Moog Music Forum

I was just watching Star Trek the Motion Picture, the very first movie and it has some pretty awesome bass synth sounds. Does anyone know if thats a Taurus 1? If not what is it?

louis wrote:I was just watching Star Trek the Motion Picture, the very first movie and it has some pretty awesome bass synth sounds. Does anyone know if thats a Taurus 1? If not what is it?

The distinctive bass sound you are referring to was produced by an innovative instrument known as Blaster Beam. When music composer Jerry Goldsmith heard it for the first time, he knew he wanted to use it for Star Trek The Motion Picture music and sound effects. Other sound effects and music were done using an ADS 11(Advanced Digital Synthesizer) built by Con Brio Inc. Unfortunately, no Moog.

But this was 1979 and digital technology had already slowly started to eclipse analog gear in the studios, at least in audio processing. The dark age of everything digital in synthesizers and the dreaded DX7, and later samplers, wasn't far away. Luckily, those days are long gone now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Beam

The blaster beam parts were performed by Craig Huxley who also did the synth work on Goldsmith's underscore.

The synths used on the soundtrack included a Yamaha CS-80, Serge modular, ARP 2600 and Oberheim OB-X.

It's a heavily orchestrated score though and from what I remember (it's been a while since I heard the music) most of the synth sounds are barely audible in the mix (for this score they were mainly used to blend with and reinforce other instruments of the orchestra).

A lot of the sound effects were done by Alan Howarth using a Prophet 5 rev 2, Prophet 10 (original single-keyboard version), ARP avatar
and a Moog vocoder. Some of Howarth's stuff can be heard on its own in the teaser trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwivz3gECus

The other FX in the film was done by Frank Serafine (using a Con-Brio ADS-100), Francisco Lupica and Joel Goldsmith.

I'd swear that was Orson Welles narrating that teaser.

Eric

Doesn't seem to have his vocal resonance (or should that be Emphasis being a Moog site ). I'm a bit of an Orson obsessive - I was even in a band called Church of Orson. Dropped the name when that awful band Orson had a hit.

Great soundtrack - think I'll go and order it now. That Beam Blaster is, well, a blast - the same sound was used in Star Wars II during the asteroid bombing scene with Fett. And the guy that built it was a child actor in the original series. Didn't he also do the musical arrangements for Shatners' 1960s record releases?

That is Orson Welles! I had to look it up after I posted.

Side note: Interestingly that documentary he narrated "The man who saw tomorrow" predicted 9/11 haha check it out.

Back to topic lol

EricK wrote:That is Orson Welles! I had to look it up after I posted.

Sounds like Orson-Lite to me. Mind you that probably isn't the best audio quality - old trailer of dubious source + YouTube compression. Will check out the doc.

Mr Arkadin wrote:

EricK wrote:That is Orson Welles! I had to look it up after I posted.

Sounds like Orson-Lite to me. Mind you that probably isn't the best audio quality - old trailer of dubious source + YouTube compression. Will check out the doc.

Yep, that's him all right.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000080/bio

years ago I found a patch online for a Roland JP-8000 / JP-8080 that matched that bass sound perfectly. However I've lost it now and was searching for it again which is how I found this post.

jrogers wrote:years ago I found a patch online for a Roland JP-8000 / JP-8080 that matched that bass sound perfectly. However I've lost it now and was searching for it again which is how I found this post.

Something very much like it is in the Integra 7. I was just auditioning sounds when I found it. As soon as I heard it I thought of the Start Trek movie. I have no idea what sound it was or what it was called though, sorry.