12 ms·

Vangelis’ film score for Blade Runner

159 points by daverol 4y ago

readingnews 4y ago
Typo on page 6, those are BGW not BWG amplifiers. They are BGW 750 laboratory amps, and I am quite familiar with them. They were some of the best sound reinforcement/labs amps made at the time.
jv22222 4y ago
Oh wow, scrolling up/down with 2 fingers on a trackpad makes the pages fly by horizontally insanely fast.... You'd have to be a replicant to read it.
- kingofpandora 4y ago
  It's probably a test ...
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Bad UX here. Scrolls more than a whole screen at a time on FF with my settings. & no scroll-bar, so chunks of the text can't be read. CSS oddity's my guess.
- nielsbot 4y ago
  I copied the pasted all the text into my markdown editor just so I could read it.
Fnoord 4y ago
Which is very neatly mixed with (goa) trance by Paul Oakenfold in his 'The Goa Mix' a-side, orig. broadcast in 1994 [1] (other versions exist as well). https://www.discogs.com/release/3016836-Paul-Oakenfold-The-Goa-Mix https://www.discogs.com/release/3016836-Paul-Oakenfold-The-G...
- donclark 4y ago
  https://open.spotify.com/album/4YmtGnpe9snrykNjqJwpOK https://open.spotify.com/album/4YmtGnpe9snrykNjqJwpOK
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    The 2011 version makes me sad. It was completely unnecessary and inferior to the original.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  Here is the whole thing: https://soundcloud.com/pauloakenfold/paul-oakenfold-radio-1-1 https://soundcloud.com/pauloakenfold/paul-oakenfold-radio-1-...
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  Wow, it's been ages since I've listened to this. I wrote a ton of code in the late 90s/early 2000s listening to this album. Thank you!
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    Goa trance is one of the few music genres which allows me to focus on a task but nowadays it tires me too much (my brain gets tired), cause of age. So I tend to stick to mid-tempo and techno (ambient would me too tired as well but for different reasons). If you want to get back into the music, consider some of the Astral Projection remixes (or works others remixed of theirs, like Filteria).
eps 4y ago
On iPad the text appears to be cut off mid-line at the bottom of every page and it's not clearhow many lines are not visible.
- SamBam 4y ago
  In general the site is not mobile friendly.
  - ygra 4y ago
    At least Reader mode works fine.
- aasasd 4y ago
  Yeah, the authors managed to outdo plain PDF at hostility toward phone users, all for a wall of text interspersed with images.
comprev 4y ago
Dillinja produced a fantastic track by sampling the score - "The Angels Fell" [MET006, 1995] One of my all-time favourite jungle/drum&bass tracks :-) https://metalheadz.bandcamp.com/track/the-angels-fell-2015-remaster-2 https://metalheadz.bandcamp.com/track/the-angels-fell-2015-r...
- bni 4y ago
  It's awesome. I had this CD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooverider_Presents:_The_Prototype_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooverider_Presents:_The_Prot... Contains another Dillinja track that also has Blade Runner samples.
  - comprev 4y ago
    Which track? Silver Blade uses "Boymerang - Soul Beat Runna" as the source
    - bni 4y ago
      ok. Yes Silver Blade, there is also Blade runner in there
- donclark 4y ago
  https://open.spotify.com/track/2KL9mHCn3aSZJzxpJM4HNb https://open.spotify.com/track/2KL9mHCn3aSZJzxpJM4HNb
craig_s_bell 4y ago
I'm particularly fond of the soundtrack editions which overlay Vangelis' music with city background noise, bits of dialog, and other atmospherics from the appropriate scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3fz6CC45ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3fz6CC45ok I don't know what this version is properly called; however I used to listen to a similar (but shorter, perhaps one hour long) version called the 'Esper Edition'. Give it a listen, while you read the article... or anytime.
- bni 4y ago
  It's great. There is also great versions without dialog if preffered. Finding an "authentic" version if the Blade Runner soundtrack is surprisingly difficult. Most are compilations and reinterpretations, even made by Vangelis himself. My favourite is this version: http://www.vangelisrarities.com/produit/blade-runner-2019-edition/ http://www.vangelisrarities.com/produit/blade-runner-2019-ed... The maker must have spent a lot of time extracting this from the multichannel Audiotracks of the Blu-Rays.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Similar to finding a version of Blade Runner you like. Some have the narration, some don't.
  - skore 4y ago
    I see no way to get a hold of that particular soundtrack and searching the web failed me. How did you get a copy? Any tips?
