The Film Score Thread

Full soundtrack for BODY HEAT is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8efRpv8s1bY

Great. I dig the "one long video" thing. Works better if you want to appreciate the score as a whole, rather than just isolated cues. BODY HEAT still needs a restoration, though. Sound quality's a bit muffled.

I hope Intrada decides to release a better version of the score in the near future.


Then again, there are a lot of scores that I hope they'll release.

One of my favourite John Barry scores, and also one of his most underrated. "Witchcraft / Erica is Burned at the Stake" never fails to give me the chills.

Interesting fact - the final vid there contains the cue Sidney Pollack temp-tracked for the airplane sequence in OUT OF AFRICA. The similarities between the two pieces are quite striking.

This is terrific, like Herb Alpert on steroids. Unfortunately there are some hideous 'yoof' remixes about that may have led to the dissolution of Takeshi Kitano and Joe Hisaish's partnership.



Must say I love this. A real retro Quincy Jones feel.

That's brilliant. Love the groovy additive rhythm in the Japanese drums, combined with the trumpet and clarinet solos and those lush 7th and 9th chords.

In what way did the remixes eff up their partnership?

Well, don't quote me on that. There was a dispute about the soundtrack and then they did a Hitch and Herrmann.

EDIT: I may be way off on this one. According to the ever-reliable IMDB the breakup occurred after Dolls not Brother:

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[Dolls] is the last Takeshi Kitano film to feature music by Joe Hisaishi. Kitano claimed that it became too expensive to hire Hisaishi for soundtracks while Hisaishi claimed that he didn't like the screenplay of the movie. Actually, they both had an argument about some pieces which weren't selected for the soundtrack, and where to put the others in the movie. They stopped working together since then.

Dolls is very different:

This is a tribute I found on another forum posted shortly after Barry's passing in January this year. I think it hits home what makes the man's music great, more so than another other eulogy I've read (including those at the Royal Albert Hall ceremony).

Quote :

Barry had a special kind of unique skill, and it's something very hard to rationalise about.

He himself pointed out that music is, 'very personal, possibly the most personal thing'. All of us have musical memories that are 'associative', they remind us of emotions, periods, events, etc., without necessarily relating directly TO those things, just by a Pavlov reflex: the, 'They're playing our song' sort of thing. And of course there's the narcissistic, 'This is what I want to be associatied with' thing of youth too, with music as a designer item.

But sometimes composers can intuitively latch onto an event or situation in a film etc., and you can't quite say how, or even sometimes why, but it still IS direct, and 'relevant' to the images. Apparently Barry was obsessed with the scripts in the movies, and researched their development before writing a note.

Barry was from Yorkshire, and there's something about the NE of England (and including the SE of Scotland), the weather perhaps, that he simply was infused with, and I doubt he'd have personally been aware it, but it's a feel. It's a slightly melancholy feel at that, sometimes depressing even, it got into him somehow, nothing pastoral, but a human feel, with some sadness. Someone I knew (from 'Movie Boulevard' as it happens, for those who remember them) asked him once why his music was always so melancholy. His reply was, 'Is there any other kind?' He excelled at bittersweet and nocturnal evocations.

A quick example would be the score for 'Mary, Queen of Scots'. I recall exploring a semi-derelict castle associated with her, to the SE of Edinburgh, and as I walked through, it was Barry's 'feel' that came to me. Now someone like Rozsa would have researched Renaissance music, English, French and Scottish, before constructing melodies for that film, but with Barry, although there are some Scotticisms in the intervals of his score, it's all in the FEEL, the atmosphere. She must have been LIKE that. But that's not mere 'mood music', rather something strangely evocative, like a sort of 'medium' channelling something of an 'essence' in the music. But unlike with Rozsa, you can't analyse just HOW he did that. But I also recall once visiting Roslin Castle alone (long before this 'Da Vinci Code' cobblers) and the same day hearing his 'Thunderball' score, and feeling some sort of connection that evades my analysis.

He captured ELEGY always, like a sense of mourning for a disappearing world, and strangely enough, that's true too of the James Bond material .... something about the twilight of the old Britain, far transcending anything in the shallow movies themselves. He was a composer of transitions, and made them. A lot of his most powerful scores are almost disturbing in their elegaic sadness, and he was best when mourning for lost worlds, as with 'Dances With Wolves', or 'Robin and Marion', etc..

