Tech Talk From The Producer…
Stephen King’s trilogy of frightening tales, linked by the supernatural cat that wanders in and out of each, provided Alan Silvestri with considerable scope for his array of electronic keyboards. The synthesized colors remain somewhat constant throughout, bringing layers of cohesion to the score, while the musical motifs used in each tale provide ample contrast. Adding unity overall is the judicious use of a solitary main theme associated, naturally, with the nimble feline itself.Highlights from the score were previously available on LP. The contents were sequenced with maximum listening pleasure in mind rather than adhering to strict film chronology. As such, some sequences were edited together when musically appropriate and other sequences were simply dropped altogether. Track titles were created expressly for the album. For this expanded CD premiere on Intrada, we obtained from the composer his own two-track stereo session mixes and went back to the studio paperwork to determine the original cue titles.
Though we have adhered to the overall film sequence, presenting the score in exact chronological order was not really a good musical option due to the enormous amount of post-production editorial changes made after the score was recorded by Dennis Sands at Group IV Recording. Some cues were used more than once—“Nighttime” (track 19), for example, was tracked into the film twice in a row. Some cues were heavily truncated while still others were disassembled entirely, with bars being severed and reattached to cues otherwise not related. In spite of all this, however, everything still works very well in the finished picture, with the score providing a distinctive pulse and vibe to each of the three tales.
Using slates and the broader musical structure Silvestri created, we have sequenced everything in the overall picture sequence as recorded, without attempting to recreate any editorial decisions made for the picture further down the production assembly line. Although the picture wraps with songs that are played during the end credit roll, the score proper concludes with “General’s Love Of Amanda,” bringing everything to a close with a brief, gentle coda drawn from the main theme (track 25). One sequence, “The Troll Arrives” (track 22), may seem like a virtual come sopra (repeat) of “A Visitor In Wilmington” (track 18)—and for the most part it is, with Silvestri merely changing octaves and adding a cymbal roll over the final bars.
And a few words about the film edit of Silvestri’s main title sequence, originally recorded as the two cues that comprise tracks 1 and 2 of this CD. In the picture itself, only the first portion of the intro appears, followed by a few seconds of a third piece (entitled “Cat Walk” on the cue sheet) that is simply four chords sandwiched between the other two cues. This tiny segment appears to have been recorded separately during post-production and appears only on the stereo music stem. We have recreated this one unique film assembly, approximating its use at the start of the picture, and include it as an “extra” on our CD (track 26). Listeners may program it as the album’s opening or just let it play as an imaginary end credit sequence to close the CD.
—Douglass Fake
