote a great send-off to 'Nightclub Brawl' (the last six seconds). And so it is with every example you listed. So many film music cues begin and end abruptly without anyone batting an eyelash, so i just fail to see the difference here.

[Kasey Kockroach 2,344]

As someone who regularly listens to John Powell's Ice Age: The Meltdown which is 32 tracks/63 minutes....I don't care.

[Holko 9,516]

Just now, publicist said:

No, that's just not true. You saw the movie too often and now have this weird idea that cues begin and end 'abruptly' which, i wager, would be a total non-issue if you wouldn't know they run into another. Because Williams actually wrote a great send-off to 'Nightclub Brawl' (the last six seconds). And so it is with every example you listed. So many film music cues begin and end abruptly without anyone batting an eyelash, so i just fail to see the difference here.

 

Doesn't that just end with a sustained note?

MAYBE I can see it not being a gigantic problem with some cues if you just listen to them in complete isolation. But once you place them next to each other in the proper order, which is how they WILL BE on an eventual MM treatment, that silence between them that ruins the tempo and flow starts to become really bothering, and if you heard the proper written transition once, you can't go back.

[publicist 4,643]

You can repeat that as often as you want, there just is no proper transition. Problem is, your Frankenstein edits may work in a movie full of sound effects but as soon as you join these cues in a professional mixing program as musical entities, it's easily apparent that they are stitched together (try your luck joining Slave Children's Crusade and Short Round Helps and see how your 'proper' transition turns to shit).

[Holko 9,516]

I did, it's better than stopping and starting again. Slalom on Mt. Humol being separate from Out of Fuel is horrific, and the jumpscare opening of Short Round's Theme is just jarring once you hear it with its buildup in Fortune and Glory.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

There are a few cues that were actually supposed to be one piece: The Quidditch Match and Journey to the Island were just recorded as seperate cues in order to make things easier. But Nightclub Brawl and Streets of Shanghai do not belong together.

1 minute ago, Holko said:

I did, it's better than stopping and starting again. Slalom on Mt. Humol being separate from Out of Fuel is horrific, and the jumpscare opening of Short Round's Theme is just jarring once you hear it with its buildup in Fortune and Glory.

Fortune and Glory + Short Round's Theme makes sense somehow. I can even understand you combining Indy Negotiates + Nightclub Brawl. But Nightclub Brawl + Streets of Shanghai is nonsense. It's really a matter of the individual cases. That why some less-than-a-minute-tracks from The Mummy are combined and others are not.

[publicist 4,643]

5 minutes ago, Holko said:

I did, it's better than stopping and starting again. Slalom on Mt. Humol being separate from Out of Fuel is horrific, and the jumpscare opening of Short Round's Theme is just jarring once you hear it with its buildup in Fortune and Glory.

 

That is actually the only example i agree with (not that SRT is jarring, but that the musical transition is compellent in this case). The first example is horrible sounding done your way.

[Holko 9,516]

1m5 Indy Negotiates

1m6 Once in a Vial 

1m7/2m1 Through Chinatown

These absolutely overlap into one piece.

Just now, publicist said:

The first example is horrible sounding done your way.

JW's way, you mean, for the primary purpose it was written for.

[publicist 4,643]

No, he wrote what you hear on the album. Expressly not the Holko garden scissor variety.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

Does anyone here think that The Battle of Hoth should be one piece?

[Holko 9,516]

Yes.

Just now, publicist said:

Expressly not the Holko garden scissor variety.

 

The Mt. Humol transition may sound horrid in the movie but I properly overlapped the last and first note and it sounds great.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

3 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

Does anyone here think that The Battle of Hoth should be one piece?

 

I do not

[Brundlefly 2,385]

It shouldn't be one piece.

[publicist 4,643]

4 minutes ago, Holko said:

The Mt. Humol transition may sound horrid in the movie but I properly overlapped the last and first note and it sounds great.

 

The are not even in the same key!!!!

[Holko 9,516]

I don't even know what a key is, it just sounds fine to me.

How come you guys are not flipping tables over The Rescue and Bike Chase being joined on the LLL release, or even with The Departure on the OST and the 2002 edition? They were written as separate cues, it's blasphemy! Burn your LLL sets!

[Disco Stu 15,495]

2 minutes ago, Holko said:

I don't even know what a key is, it just sounds fine to me.

How come you guys are not flipping tables over The Rescue and Bike Chase being joined on the LLL release, or even with The Departure on the OST and the 2002 edition? They were written as separate cues, it's blasphemy! Burn your LLL sets!

