I found that the music from The Mummy got a bit repetitive on the second part of the album. I didn't make the mental "side one" and "side two" delineation I usually do when I make these compilations (even though one ended up developing anyway) and so I sort of lost track of the threads I had planned for this particular film in the second half of the album. I grouped several tracks that have deal with the same thematic material - "Regeneration," "A Face of Sand" and "Rebirth" all feature Imhotep's theme and the latter two the heroic theme. Except for a brief appearance in "A Face of Sand," the love theme is completely absent in all these tracks; it isn't heard since from "Camel Race" (track 8) through to "Into the Sunset," the penultimate track on the album. On the other hand, the heroic theme was heard three times in the latter portion of the album, the effect being somewhat overbearing by the end. The variations on the heroic theme heard in "A Face of Sand" and "Rebirth" are very similar, giving the latter track a feeling of déjà vu when it should be triumphant.
The net effect of Goldsmith's heroic theme on the listener in my original assembly.
There ended up being an easy fix. Another track that was initially under consideration for inclusion on this mix was "Mumia Attack," which features the thunderous Mumia theme previously heard in "Night Boarders" (track 5) and concludes with a beautiful quote of the love theme. While I favored the more confrontational "A Face of Sand" when assembling the album (and I am sorry to have "Goodbye Winston" go), I ended up feeling that it unbalanced the whole somewhat. This keeps The Mummy much fresher in the second half of the disc.
"Mumia Attack" is a shorter track than "A Face of Sand," and so I made up for the difference by expanding the excerpt from "Rebirth" to feature some of the Poltergeist-esque choral work that opens the cue. The track plays to its end, from there "The Great Wall" takes over and the edit is afterwards identical to the other version.
I did make some minor changes to other tracks; I smoothed out a slightly awkward edit in my "Shangri-La" suite (track 9), I raised the volume on the "Wrong Girlfriend" part of "The Final Confrontation" (track 19) to make it more consistent with the surrounding material and I softened the entrance of "Into the Sunset" (track 20) which was more jarring than it ought to have been on the other disc.
This is embarrassing because I had already sent out a few copies of the original version. It took me two weeks of listening to really isolate the major problem, and once I did I couldn't get the gnawing feeling that "A Face of Sand" was a mistake out of my head. The other issues were minor and I wouldn't have bothered to fix them if I wasn't already cracking open the master, but I had to at least try to fix what I found a glaring issue, and I think I might be sending out a few replacement copies.
Yoinked from
Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
You scored as Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) You are a light and humorous person. No one can help but to smile to your wit. Now if only the improbability drive would stop turning you into weird stuff.
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