ORIGINAL TRACK DESCRIPTIONS

For technical reasons, and for the fact that CDs are always so damned small, this page was created to provide more detail on a track by track basis of how each movement of the suite was created. This information came from Capitol's publicity archives and has been updated by Amin and his crew.

When The Interstellar Suite was first distributed by Capitol's Cinema label in 1987 Amin was asked to provide a track by track description of the album. What follows is the description of how the composer, Amin Bhatia, saw and heard in the music. His original words are shown here in italics .

The story is a loose thread. It's not a hardcore plot and characters. There are enough guideposts in the titles of each movement to depict the setting. Amin never wanted things to be too obvious and he wanted the listener to be a character.

1. Overture: Introduction And March (2:38): This is, of course, the beginning, the showpiece of the album. It sets a theme and a pace - very orchestral, very martial. I like the fact that, halfway through it, you forget that you're listening to synthesizers and start hearing French horns and woodwinds. The original idea for this piece came from the one-on-one workshop I had with Steve Porcaro (keyboardist with Toto) a couple of years ago. This march was a result of that.

Behind the Scenes - Overlapping sound effects are commonplace now with samplers and computers, but back when this album was made all the sound effects were pre recorded and then "hand synched" between a 2 track and a 24 track. It was a physical challenge doing things by hand. We had to backtime the reels and count the number of revolutions to determine where to start the tape in order to land the effects at the right time, just like the way a DJ cues up vinyl. To be honest it was a lot more fun than the click-drag method most computers use now.

Interesting Note - The first version of the Overture was "The Manor March" which was produced by Steve Porcaro.

For studio geeks only: ­ the opening fireball effect is a 2 track sound effect made from 24 tracks of Minimoog noise generators. It is layered on itself three times at three different speeds. The slowest one (at half speed) starts first, then the second one comes in at regular speed. The third double speed one comes in just toward the end. All three "meet" at the resulting explosion that begins the overture. The crash cymbals featured later are the only real element in the piece (and in fact in the whole album).

Refer to Your CD Booklet - What appears to be a galactic nebulae is in fact a radically altered image of a cymbal!

2. The Ship: Main Theme (2:46): The original idea was to go straight from the overture to the piece after this one. Then I thought about the meanness of the march, we need something that states the theme very simply, because that theme is thrown around in so many different variations throughout the suite. So this piece is a direct statement of the theme.

Behind the Scenes ­ This theme was the first melody ever created, long before Interstellar suite was even realized. It was written for an un-produced radio play for my college friend Mike Baker. The theme was meant to be able to split off and be used in various segments. The radio play never got off the ground, but this eventually did.

For Studio Geeks Only­ all synth buzzes and even the keypad sounds are noise generators from the minimoog triggered by a Roland CSQ 600 Sequencer. The strings are 2 Roland JX synthesizers, overdubbed several times over to achieve the warmth and body of a large string section. For the detail of the rosin of the bow, I doubled up a Yamaha TX-816 rack via midi.

3. Launch: Mission Control And Liftoff / Jumping To The Speed Of Light (4:26): I always enjoy the part in a science fiction movie where the ship just dashes off into hyperspace. I wanted to create that affect sonically without visuals. We were able to simulate the complete cancellation of sound when it's out of phase with itself - it made some very interesting problems for the engineers in the mastering lab. So there is the musical end of things, where melodies are clipping by at a hectic pace, and there's this flanging effect where everything is shifting in and out and your ears are pulled along with it.

For Studio Geeks Only­ all flanging effects were done at the mastering stage with two tape machines running identical program material and then vari-speeding one to create the sweeping in and out effects. There were no digital flanging effects used.

Interesting Note: All sound effects from liftoff noises to computer blips were created on the Minimoog.

Interesting Note: The themes from this movement were first realized in the Roland International Synthesizer Contest, entitled "Flight Beyond the Stars".

Refer to Your CD Booklet - What appears to be exhaust ports from a space shuttle are actually tape machine gears and a midi cable!

