Music Stems

[Methuselah Flint]

Hi guys,

Is there any way of grabbing the original music stems from the DVDs using software? I love the La La Land boxset, and would like to use the stems as a guide for recreating individual episode soundtracks.

I see people have recreated some on Y. T., however I think background sound effects are still present.

MF

 

[ZapBrannigan]

To my knowledge, you can't get music-only off a DVD unless it has an iso-score feature. But we might be moving toward the day when audio software can silence the dialogue and effects, and digitally fill in or boost up the affected bits of music.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

I'm assuming, however, that the La La Land team had access to the isolated music stems for the 50th Anniversary Collection? The love music from Court Martial and TAS. So I guess they do exist as separate tracks? Or did the team have to painstakingly remove any unwanted sound?

 

[J.T.B.]

Fire up the @Indysolo signal!

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I'm assuming, however, that the La La Land team had access to the isolated music stems for the 50th Anniversary Collection? The love music from Court Martial and TAS. So I guess they do exist as separate tracks? Or did the team have to painstakingly remove any unwanted sound?

I think they had a straight presentation of the love theme on the music stem, and it sounds terrific. The TAS music was taken from stems as well, but it was a major job putting it together, as IndySolo might explain.

But LLL didn't get their stems from a DVD you know, they got the actual film stem recordings from studio vaults for the cues with no surviving master tapes.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

Ah gotcha! I wasn't necessarily suggesting that the team used the DVDs to extract the music per se, rather I was curious how they acquired the raw stems. And you've answered my question - the stems exist in storage in their isolated format. Thanks!

 

[Indysolo]

How did we get the stems? We worked with CBS for the set.

My reference for everything was the actual episodes recorded in real time to Pro Tools from the Laser Discs. We had stems pulled for a few things (vocals for songs) but no music was from the stems until the 50th anniversary set. That one lone cue is missing from the tapes we have.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

Thought so, thanks! I've got copies of the laser discs, which I am assuming are the closest to original broadcast?

 

[Indysolo]

I would think the LDs are closer to the original broadcasts. I know there's an incorrect take in the 5.1 track for "The Doomsday Machine" that is not present on the LD or our release. And "The Menagerie Part II" does not open with the Fred Steiner re-recording, the way the 5.1 does.

However, with the exception of "Where No Man Has Gone Before", all of the first season episodes use the Steiner arranged "cello" version of the main title as opposed to the original "electric violin" version, which played on the first few episodes.

Neil

 

[Methuselah Flint]

Thanks!

 

[Ssosmcin]

The laserdisc/VHS prints are the closest to the original broadcasts that we had on home video. They still had some sound tweaking done. Aside from the first season main and end titles being standardized into the Steiner arrangement (other than WNMHGB), some sound effects were futzed with - probably in process of making the series "Hi-Fi" where it never was before. The picture was also brightened. Let's not forget that, in City on the Egde of Forever, "Goodnight Sweetheart" and the music score quoting it was replaced by new music due to rights issues. And some clips were missing from the finished episodes here and there (Lights of Zetar, Let That Be Your LAst Battlefield and All Our Yesterdays come to mind).

The actual closest we had were the 16mm prints used in syndication until the early 80's.

 

[Indysolo]

Let's not forget that, in City on the Egde of Forever, "Goodnight Sweetheart" and the music score quoting it was replaced by new music due to rights issues.

For that episode I used the DVD as reference.

Neil