 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
May 15, 2020 - 10:44 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Zooba
(Member)
|
I know years ago on the board we talked about when we used to record Movie Music off our TV Sets by holding up a Cassette Recorder to capture all the soundtracks that were never available.
I searched the so called "Search Engine" and it was useless as usual in trying to find an old thread on the subject to bring back. Anyway, I just listened to an old recording I made from an A&E Showing of A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, the 1974 TV-Movie version that was so Beautifully and Delicately scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Got lots of great music and some with dialogue of course. Loved the End Title music but I was just reminded that sometimes when a movie ended and they played the End Credits, an obnoxious Announcer's Voice would suddenly appear and start announcing what was coming up next ruining all that great End Titles music. I remember it happening so many times to me in the 70's and my Mother, who would angelically keep so quiet for my recordings would get a kick out of me yelling "You Bastard!" or "You son of a mutha....!" when the announcer's voice came up. I'm sure many of you experienced the same thing. It was so annoying and frustrating.
Anyway, if you have any "Recording off the TV" memories you'd like to share, please do. You can share what Film Scores you recorded and if they came out good. Whatever you like. I used to scour the TV Guides back in the 70's to see if any movies were going to be on that had an unreleased score by Jerry Goldsmith or Elmer Bernstein or anything by any of the composers I grew to love and admirer. I remember being so happy when BITE THE BULLET was on TV and I finally got to record some of that great Alex North Western music from the film. Loved the Main Title and played it along with other of my faves over and over again. Jerry Goldsmith's MAGIC and THE RAGGEDY MAN were wonderful on my cassette tapes long before they were even released on VHS. Had so many on Cassette that I would listen to in my Car Cassette player constantly. PLAYERS by Jerry Goldsmith. "Played" the heck out of that one!
Please share! Thanks!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
May 15, 2020 - 11:26 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Zooba
(Member)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 15, 2020 - 11:52 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Zooba
(Member)
|
My DAMNATION ALLEY had a Track Title List I had made up for it. I guess I was and still am a Bonafide Soundtrack Nerd!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 16, 2020 - 12:03 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Zooba
(Member)
|
Okay, last 2 or 3 for the night.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
May 16, 2020 - 4:13 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
1977
(Member)
|
I used to connect my tape recorder to the audio out of my VCR using patchcords. I recorded music from my taped-off-TV videos of ST: TMP, Midway, The Towering Inferno and Superman II, III and IV that way. I also would pause the tape when dialogue was spoken, which made for a very disjointed music listening experience indeed. But oddly, I used to listen to those dodgy, mono, hiss-laden, hacked-to-pieces home recordings for hours and hours, whereas today I barely play the pristine special editions released in the last 20 odd years that I have collected. That's my strange, sad tale.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 16, 2020 - 6:04 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
|
I think that the majority of us here, of a certain vintage, did that zooba. It was really the only way to get the multitude of unreleased music preserved for posterity. Golly yes, I remember hating how the announcer's voice would sometimes come in with "Stay tuned for...". And quite often the End Titles would be cut off completely, especially if they were more than thirty seconds long. I remember TV screenings of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD - my hand shaking in terror while holding the mike up to the TV speaker in case Alfred Newman's wonderful music was cut or interrupted. They played the whole thing! There must indeed be a God, I thought. Another memory I'm sure many of us share is the "Shhh!" to our parents because they would be nattering away in the background, not realising that this was the most important thing in the world to us nerds.
I started off taping from the TV around the age of twelve... in fact I had just turned twelve. This was before I became aware that real people wrote all that crazy shit I was recording. They were just aural souvenirs to me back then, and because I was a horrific freak of nature, all my cassettes were filled with the Main Titles/End Titles for horror and SF films. It wasn't until about the age of fifteen (surely too old for that kind of nonsense?) that I branched out into non-genre movies.
One great thing was getting my first video recorder. This must have been about 1980 or '81. Crikey! I was nearing twenty years old and "normal" people were out drinking, smoking and shagging! I didn't start doing that until I was twenty-one. It was a joy replaying the videotape so that you knew exactly when to start recording. Before that there had been so many false starts with pre-credits sequences, dialogue etc... It used to be extremely tricky guessing when the End Titles were going to kick in.
My brother is now the custodian of all those old cassettes. He says they still play. Anyway, a few random listings from the cassettes.
Cassette 1: The very first music I ever taped was the less-than-20-seconds End Title of THE DEVIL DOLL (Franz Waxman), so I guess I must have made up my mind to start this nutty craze actually between the Main Titles and the End Credits. August the 18th, 1973. A week after my 12th birthday.
Christmas 1977. This must have been about Cassette Number 63. I realised that here was great music to be preserved outside the horror/SF genres. That first mixed bag of a cassette included MADIGAN (Don Costa), SHAFT (Isaac Hayes), AIRPORT (Alfred Newman), THE DEADLY AFFAIR (Quincy Jones), THE SATAN BUG (Jerry Goldsmith) and about a million more things.
It was a great way to get familiar with the styles of dozens of composers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cassette 1: The very first music I ever taped was the less-than-20-seconds End Title of THE DEVIL DOLL (Franz Waxman), so I guess I must have made up my mind to start this nutty craze actually between the Main Titles and the End Credits. August the 18th, 1973. A week after my 12th birthday.
Graham, did you ever acquire one of those Intrada 4-CD sets on Waxman, which includes The Devil-Doll?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's one of the strange mysteries of life, Zardoz. Despite THE DEVIL DOLL being a kind of gateway for me into soundtracks, Waxman never became one of my favourite composers. The box set you mention is one of the countless releases I haven't purchased. You might be surprised at the amount of stuff I actually don't have in my collection.
What transpired inside Graham Watt's mind when, in 2017, an official album was released containing music he recorded off-telly in 1973 @ age 12?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yup, I did this too. I wish I had those tapes. I remember recording tv show themes, especially from the NBC Mystery Movie, and ELLERY QUEEN. Good times.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yup, I did this too. I wish I had those tapes. I remember recording tv show themes, especially from the NBC Mystery Movie, and ELLERY QUEEN. Good times.
YES!! I loved Ellery Queen!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 16, 2020 - 9:34 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
alexp
(Member)
|
I did all these, too.
I remember when I first got an audio tape recorder for Christmas, I would record the main title of ‘Battlestar Galactica” off the TV speaker and I would play that music over and over.
Years later when got a stereo tape deck, I would record those previously unreleased music cues from rented video tapes by hooking the stereo patch cables from my tape deck to the back of my stereo VCR. The fidelity on my recordings sounded so much better than placing a microphone over a cheap TV speaker.
The DVD years increased the quality of my audio recordings. I bought a DVD player that has 6 audio outputs--one for each channel of the film’s sound mix (left, right, center, left surround, right surround, subwoofer). Most of the film’s dialogue is sent to the center output, so, I would hook-up my audio tape deck to either the DVD player’s left and right ports or the surround ports and I would get dialogue free music…with sound effects. But the film’s sound had to be mixed in 6-channels in order to benefit from talk-free audio.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
