As announced last year,
Silva Screen are releasing an incredible limited edition
Doctor Who
soundtrack boxset featuring eleven discs of music spanning every era of
The Doctor. This magnificent collection, due for release very soon,
comes presented in its very own TARDIS boxset and is a must for any fan
of
Doctor Who music through the years. Also included in the set are notes from classic
Who composer Mark Ayres and notes from various composers through the years.
In this
EXCLUSIVE series for Blogtor Who,
Silva Screen
are releasing these fascinating notes ahead of the boxset's release. Today sees Part Seven which includes notes from composer Elizabeth Parker and Mark Ayres (which are abridged and will continue through
this series). Also included are the front and back covers for The Seventh
Doctor disc included in the boxset (click on them for bigger versions.
Many thanks to
Silva Screen, visit their site
HERE.
COMPOSER NOTES - ELIZABETH PARKER
My first experience of working on
Doctor Who was creating sound effects for
The Stones of Blood. It was the hottest August in the mid-1970s and I was holed up in the studio with the chance of a lifetime to do
Doctor Who sound effects while Dick Mills was on holiday. I was still on attachment at the Workshop so it was an amazing opportunity to prove myself, if somewhat scary... to put it mildly. I used a lot of guttural vocal sounds from myself, slowed right down and looped around the studio - as was the custom in those days! - then multilayered so that, as the stones lumbered along splurging blood, this hissy, deep, groaning, sucking sound emerged from them.
Timelash, for which I did my only set of
Doctor Who music cues, had a deliberately funky metallic feel to it, if I remember rightly. It made a change from doing sound effects for
Doctor Who’s great rival,
Blake's Seven! It was, I think, one of the first series I ever wrote incidental music for and I really enjoyed getting tangled up in the story... I wish I could have done more, actually.
Abridged album notes from Mark Ayres [Part 7]
The following year [1987] prolific
producer and touring musician Keff McCulloch joined the team, bringing
with him another theme tune arrangement and a new, “pop” sensibility
inspired by the likes of Art of Noise. For the final two years of
"Classic Who", the team was Dominic, Keff, and some chap by the name of Mark Ayres. By this time, Sylvester McCoy was the Seventh
Doctor, following in the proud footsteps of William Hartnell, Patrick
Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker. In
1989 Ghost Light was the last story to be made. At the wrap
party, we all wished one another well and "see you next year"... but it
was not to be. Doctor Who was put on permanent hiatus (though nobody was brave enough to say that it was actually cancelled).
Four years later, Kevin Davies made an hour-long documentary for BBC1 - Thirty Years in the TARDIS
- and was kind enough to ask me to write the music. The rather
doom-laden final cue reflects the feeling of fans at the time, as it
seemed the good Doctor would not be returning to our screens. But the
following year when we created an extended More Than... version
of the documentary for home video release, rumours had begun to
circulate that an American co-production was on the cards: hence the far
more optimistic re-score!
TO BE CONTINUED
Thanks to Silva Screen
