Indiana Jones and the mystery of cue 2m1

[Hayden Jonas 10]

Happy new year to everyone,

I am currently working on the project of engraving the complete Raiders of the Lost Ark score for my own personal home library in a printed definitive-edition-sort-of-style. Included will be a proper front page, a content page, an in-depth theme analysis, an instrumentation list, a proper introduction text, performance notes, notes regarding alterations between film and album versions, notes regarding sync points between film and the music as well as a cue by cue analysis accompanying each cue.

I also want to include a list of music that can be heard in the film but won't be included in note form because (I assume) it was not written by Williams, e. g. all of the source music.

By looking at the cue numbers, you can conclude that they must include the diegetic music as well, otherwise, some of the numberings wouldn't make sense (assuming there aren't huge chunks of music composed for the film, we have never heard of, which I find unlikely).

For example, "To Cairo" has the cue number 4m2 while the next official cue "Escape in the Alleys" has the number 4m4/5m1 which leads me to the conclusion that the "missing" 4m3 cue must be the market source music. Same thing with 5m2, which must be the source music that can be heard in the bar scene. Regarding those two cues comes my first question: Do we know if these two pieces of diegetic music were specifically composed for the film (maybe even by Williams)? If so, does  a lead sheet exist for them out there (like for the source music in Last Crusade or Phantom Menace, for instance)? Or are those pieces of exisiting music (if so, do we know their origin?) that were just edited in there?   

A more drastic example left me bewildered at first: How can "En Bateau" be 10m4 when the last cue by Williams before this is numbered 9m1b? Well, the only logical conclusion is, that even the slightest bit of music counts towards the cue numbers, because then the number 10m4 makes sense: 10m1 is the crew of the Bantu Wind singing, 10m2 is Sallah's second Gilbert and Sullivan recital, and 10m3 must be Marion's whistling of Gilbert and Sullivan when she enters the cabin. Would you agree with this?

Considering this, there is only one case in the film, where the numbering still doesn't make sense, and that is the cue 2m1 which would underscore the scene of Indy and Belloq talking after Indy has escaped the rolling boulder. Now, I remember that I saw a video on Youtube some time ago, which I can't find anymore (but it was also discussed briefly in this forum) where Williams (I think it was him?) conducted live to this very scene and there was music there (nothing special but still; I only remember some Mickey-Mousing for when Indy hands Belloq his gun). Does this video still exist somewhere? Maybe I can at least pull off a rough ear transcription.

So in my mind, there are multiple scenarios here for this cue:

A) 2m1 was written specifically for this live presentation to give the orchestra something to do and did not exist before. So maybe when composing the score in 1981, Williams conceived the number 2m1 as a sort of placeholder just in case the demand that this scene would need some music would arise later.

B) Williams wrote the music in 1981 but it was decided that the scene should remain unscored before it could go over the sketch/handwritten full score state and was therefore never recorded.

C) 2m1 was written and recorded in 1981 but the recording was never released for some reason.

What do you think about these possibilities?

Whichever it may be, as a perfectionist, it still kind of bothers me that I won't be able to include 2m1 in my score and it, therefore, won't be complete with all the music Williams composed for Raiders.

[Jay 32,037]

You have everything exactly right.

 

Reel/part numbers are set aside for ALL music, whether written specifically for the film or already existing, and whether Williams was involved with it or not.

 

So yes, you have it all correct about why 10M4 is 10M4 and not 10M1, because of those 3 bits of singing/whistling, for example.

 

And yes, sometimes cue #s are set aside for cues that never end up getting written.  So yes, they very likely set aside 2M1 for a score cue to underscore Belloq and Indy talking.  Maybe back in 1981 he did sketch out some ideas, maybe he even finished the cue, we'll probably never know, but it was certainly never recorded, that is certain.

 

When he premiered music for that scene in concert, he either wrote it brand new from scratch, or found some old sketch from 1981 and re-used that, again we'll probably never know.

 

I too remember watching the scene with the music on youtube, bummer that it's been taken down.  Maybe sometime who sees this thread can find it, or upload it themselves if they saved it?

[Tom 3,707]

He may very well have composed it just for the LTP.  When he performed the opening sequence at Tanglewood 12 or so year ago, he added new music to parts that are unscored in the movie for a better listening experience, so he is not averse to that approach.  

 

Edit: I didn't know I was responding to the same cue with my reply. 

[BrotherSound 1,987]

Here we are!
 

1 hour ago, Jay said:

When he premiered music for that scene in concert, he either wrote it brand new from scratch, or found some old sketch from 1981 and re-used that, again we'll probably never know.

Well, let’s hope that the unused, never orchestrated sketches are incorporated into all those leather-bound volumes, and then we should hopefully have an answer for this and similar questions someday when those are all donated to Juilliard.

[King Mark 3,223]

that's cool never knew about this

[Jay 32,037]

44 minutes ago, King Mark said:

that's cool never knew about this

 

Yes you did

[Hayden Jonas 10]

Many thanks for all your replies.

