In his latest video, synthesist Alex Ball takes a look at how the Tron soundtrack was created.
Wendy Carlos’s score to the original (1982) Tron features the London Philharmonic Orchestra, U.C.L.A. Chorus and GDS and Moog synthesizers.
Ball shares some of the history of the Tron soundtrack and recreates some of the cues, using a combination of hardware and software synths.
Topics covered:
0:00 Intro
0:49 Wendy Carlos
2:04 Tron – The Instruments
4:44 The Recording Rig
6:39 Cue Breakdown – Tron Theme
9:10 Cue Breakdown – Tron Scherzo
10:22 Cue Breakdown – We’ve Got Company
11:40 Use of Choir
12:49 Other Music
13:46 Summary & Thanks
Its just plain wrong that you can’t buy Wendy’s works today. Very few have ever touched the high quality she brought to the table. Tomita is one of her rare counterparts when it comes to classical reworkings and astounding studio craft. Wendy’s full version of “Timesteps” is an aural handbook for what a modular can do. No one really goes there that way now, despite the much more advanced tools we have.
it’s her own fault. she lost her independent cd distribution over a decade ago after mp3s and then streaming became a thing, and she refuses to adapt to the newer standards because she hates the audio quality and how (to her anyway) it “butchers” the sound of her music. so she refuses to re-release anything anymore and very aggressively goes after anyone who tries to post her recordings on youtube (how many times did Alex complain about “i can’t play you the original because of copyright”), and thus people have no option but secondhand (usually the older cbs releases which she also hates) or piracy to listen to her work.
Carlos wants history to remember quality over quantity. Nothing wrong with that. It’s her music. I don’t think she is sitting around fretting and regretting. If I wrote a novel and it ended up in a Reader’s Digest condensed collection without permission, I would be suing them.
One of the greatest synth soundtrack scores of all time.
is it?
Is it not? Discuss.
I really enjoy these works from Alex Ball, true love letters to the history and the craft
Impressive mini-doc. I enjoyed it!
Christina, if that’s the case, what a bummer. It’d be hard to condemn her for managing her own creative work as she sees fit, but its a huge loss. Format changes always give something here and take something away from over there. The noted cartoonist R. Crumb hates LPs and sticks to 78s religiously. You can’t 2nd-guess someone else’s ears.
I’m just glad I have all of her work on LPs. It seems artistically wrong in an overall sense for her achievements to be withheld. I can see her point, but it seems less important than having her music out in the world. She’s always been one of the high points for me.
The original TRON almost comes off as a Soviet propaganda film in look, feel, and message, only nobody in Russia would have been able to create such an astoundingly good film.
The Russians have made loads of great movies