Soundtrack - Types of Recordings

Types of Recordings

There are five types of soundtrack recordings:

1. Musical film soundtracks which concentrate primarily on the songs
   (Examples: Grease, Singin' in the Rain)
2. Film scores which showcase the background music from non-musicals
   (Examples: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings)
3. Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of non-musicals
   (Examples: Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally...)
4. Video game soundtracks are often released after a game's release, usually consisting of the background music from the game's levels, menus, title screens, promo material (such as entire songs that only segments of which were used in the game), cut-screens and occasionally sound-effects used in the game
   (Examples: Sonic Heroes, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
5. Albums which contain both music and dialogue from the film, such as the 1968 Romeo and Juliet, or the first authentic soundtrack album of The Wizard of Oz.

The soundtrack to the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first commercially issued film soundtrack. It was released in January 1938 as Songs from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with the Same Characters and Sound Effects as in the Film of That Title) and has since seen numerous expansions and reissues.

The first live-action musical film to have a commercially issued soundtrack album was MGM’s 1946 film biography of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern, Till the Clouds Roll By. (Snow White was also a musical film, but an animated one.) The album was originally issued as a set of four 10-inch 78-rpm records. Only eight selections from the film were included in this first edition of the album. In order to fit the songs onto the record sides the musical material needed editing and manipulation. This was before tape existed, so the record producer needed to copy segments from the playback discs used on set, then copy and re-copy them from one disc to another adding transitions and cross-fades until the final master was created. Needless to say, it was several generations removed from the original and the sound quality suffered for it. The playback recordings were purposely recorded very "dry" (without reverberation); otherwise it would come across as too hollow sounding in large movie theatres. This made these albums sound flat and boxy.

MGM Records called these "original cast albums" in the style of Decca's Broadway show cast albums. They also coined the phrase "recorded directly from the soundtrack." Over the years the term "soundtrack" began to be commonly applied to any recording from a film, whether taken from the actual film soundtrack or re-recorded in studio. The phrase is also sometimes incorrectly used for Broadway cast recordings. While it is correct to call a "soundtrack" a "cast recording" (since it represents the film cast) it is never correct to call a "cast recording" a "soundtrack." Among MGM's most notable soundtrack albums were those of the films Good News, Easter Parade, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin' in the Rain, Show Boat, The Band Wagon, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Gigi.

Film score albums did not really become popular until the LP era, although a few were issued in 78-rpm albums. Alex North’s score for the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire was released on a 10-inch LP by Capitol Records and sold so well that the label later re-released it on one side of a 12-inch LP with some of Max Steiner's film music on the reverse.

Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind has been recorded many times, but when the film was reissued in 1967, MGM Records finally released an album of the famous score recorded directly from the soundtrack. Like the 1967 re-release of the film, this version of the score was artificially "enhanced for stereo". In recent years, Rhino Records has released a 2-CD set of the complete Gone With the Wind score, restored to its original mono sound.

One of the biggest-selling film scores of all time was John Williams's music from the movie Star Wars. Many film score albums go out-of-print after the films finish their theatrical runs and some have become extremely rare collectors’ items.

In a few rare instances an entire film dialogue track was issued on records. The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet was issued as a 4-LP set, as a single LP with musical and dialogue excerpts, and as an album containing only the film's musical score. The ground-breaking film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was issued by Warner Bros Records as a 2-LP set containing virtually all the dialogue from the film. RCA Victor also issued a 2-LP set what was virtually all the dialogue from the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons.