I watched a YouTube video about the synthesizers used in Brad Fiedel’s Terminator 2 score: It’s possible I’ve already mentioned this in a blog column or online somewhere...but check out 5:40 where the creator plays a sound called “Brass Falloff” on the Fairlight synthesizer. In a normal register, it’s a brass hit. In a low register...it’s the T-1000 theme. You just literally press a low note and it’s that unforgettable pulse. Pretty cool—and way simpler than you might think.

Happy new year everybody! We’re looking forward to an exciting year at FSM, and it’s going to be jam-packed January as we ship our Kickstarter perks and make more improvements to the new website . Thank you!

Happy New Year’s Eve! We have completed our listings and will go live with the next CD sale on Tuesday, January 6, at 10AM Pacific (1PM Eastern) at www.fsmcds.com . This is a very interesting collection with a lot of rare but inexpensive items I had never seen before, as well as the usual collector goodies. There is also a significant assortment of library music CDs, and I didn’t know how many name composers contributed to these. Looking forward!

I’ve gotten permission from another batch of sellers to do clearance prices on more of the oldest stock at www.fsmcds.com . If you go to the end of the listings (presently page 45 ) and work backwards, you’ll see the slashed-out prices with the sale prices beside them. Some are pretty radical so I hope you find some good deals! One way or another, I need this stuff to move! If you want a spreadsheet of the entire inventory, please go here . We are prepping the next big sale—c

The great star and icon Brigitte Bardot has passed at the age of 91. Deadline news item here . In her honor, one of the all-time great film themes, Le Mepris ( Contempt ) by Georges Delerue: I know Marty Scorsese agrees with me!

The Star Wars main title is one of the most familiar pieces of music in the world. But I saw a dopey video that claimed it was not really in B-flat major (of course it is), but in E-flat major. It’s so wrong, I don’t even want to embed it, but it’s here . The reason is because of the A-flat major chord near the end of the main theme (dah-dah-dah DUN)—look at the top stave below: A-flat major is not a chord in the B-flat major scale. It’s been a long time since I wrote a musi

We’ve improved the home page at www.filmscoremonthly.com . We are working our way systematically through the site to fix things—stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!

Check out this reduction Patrick Suiter posted a couple of years ago of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban quidditch match by John Williams. I guess I missed it at the time? It would take me hours to go through it carefully. This movie is like the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter movies—where all the choices work together to make the very best version of the franchise. It’s not even a matter of being “darker,” just in elevating everything into more mature

We are making progress getting the new site organized—but there’s a ton left to do. I am particularly concerned with the search engine(s). We have 35 years’ worth of content, and it’s a priority for me that people be able to find what they’re looking for. This is likely going to take thousands of dollars to program, but we will do it!

I stumbled on a YouTube video about one of my guilty pleasures, Logan’s Run . (Nothing guilty about loving the Goldsmith score, though!) Here’s a playlist to a series of videos meticulously trying to reconstruct the lost bits, using audio from a preview screening.

Intrada has announced their next Kickstarter will be to record a CD of The Night of the Hunter , an absolutely gorgeous score by Walter Schumann that’s buried under narration on the existing soundtrack album. Bravo! Can’t wait for this one!

I was sorry to hear the news that Bob Burns has passed away. He was an institution in the sci-fi/horror/fantasy community— read here —and so generous and kind. I was given a tour of his collection in the early 1990s and it blew my mind the stuff he had, and how open and friendly he was in sharing access with likeminded fans. He and his wife Kathy (who passed a few years ago) were such gracious hosts. He also, by the way, was the person who rescued the stereo master tapes to T

Above: A signed, framed LP of The Prize by Jerry Goldsmith we have in stock . Thanks to everybody who bought from our clearance sale yesterday! Still lots of discounted and free items available— check out the details . And here’s a spreadsheet of our total inventory . Thank you!

Update: Here’s a spreadsheet of the inventory . Prices listed are the sale prices but you need to use the site itself ( www.fsmcds.com ) to see which items have sale prices. I have drastically slashed prices on the oldest items at www.fsmcds.com . These are CDs that we’ve had for 18–24 months, and who knows if I priced them too high, or just nobody wanted them (or both?) but I have radically reduced them—anywhere from 25% to 75% off. And a whole bunch I’ve reduced down to $0,

My compliments to YouTube user “rmxmusicprojects” who has completed James Horner’s Star Trek II score. He also has Star Trek III and TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds” on his channel—and lots more. Quite the investment of time—very well done!

I’ve carried the torch for a long time for the animation music of Johnny Douglas, whose jazzy, muscular writing for Marvel Productions in the early ’80s became a lifelong favorite. Thanks to his granddaughter, Louise Camby, at the family label, Dulcima Records , his music for Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Incredible Hulk and Dungeons and Dragons has been rescued from oblivion, and is now available on CD and vinyl, as well as digital download. Check out the details

I have to beg everybody’s indulgence: we need to ship the Kickstarter donor rewards in mid-January. This is because we finally have the Best of Film Score Monthly book at the printers, but they can’t turn it around faster than that. The other perks are done and ready to ship, but I have to ship everything all at once, otherwise it’s not fair to the people also expecting the book. And if I double-ship (send items in more than one shipment), it’ll be several thousand more doll

Very sorry to hear of the passing of jazz artist Gordon Goodwin . He suffered a stroke while fighting pancreatic cancer. I emailed with him briefly when we were working on the Deluxe Edition of Star Trek: Nemesis ; he did the arrangement of “Blue Skies” for Brent Spiner at the Troi-Riker wedding. Super talented and super nice.

Was Tron ever cool? I remember in the ’80s it was this kind of also-ran sci-fi movie that had a unique look and cool concept—but dramatically, was pretty inert. It was this sort of intriguing flop that we’d revisit once in a while. I never would have pegged it as a franchise, but Disney has tried anyway, and, well, zzzzzzz . The original Wendy Carlos score is super cool and here’s a video on it which I enjoyed: It comes from a unique point in time when mixing synthesizers wi

Today’s project on our end is getting the FSMOnline subscription/payment service to work right. There are a lot of moving parts on the “backend” as we say about websites: caching, e-commerce, “webhooks,” and a lot of other stuff I never thought I would learn about. It’s frustrating not to have a better grasp on this, personally, because I can’t get in there and help the way I could if it was, for example, editing a magazine article. But we’re confident in our tech folks to so