 

I was very happy that the LLL separated The Departure into a separate track.  I love "Adventure on Earth" in the OST presentation, but for the complete score presentation I prefer them separated.

[publicist 4,643]

9 hours ago, Holko said:

I don't even know what a key is, it just sounds fine to me.

How come you guys are not flipping tables over The Rescue and Bike Chase being joined on the LLL release, or even with The Departure on the OST and the 2002 edition? They were written as separate cues, it's blasphemy! Burn your LLL sets!

 

I don't know or care much about E. T., though i do know that there is a significant pause between these two cues on the old MCA, even if they are not indexed separately.

 

And no, your edit doesn't sound 'fine', it probably sounds ok-ish to the layman but as soon as you take into account the slightly off key (which means pitch, scale) that is easily apparent when you take the first note of the Slalom track and the crescendo of the Fuel track, which do not align and more importantly, the wholly different tempos (Slalom enters much faster), you arrive at an overlap that doesn't sound like a natural progression, but two different scenes divided by a counterpoint (which is obviously the cut to the falling raft). A difference you can easily spot when you compare it to cues that were really written to move seamlessly into another, i. e. in Hook, where cues like 'Pirates' and 'Hook challenges Peter' (one of many examples) can be seamlessly joined at a certain spot with the last notes of the former softly and naturally fading out into the other.

[Kasey Kockroach 2,344]

This score should be played as one long 90-minute cue!

[publicist 4,643]

It may be a Kockroachy thing to say, but i saw such monsters rise up from the depths of Final Fantasy Shrine. It's just a weird foible that somehow seems to make film music more legitimate to some fans. As if James Newton Howard suddenly turns into Puccini if you just edit all of 'Maleficent' together into one long (=silly) 'opera'.

[Holko 9,516]

You'd honestly prefer to have Out of Fuel quite obviously build towards something with those last seconds then just stop? I'll never believe it was never written to flow into Slalom, that's not an ending. The movie is our best clue of how Williams and Spielberg intended these to go and a stop makes no sense.

[publicist 4,643]

I honestly prefer it because the paste sounds no good. As it is, Williams wrote a soft fade out which is more than OK as end of that particular cue and the sudden crescendo of Slalom stands also well on its own feet. But we move in circles. Nobody prevents you from editing all this shit together regardless of awkward transitions - which is my only point. Not that you couldn't possibly stitch these together but as someone editing a lot i have a fine enough ear when a cue is best left alone because you can't replicate the 'seamless' flow from the movie soundtrack, where due to sound effects you wouldn't even notice if the editor cold-stops cue 1 when cue 2 enters - too many noises. But as soon as you try to replicate the film edits on an album, 80% of them sound awkward because the tail ends and beginnings do not quite match. And what's more, these long 8-minute cues have no real musical flow anymore, because there's too much different stuff happening in them (tone and tempo wise). That's why good composers take a sequence and write that as self-contained piece which is exactly why JW wrote those unncecessary fade-outs, which going by your logic, make absolutely no sense. 

[Holko 9,516]

59 minutes ago, publicist said:

Nobody prevents you from editing all this shit together regardless of awkward transitions - which is my only point.

And my point is that I don't want to look at a finally complete and proper release of the score as a resource mine I edit together once then never listen to the CD itself again because it breaks the flow for me.

 

I'll stop now, but just one last time: The Rescue was also written as its own cue complete with a pretty good ending and all, why did that devil Matessino join it with The Bike Chase? Because they were always intended to flow together, regardless of their separate endings and openings, they have never been apart on any release.

[Richard Penna 3,679]

What a lively debate

 

I just checked my ToD edit and I joined Out Of Fuel and Slalom together. It's far from a perfect transition but it feels 'right' to me as one goes storywise right into the other. I don't see why this needs to get so heated - no one's forcing you to listen to another's edit.

[Holko 9,516]

This was born out of how the eventual official release should deal with these long stretches in ToD - which way would be "forced" on everyone.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I'm sure I'll be happy with however Mattessino (and it had better be him) decides to assemble it.  I'm not super picky about this stuff usually.  If he hadn't separated "The Departure" I wouldn't have cried a river or anything.

[Holko 9,516]

Those slow, quiet crossfade transitions are OK to break up by me, I love Appearance of the Visitors, Contact and End Titles separate in CE3K, it's the big, sudden transitions I think should be always kept.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

People always tell me I'm wrong and my ears don't work, but the automatic crossfading of CD players and iTunes sounds fine to my ears.  I hear no break between tracks on soundtracks or prog rock concept albums