    - bni 4y ago
      After much searching I found a copy (FLAC) on MEGA, but I can't find my way back to it. No search engine seems to index MEGA
- fennecfoxen 4y ago
  If you like these, consider also his work in The City (1990). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPpJbgod_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPpJbgod_k
smoldesu 4y ago
For anyone interested in the world of analog synths, now is the time to jump in. The hobby is starting to get affordable enough for everyone, but elitist enough that you'd be fooled into thinking that synth owners spend a lot of money on their hobby. Joking aside, the Yamaha CS-80 sound that built Vangelis' career is easily a $60,000 synthesizer today, but you can still get 90% the same sound from a $600 Behringer Deepmind 6. Both instruments are obviously respectable in their own rights (and perhaps detestable in others), but I think it represents a really hopeful trend for the future of electronic music. I still have a hard time believing that you can get several high-quality polyphonic, analog synthesizers for less than a grand.
- ohhelloxoxo 4y ago
  I'm very much in that boat myself! Zero synth or really even musical experience, picked up a Korg Prologue on a lark from a local CL seller. Do you have any recommended introductory resources? Right now I'm focusing on learning the basic modulation the synth offers alongside some very basic music theory to get a grasp on chords/melodies/etc.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    That's awesome! I'd recommend all first-step beginners check out Ableton's Learning Music[0] and Learning Synths[1] resources to start. They're both great sites for getting to grips with the basics, and should take ~2 hours each. They're also super accessible, anyone aged middle-school or older should be able to get something valuable from these guides. Learning Synths is particularly salient because it teaches subtractive synthesis, so (almost) all of the parameters it shows you how to use will also exist on the Prologue. After that, it's mostly up to you. There are hundreds of niches in both sound design and music theory, all of them with their own unique quirks to learn. Let your sense of curiosity guide you, and you'll definitely find something interesting. You should probably look into getting some DAW software if you want to compose full tracks, and a DAC would allow you to record off the Prologue into your computer. It really is an open-ended hobby besides that. The only other piece of advice I like to give is to temper your expectations. The process of learning music theory and sound design is long, and everyone makes a lot of garbage when they're starting (much like programming). Unlike programming, I find the process of sound design to be pretty therapeutic, and many nights I'd find myself sitting in front of my modular rack instead of watching TV or playing games with friends. Everyone's relationship with it will be a little different, but nobody should be overly critical of their own work. Do whatever is fun to you, and let the inspiration follow. [0] https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ [1] https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
MikeDelta 4y ago
For me Nemo studios have such a mysterious vibe. I can imagine Vangelis walking around the city and spending days and nights making his music there. Must have been amazing times. He will not be forgotten.
cronix 4y ago
The 9 year old me didn't know who Vangelis was, but my whole family loved watching Cosmos and loved the music in the early 80's. I loved his music long before I knew who made it. We had the record and played it all the time and was a favorite in the car on long trips (recorded to cassette). That show turned me onto science. And music. Today I listen to it and a flood of memories take over. The Grand Canyon. The Tetons. Yellowstone. Dinosaur Nat'l Park. Mesa Verde. Walley World (jk). All triggered by music; such a beautiful and wondrous thing.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  > Cosmos The soundtrack for that comes from Heaven and Hell, one of Vangelis' best.
telotortium 4y ago
How does this page implement the horizontal scrolling? How does it decide how to format into columns?
- telotortium 4y ago
  Not too interesting technically - it's just a bunch of divs that are manually filled with text and defined to be a fixed size. I was hoping to see something that would automatically reformat text into columns based on screen and column size, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29172083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29172083.
stewbrew 4y ago
I'd say the page is a candidate for the title worst mobile UX ever.