4. Walking In Space: Opening The Airlock / Weightless / Retrieving A Satellite (5:52): This piece turned out a lot better than I thought it would. My original idea was to give the astronauts something to do once they've flown through hyperspace - there's a simplicity and transparency I wanted to maintain. I wanted a feeling of relaxing tranquility, of being totally weightless. I did that by creating very hard, grungy sound effects when the astronaut is waiting to jump out of the ship - and as soon as he jumps out it becomes quiet. When the bottom drops out it's like "My God, I'm out there..." The voices on the track were done by a lot friends in radio. I called them one Saturday afternoon and said "OK, you're in a space dock and you're about to jump out - what do you think you'd be doing?" Everybody worked out real well.

Behind the Scenes ­ To create the astronaut walking around we used a tent blanket and an old pair of runners. The door opening engine is a TX 816 patch called dentists drill! The latches that blast open into space are the anvil door locks on my minimoog case. Much of the choir and synth lines came from the oberheim expander from Steve Porcaro. We sometimes had to restart the synthesizer because the case was melted from Toto's stage use!

For Studio Geeks Only­ The sequencer line echo at the beginning has a slowed delay on the third echo. It was a complete accident created by accidentally offsetting the tempo map on the Roland SBX 80 sync box. We kept it.

5. Hostility: Intruder Alert / The Attack (6:30): I was after contrast with Walking in Space here. This is my tribute to all the space villains we've ever known through the ages. It's a brutal, savage, continuously bloodthirsty piece, which just popped into my head on day.

Behind the Scenes ­ Many of the sound effects were inspired by sound designer Frank Serafine who created those Klingon torpedos at the beginning of "Star Trek The Motion Picture".

For Studio Geeks Only ­ The firebomb sfx at the end of the piece is 24 separate tracks of Minimoog noise generators.

Artwork ­ the gigantically evil looking circular red ship is actually a 7 inch Toshiba tape reel from my first bedroom studio.

6. Distress Signal: The Beacon / A Damaged Ship / The Loneliness Of Space (5:48) : Once again, the simpleness of this piece contrasts with the brutality of the Hostility track. On both sides of the album I went for dynamic opposites. You can't continue with a hard soundtrack throughout. - you need black and white, with some transitions in between.

Behind the Scenes ­ Note that the distress beacon motif becomes the ostinato for the following Rescue Fleet. (Rescue Fleet was written first). In Vancouver, this music was used for an homage to the Challenger disaster. Some of the marching bands that have performed this piece have used everything from solo trumpet to english horn and its always a very poignant moment.

For Studio Geeks Only­ there's some extra material here. It was shortened during final tracking because Dan and I thought it might feel too long. Boy did we regret that. My friend Dennis was so livid that I edited it down. So it's restored here, and he's finally forgiven me. Upon hearing this version at a preview Dennis looked at me said "history has been restored. A great wrong has been righted!" Producer David Greene worked very hard to match the restored segment to the original.

Refer to Your CD Booklet - (featured in SEE of these Bonus Features) Look carefully and you'll see that a dark and lonely planet is actually orbiting the cutoff frequency knob from Amin's Minimoog.

7. Rescue Fleet: Formation And Rescue Theme / Dive / Arrival At The Alien Fort (5:56) : This whole Cavalry piece works around the triplet figure, which was heard previously in Distress Signal. I also interspersed sound effects of fleet fighterships (which were created from scratch, not sampled!) The final effect is music and sound galloping joyously to the rescue, with all the flair and pomposity of classic space heroesŠit was a lot of fun.

Behind the Scenes - This motif popped into my head one evening at my friend Dennis' house. We'd each get on the piano and challenge each other in a game of "name that film score tune" and sometimes we'd accidentally come up with new material of our own.

For Studio Geeks Only ­ The opening sound effects are about a dozen Minimoog tracks. Each of the three different passes has a slight vari-speed pitch change to make it sound like at least three ships at the head of the fleet.

