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redirect|Original SoundtrackOther usesA soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture , book , television program or video game ; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.
Origin of the term
In movie industry terminology usage, a sound film|sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production . Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track ( dialogue track , sound effects track , and music track ), and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A Dubbing (filmmaking)|dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track (music and effects) containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.
The contraction soundtrack came into public consciousness with the advent of so-called "soundtrack albums" in the early 1950s. First conceived by movie companies as a promotional gimmick for new films, these commercially available recordings were labeled and advertised as "music from the original motion picture soundtrack ." This phrase was soon shortened to just "original motion picture soundtrack ." More accurately, such recordings are made from a film's music track, because they usually consist of the isolated music from a film, not the composite (sound) track with dialogue and sound effects.
The abbreviation OST is often used to describe the musical soundtrack on a recorded medium, such as compact disc|CD , and it stands for O riginal S ound t rack; however, it is sometimes also used to differentiate the original music heard and recorded versus a rerecording or cover version|cover of the music.
Types of recordings
In the soundtrack genre there are four types of recordings: # Musical film soundtracks which concentrate primarily on the songs (Examples: Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture|Grease , '' Singin' in the Rain ) # Film scores which showcase the background music from non-musicals (Examples: Music of Star Wars|Star Wars , Music of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy|The Lord of the Rings ) # Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of non-musicals (Examples: Sleepless in Seattle , When Harry Met Sally... ) # Video game soundtracks are often released after a game's release, usually consisting of the background music from the game's levels, menus, title screens, promo material (such as entire songs that only segments of which were used in the game), cut-screens and occasionally sound-effects used in the game (Examples: Sonic Heroes Original Soundtrax|Sonic Heroes , The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (original soundtrack)|The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time )
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (soundtrack)|The soundtrack to the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first commercially issued film soundtrackcite web | publisher = Chicago Sun-Times | date = Nov 3, 2006 | author= Jerry Osborne | title = Soundtracks start with 'Snow White' | url= http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20061103/ai_n16830847 | accessdate = 2007-09-12 Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot. It was released in January 1938 as ''Songs from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with the Same Characters and Sound Effects as in the Film of That Title) and has since seen numerous expansions and reissues.
The first musical film to have a commercially issued soundtrack album was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM ’s film biography of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern , Till the Clouds Roll By . The album was originally issued as a set of four 10-inch 78-rpm records. Only eight selections from the film were included in this first edition of the album. In order to fit the songs onto the record sides the musical material needed editing and manipulation. This was before tape existed, so the record producer needed to copy segments from the playback discs used on set, the copy and re-copy them from one disc to another adding transitions and cross-fades until the final master was created. Needless to say, it was several generations removed from the original and the sound quality suffered for it. The playback recordings were purposely recorded very "dry" (without reverberation); otherwise it would come across as too hollow sounding in large movie theatres. This made these albums sound flat and boxy.
MGM Records called these "original cast albums" in the style of Decca's Broadway show cast albums. They also coined the phrase "recorded directly from the soundtrack." Over the years the term "soundtrack" began to be commonly applied to any recording from a film, whether taken from the actual film soundtrack or re-recorded in studio. The phrase is also sometimes incorrectly used for Broadway cast recordings. While it is correct to call a "soundtrack" a "cast recording" (since it represents the film cast) it is never correct to call a "cast recording" a "soundtrack." Among MGM's most notable soundtrack albums were those of the films Good News (1947 film)|Good News , Easter Parade (film)|Easter Parade , Annie Get Your Gun (film)|Annie Get Your Gun , '' Singin' in the Rain , Show Boat (1951 film)|Show Boat , The Band Wagon , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (film)|Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , and Gigi (1958 film)|Gigi .
Film score albums did not really become popular until the LP album|LP era , although a few were issued in 78-rpm albums. Alex North’s score for the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 film)|A Streetcar Named Desire was released on a 10-inch LP by Capitol Records and sold so well that the label later re-released it on one side of a 12-inch LP with some of Max Steiner's film music on the reverse.
Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind has been recorded many times, but when the film was reissued in 1967, MGM Records finally released an album of the famous score recorded directly from the soundtrack. Like the 1967 re-release of the film, this version of the score was artificially "enhanced for stereo". In recent years, Rhino Records has released a 2-CD set of the complete Gone With the Wind score, restored to its original mono sound.
One of the biggest-selling film scores of all time was John Williams 's music from the movie Star Wars . Many film score albums go out-of-print after the films finish their theatrical runs and some have become extremely rare collectors’ items.
In a few rare instances an entire film dialogue track was issued on records. The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)|Romeo and Juliet was issued as a 4-LP set, as a single LP with musical and dialogue excerpts, and as an album containing only the film's musical score. The ground-breaking film '' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (film)|Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was issued by Warner Bros Records as a 2-LP set containing virtually all the dialogue from the film. RCA Victor also issued a 2-LP set what was virtually all the dialogue from the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons (1966 film)|A Man for All Seasons .
