We're certainly both as surprised and as happy as most of you will be. Disney just contacted us out of the blue, and informed us that they were going to release a CD of my original music soundtrack to put out in conjunction with their new DVD edition of the 1982 motion picture, TRON. They asked if we had a digital stereo CD master available. The catch was that they needed the new master, like ... yesterday!
The first thought that came into my mind was: "The sleeping giant awakes...!", a scene from some childhood story in which everyone lives happily ever after. Yet it's true, this one has a happy ending. It was VERY short notice, a good example of the old hurry up and wait (or is it vice-versa this time, something like that...?), but we were well prepared. I've mentioned several times before that we had finally made excellent surround transfers of the music master tapes, recordings which had become unplayable in the late 80's (there's a story on a previous news page). We suggested that we include some bonus tracks, music that didn't make it to the final original LP and cassette for reasons of space. Those masters had to be found and transferred, too. Liner notes ("Looking Back on Tron") had to be written. Most important, the whole thing had to be mixed to stereo and mastered with the same 20-bit Hi-D care we give our latest series of albums on East Side Digital: the best the masters can sound, short of altering them in any way artistically.
Fortunately, the sound for TRON was more recent than many of the ESD remasterings, and didn't need so much manual cleanup and massaging of tiny ticks, bumps, hums, hisses and so forth, that have become only audible on the latest audio systems. So the process went smoothly if intensely during a marathon week of whirlwind production over the Thanksgiving holiday. Hey, how could I refuse this opportunity?
This was a friendly surprise, a positive way to celebrate the holiday season at the end of a trying year on more of an up beat. All TRON enthusiasts should take note of the in store date of January 29th for the soundtrack CD's of the first CGI feature motion picture (with some notable breakthroughs in the music, too). The sound is beyond anything you've heard before: sharp and vivid, not like all those lame, overpriced pirate editions that thieves have sneaked out to fill the CD void (all faked from LP and Cassette transfers -- ick!).
Here the last copy!
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