Monday 11 December 2017

Island of Terror

Island of Terror (1966)

Music by Malcolm Lockyer

Complete Soundtrack reconstructed by ear

All Music notation entered and preserved via Midi Software 

Staff View Length 912 bars over 148 pages

Realistic sounding Midi Mock-Ups created (for reference purposes) using Cakewalk TTS-1 and  Miroslav Philharmonik Sample Library


01) Opening Scene (Completed)
02) Main Title (Completed)
03) The Cave (Completed)
04) Discovery (Completed)
05) Examining the Body (Completed)
06) David's Apartment (Completed)
07) Helicopter Journey (Completed)
08) Not A Very Pretty Sight (Completed)
09) I'll Find A Way in (Completed)
10) Searching for the Laboratory (Completed)
11) Dead Horse (Completed)
12) Laboratory Attack (Completed)
13) Car Roof (Completed)
14) Back to the Village (Completed)
15) The Basement (Completed)
16) Escape from the Silicates (Completed)
17) The Getaway (Completed)
18) I Won't Let You Down (Completed)
19) We'll Be Back (Completed)
20) Battle with the Silicates (Completed)
21) Drive to the Laboratory (Completed)
22) Keep Out - Radiation Danger (Completed)
23) Car Trunk (Completed)
24) Strontium 90 (Completed)
25) I Love You (Completed)
26) They're Coming this Way (Completed)
27) Death of the Silicates (Completed)
28) Epilogue - End Titles (Completed)

Length - Approx 36 minutes

PREVIEW (Complete Soundtrack)






SAMPLE: Main Title (Midi reconstruction)








A lot of time and effort goes into these projects (on average about 200-250 hours). If you would like to offer your support, please make a PayPal donation at the link below. All of my full soundtrack MIDI Mock-ups are available to hear privately on YouTube. If you would like to hear any of them, please contact me via Social Media to discuss Donation rewards. Many thanks



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Saturday 9 December 2017

Resurrecting Frankenstein and Dracula

In 2015, I became friends with David Huckvale on Facebook. David is the Author of James Bernard: Composer to Count Dracula (amongst other books) and while writing this book, he became friends with the Great Composer. I discovered, to my delight, that he also had copies of most of James Bernard's original Hammer scores in his Attic. As a part time composer and life long Film Music and Hammer fan, I suggested doing recordings using Midi software and Sample Libraries. It might not be real, but its the next best thing. David thought it a great idea and agreed to send me the cue sheets via E-Mail.

So, I started the Film Music Midi Group and took upon the task (or Labour of Love) of hand notating all of The Curse of Frankenstein score into midi software and creating a realistic sounding Virtual recording. I was so pleased with the results that I immediately moved on to doing the same with Dracula. The process was, David would send me photos of each cue sheet and I cropped, rotated and collated them all, ready to start the laborious job of entering the score, note by note into my Midi software. Sadly, I found out during this Project, that two cues were lost. The Main Title and Dracula's Rage. Undeterred by this though, I set about reconstructing these lost cues by ear. This is an arduous task and is done by forensically listening to the Film audio and writing down every note as you hear them. A bit of music theory and knowledge of the score comes in useful during this process. For these scores, James Bernard uses the Whole Tone Scale and the Dracula motif is cleverly made up of a Tritone (Known as The Devil's Chord in Musical History). Each cue took about a week to reconstruct. During all of this process, I had a lot of important people watching. Viewers that included James Fitzpatrick and Nic Raine, who both do incredible Film Music recordings with The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Briefly, over the coming months, James Fitzpatrick contacted me telling me that he had a client, interested in producing World Premiere Recordings of these Classic Hammer Film scores. So, on request, and with David Huckvale's permission, I sent all of James Bernard's cues (including my two reconstructions) to James Fitzpatrick. That was in September. Leigh Phillips (the orchestrator) has now almost completely Orchestrated The Curse of Frankenstein which basically means it can be handed to the Orchestra ready to play at any given time.

UPDATE: April 15th 2018

The recording sessions for "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Dracula" have been completed.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1603626043066613&id=100002576978541&ref=m_notif&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic



World Premiere recording now available on CD.

http://www.tadlowmusic.com/2019/09/dracula-the-curse-of-frankenstein-james-bernard

http://www1.screenarchives.com

The Best Years of Our Lives

Complete score to visuals playlist  The Best Years of Our Lives