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To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com
Star Wars Prequels/Original Trilogy: The Complete Scores (Released) — Page 7
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The site is fine, the server, however, is down.
I thought I had it all organized! lol
I'll let you all know when it's back up...
EDIT:
Well, as I've typed this, the site seems to be back up! lol
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
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As for Episode II... I may make an expanded release... but it will by no means be a complete release. There just isn't enough material, which is why I don't want to do an expanded release... because it even then, wouldn't be much... but I'll keep it in mind.
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
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GoodMusician,
First off, in case you're unaware, the link to your files is currently down. I only just discovered them a few days ago, and in the middle of downloading them my old monitor burnt out on me- and since I've gotten a new one the link has been down & I've been unable to finish. However, what I've heard so far is spectacular and I eagerly await the rest.
More to the point, you are obviously very knowledgable and I've enjoyed reading your posts about the soundtracks. Since you'd be the one to ask (and unlike folks at Lucasfilm, likely to answer) I have questions about some of my favorite music, Lapti Nek and the other 2 Max Rebo source cues.
1. Many, many years ago, my research on the internet (for what that's worth) indicated that the masters for this source music was somehow "lost in the archives." Somewhere back in your posts (it may have been in your letters sent to Sony about the 30th Anniv. CDs), you mentioned that some lost masters for ROTJ had been found. Through your contacts, do you know if any of these three tracks (Lapti Nek film version, Max Rebo #1, & #2) were actually found or are they still in the 5th dimension somewhere?
2. This ties into my ignorance about the technicalities of film soundtracks, but whenever I discuss this issue with anyone, the subject always comes up, something to the effect like "Couldn't they isolate that element of the score off of the soundtrack?" Now obviously it wouldn't be complete and quality like a master recording, but say IF George or whomever wanted to (much like you did to make your versions of the tracks in question), could they pull the music only out of the mix (however that's stored) and get a fairly good result? This is especially true of Max Rebo #1 & #2, which would be part of the more recent SE mix. I'd doubt it ever happen, but I'm just curious from a technical standpoint how good you think that could be.
3. Somewhere else in your posts you mentioned something about Joseph Williams having written a source cue. I'm familiar with him having written the English lyrics to Lapti Nek if I'm not mistaken (which can be partly heard on the "SW to Jedi" documentary), but didn't think he wrote any music. Is this something different and what do you know about it?
Thanks & keep up the excellent work!
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1) For the first question, yes: those masters are lost.
Let me clarify the master's situation:
Film Score Masters: These masters were recorded in Abby Road Studio (excepting one track "Superstructure Chase" which was recorded in another venue because of time constraints). These masters contain all the film score material. These masters are then copied, edited and so fourth to make the final film mix. Those are then what are usually used to make the soundtrack releases.
Album Recording Session Masters: It use to be that film scores never got the releases we see today. No one really cared. But, ironically, the very thing that caused 'classical film scores' to loose out in the main media was the very thing that created the first soundtrack/score releases.
Many films had popular music play in them. Think of the old surfer movies with people dancing on the beach or even up until the 80's with "The Breakfast Club." These films had many popular songs play in them. But back in the 50-60's, composers usually would compose a main title that was lyrical.
Williams did many of these old films in this style. One such is "Penelope." The main title has people actually singing in it... or "John Goldfarb, Please come home!" These scores, because of the popularity of their almost strictly "pop" music scores began to cause interest in musical releases.
So, many scores would be recorded for the film, then latter, the composer would come back, arrange the score into several tracks that are shorter and highlight the main points of the score, and release a sort of "Concert Suite" album.
With the advent of much better editing practices and such, as technology developed, Williams slowly stopped doing this, and simply would take the Film score masters, and have those edited to create the album release. Notice certain scores like "Checkmate" have never been released in their complete fashion, but rather, the album re-recording has been remastered and re-released because it's all that's survived.
But, sometimes Williams will go back to this practice and make Concert Suites for the films. Star Wars you'll notice only had one: Princess Leia's Theme. There was also the edit of "Main Title" that then transitioned into "End Titles" but that wasn't recorded that way.
Jedi, however, had a separate session about a week latter if I remember right where the LSO and Williams reconvened and recorded the concert suites.
"Jabba the Hutt's Suite"
"The Forest Battle Concert Suite"
"Parade of the Ewoks"
"Luke and Leia"
and lastly, because they re-edited "Sail Barge Assault," Williams was asked to rescore that sequence. The rescore was recorded during the album recording session as well. However, the editing of the sequence continued on for many more weeks, and by the time the sequence was perfected to how we see it theatrically, Williams was no longer able to compose for the scene so they simply used the material he composed and edited it like they had the scene to match the new edit.