My personal favourite theme is the loss of the old, and the loss of innocence (which is partly why CHIMES OF MIDNIGHT is my favourite film of all time) - and I think why Barry's music resonates with me more than any other film composer except Herrmann, is because of that very quality.

Ken Russell's gone, and this may be his least personal film, but the music is terrific:

Just posted that. Great minds etc.



This moving love theme has got to be my favourite. Greatest use of an Ondes Martenot in a film score IMO. Minus the eerie harpsichord/celesta intro, it would be amazing wedding music.

That's very nice. Shame it's so short.

Looks like I'm going to have to watch Billion Dollar Brain again.

Someone should ask Rich to arrange/record a longer version of it. A real forgotten gem.

Goldsmith's THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (2-disc set):
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.7372/.f

Great live performance here of a suite from THE FIRST GREAT SUITE ROBBERY at the Royal Albert, conducted by Maestro Goldsmith:



Starts at 05:10.

Have loved Paul Smith's (who?) score for 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA since I first heard it as a kid.

MOO7RE loved Blood On Satan's Claw.




Can't say I know anything about Marc Wilkinson, but he wrote a lyrical title theme.

Giving the OHMSS expanded its first run through in yonks. Seem to dig Over and Out more with each listening. Sterling soundtrack.

Yep, Over and Out is brilliant. Greatest use of a synthesiser ever in a score. Simple but haunting.



Almost sounds like sonar.

Erica, be a dear and explain how this would have been done on an old Moog Modular (VCO1, VCF and so on etc.).

Never thought of it like sonar :) It just builds and builds. Can easily picture Tracy's face as she listens in, Draco's "Mer-cy flight"...but then I've watched it far too often.

Sharky wrote:

Erica, be a dear and explain how this would have been done on an old Moog Modular (VCO1, VCF and so on etc.).

A sonar ping is not a complicated sound, a sine wave will make a good approximation. However, here it's been fed into an old plate reverb, and then EQ'd. It was most probably a large EMT plate given the age of the recording .

Erica Ambler wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Erica, be a dear and explain how this would have been done on an old Moog Modular (VCO1, VCF and so on etc.).

A sonar ping is not a complicated sound, a sine wave will make a good approximation. However, here it's been fed into an old plate reverb, and then EQ'd. It was most probably a large EMT plate given the age of the recording .

Cheers. I'm guessing an EMT plate is also responsible for THUNDERBALL's distinctive watery.sound. I think in those days, Barry also used a lot of compression on the brass track too, or maybe they got that rasping sound by overloading the console.

In the words of the man who recorded the early Bond scores - Eric Tomlinson.

Quote :

Although smaller than some of the other facilities in England, CTS comfortably fit 65 players in its rectangular shaped 85 by 40. "it was a very basic studio," reflected Tomlisnson of the early days of CTS. "It had only 12 inputs on the desk, very little equalisation (not that I use a lot) and a couple of EMT echo plates and that was about it."

http://www.malonedigital.com/tomlinson.pdf

Do you know how they got the other main synth sound on OHMSS - the bass line in the main theme? It sounds pretty simple too, but there's no obvious reverb. Any oscillator detuning going on? It's a fairly reedy sound. Not phat like The Persuaders theme.

Terrific cover/remix . I dare say, I think I might prefer it to the original.

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This is a cover, but I kept the original sax part (no synth can replace a real sax played by a real sax player!) Took me a long time to sample it and bring it back into the track, but ableton is one powerful tool. Lots of EQing and compression/delays etc. Hope you like it!
Juno 6- sequence, bass
Ensoniq ESQ1 - sequencer, sawtooth bass
Juno G - Elec piano
Microkorg-strings
Akai s3000 - drums, opening countdown
Ableton live 7- recorder /arranger and effects

Sharky wrote:

Do you know how they got the other main synth sound on OHMSS - the bass line in the main theme? It sounds pretty simple too, but there's no obvious reverb. Any oscillator detuning going on? It's a fairly reedy sound. Not phat like The Persuaders theme.

*prods Ambler*

*finger sinks into my vast pot belly*

I'll have to have another listen to it. Weren't many commercially manufactured synths around back then though, so it's likely to have been either a Moog modular or EMS of some kind.