"The President Is Expendable" || Re-creating Unreleased music Twilight's Last Gleaming.

Re-creating Unreleased music from Jerry Goldsmith's score to "Twilight's Last Gleaming"
=======================================

The first cue I chose to re-create was one of the easier ones to start with. The cue is soft, dark, brooding, and intimate. It is simple writing – a single melodic idea that is repeated several times in a row but in different keys/modes. It starts in the bass and celli before transitioning to the strings with transitions on brass. There are a few quotes of chimes / vibraphone, all ending with a crescendo of all strings and rolling snare with drum hits to punctuate a dramatic moment.
For my recreation, I matched the tempo, the notes and the performances as closely as possible based on what I could hear in the movie. More about why everything is done by ear can be learned in the below paragraphs. I then overlayed my recording (using virtual instruments which I also performed and mixed) over the existing audio track and made it louder to be more audible. Additionally, I also tried to match the balance the original album had as in the movie, everything sounds mono.

About The Re-Creation Project
---
Now that I am finished with my composing assignment and in the mixing phase, I'm turning my attention to "re-creating" unreleased cues from Jerry Goldsmith's Twilight's Last Gleaming". I did an extensive breakdown watching the movie, comparing the music on the album with what's in the movie. There was a significant amount of editing, short cues, whole sections of longer cues that were not used on album tracks and conversely short sections released from longer cues. It's a brilliant edit of all the music into a great listening experience. The album is also not in chronological order for the most part.

There is about 9-10 minutes of unreleased music that is in the film. This does not include the "recorded for but not used" End Credits suite in that 9-10 minute. Additionally, there is at least one "alternate" of the big finale cue" as the film version IS different from the album.

The mix on the album is also very left heavy, much of the orchestra (percussion, brass and mid-low strings are all mostly heard from just left of the center channel to the far-left extreme left channel. Not much is pushed to the right but that is reserved for the high register instruments. So, I tried to emulate that "balance".

Also, I have tried (to the best of my ability) to recreate processed instrument sounds and the echo-plex the "effects”. I know there are echoplex plugins, but I prefer to do it with delays since I am familiar with using them. I do not know what original instruments were used before the processing, but it seems like they were timpani, tom toms and snares, and sometimes all mixed together before then given an echo-plex effect.

There is NO sheet music or any other documentation available pertaining to the score or recording sessions other than the liner notes of the original album. I have been trying to get Ford Thaxton to respond regarding the transferred masters as those transfers would presumably have all this unreleased music. Until that day comes, I am doing re-creations of all the unreleased music as heard in the film.

#twilightslastgleaming
#jerrygoldsmith
#filmscore
#scorerecreations