Unreleased Jan Hammer cues from Miami Vice


Crockettt

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great work :thumbsup:

It's a pity that Jan Hammer has created so many great cues that never ended up being released on any of his CDs.

With the Complete Collection having been a financial failure, I guess there's no point in hoping that Jan Hammer will ever give it another go and release all these other cues on CD as well... ;(

 

Edited by Daytona74
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48 minutes ago, Daytona74 said:

great work :thumbsup:

It's a pity that Jan Hammer has created so many great cues that never ended up being released on any of his CDs.

With the Complete Collection having been a financial failure, I guess there's no point in hoping that Jan Hammer will ever give it another go and release all these other cues on CD as well... ;(

 

Yes Daytona74 I agree - so many great cues and unreleased gems. 

I had read somewhere Complete Collection did not sell well and was'nt it financed in part by JH - I had no idea it was a financial failure.

But with itunes you think he could record and release.:D

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The problem is that it's going to take an immense amount of work fixing all these cues up to be ready to be released on CD.

I read an interview with Jan Hammer about the Complete Collection, and apparently what he had to do was sift through all his old Miami Vice tape recordings which he hadn't played in well over a decade, and then load all selected tracks into Cubase and then reengineer them almost from the ground up. Which is why they sound as good as they do, but it also means there's a tremendous amount of work and studio time involved. And apparently, Jan Hammer is still a busy guy these days, and somebody with business acumen. So he'll probably be more inclined to spend his time doing other, more rewarding and lucrative things than to take on the massive work involved in another Miami Vice CD with uncertain financial outcome.

Edited by Daytona74
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ok here's the interview:

http://www.keyboards.de/stories/synthie-virtuose-jan-hammer-im-interview/

It's in German, sorry if this interview has been posted here before... the key point is this section (translation mine):

----------------

KB: How did you go about the remastering?

Jan Hammer: The remastering for the first disc was done in ProTools - after all, I've got all those plugins by a company called Waves, so that's why I used their wonderful mastering tools - to polish those things up and reconstruct the low frequencies which we couldn't do back then on vinyl. I wanted a fat contemporary sound, even if the original recordings were created in the 80s. On the second disc, everything was done completely new; I fed all the sounds from the fairlight and all the sequencers directly into ProTools and then used ProTools as a multitrack - I don't know how many tracks at once, but basically there's no limit. And in doing that, the Waves tools were used again to make it sound - I can't think of a better word - "alive", so that the sounds would practically jump at you out of the speakers. In-yer-face style.

KB: You already said a moment ago that you dusted off the original 80s equipment again on which the original recordings were created. And yet, the sound on both CDs is remarkably similar. Was it difficult to create this illusion of continuity?

Jan Hammer: I still had many of these very special original sounds on the Fairlight CMI. During the first year of production, I had a Series II. After that, at the beginning of the second year, I got myself a Series III and copied all the sounds onto the Series III; I still have that one here today. But those were the foundations of "Miami Vice" music. I did a lot of sequencing directly on the Fairlight sequencer because back then it was the most advanced device. Other sounds that you hear on the CD came from the Memory Moog, one of the fattest sounding analog synths of its time. That means many of the classic sounds of this series - especially during the first year - came from the Memory Moog; it had a sound that swallowed you whole.

----------------

 

So I was wrong about the tapes, but he did reengineer the cues on disc 2 from their original sources.

Edited by Daytona74
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But those cues were mixed down to tapes that were sent to Universal to produce the show. Those are the tapes I wish I had. Probably don't exist anymore :( 

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I've spent some time checking out the Memory Moog on youtube after reading the interview with Jan Hammer...

So cues like "Little Prince" were also done on the Memory Moog?

(one of my favorite season 1 cues... so quintessentially 80s... :thumbsup: )

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I think Jan said said about 70(?)% of the score is from the MM. All those lush orchestra string sounds you hear come from the MM. 

This whole video is great, but check out 6:55 for those string pads. No other synth does that exact sound. Just incredible!

 

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3 hours ago, Daytona74 said:

I've spent some time checking out the Memory Moog on youtube after reading the interview with Jan Hammer...

So cues like "Little Prince" were also done on the Memory Moog?

Yes, exactly. This track was done on Memorymoog. :)

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18 hours ago, Dadrian said:

But those cues were mixed down to tapes that were sent to Universal to produce the show. Those are the tapes I wish I had. Probably don't exist anymore :( 

So it means that Jan doesn't have tapes with cues from Miami Vice ?

Edited by Crockettt
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Idk. Also, the ppl at Universal in some article said they didn't have to do anything with the cues when they were received--they were totally ready for production. So they may have volume changes throughout anyway. Who knows? Still, it would be nice to have those great unreleased cues. 

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2 hours ago, Dadrian said:

Idk. Also, the ppl at Universal in some article said they didn't have to do anything with the cues when they were received--they were totally ready for production. So they may have volume changes throughout anyway. Who knows? Still, it would be nice to have those great unreleased cues. 

