Brent Armstrong, the Yeti and Me. It's Abominable!

The Abominable Snowman

Music by Humphrey Searle

Midi reconstruction by Gaetano Malaponti

Special Thanks to Brent Armstrong

In October of 2016, I was approached by renowned Sculptor and Artist Brent Armstrong and asked if I would be interested in reconstructing Humphrey Searle's score to the 1957 Hammer Film "The Abominable Snowman". Brent had heard my midi recordings of Hammer's "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Dracula" and, impressed by them, had decided to see what I could come up with here. The only problem was, as there were no cue sheets available, the reconstruction would have to be done by ear. A challenge, to be sure, but one that I felt I was up to. I didn't know the music at all at that point, but boy did I get to know it over the coming weeks. So for a few hours a day, I got up around 6 am every morning, and started the arduous task of listening to every note, of every instrument, of every second of music, of the entire score. I would then reconstruct it, very carefully, trying to make it sound as authentic as possible using my Miroslav Philharmonik Sample Library. It was an extremely laborious task and not one for the faint hearted, but eventually, after 10 weeks of this daily routine, I completed the 25 minute Soundtrack. All in all, it took about 250 hours to complete. Brent and I were very happy with the final results.

At times, doing this reconstruction, I felt like I was on an expedition to the Himalayas myself, but in the end, I got there and reached my final destination. I also got to "really" know a great old school film score while at the same time learn a lot about orchestration and the skill of reconstructing a film score by ear. Many thanks to you, Brent for entrusting me with this reconstruction.


"I am also proud of your work. You accomplished a very difficult task for which I will be forever grateful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart" .... Brent Armstrong

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

Make a Donation

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