For any one with the original Interstellar Suite CD, Capitol got the track index wrong! Track seven incorrectly began with closing echoes of Distress Signal. This re-release is the way it was always meant to be.

8. Battle: Planning The Attack / Return Fire / The Last Missile (4:36): This was the biggest track in terms of dynamic range, for obvious reasons. You have to have something to build to and that was very hard. After Hostility and rescue Fleet I thought, "Wow, I've gone as far as I can go". So had to very carefully create a whole new type of climax that you'd feel would end the adventure.

Behind the Scenes ­ Just before this cut starts producer Dan Lowe had suggested an homage back to the space walk piece as if the rescue crew have come on board and found a little music box or something. Or they see an ember of a space suit which reminds us of the walk or something like that. The real reason is that space walk in its simplicity turned out so well that we had to just hint at it somewhere else in the album.

For Studio Geeks Only- The real reason to feature a segment from Space Walk is that we were SHORT! There's nothing more annoying than buying a CD that is LESS than 40 minutes long which was the norm for LPs. So at 3 in the morning we quickly created this little remix using the multi-track portion from spacewalk, and spliced it into the final master, before Dan and I got on a plane 6 hours later to deliver the master to Capitol in LA.

9. Finale: Theme Reprise / March (3:20) ) : This was the resolution, the entire summation of The Interstellar Suite. All of the themes that posed questions in previous movements are now answered in a major key. The finale concludes with the same martial rhythm of the march that opened the suite, but this time the last chords are resolved, complete with music and sound effects...very dazzling, very triumphant. My friends tell me every time they listen to it they imagine the closing credits of a film...that's the whole idea. If people can close their eyes, tune into this and escape into a space adventure for some forty minutes, then I've achieved my goal.

Behind the Scenes ­ frankly this piece was always a bit too "nice" for me. It had to be done for reasons of story and form but I've always liked "bad guy" music more than "good guy" music.

For Studio Geeks Only­ The artwork features a series of numbers, laid out like the credits in a Star Wars movie. These numbers are midi system exclusive signals and if you transmit them into a JX synthesizer you'll get the legato string patch that Amin used in this album.

Refer to Your CD Booklet - The four pictures at the bottom are various studios that I lived most of my life in. The first one is my first bedroom studio, circa 1978 and the last one is Steve Porcaro's Manor Studio circa 1985.

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THE INTERSTELLAR SUITE Complete Dialogue Script

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MAKING THE INTERSTELLAR SUITE

While themes and sound effects experiments for The Interstellar Suite had been culminating for years, the bulk of the composition took place in the spring of 1986. Amin locked himself away in his apartment and worked 14-18 hour days with very few breaks to visit friends and family.

Each piece was first sequenced in rough form onto a Roland MC-500 microcomposer and recorded to 2 track tape. At this point tracks were not very thick because only a maximum of 8 synth parts could be sequenced in one pass of tape. But it was meant as a guide only. Amin then edited this tape and moved sections around, trimmed some, extended others until he was happy with the "form" of the piece. For details of synthesizer layout and functions see the Studio Diagram below.

Amin then went back to the original sequencer data and began "stemming it" for the large scale overdubs. This meant 8 different overdub groups onto 8 tracks of an Otari multi-track recorder. Now it was possible for 64 different synth parts to be merged together, and with premixed sound effects or specific musical phrases, this could now expand into hundreds of tracks. An SBX-80 sync box was used to keep all the parts from the MC-500 in sync with the overdubs. Parts were edited and revised as the overdubs began to take shape.

Since all the music for the overdubs came from the sequencer the entire overdub process could now be repeated in the large scale studio. This involved an MTR 24 track at Smoothrock Studios and was produced by Danny Lowe. Much of the time was spent simply "reprinting" the files that were stemmed at home but now all the overdubs could be EQ'd and panned and processed in a 24 track studio environment. At this stage certain sections were "flanged" by playing back a duplicate mix from another tape machine and slowing it down or speeding it up against the original. The result is a large scale jet plane flyby effect, and just like a real jet plane, it is very difficult to control!

