The Holy Grail and the rest

Welcome back with another post that qualifies as "long overdue". Let's recap.

The Holy Grail

In my previous post I announced that all recording has been completed and the only thing left to do was to transcribe track 14 (the full Orchestral Main Theme, the Holy Grail of Airwolf Themes) so that it can be recorded by Mark. That turned out to be not exactly accurate - I ended up recording it myself. There were a couple of reasons behind this but the most important factors were the logistics and... pride. The challenge of doing the Orchestral Main Theme properly (as I already made two attempts; in 1998 and 2002 - some of you might still have these mono 56kbps mp3s...) has haunted me for ages; much like Mark's "Airwolf II". This was by far my most challenging, complex and time consuming piece to date. The amount of tweaks and fine tuning to make it sound realistic is enormous (at least by my standards). Some of the instrument tracks carry up to 5 parameter envelopes.

The recordings of this Holy Grail finished a month ago, and by September 8th I managed to achieve an "acceptable" mix. At that point I was almost ready to post teasers, but with tracks like this you need to put them on a shelf and let them... rot a little bit. Rot, so that after initial excitement you start to be less biased, engage criticism - you really need a love-hate relationship with them. There are a couple of tweaks that still need to be done, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to give you something at the end of this week.

Per popular demand the track is based on the Pilot version of the Orchestral Main Theme and not only includes the Main Theme alone, but also the "Gabrielle's Death" segment. If you look at the CD1 pre-production tracklist though, you'll notice that the track is 5:18, while the original "Gabrielle's Death + Sand Dune Chase" segment is closer to 4:15. Well, the album IS called "Airwolf Extended Themes", isn't it? I won't reveal what the extra minute is just yet, but it definitely isn't a plain extension of the Main Theme part, no siree! It's a completely different segment of music, which gives track 14 a "suite" feel.

The rest

Besides track 14, I've been busy making tweaks to other tracks. You'll notice on the CD1 pre-production tracklist that tracks 04 and 06 are now green. Track 04 (Season 1 Synth Theme) is now much more refined and dynamic than the EP version and upgrades in Track 06 are mostly related to maintaining consistency with track 04. Track 05 also received some upgrades (more dynamic than what was previewed) and so did Track 10 (UDI's Main Theme), speaking of which - it's one of the very few that have not been previewed yet (completed Aug 2011)! If time permits tracks 01 and 03 will be revamped as well (so it probably still makes sense to grab the EP, as while all the tracks will be on CD1 they will sound differently). This work will wrap up by the end of October.

Stay tuned for track 14 previews.