Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

I watched THX 1138 once more a couple of weeks ago and began watching the DVD extras afterwards, There is a fascinating interview regarding the sound design and production. Someone has kindly compiled the videos on this webpage. I would strongly advise checking it out. There is some great stuff relating to creative use of tape and alternative techniques.

http://designingsound.org/2009/12/12-vi ... -thx-1138/

One filmscore which (I think) hasn't been brought up here yet is the score from Romancing the Stone. It's one of those classic 80s hybrid traditional/electronic scores. I know Alan Silvestri used a Synclavier for his Flight of the Navigator score. But, do any of you happen to know what he used for Romancing the Stone?

Didn't read the entire thread, but Jeremy Schmidt from Solina Caves / Black Mountain did an amazing score for Beyond The Black Rainbow. If you have not seen the film or heard Solina Caves I stronly suggest such an action....

MrFrodo wrote:One filmscore which (I think) hasn't been brought up here yet is the score from Romancing the Stone. It's one of those classic 80s hybrid traditional/electronic scores. I know Alan Silvestri used a Synclavier for his Flight of the Navigator score. But, do any of you happen to know what he used for Romancing the Stone?

Here's a couple of quotes from Alan Silvestri:

"We used quite a great deal of electronic instruments and to my knowledge it was one of the first times that computerized sequencers were used on live sessions along with a big orchestra. Just working out the logistics of putting the entire score in the hands of a little black box, and if this thing goes off, great; and if not, you're dead! As it turned out it all went just fine, but we really stretched in terms of experimentation and it paid of, but not without some rather tense moments on those sessions".

“When I did ‘Romancing the Stone’ (1984) I had all five existing Yamaha DX-7s in the control room, with our Japanese manuals and our power adapters,” he says, laughing at the thought of all those outdated machines.[/quote]


I know that he had a Linndrum as well and it does sound like it was used in the score.

Especially during the dance scene. That clap sound is almost unmistakable.

Romannis1972 wrote:Didn't read the entire thread, but Jeremy Schmidt from Solina Caves / Black Mountain did an amazing score for Beyond The Black Rainbow. If you have not seen the film or heard Solina Caves I stronly suggest such an action....

I think you mean Sinoia Caves.

Stab Frenzy wrote:

Romannis1972 wrote:Didn't read the entire thread, but Jeremy Schmidt from Solina Caves / Black Mountain did an amazing score for Beyond The Black Rainbow. If you have not seen the film or heard Solina Caves I stronly suggest such an action....

I think you mean Sinoia Caves.

Haha... uh... yeah

Parts of Lalo Schifrin's score for Sam Peckinpah's final movie, the 1983 thriller "The Osterman Weekend", are quite synth-heavy:



There are a few more synth-driven cues in this score but I could only find the main theme on youtube.

Btw, Alan Howarth was called in to help with The Osterman Weekend after they did a second edit and re-cut the film severly. Some of Lalo's material didn't work anymore after that
but he was already working on another project and was too busy to jump into it immediately. Alan recorded several new cues that were used towards the end of the film when everything
gets scary. Some of Alan's sequencer-driven cues remind me a lot of his own synth score to the low-budget flick "The Lost Empire" (1983).

This Star Trek kid's record, released in 1975, is a story written by Alan Dean Foster about how the Enterprise encounters a being out in deep space made of pure sound. A crewman produces something onboard the ship kind of like a synthesizer to communicate with it through music. The sounds made by the being all sound to me like a Moog Modular.

Part 1
Part 2

I've always loved Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack to Midnight Express (1978), especially the film versions of
"Chase" and "Theme from Midnight express" which sound more raw and edgy than the versions found on the soundtrack album.

According to Harold Faltermeyer the music was produced at Musicland studios, Münich and at Dan Wyman's Sound Arts studio, L.A. where the synth
overdubs were made. Faltermeyer and Wyman handled the synth-work/programming.

Film score (unreleased):




Greg Mathieson recorded every synth and keyboard part for the soundtrack album at Larabee sound studios in Hollywood. Greg's job was to take the 1 minute cues
from the movie and turn them into 6 or 7 minute disco songs that would be used for the movie soundtrack album.

A Roland SH-2000 was used for a lot of the melody sounds on both the film score and soundtrack album.

Soundtrack album:



I do like the album arrangements but I still prefer the the actual movie score.

No mention of the greatest unknown synth soundtrack of all time in this thread? I give you the soundtrack to Liquid Sky.

How such a low production film got their hands on a Fairlight CMI, the world may never know.

The Italian composer Marcello Giombini (1928-2003) - master of the ARP 2600 - did some really cool electronic albums and film scores back
in the '70s and early '80s. However, with the exception of his score to "La Bestia Nello Spazio", recently released on CD by Beat records in
Italy, most of Giombini's electronic scores remain unreleased in any form.

Giombini used to use two 2600s mounted on top of each other, with the keyboards stacked like those of an organ. He also had an Eminent organ
(probably a 310U or the theater version) and a RMI keyboard computer which I suspect was used for the church organ sounds in
some of these scores (he was a church organist in the beginning).

War of the Planets (Anno zero - guerra nello spazio -1977):


Eyes Behind the Stars (Occhi Dalle Stelle - 1978):


Antropophagus (The Grim Reaper - 1980):



The Beast in Space (La Bestia Nello Spazio - 1980):


I recently bought the CD of The Beast in Space score and I'm just loving it.

I just found out that Jeff Wayne (of The War of the Worlds fame) did a synth-driven score for a 1977 thriller titled "Golden Rendezvous":




The music is pretty good I think and very much in the vein of TWOTW. I have a feeling that Ken Freeman played the CS-80 and Odyssey
on this score...it sure sounds like it.

The control panel this woman is sitting in front of is an EKO DrumComputer!!
Sweet!!!

Yeah I noticed that too. The one seen in the film looks somewhat different though.