This may also be where he recorded the "Ewok Forest Battle Insert" as well... which may be why that is not on the set.
The Source Cues Masters: Frankly, I don't know too much about these. From my knowledge they were lost, but strangely, there are source cues on the set lol. These were recorded in a different studio by completely different people.
From my understanding the Max Rebo Band music ( #1, #2, an unused source cue and Lapti nek) were composed in a collaboration between Joseph and John Williams. I'm not sure to what extent. I've heard the Joseph composed the music for the source cues and that his dad supervised. I've also heard that Joseph did the lyrics which were then translated into Huttesse by Ben Burtt and some other person.
The source cues include:
Jabb the Hutt's Baroque Recital
Lapti Nek (Film) / Film Instrumental / Album / Extended Album/ Album Instrumental / English
Max Rebo Band Song #1
Max Rebo Band Song #2
Part of the Tribe
Unknown Source Cue
and possibly the three Ewok Yub Nub/Choir/Film versions were recorded here
(and then of course "Jedi Rocks" many years latter).
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These are the THREE sets of masters. When the first album was released, they had access to all of these. When Ford Thaxton set up the 4 disc anthology, they had access to all of these.
When they went to do the SE, everything had disappeared. All that was available were the copies of the film score masters and presumably only a couple of the source cue master reels.
Because of this, the quality of all the cues is severely diminished (as whenever you copy something you loose quality).
The SE, however, does contain the concert suites, but notice not all of them.
Interesting to note is that on the Anthology, the Return of the Jedi track "Han Solo Returns" has the ending to the album recording session of "Jabba the Hutt's Concert Suite" incorrectly placed at the end. On the SE, they correct this and use the originally composed version (although still not what's heard in the film as that's simply tracked music).
The reason the SE does have any of the concert suites is when an album is produced, a master copy of the entire album is created and the ones produced on CD are copied from this master copy. The master copy has very good quality and is almost comparable to the original masters (but still is slightly less).
When the SE was produced, the Anthology master was available and it is from THAT which the concert suites are taken (which also includes the Film "Sail Barge Assault").
Because of this, the sound quality is arguably "clearer," but technically only slightly so due to the limitations. In essence, the only difference is that the SE version has been digitally mastered which added arguably some clarity, but did add a bit of tape noise to it.
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After the SE was produced, however, the Original Score Masters were discovered. It is THESE that should have been used but could not be because they were missing.
Now that they have been found, the complete score as recorded for the film (not the source cues and not the album cues) can be presented cleanly and clearly.. and should, in theory, be as great sounding as a modern film score do to the advances already in place at that time.
It should also include about 90 seconds of missing score that the SE doesn't have.
Unfortunately, I have not heard if the other masters have been found. The Album and the Source cue masters are seemingly lost forever, which is Lucasfilms official stance.
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2) I'm not too sure about this...
When a score is prepped for film, they music is edited to fit the film. The source cues, however, I think may be mixed in with the SFX mix and are mixed separately from the score itself.
If you go on starwars.com, you can do video mashups. These prove that the SFX alone film does exist. The music alone film, however, I do believe exists but I do not think they had access to. That, again, would be unnecessary really because they had other masters from which to work. They actually had very little help from Lucasfilm when producing the Special Editions. When they discovered the best quality original masters for Star Wars, Lucasfilm was thrilled! You'd think they'd already have them but no, they'd been sitting in a closet in a recording studio all these years.
That's the score. The source cues like the Max Rebo and such I do not believe are mixed the same way. Because they change depending on the environment. MY GUESS is that they are mixed in with the SFX layer... but you do raise an interesting question... even though they would change in how they sound because of the environment changing and the barge flying by and such... it may be possible for they to find that music and at least isolate it.
3) Joseph Williams is actually a very accomplished composer. For the Prequels, he wrote all the source cues... composed and everything.
He's a composer. He does more pop style music, however. He also is a singer. He did the singing voice of the adult version of Simba in The Lion King (why it wasn't Mathew Broddrick who can sing and sings on Broadway, I don't know lol... I guess they wanted a more masculine voice oh well)...
But yes, he is a composer and an arranger and a lyracist. He writs "pop" style songs. They aren't ... brilliant... but they're ok. As far as the OT goes, those source cues he did write the lyrics to... and as far as I know he at least arranged the music if not performed the electronic/synth portions.
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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I had never heard Joseph Williams had worked on the prequels. So for example, "The Street Singer" on TPM would be his work? Is he completely uncredited? The TPM Ultimate Edition doesn't mention him, and I never caught his name on any film credits. Did he ever do work on Indiana Jones as well?
