Robert Aragon, artist for Monstrous Movie Music

About Monstrous Movie Music

Our goal in this CD series was to re-record the scores from science-fiction, fantasy, and horror films of the past in a manner that's as faithful as possible to the original movie studio versions.

Rather than using standard classical microphone set-ups as if the music were written for the concert hall, we close-miked the orchestras. This not only creates a more powerful and immediate sound consistent with the dramatic intentions of film music, but it also reveals additional instrumental detail. Just as the visual nature of film demands close-ups, film music has similar requirements, such as when the drama dictates that a single oboe must dominate over the rest of the orchestra.

Occasionally, last-minute composition and orchestration changes were made at the original studio scoring sessions. Rather than record the hasty alterations that were often done to better synch the music to the image or to prevent the music from conflicting with dialogue or sound effects, in many cases we have recorded the composers' original intents.

We hope the Monstrous Movie Music series serves as a tribute to the many gifted composers who labored hard on these pictures for little or no recognition. As watching these movies will attest, the composers who wrote these unjustly-ignored film scores were the true Frankensteins -- the ones whose artistic talents brought the cinematic creatures to life.

You can learn more about some of the people associated with Monstrous Movie Music via the accompanying links. There were many others who helped make our recordings as good as possible, including recording engineers Malgorzata Polanska and Hubert Geschwandtner, masterers Lee Scott and Thomas Bartke, and the fabulous musicians of the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cracow and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia (Bratislava).

And, of course, special thanks to the incredibly talented composers whose music we’ve released.

Masatoshi Mitsumoto, conductor

Kathleen Mayne, music restorer, co-producer

Robert Aragon, cover artist

McKellar MacSchecter, PR department

David Schecter, writer, co-producer