After equipment on Starship C57D is mysteriously sabotaged, Commander Adams and Lieutenant Ostrow confront Dr. Morbius in his lab. Morbius is then compelled to reveal his discoveries on the Forbidden Planet, Altair IV and the incredible advanced technology of the vanished ancient Krell race. Morbius begins his tour of the Krell’s astounding artifacts by sharing some of their music, from half a million years ago.
The original composers for Forbidden Planet were Bebe and Louis Barron who recorded their groundbreaking “electric tonalities” score in their kitchen in New York. The duo composed completely electronic pieces that they created by overloading patched circuits and recording these sonic experiments. The results were truly alien to the ears of most audiences, except those that may have been familiar with some of the other experimental electronic artists in the early 1950s.
In my approach to creating an original re-score, I chose to honor the spirit of electronic music technology of the mid-1950s. To augment the home-made synthesizer patches, the Barrons made heavy use of ring modulation, reverb, tape-delay, filters, and tape manipulations. I chose to limit my effects to digital emulations of the originals. Instead of tape manipulation, I used a looper pedal that his the afore mentioned effects available. Moreover, I could slow down, speed up, re-pitch, and create loops, as if I was working with tape.
In considering the Barrons and the time period, I became curious as to other electronic artists in this mid-1950s period. To begin my score, I decided to sample various recordings from this period that would form the sound bed, and set the tone for my own analog synthesizer additions. I found this article online from Fact Magazine (11/29/2016) titled “The greatest electronic albums of the 1950s and 1960s.” I specifically chose records that were no more than a year or two before or after the music production (1955) of Forbidden Planet. Here’s are the pieces I selected from:
Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan - “Song of the Second Moon” (1957)
Herbert Eimert - “Fünf Stücke” (1955/1956)
Jean-Jacques Perrey - “Prélude au Sommeil” (1957)
Ussachevsky, Vladimir - “Sonic Contours” (1955)
Additionally, because I’m a long-time fan and the mid-1950s is when his first Arkestra records were being released, I chose a tune from Sun Ra’s “Jazz by Sun Ra” titled “Sun Song” (1955). Sun Ra being one of the first artists to profess that he was from outerspace, and an early adopter of synths, I felt compelled to incorporate his vision with the electronic vanguard of the day. There are two percussive/rhythmic lines that I used for the rhythm to my score. One is from Dissevelt and Baltan’s “Second Moon,” at 112 bpm. The other is from “Sun Song” and is at 129bpm. And is floor toms and cymbals. I re-ptiched and added ring mod to this loop, and slowed it down to sync with the loop from “Second Moon.” In my score there is a distorted/ring-modded recurring organ line, that’s Sun Ra.
The other mid-1950s synth elements I included will be much less distinguishable from my own synth recordings and from each other. I sampled them into my 1010Music Blackbox sampler and played them through my Boss looper’s effects and recorded and arranged the layers in Logic Pro. Finally, I did one-take passes performing on my Korg Minilogue. I chose this synth because it’s analog, has lots of knobs, and has a slightly lo-fi sound. Since the Barrons did not use a piano style keyboard for their soundscapes, I focused on tweeking the Minilogues knobs to change the envelopes, lfos, pitches etc. The sample phrases were also chosen for non-melodic, non-source identifiable tones.
Overall, this approach yielded dense, noisy, and somewhat menacing results that I feel both honored the original groundbreaking composers, and provided suitably alien technology artifact sounds that suit the narrative of Forbidden Planet, and perhaps even hint at the primitive and destructive Id monsters hiding in their advanced machines.