Someday maybe I'll commission or talk someone into "re-creating" the Max Rebo tracks for me, for fun. I have no musical talent myself (other than as a lyricist, but that doesn't really count), but I know a couple of people who could pull it off if they just had the right equipment (one of which might already, I'll have to ask him).
As for Lapti Nek, the film version you made is so good, that I think I can be satisfied for the rest of my life with that if nothing better ever comes along. Also, thank you for finding what I always called the "Lapti Nek 12" Single" versions. I had never been able to dig that up.
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glad you enjoy them heh
As for a book, I have decided to start compiling my information on a website... I don't have much experience building websites so it's a simple geocities site... but I'm only working on the outline at the moment. Unfortunately/fortunately, there is so much information that even having separate pages for the individual films isn't enough. There will probably be 3-5 pages for each film score lol....
If you're interested, here's a very very rough idea of it: Star Wars Music
EDIT: Normally there would me a music track playing but with my upload place down, you won't hear it.
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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Thanks again!
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In the vein of Jericho and the whole NUTS! Campaign, we ask the whole OT.com subscriber base to:
1) Print out two copies of the following:
Hi-res, print-ready PDF HERE
2) Snail-Mail to:
Howard Roffman
President, Lucas Licensing
Lucasfilm Ltd.
P.O. Box 29901
San Francisco, CA 94129
and
Sony Classical
550 Madison Ave, 24th Fl
New York, NY 10022-3211
The more professional-looking you can make the envelope, the more likely they will be to open it if bombarded by letters. Flooding them with something that is simply just this organized will get the message through. Knowing that most of us are strapped for time, probably only a few dozen people can take the time to write out an actual letter. But this should take no time at all, and costs $0.82 in stamps. Heck, send in several copies if you're feeling rich. Hundreds, maybe thousands of you can take this much time for the cause, and that should be far more effective.
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Its hard to say when it'll be back up. It was up almost all summer, and then it was down for like 2 days... then it was up for a month and now it's down again...
Give it a few days and it should be back up.
As for the new scores, I'm going to start working on them right now and hopefully by the time the site is up, I can upload them and they'll be ready...
I'm going to work on Jedi right now--fixing a few errors and replacing that whole set.
Then onto Episode II.
This isn't star wars Related, but I just finished a Home Alone complete score edit which will be up on there so I have some free time now to work on the other edits.
I'd also like to redo Episode I but that will take a lot of time. It'll mean going over EVERYTHING and remixing and editined everything...so that'll take some time.
As far as the ewok scores, I have a really low quality rip. If anyone has a nice high quality even MP3 320 rip of that score, could you let me know. I'd like to place that up on the site as well but at the moment, I only have a low quality rip of about half that bit rate.
Estimate time:
Jedi can be completed by this weekend.
Episode II in a week.
I'd like to explore Episode IV and possibly just give an expansion CD. That can be done by next saturday.
I don't like the idea of putting deadlines on these but I will do my best to get them done by these dates... but if need be I will push dates forward.
I'll also let you know when the site is back up.
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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It is very difficult to quantify the musical happiness you brought with your talent, knowledge, insight and dedication.
I am an avid JW fan (and SW is for me the apex of it), and your soundtracks are a tribute to both, beautifully crafted and lovingly listened to.
The site being down at the moment, I only have old versions of Jedi, Menace and Sith, but they are nonetheless very often on my playing list.
Thank you, more times than I can say !
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E Chu Ta!
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I will be sure to do that from now on...
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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E Chu Ta!
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New Index
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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Are any of the Star Wars scores updated or improved? No hurry of course, just wondering. I know that the Episode II score you have in the works is more "expanded" than complete, but I can't even wait!
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Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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Your soundtracks are an amazing resource.
Here I thought that I was just waiting on a corrected crawl on for my Episode I dvd and it was complete, and then I took one listen to your Phantom Menace score.
Back to the drawing board.
And the Lapti Nek recordings. I don't know where you found them (it's probably in the thread, but I haven't read all of it), but bravo.
That was the one thing I was missing in order to eradicate that atrocity that is Jedi Rocks from Jedi.
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I'm going back and redoing Jedi again becuase I've learned a bit more about cleaning the music since then so if you downloaded the complete Jedi, it'll be replaced soon.
As will Episode I... I've upgraded my technology since I did that a few years back and I'd like to correct it. There are a few small problems with it but I can make it sound even better so I'm going to.
Glad you like my edits.
Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me
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These collections are great, thank you so much for your continuing work with them