I agree ! So nice :shout::D:fireworks:

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vor 4 Stunden schrieb Crockettt:

Yes, exactly. This track was done on Memorymoog. :)

Interesting... wouldn't have thought that you could do sequencer stuff like on "Little Prince" with a Moog...

One of these days I will get myself a vintage synthesizer... it's been 30 years since I had keyboard lessons, but hey... :D

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Yeah the MM had a great sequencer for 1983 production synth. Jan even called it his "main sequencer" in the 1985 Keyboard Magazine interview, I believe. 

Edited by Dadrian
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Am 16.2.2017 um 22:01 schrieb Daytona74:

ok here's the interview:

http://www.keyboards.de/stories/synthie-virtuose-jan-hammer-im-interview/

It's in German, sorry if this interview has been posted here before... the key point is this section (translation mine):

----------------

KB: How did you go about the remastering?

Jan Hammer: The remastering for the first disc was done in ProTools - after all, I've got all those plugins by a company called Waves, so that's why I used their wonderful mastering tools - to polish those things up and reconstruct the low frequencies which we couldn't do back then on vinyl. I wanted a fat contemporary sound, even if the original recordings were created in the 80s. On the second disc, everything was done completely new; I fed all the sounds from the fairlight and all the sequencers directly into ProTools and then used ProTools as a multitrack - I don't know how many tracks at once, but basically there's no limit. And in doing that, the Waves tools were used again to make it sound - I can't think of a better word - "alive", so that the sounds would practically jump at you out of the speakers. In-yer-face style.

KB: You already said a moment ago that you dusted off the original 80s equipment again on which the original recordings were created. And yet, the sound on both CDs is remarkably similar. Was it difficult to create this illusion of continuity?

Jan Hammer: I still had many of these very special original sounds on the Fairlight CMI. During the first year of production, I had a Series II. After that, at the beginning of the second year, I got myself a Series III and copied all the sounds onto the Series III; I still have that one here today. But those were the foundations of "Miami Vice" music. I did a lot of sequencing directly on the Fairlight sequencer because back then it was the most advanced device. Other sounds that you hear on the CD came from the Memory Moog, one of the fattest sounding analog synths of its time. That means many of the classic sounds of this series - especially during the first year - came from the Memory Moog; it had a sound that swallowed you whole.

----------------

 

So I was wrong about the tapes, but he did reengineer the cues on disc 2 from their original sources.

He also says in the interview that it took him an entire year to finish the production and redo those cues for CD2 So that basically confirms what Daytona74 said earlier. What I would like to know though: What constitutes a financial failure?? I can see that physical CD sales might have been not so good but over time I'm pretty sure the digitial sales were quite decent? After all this was released in 2003, correct? So speaking financially one should look at the long term picture here...
(And let's face it - if such a double CD compilation would have been released BACK THEN it would have been a success. 15 Years later that's kinda hard to do and promote. What where they/he expecting?)

p.s.: Another interesting tidbit from that interview that I had never heard before - Jan also used an Oberheim Expander for that MV guitar sound. I assume for the main theme, but maybe other pieces too? He said (I'm going to translate this real quick): "It was one of the resources for this guitar sound thing because you could synchronise one oscillator with the other. So you got this grumbling harmonic component that permeated the entire sound - a kind of super wah-wah."
 

Edited by Den Taylor
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Am Saturday, February 18, 2017 um 03:18 schrieb Den Taylor:

What I would like to know though: What constitutes a financial failure?? I can see that physical CD sales might have been not so good but over time I'm pretty sure the digitial sales were quite decent? After all this was released in 2003, correct? So speaking financially one should look at the long term picture here...
(And let's face it - if such a double CD compilation would have been released BACK THEN it would have been a success. 15 Years later that's kinda hard to do and promote. What where they/he expecting?)

 

Well you can only assume that CD sales weren't enough to recoup the production costs of the project or make an actual profit. And that's likely not going to get better over time with such a niche product as music from a 30 year old TV series.

Jan Hammer now offers all of the tracks as downloads on his web site. Maybe we could ask him to do a handful more reengineered cues from the series in the future and put them on his web site? :)

Also, it's not a bad thing that the Complete Collection was done in 2002. I bought the "Snapshots" CD in 1989, and the sound quality was very disappointing. The tracks just sound flat and muffled, and they lack all the dynamic range and crispness that make the Complete Collection such a great audio experience. Digital sound editing probably wasn't as advanced as 13 years later in 2002.

Edited by Daytona74
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Am 18.2.2017 um 04:00 schrieb Dadrian:

Awesome! I'd never read anything about the Expander for the MV theme. Wow. 

Yeah, I know! Really surprised me. I always thought he just used a wah pedal or something. Or that maybe the MXR flanger was/is able to do that sound. Have you ever replicated that type of wah with your gear, Dadrian? I think it can be heard in the guitar from Airport Swap too (in the beginning). Unless that is just from the flanger...?

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