159 points by daverol 4y ago

Typo on page 6, those are BGW not BWG amplifiers. They are BGW 750 laboratory amps, and I am quite familiar with them. They were some of the best sound reinforcement/labs amps made at the time.

jv22222 4y ago

Oh wow, scrolling up/down with 2 fingers on a trackpad makes the pages fly by horizontally insanely fast.... You'd have to be a replicant to read it.

kingofpandora 4y ago
It's probably a test ...
8bitsrule 4y ago
Bad UX here. Scrolls more than a whole screen at a time on FF with my settings. & no scroll-bar, so chunks of the text can't be read. CSS oddity's my guess.
nielsbot 4y ago
I copied the pasted all the text into my markdown editor just so I could read it.

Fnoord 4y ago

Which is very neatly mixed with (goa) trance by Paul Oakenfold in his 'The Goa Mix' a-side, orig. broadcast in 1994 [1] (other versions exist as well). https://www.discogs.com/release/3016836-Paul-Oakenfold-The-Goa-Mix https://www.discogs.com/release/3016836-Paul-Oakenfold-The-G...

donclark 4y ago
https://open.spotify.com/album/4YmtGnpe9snrykNjqJwpOK https://open.spotify.com/album/4YmtGnpe9snrykNjqJwpOK
- vehemenz 4y ago
  The 2011 version makes me sad. It was completely unnecessary and inferior to the original.
Krasnol 4y ago
Here is the whole thing: https://soundcloud.com/pauloakenfold/paul-oakenfold-radio-1-1 https://soundcloud.com/pauloakenfold/paul-oakenfold-radio-1-...
tonyarkles 4y ago
Wow, it's been ages since I've listened to this. I wrote a ton of code in the late 90s/early 2000s listening to this album. Thank you!
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Goa trance is one of the few music genres which allows me to focus on a task but nowadays it tires me too much (my brain gets tired), cause of age. So I tend to stick to mid-tempo and techno (ambient would me too tired as well but for different reasons). If you want to get back into the music, consider some of the Astral Projection remixes (or works others remixed of theirs, like Filteria).

eps 4y ago

On iPad the text appears to be cut off mid-line at the bottom of every page and it's not clearhow many lines are not visible.

SamBam 4y ago
In general the site is not mobile friendly.
- ygra 4y ago
  At least Reader mode works fine.
aasasd 4y ago
Yeah, the authors managed to outdo plain PDF at hostility toward phone users, all for a wall of text interspersed with images.

comprev 4y ago

Dillinja produced a fantastic track by sampling the score - "The Angels Fell" [MET006, 1995] One of my all-time favourite jungle/drum&bass tracks :-) https://metalheadz.bandcamp.com/track/the-angels-fell-2015-remaster-2 https://metalheadz.bandcamp.com/track/the-angels-fell-2015-r...

bni 4y ago
It's awesome. I had this CD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooverider_Presents:_The_Prototype_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooverider_Presents:_The_Prot... Contains another Dillinja track that also has Blade Runner samples.
- comprev 4y ago
  Which track? Silver Blade uses "Boymerang - Soul Beat Runna" as the source
  - bni 4y ago
    ok. Yes Silver Blade, there is also Blade runner in there
donclark 4y ago
https://open.spotify.com/track/2KL9mHCn3aSZJzxpJM4HNb https://open.spotify.com/track/2KL9mHCn3aSZJzxpJM4HNb

craig_s_bell 4y ago

I'm particularly fond of the soundtrack editions which overlay Vangelis' music with city background noise, bits of dialog, and other atmospherics from the appropriate scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3fz6CC45ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3fz6CC45ok I don't know what this version is properly called; however I used to listen to a similar (but shorter, perhaps one hour long) version called the 'Esper Edition'. Give it a listen, while you read the article... or anytime.

