Production
Composer Alan Silvestri was originally hired to write the score for The Curse of the Black Pearl. However, due to creative differences between the producer Jerry Bruckheimer and him, Silvestri left the project and Gore Verbinski asked Hans Zimmer, with whom he had worked on The Ring, to step in. Zimmer declined to do the bulk of the composing, as he was busy scoring The Last Samurai, a project during which he claimed he had promised not to take any other assignments. As a result he referred Verbinski to Klaus Badelt, a relatively new composer who had been a part of Remote Control Productions (known as Media Ventures at the time) for three years.
Zimmer however ended up collaborating with Badelt to write most of the score's primary themes. Zimmer said he wrote most of the tunes in the space of one night, and then recorded them in an all-synthesized demo credited to him. This demo presents three of the score's themes and motifs, concluding with an early version of "He's A Pirate" which differs from the final cue and includes a development of a melody Zimmer wrote for the score to Drop Zone.) Since the schedule was very tight and the music was needed for the film in three weeks, seven other composers — Ramin Djawadi, James Dooley, Nick Glennie-Smith, Steve Jablonsky, Blake Neely, James McKee Smith, and Geoff Zanelli — were called upon to help orchestrate the music and write additional cues. The resulting score was recorded with a group of musicians, credited as the Hollywood Studio Symphony, over the course of four days. The short time frame demanded the use of a different recording studio for each session. The Metro Voices, a male choir, was recorded in London and added to the finished recordings.
The soundtrack album, consisting of 43 minutes of the film's score, was released with Klaus Badelt credited as the composer. The cues were edited for length, and minor changes to the mix were also made. For unknown reasons, the mixing of several cues are executed with gain levels so high that it causes distortion. This is noticeable particularly during the action cues and the reprise of the love theme in track 14, "One Last Shot". It is also noted that besides the first two cues, the tracks' generic names were unrelated to their contents. According to the official website of composer Geoff Zanelli, this was because the production "schedule was so short that had to decide on the track names for the album packaging before the score was even written!"
Badelt was credited as the conductor on early batches of the disc, but it was actually conducted by Blake Neely.
Read more about this topic: Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (soundtrack)
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—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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