Lastly, additional sound effects were recorded, alterations were made to some sections, arguments ensued and were resolved, and then tracks were mixed down in stereo to a final master. The final tape was edited, played back and edited again literally hours before Amin and Dan got onto a plane to deliver the master tape to Capitol records in Los Angeles.

The entire process took four months and was very grueling to all involved, but very satisfying when the end result was played back. "It's like animated film" explains Amin. "You have no way of knowing the end result until all the elements and layers are played back at once. It means you have to plan and prepare things way in advance of performing or recording them, and I like that. I think we've lost that in the last few years. Today's studios can do things a million times bigger and faster, so there's less need to preplan. But I still try and work out the rough harmonies and do a piano or skeleton sketch first. It makes for better writing and better structure. I encourage others to do the same."

SYNTHESIZER FUNCTIONS:

Roland JX-10: Mostly for strings and brass, both legato and staccatto. Provided warmth and richness for all orchestral ensemble parts. Also used for some low end sound effects like ship hums and machines.

Oberheim Expander: French Horn ensembles, woodwind parts lines, and sequencer lines. Also many sound effects that roared or whooshed (the noise generators on this thing are amazing).

Minimoog: Solo French Horn, Subharmonic Tuba, timpani and snare, and many sound effects for anything that buzzed, clicked, whirred or downright exploded.

TX-416 (TF-1 modules times 4): The FM synthesizers on this thing added fantastic detail and clarity to the other analog synths. They were used to add bite to the brass, rosin to the strings and detail to the percussion.

Rarely were any of the above synths used solo. Each of the orchestral sounds was a hybrid of different modules linked together via MIDI or by overdubbing parts.

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THE HIDDEN TRACK

Thanks to those who found and remarked on the hidden track in the re-release of Interstellar Suite. As to your specific questions here is a brief FAQ:

Is this a deleted track from the original Interstellar Suite?

No, it is a hint of what is to come from the next album currently in production. Without giving too much away, let's just say that it will take you as much into "virtual space" as Interstellar Suite took you into outer space.

Its brutal and savage and reminds me of "Lord of the Rings" or "Phantom Menace" whats it meant to portray?

The track is called "Virus" and is a depiction of the chaos and turmoil of a computer virus invading the network. The parallel to this invasion is a grand Wagnerian "Day of Wrath".

What is the time signature? Its almost hip hop but not quite.

It's 5 beats to the bar, just like "Mars"from Holsts' Planets, but much faster. The rhythms come from a combination of Roland and Korg percussion modules re-enforced with loops from the Spectrasonics libraries by Eric Persing. The hardest part was taking traditional loops and re-editing them into 5/4 time!

Is that a real choir or is it samples?

It's both. A combination of sampled choir sounds overdubbed several times with eight professional voices under the direction of orchestrator/conductor Jamie Hopkings, (who also researched the libretto.) The track was composed and engineered by Amin and produced by David Greene.

The lyrics are traditional choral libretto from a requiem mass. They depict the Day of Wrath: "That day will dissolve the Earth in Ashes. What dread there will be When the Judge shall come To judge all things strictly.

What are they singing? I keep trying to follow along but can't quite get it.

dies irae dies ila solvet saeclum in fa vila
dies dies irae dies dies ila solvet solvet saeclum saeclum in fa vila
quantus tremor est futurus quando ju dex est venturus
quantus quatus tremor quando quando ju dex ju ­ dex

Where's the rest of this album?

We're workin on it! Now that The Interstellar Suite is out we can actually move on to other stuff that Amin has had brimming for years. Stay tuned.

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BACK TO BONUS FEATURES

Thanks for checking out the Bonus Features page of The Interstellar Suite Web Site. Please bookmark this page and check back in the coming months for other bonus features and updates.