Movie and television soundtracks
main|Film scoreThe term soundtrack now most commonly refers to the music used in a movie (or television show), and/or to an album sold containing that music. Sometimes, the music has been recorded just for the film or album (e.g. Saturday Night Fever ). Often, but not always, and depending on the type of movie, the soundtrack album will contain portions of the film score|score , music composed for dramatic effect as the movie's plot occurs. In 1908, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the first music specifically for use in a motion picture (L'assasinat du duc de Guise), and releasing recordings of songs used in films became prevalent in the 1930s. Henry Mancini , who won an Emmy Award and two Grammy s for his soundtrack to Peter Gunn , was the first composer to have a widespread hit with a song from a soundtrack.
By convention, a soundtrack record can contain all kinds of music including music "inspired by" but not actually appearing in the movie; the score contains only music by the original film's composer(s).Savage, Mark. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7525242.stm Where Are the New Movie Themes? " BBC, 28 July 2008.
Video game soundtracks
main|Video game musicSoundtrack may also refer to music used in video games. While sound effect s were nearly universally used for action happening in the game, music to accompany the gameplay was a later development. Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway were early composers of music specifically for video games for the 1980s Commodore 64 computer. Koji Kondo was an early and important composer for Nintendo games. As the technology improved, polyphonic and often orchestral soundtracks replaced simple Monophony|monophonic melodies starting in the late 1980s and the soundtracks to popular games such as the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series began to be released separately. In addition to compositions written specifically for video games, the advent of CD technology allowed developers to incorporate licensed songs into their soundtrack (the Grand Theft Auto (series)| Grand Theft Auto series is a good example of this). Furthermore, when Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001, it featured an option allowing users to customize the soundtrack for certain games by ripping a CD to the hard-drive.
Book soundtracks
see also|Category:Book soundtracksOnly a few cases exist of an entire soundtrack being written specifically for a book.
A soundtrack for J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was composed by Craig Russell (American composer)|Craig Russell for the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony. Commissioned in 1995, it was finally put on disk in 2000 by the San Luis Obispo Symphony. Citation needed|date=February 2007 For the 1996 Star Wars novel Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire#Novel|Shadows of the Empire (written by author Steve Perry (author)|Steve Perry ), Lucasfilm chose Joel McNeely to write a score. This was an eccentric, experimental project, in contrast to all other soundtracks, as the composer was allowed to convey general moods and themes, rather than having to write music to flow for specific scenes. A project called "Sine Fiction" http://www.notype.com/drones/catalogue.e/sinefiction/ Sine Fiction (New) — No Type — electronic & experimental music has made some soundtracks to novels by science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke , and has thus far released 19 soundtracks to science-fiction novels or short stories. All of them are available for free download.
Author L. Ron Hubbard composed and recorded a soundtrack album to his novel Battlefield Earth (novel)|Battlefield Earth entitled Space Jazz . He marketed the concept album as "the only original sound track ever produced for a book before it becomes a movie". There are two other soundtracks to Hubbard novels, being Mission Earth (album)|Mission Earth by Edgar Winter and To the Stars (album)|To the Stars by Chick Corea .
The 1985 novel Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin , originally came in a box set with an audiocassette entitled Music and Poetry of the Kesh , featuring three performances of poetry, and ten musical compositions by Todd Barton.
In comics, Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron had an official soundtrack album. The original black-and-white Nexus #3 from Capitol comics included the "Flexi-Nexi" which was a soundtrack flexi-disc for the issue. Trosper by Jim Woodring included a soundtrack album composed and performed by Bill Frisell , http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/woodring/woodring.html Fantagraphics Books | Comics and Graphic Novels - Jim Woodring and the DC Comics Absolute Edition|Absolute Edition of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is planned to include an original vinyl record .
As Internet access became more widespread, a similar practice developed of accompanying a printed work with a downloadable theme song , rather than a complete and physically published album. The theme songs for Nextwave , http://marvel.com/news/comicstories.65.Nextwave Marvel Comics News: Next Wave: "And to prove it, we've created the band Thunder Thighs and commissioned a Theme Song worthy of these champions!"Runaways (comics)|Runaways , http://marvel.com/news/comicstories.8505.Download_The_All-New_Runaways_Theme_Song Download the All-New Runaways Theme Song Now& #33; | Marvel Heroes | Comic News | News | Marvel.com Achewood , Dinosaur Comics and Killroy and Tina are examples of this.
In Japan , such examples of music inspired by a work and not intended to soundtrack an radio drama|radio play or motion picture adaptation of it are known as an "image album" or " image song ," though this definition also includes such things as film score Demo (music)|demos inspired by concept art and songs inspired by a TV series which do not feature in it. Many audio book s have some form of musical accompaniment, but these are generally not extensive enough to be released as a separate soundtrack.
See also
Find your favorite movie soundtrack in seconds
http://www.moviessoundtrack.org Movies soundtrack
Audio restoration
Film score
Image album
Image song
List of soundtrack composers
Cast recording – for musical theater
Soundtrack album
SoundtrackNet
Musivisual Language
References
reflistRefimprove|date=September 2007
External links
http://www.soundtrackinfo.com/ the Soundtrack INFO project
http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/film.htm Film Composers and Soundtracks
http://www.soundtrack.net/trailers/ Soundtrack.net trailer music reference