Anything about the Cairo source music?
I'm not sure about this information - maybe it was just in a dream that I had - but I think I remember someone saying in a podcast that it consists of songs by a particular Egyptian band. I first thought I heard that on the Soundtrack Show, but I checked his episodes on Raiders again, and apparently, I seem to be mistaken.

Oh, and another thing: Is there any place on the internet where I can find and read the full liner notes that come with the DCC Compact Classics release of the Raiders soundtrack? I would like to quote them into my own analysis.

[Jay 32,037]

3 minutes ago, Hayden Jonas said:

Anything about the Cairo source music?

 

I've honestly never paid attention to it 🤷‍♂️

 

3 minutes ago, Hayden Jonas said:

Oh, and another thing: Is there any place on the internet where I can find and read the full liner notes that come with the DCC Compact Classics release of the Raiders soundtrack? I would like to quote them into my own analysis.

 

You can buy a used copy on Amazon for $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000008152

 

It's worth owning, as it is superior to the Concord disc

[Hayden Jonas 10]

4 hours ago, Jay said:

 

I've honestly never paid attention to it 🤷‍♂️

 

 

You can buy a used copy on Amazon for $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000008152

 

It's worth owning, as it is superior to the Concord disc

The thing is, I already bought one, but since I'm not living in America, the shipping takes forever. I thought maybe I could bypass the waiting, but thanks nonetheless.

[Jay 32,037]

Scans of the booklet might be online somewhere!  I honestly have no idea how to find that stuff; There's a website called Album Art Exchange, but that's just for front covers I think.

 

Maybe somebody who sees this will PM you scans of the booklet (I don't have any myself)

[KittBash 83]

@Jay you can take this down if links to here aren't allowed but.

 

@Hayden Jonas you can find scans of many booklets including the DCC raiders here: https://musicbrainz.org/release/a6a132cc-5081-4026-bc9c-0f8f7046776c/cover-art

[Jay 32,037]

No problem at all linking to sites like that.  Nice find!

[KittBash 83]

8 minutes ago, Jay said:

No problem at all linking to sites like that.  Nice find!

 

Yeah it's got a good number of the Williams releases in there, They had Eiger in there pretty quick after release.

Someone spent a heap of time scanning.. Even the book from the FSM Blue Box was in there.  Wonder who took their book apart for that!?

 

I like it because I've got a digital copy of everything just in case disaster ever befalls the house. 

 

[Jay 32,037]

I always loved this picture of Spielberg

 

 

[Hayden Jonas 10]

So, I've gone ahead and made a mockup of the cue "2m1" to be able to listen to it without the dialogue. Thought some of you might be interested in that.
Of course, it might not be 100% accurate or sound as good as it could (the horns crescendo a little too hard, for example), but here we go nonetheless.

 

2m1 "Belloq"

 

 

[Andy 2,555]

Wow, that sounds terrific to my ear!

[lairdo 591]

I am not sure this is helpful or not information given all that has been written in the thread, but I'll provide it in any case.

 

When I worked on Young Indy, we had access to all the Skywalker Sound sound effects reels. (These were on quarter inch, half tape format reels - e.g. 2 stereo channels only going in one direction as compared to consumer quarter inch that had 4 channels.) Amongst those tapes were the stereo mix downs of the recorded orchestral Raiders's music. We used a few bits as temp music before Joel McNeely and Laurence Rosenthal did the new scores. Overall, George Lucas preferred us to use no William music at all in the temps because he was worried that the tunes would be too associated with their original placement in the movies.

 

Back to the question:

2m1 was not on the reels. I know this because I made a copy of the reel to cassette which I still have (but is in storage) as well as a capture of that tape. So, I would agree with @Jay that this was not recorded in 1981 - possibly it was spotted and maybe sketched. Since the tape reel were almost complete (even the insert fixes for 8m3 Indy Rides the Statue were there), my guess at the time is that they represented everything printed from the music recording sessions. (The 1m3 insert for the Boulder sequence was not there so I guess that was done later or created out of another take? CORRECTION: I checked, and it was on the ¼" reel and my cassette!)

 

However, there were no source music pieces on those tapes - there was only the Williams score, leading me to believe that those queues were found/recorded/licensed from elsewhere. 

 

For example, the diggers song at Tanis was on the sound effects reels for Raiders. This song occurs at about 58 minutes. My understanding was this was recorded by the extras during the film production. (I personally edited this into the YIJC Cairo 1908 episode as an Easter egg when Indy arrives at Howard Carter's camp 21 mins into the My First Adventure movie that includes this episode.)

 

[Luke Skywalker 1,506]

what a nice insider's piece of information. Any interesting information about TOD or Last crusade?

[lairdo 591]

 

After I wrote this reply, I remembered I just had my original cassette capture retransferred over last summer when we were selling our house and digitizing all of our old photo albums. The place I used does audio too! (I was able to save recordings with my in-laws which was a nice find as they are gone a few years now.)

 

And, I had tossed in Raiders (as well as Young Indy's first movie of the week music which was recorded at SkySound). And I just loaded that raw cassette wav capture, and in fact, it does include the boulder pick up insert! I must have forgotten about it! As I wrote before, 2m1 does not exist on what I have.

