Doug Adams

That's the last time I get my insider news from Harry Potter fan sites!

Private message me

Smaug the Magnificent and Smaug the Terrible begin as near-retrogrades of one another.* But major record labels don't love if if you use the word "retrograde" in mass-marketed commercial products. Can't imagine why ... *Speaking here of pitch content. Probably obviously.

Most of these instruments (dizzy, shakuhachi, hecklephone (bass oboe), and tamboura) tend to double the melodic line in Smaug's two principal themes ... so they're a little tough to point out individually in a recording ... especially in the film mix. The finger cymbals (which are meant to evoke a sort of Chinese parade procession -- or Indonesian ceng ceng cymbals -- and, of course, Smaug's golden coins) are a bit easier to spot. I'll have to think on the waterphone. I believe it's easiest to find not in the score, per se, but in some wild takes that are used to evoke the trippiness of Mirkwood.

We start at the beginning, and make a few references to sync points throughout. But really, I don't think we line up anything all that tightly anyway. It should work fine as long as you're close. Thanks for the kind comments, everyone. Part two this coming week. D

I would think so. The One Ring people tend to archive everything. Unless there’s a copyright issue with the film audio. I still haven’t been told how we’re handling that. ... Also not sure if this is video or audio. I haven’t had a haircut since February, so I’m slightly concerned!

I'm not planning to read the book out loud. (The book is too long, and my voice is too annoying!) Rather, I'm hoping to set the stage for why such a book would be interesting to people. Back on LOTR, I had time to run a blog to help with such things. These days, I have far less free time. Stupid adulthood! Regardless, I'll try to drop in plenty that people don't already know.

Poor cymbal player gets no credit at all.

"Lament for Gandalf" is used (briefly) in Guardians of the Three.

Lack of progress is not due to lack of preparation.

My guess -- and this is only a guess, having not seen the contracts -- is that Howe would be able to do a Rarities album, but only WaterTower would be able to do expanded editions.

It would certainly help the lawyers stay afloat.

A friend and I met Randy Newman at a party years and years ago. My friend told Newman that he was his mother's favorite singer. "Oh yeah?" he responded. "How old is she?" My friend answered, then added she'd be older the next week -- her birthday was coming up. "It is?" Newman said. "Give me your phone." He did. He called her, sang Happy Birthday, said, "here's your son," and tossed the phone back to my friend.

The dinosaur stampede was scored and recorded. I believe it was the only island sequence that had enough footage ready at the time ... and even then, it was a significantly different effort. Still, it exists!

Sometimes these things don’t involve fault or blame. The term “creative differences” has sort of become a parody of itself, but it’s not always inaccurate. Sometimes creative parties begin on one path, then divert to others. It happens ... I mean, that’s kind of the ephemeral nature of creativity. And there are times when those creative diversions make it impossible to continue things as planned. And something has to give. I know that’s lamentably anticlimactic. It’s easier to process these things where there’s some cataclysmic event to pin everything on. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself when I was 24 hours away from hopping a flight to New Zealand to attend the recording sessions, and everything fell apart. (I didn’t have any trip insurance.) You’d be out a million quid. The principal themes — which were sort of cantilenas set for 12 cellos and soprano — were, in my opinion, some of the best lyrical work Shore has ever done.