bni 4y ago
It's great. There is also great versions without dialog if preffered. Finding an "authentic" version if the Blade Runner soundtrack is surprisingly difficult. Most are compilations and reinterpretations, even made by Vangelis himself. My favourite is this version: http://www.vangelisrarities.com/produit/blade-runner-2019-edition/ http://www.vangelisrarities.com/produit/blade-runner-2019-ed... The maker must have spent a lot of time extracting this from the multichannel Audiotracks of the Blu-Rays.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Similar to finding a version of Blade Runner you like. Some have the narration, some don't.
- skore 4y ago
  I see no way to get a hold of that particular soundtrack and searching the web failed me. How did you get a copy? Any tips?
  - bni 4y ago
    After much searching I found a copy (FLAC) on MEGA, but I can't find my way back to it. No search engine seems to index MEGA
fennecfoxen 4y ago
If you like these, consider also his work in The City (1990). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPpJbgod_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPpJbgod_k

smoldesu 4y ago

For anyone interested in the world of analog synths, now is the time to jump in. The hobby is starting to get affordable enough for everyone, but elitist enough that you'd be fooled into thinking that synth owners spend a lot of money on their hobby. Joking aside, the Yamaha CS-80 sound that built Vangelis' career is easily a $60,000 synthesizer today, but you can still get 90% the same sound from a $600 Behringer Deepmind 6. Both instruments are obviously respectable in their own rights (and perhaps detestable in others), but I think it represents a really hopeful trend for the future of electronic music. I still have a hard time believing that you can get several high-quality polyphonic, analog synthesizers for less than a grand.

ohhelloxoxo 4y ago
I'm very much in that boat myself! Zero synth or really even musical experience, picked up a Korg Prologue on a lark from a local CL seller. Do you have any recommended introductory resources? Right now I'm focusing on learning the basic modulation the synth offers alongside some very basic music theory to get a grasp on chords/melodies/etc.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  That's awesome! I'd recommend all first-step beginners check out Ableton's Learning Music[0] and Learning Synths[1] resources to start. They're both great sites for getting to grips with the basics, and should take ~2 hours each. They're also super accessible, anyone aged middle-school or older should be able to get something valuable from these guides. Learning Synths is particularly salient because it teaches subtractive synthesis, so (almost) all of the parameters it shows you how to use will also exist on the Prologue. After that, it's mostly up to you. There are hundreds of niches in both sound design and music theory, all of them with their own unique quirks to learn. Let your sense of curiosity guide you, and you'll definitely find something interesting. You should probably look into getting some DAW software if you want to compose full tracks, and a DAC would allow you to record off the Prologue into your computer. It really is an open-ended hobby besides that. The only other piece of advice I like to give is to temper your expectations. The process of learning music theory and sound design is long, and everyone makes a lot of garbage when they're starting (much like programming). Unlike programming, I find the process of sound design to be pretty therapeutic, and many nights I'd find myself sitting in front of my modular rack instead of watching TV or playing games with friends. Everyone's relationship with it will be a little different, but nobody should be overly critical of their own work. Do whatever is fun to you, and let the inspiration follow. [0] https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ [1] https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

MikeDelta 4y ago

For me Nemo studios have such a mysterious vibe. I can imagine Vangelis walking around the city and spending days and nights making his music there. Must have been amazing times. He will not be forgotten.

cronix 4y ago

The 9 year old me didn't know who Vangelis was, but my whole family loved watching Cosmos and loved the music in the early 80's. I loved his music long before I knew who made it. We had the record and played it all the time and was a favorite in the car on long trips (recorded to cassette). That show turned me onto science. And music. Today I listen to it and a flood of memories take over. The Grand Canyon. The Tetons. Yellowstone. Dinosaur Nat'l Park. Mesa Verde. Walley World (jk). All triggered by music; such a beautiful and wondrous thing.

cryptonector 4y ago
> Cosmos The soundtrack for that comes from Heaven and Hell, one of Vangelis' best.

telotortium 4y ago

How does this page implement the horizontal scrolling? How does it decide how to format into columns?

telotortium 4y ago
Not too interesting technically - it's just a bunch of divs that are manually filled with text and defined to be a fixed size. I was hoping to see something that would automatically reformat text into columns based on screen and column size, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29172083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29172083.

stewbrew 4y ago

I'd say the page is a candidate for the title worst mobile UX ever.