 

4 hours ago, Luke Skywalker said:

what a nice insider's piece of information. Any interesting information about TOD or Last crusade?

 

Only a little bit.

 

Temple of Doom was similarly in the library in the ¼" track format. We did not use anything from that, so I never had reason to put up the reels. (We did not like to handle things that were otherwise sitting happily stored for worry of damage or adding print through.) So, I have no idea if the Palace Source music was on those tapes or not. I assume those were licensed, but there is a Williams cue that does weave into and out of it, so he must have had that in the film edit to work with. (Complete guess though.) And I know that music is on the music stems so maybe the music editor did that and gave it to Williams. The quality of the recording is pretty poor, and it's mixed fairly low in the movie anyway. 

 

By the time of Last Crusade scoring sessions, everything was on 2" 16 or 24 track. I remember those music reels being in Ben Burtt's closet! And funnily enough, about 5 years after I left, I got a call from someone asking if I knew were they were! (I said they were in Ben's closet - which they said they had alread checked! I had only seen them but similarly we did not use anything, so they stayed in their boxes.) When I visited a number of years after that, having not been back in some time, I found that the closet itself was now gone. Matt Wood and Dave Acord had remodeled Ben Burtt's old audio suite and needed the space. So, no idea if they ever found those Last Crusade tracks tapes. I guess they found a source in any case given what ended up on the Indiana Jones 3 movie music box set.

 

Hopefully whenever Mike M. gets the ok, he can go back to the earliest generation masters.

[A Farewell to Kings 3,786]

The fact that the Staff of Kings (and I think the DVD documentaries) used bootleg material for the unreleased TLC cues still scares me.

[Manakin Skywalker 3,885]

6 hours ago, lairdo said:

When I worked on Young Indy

 

Wait... are you Laird Malamed, former Activision executive and Oculus COO? 

[A Farewell to Kings 3,786]

4 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

Wait... are you Laird Malamed, former Activision executive and Oculus COO? 

And co-host of the IndyCast Magic of John Williams specials.

[Manakin Skywalker 3,885]

 

I'll never look at the Oculus episode of South Park the same. 

[lairdo 591]

Ha ha. Yes, that's me. Still at Meta working on AR interaction models. Here's a link to the team's work that I am part of it - long term research. I love it. https://tech.fb.com/inside-reality-labs-meet-the-team-thats-bringing-touch-to-the-digital-world/

 

Oh yes, and I'm a professor too.

 

Part time.

 

 

7 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

I'll never look at the Oculus episode of South Park the same. 

 

Yep, that was a blast. Having seen what they did with World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero, I knew they would be a positive on Oculus too and make just enough fun of us. I manager our customer support team at that time, and they just loved the episode. 

[Thor 5,961]

Reading the thread title too quickly, I thought this was about the YOUNG INDY episode "Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues".

[crumbs 12,961]

16 hours ago, lairdo said:

 

By the time of Last Crusade scoring sessions, everything was on 2" 16 or 24 track. I remember those music reels being in Ben Burtt's closet! And funnily enough, about 5 years after I left, I got a call from someone asking if I knew were they were! (I said they were in Ben's closet - which they said they had alread checked! I had only seen them but similarly we did not use anything, so they stayed in their boxes.) When I visited a number of years after that, having not been back in some time, I found that the closet itself was now gone. Matt Wood and Dave Acord had remodeled Ben Burtt's old audio suite and needed the space. So, no idea if they ever found those Last Crusade tracks tapes.

 

I don't suppose you could call someone and ask if they were ever found...?

 

Seriously though, very cool intel, thanks for sharing!

 

I'd just hate to think we're stuck with Dan Wallin's stereo mixes of TLC, even after Mike M. gets the chance to work on the Indy scores. TLC desperately needs a modern remix, which is only possible if the multitrack masters are safe. It's hard to believe they were just sitting in a closet for however many years... not exactly ideal storage conditions for such delicate elements  

 

Out of interest, was this around the time Lucasfilm embarked on their project to transfer all known music elements from JW's Star Wars scores (I think that project began around 2016) or much earlier (around the release of the Concord set in 2008)?

[BrotherSound 1,987]

1 hour ago, crypto said:

I'd just hate to think we're stuck with Dan Wallin's stereo mixes of TLC, even after Mike M. gets the chance to work on the Indy scores. TLC desperately needs a modern remix, which is only possible if the multitrack masters are safe. It's hard to believe they were just sitting in a closet for however many years... not exactly ideal storage conditions for such delicate elements  

[A Farewell to Kings 3,786]

It seems, in your stupidity, you lost them...

[Luke Skywalker 1,506]

The ultimate ben burrt revenge against williams

[lairdo 591]

5 hours ago, crypto said:

 

 

Out of interest, was this around the time Lucasfilm embarked on their project to transfer all known music elements from JW's Star Wars scores (I think that project began around 2016) or much earlier (around the release of the Concord set in 2008)?

 

I was there from 1991-1994. I think I was called around 2000, but maybe it was closer to the Concord set in the mid-2000s. Definitely not around the later project on SW. 

 

For some reason, only Indy was around. I saw no other music tracks from SW or Willow or Tucker etc.