Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 3m3 The Snow Battle.
This cue is 148 bars long and was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.
Here's the tops of the sketch and orchestrated score:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qz-RbXqW34
At 0:00 the cue begins with a low piano march to represent the impending walkers in the distance. This continues as we move inside Echo Base with the R2 shot at 0:16.
Some percussion at 0:24 with a short fanfare for the troopers entering their vehicles, followed by the main battle A melody on brass at 0:27.
At 0:36 the melody repeats, joined by the rest of the orchestra as we cut back to the walkers. This continues to develop at 0:46 as the speeders race toward the walkers.
The main battle B melody plays at 1:01 as the speeders circle the walkers leading into Luke's POV dive.
At 1:10, more aggressive brass as the walkers inch closer to the rebel trenches. The aggressiveness dials back a bit at 1:19, although the intensity and rhythm continues until Luke talks about tow cables at 1:36.
The music becomes a tense rendition of the B melody as Dak warns of a malfunction, but Luke brushes it off.
A rhythm starts to come back at 1:50 but it suddenly interrupted by Dak's death, which is accompanied by loud brass.
At 2:03 the aggressiveness returns as the walkers inch ever closer to the rebel trench. This is joined by the return of the battle A melody at 2:14.
The action music slows at 2:20, becoming mostly percussion for the discussion with Vader inside the AT-AT.
Some tense brass as we return to the speeders at 2:29, which plan to trap the walkers with harpoons and towcables.
Then at 2:42 the music picks up one last time as the speeders approach the walkers.
Some mickey mousing for the harpoon launch at 2:52, and then some brass music for the cable being wrapped around the walker's legs.
Some percussion at 3:09, and then some additional brass building up to the cable pulling free.
One final statement of the battle melody at 3:17 as the walker trips and falls. This leads into one final brass fanfare at 3:28 as the snowspeeders blow it up. Thus, the cue ends...
The film appears to have undergone several visual changes after the scene was scored, all of which led to music edits in the film. The picture edits are as follows:
5 seconds of Veers inside the AT-AT were added at 1:26
Two seconds of material was deleted at 1:57, presumably this was additional footage of Dak's death and Luke's reaction
Two seconds of additional Veers shots were added at 2:15
These edits led to the following music changes in the final cut:
0:00-0:25 = silence
0:25-1:53 = 3m3 The Snow Battle 0:25-1:53
1:53-2:11 = 3m3 The Snow Battle 1:52-2:10
2:11-3:20 = 3m3 The Snow Battle 2:07-3:16
3:20-end = 3m3 The Snow Battle 3:12-end
The first change, replacing the opening 25 seconds with silence, appears to have been a creative change rather than one made due to picture edits. The others were done to re-sync with the picture, although the music edits are not at the same places that the visual edits were, meaning parts of the cue actually play out of sync in the final cut. Thankfully, the sync notes on the sketch allowed me to resync the cue with the footage as it was intended.
Despite not having a recording log, I'm fairly sure that this cue was recorded on December 28, 1979, likely the next cue recorded after 6m4 Training a Jedi (which has the recording date written on the orchestrated score). I'm unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 41, 42 and 44.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1980 on RSO Records' OST album
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)
More specifically, 3m3 The Snow Battle can be heard:
From 0:00-end of track 9 "The Battle in the Snow" on the 1980/2018 albums
From 0:00-end of disc 2 track 6 "The Battle in the Snow" on the 1993 album
From 4:02-7:42 of disc 1 track 5 "The Battle of Hoth (The Ion Cannon/Imperial Walkers/Beneath the AT-AT/Escape in the Millennium Falcon)" on the 1997 album.
All albums have the clean opening, but the 1997 set is missing the clean ending. The 1980, 1997 and 2018 albums are all remixed, but the 1993 album appears to be the film mix.
Chris Malone had claimed in his 2007 document that the 1993 set may have pulled this cue off of the 1980 set, but this appears not to be the case based on careful listening and spectrogram comparison, they do indeed mix instruments differently:
While I'm showing off spectrograms, it's worth demonstrating what the other remixes look like. The 2018 remix is very left heavy, and I think this has to have been a technical error rather than something intentional. The spectrogram looks like they cut off most of the frequencies of the right channel but not the left:
The 2023 ATMOS re-release of the 2018 set replaces the left heavy mix with a more accurate remix, but still has a lot of reverb and doesn't sound great.
The 1997 remix normally shouldn't have been visible in a spectrogram but for whatever reason the right channel on every remixed cue has this weird "stepladder" effect that's visible in the spectrogram:
This has to have been added at the mixing stage and not the mastering stage because only the remixed cues on this album look like this.
Additionally, all releases of this cue play at the wrong pitch/speed, although this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:
1980 set has to be sped up by 0.865 to match film
1993 set has to be sped up by 0.65 to match film
1997 set has to be sped up by 0.60 to match film
2018 set has to be slowed down by -0.37 to match film
For the video above I used a speed corrected copy of the 1993 set.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be listening to the second part of the Battle of Hoth, 3m4-4m1 Luke's First Crash. See you then!