Intrada Soundtrack Forum

7/3/07

Time to celebrate the 4th of July. Like many of you, we'll take the day off and soak up some sun. On the other hand, if you're in the Oakland area you already know this but we aren't getting fireworks this year. Not the city-provided public display kind, anyway. Fire hazards, ongoing construction where the annual event happens, alternate traffic route problems, so forth. Signs everywhere remind us of the cancellation.

One never grows too old for fireworks. Plus the City of Oakland plays the theme from SILVERADO at the shows every year. Right from our CD. I'll miss that.

So have a "safe" 4th and we'll see you "sound" on the 5th!

7/5/07

The fireworks are over and work takes top spot once again. So we've already got another Special Collection title ready for release. You'll find our official announcement here on Monday at about 5:15 pm our time. This one's not gonna set the world on fire but it's a dynamo 1980's action score from a veteran. So you'll probably play it often.

Also of note. EAST OF EDEN has quietly sold down to the last 125 copies. If you haven't taken the plunge for this one, consider adding it to your order for next week's Volume 45. We're talking two CDs for the price of two CDs. What a deal! (But they're both terrific scores and you'd save on postage!)

7/11/07

Bean counter alert. Looks like there are just 50 copies of EAST OF EDEN left on our shelf. We'll stop counting them now and just let the last ones sell out. So please don't wait for us to break the numbers down any further. We used to provide a "going... going... gone" as limited titles sold down but it's getting difficult to keep abreast of the last few copies and post accurate numbers for you simultaneously. You're better served having our hamsters in the mailroom process orders rather than count down "49-48-47-46... " and so forth (even though we've got really talented talking hamsters back here that can do math!) Anyway, when these last 50 copies of EAST OF EDEN are gone, we'll just pull it from our active catalog. If you'd like to order one and haven't done so at this point, you may want to do it soon.

On all of our limited releases, we'll try to keep you abreast of the numbers until they get down to that last 50 or so. Figure after that, things will fall off our high-tech radar scope. Which is basically just Jeff and George counting remaining CDs on a shelf. They make great hamsters!

7/17/07

It took decades but soundtrack collector's are finally getting their due. It's busy enough around here that I'm checking on my calender every morning just to confirm what I'm mastering when. (There's a lot of stuff for you to look forward to.) Add all these cool releases coming from Varese, FSM, La La Land, BSX and wherever and I'm thinking wow! Even if you can't keep up there's probably something that still tempts you to skip a meal or two!

So here's Intrada's release schedule for the next few weeks. We've got a pretty big album being announced for pre-orders this Thursday evening. Due to unique marketing requirements, it'll be announced then but shipments actually won't happen for a few weeks. On the more immediate front, hot on the heels of MALONE, we've already got two more releases coming out together next Tuesday (July 24.) Both are limited editions. Proper announcements will go up this Monday evening around 5:15 pm our time. We'll start shipping orders the next day. They're exciting projects to be sure but I don't anticipate everyone jumping on them all at once. Save that for the 2-CD set coming up just two weeks later - August 7 - when we offer you an expanded release for one of the truly greats. One for which we'd all skip a meal or two if need be.

Anyway, all these projects just cover the next four weeks.

It's heavy work for a small-time producer, sure, but on the other hand - as a big-time collector as well - I wouldn't have it any other way!

7/20/07

A quick note I'd like to share. Todd Boekelheide has just received an Emmy nomination in the category of "outstanding music composition for a miniseries, movie or a special". The show: BOFFO! TINSELTOWN'S BOMBS AND BLOCKBUSTERS.

As some of you may know, Todd's been a close composer friend of mine for many years. He's also an Oscar winning sound engineer with numerous credits to his name. I first met him when we released his score to THE BLOOD OF HEROES many moons ago and we've kept up a friendship ever since. He even tries to give me pointers on the finer art of engineering and mastering but like the other hamsters around here, I'm a slow learner! It's too bad more of his genius won't rub off! Anyway, my hats off to him right now.

Congratulations, Todd

7/24/07

This'll seem totally random. Stuff like this pops into mind while we work. There's even a little musical philosophy here, though nothing deep.

I'm thinking about why synthesizer music, though often on the cutting edge, doesn't hold up for me. For long, anyway. You guys probably figured this out awhile ago but give me credit for figuring it out myself at last. Anyway, I was just thinking about this while watching a new DVD of STOPOVER TOKYO, of all things. Paul Sawtell does the score. It's reasonably impressive though not particularly ground-breaking. But I kept thinking it sounded fresh, for some reason. Then it dawned on me. Of course. It has no synths!

Synthesizers, even when combined with an orchestra, date. It's that simple. The resources of the modern symphony orchestra have been around for a long time. Sure, Adolphe Sax introduced his instrument less than two centuries ago, and modern brass instruments went through revisions. But the standard symphony orchestra's been well established for some time. So when you play Mozart, you get a sound that works and when you play Stravinsky you get another sound that works. And I admit when you play today's best synthesizer music it also works, for now. But not for long.

Mozart and Stravinsky are separated by a century. Yet their music isn't dated, though the vernacular may be more aggressive or advanced in one over the other. My impressions, anyway.

But synthesizer music actually sounds more dated, not less! My random theory: technology keeps getting updated so fast that synthesizer music becomes out-of-date really fast. Most electronic scores from the seventies and eighties already sound "cheesy". The best of those being written today will probably sound pretty gimmicky tomorrow. Literally!

But Mozart and Stravinsky just keep sounding fine to my ears!

7/27/07

What a boo boo!

It's nice to get such a solid response to our HERCULES. So it'll probably be gone pretty soon. It's certainly worthwhile. The entire score appears in stereo from MGM's excellent condition master mixes. But you'd think we'd have learned how to catch our typos by now. So in the big "oops" department, I feel bad that we spelled Mr. Donaggio's name incorrectly on the back cover. Dammit! We even mis-numbered the last track. It should read just 30 tracks instead of 31. The CDs are fine, fortunately. But still. Come on Doug... do some proof reading.

My humble apologies to Pino. Your music plays fine, we just can't type very well.

On the other hand, don't rare coins and stamps with similar printing boo boos get valuable really fast? Hmmmm... maybe I'm on to something here.