Write-up on Star Wars.com on recording Star Wars

[Joe Brausam 215]

This is a write-up from a panel at an academy screening of the original film earlier this month. Its an interesting read.

Article

Star Wars won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score (John Williams)

Gary Kurtz: Before we leave sound, I did want to talk about John for a minute. John Williams is a major contributor (applause) to the soundtrack. When we were looking for a composer, Steven Spielberg recommended John originally who had done Jaws for him. He said he's really good, he knows and can pick out the right elements in your picture. Both George and I were concerned that we didn't want a science fiction or electronic score of any kind. We wanted a classical Hollywood film score. It turned out John's background was in classical music and he had done a lot of non-film classical recordings and compositions.

After meeting with him, he became very quickly the first choice, and then we ran into the fact that he was also signed up to do Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So we had a little bit of a logistics nightmare, because [steven] wanted John to record first, and we wanted him to record Star Wars first. In the end, we won that battle just because we were ready first. Otherwise it would have gone the other way.

He didn't even want to look at the picture until we had it cut well enough that he could see big chunks of it all together. I remember one night George and I went to his house in Beverly Hills and he sat for two hours and played themes on his piano in his sitting room. We went away thinking this is the right choice. It was great.

When we did the recordings in London with the London Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra played the cues almost perfectly from sight-reading. They were a fabulous orchestra. Occasionally, some of the orchestra members who weren't playing in a particular cue would sit and look at the screen, which was this black and white picture running by with marks and beats and punches in it. At the break, they would come up to us and say, "what is this all about?" They were a bit like the shooting crew. They weren't sure exactly what kind of film it was. The recording went beautifully in an old studio in Denham, outside London, which has been torn down now, which had one of the best sounds acoustically as a room for a big orchestra. We were talking about a 120-piece orchestra. It was just exhilarating to be there, to listen to these cues that were recorded.

Paul Hirsch: After we had turned the picture over to John to score, George and I kept cutting. We kept making changes, and I would keep track of the changes we had made. I said to George, you know, this is gonna cause problems for John. He said, "Don't worry. It's okay. It's okay." So, Kenny Wannberg was the music editor was over in London, and finally George says, "you better send him the changes." So I sent him a telex, I think it was 20 pages or something, and I get this phone call from Kenny from London and he could hardly speak. "Wh-wh-wh-what?" So anyway, it worked out. I don't know how he did it. He said, well, you know we have to record to the version that we've been working to. I said, okay, but anyway they worked it out.

Alan Ladd, Jr.: George called me from London, and he was excited. I had never heard this before from George. (laughter) He sounded like he was excited about something. I thought, oh my God, he must be having a baby or something. (laughter) So, I say what's up, and he said "I got to play you some of the score." I said, George, I'm in a meeting. He said, "let me just play you a few minutes." So he ended up playing me the entire score! (laughter) And it was so good I couldn't say, hey, I'm not interested anymore.

[Morlock 11]

Very nice. We see that George was never precious with last minute changes to the music.

Thanks for pointing it out!

[Quintus 5,399]

Nice find!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Star Wars was not recorded with a 120 man orchestra!

[Elmo Lewis 6]

"Gary Kurtz has raped my childhood memories"?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

The recording went beautifully in an old studio in Denham, outside London, which has been torn down now, which had one of the best sounds acoustically as a room for a big orchestra.

Then why does Star Wars sound harsh and tinny?

[Red 75]

Lucas knows that John's music really made the entire saga. Too bad he mistreats him.

[Ollie 1,059]

Star Wars was not recorded with a 120 man orchestra!

Wasn't it around 92 players?

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

86, according to the RCA liner notes.

The source cues were recorded with 9 jazz musicians.

[Guest macrea]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Paul Hirsh is actually remembering "Empire." "Star Wars" was recorded in March (only 2 months before release) and the differences between what was recorded and what was heard in the film are negligible. "Empire," on the other hand, was recorded in January, allowing much more time for recutting the film, and with that one the score was significantly chopped up and tracked, and I can see Wannberg having that reaction.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Paul Hirsch: After we had turned the picture over to John to score, George and I kept cutting. We kept making changes, and I would keep track of the changes we had made. I said to George, you know, this is gonna cause problems for John. He said, "Don't worry. It's okay. It's okay." So, Kenny Wannberg was the music editor was over in London, and finally George says, "you better send him the changes." So I sent him a telex, I think it was 20 pages or something, and I get this phone call from Kenny from London and he could hardly speak. "Wh-wh-wh-what?" So anyway, it worked out. I don't know how he did it. He said, well, you know we have to record to the version that we've been working to. I said, okay, but anyway they worked it out.

Sounds like he's talking about TPM.

[Ollie 1,059]

Yeah, Empire is nowhere as bad as TPM, in fact most of the tracking occurs early in the film.

[mahler3 478]

The recording went beautifully in an old studio in Denham, outside London, which has been torn down now, which had one of the best sounds acoustically as a room for a big orchestra.

Then why does Star Wars sound harsh and tinny?

More to do with the recording equipment and technique employed at the time, close miking etc.

I've always said, if only Kenneth E. Wilkinson had recorded the score @ Kingsway Hall, London with his equipment & technique that would have been a superb-sounding score!

- Tim.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

I've always said, if only Kenneth E. Wilkinson had recorded the score @ Kingsway Hall, London with his equipment & technique that would have been a superb-sounding score!

- Tim.

That's what I've always said too

[Guest macrea]

Yeah, Empire is nowhere as bad as TPM, in fact most of the tracking occurs early in the film.

Mostly, yes, but there were changes all the way through the film. There's an editorially created insert within "Hyperspace" and a tracked portion of "Yoda and the Force" preceding the Finale, which itself is edited. There was a change to a section of the carbon freeze scene and lots of music dropped from the duel. A lot of the music for the mynock cave was dropped as was most of Yoda's introduction and training music, and then every cut to the Imperial fleet (originally) used bits of "The Imperial March" instead of what was recorded. All this in addition to redoing the opening music, cutting a lot of the Hoth base music, tracking "Hyperspace" over the snowspeeder rescue scene, the wampa music over Luke's recovery, and "The Imperial March" over the fleet introduction. True it doesn't even come close to the ridiculous TPM scenario, but think of how all this would have compared to "Star Wars" which was virtually left alone. Given that Hirsch didn't work on the prequels I still think he was remembering "Empire."

[Ollie 1,059]

It's rare to find a film where the music fits 100%. There will always be snipping and trimming of scenes, and editing because not everything flows correctly once assembled.