Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 6m4 Training a Jedi.
This cue is 40 bars long and was orchestrated by Fred Steiner.
Here's the tops of the sketch and orchestrated score:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue starts with some beautiful celesta writing, almost reminiscent of Williams' future whimsical scores like Home Alone and Harry Potter 1.
This continues as Luke climbs the rope, with some harp accompaniment as he swings over the gaps. It is joined by a horn rendition of Yoda's theme, which begins at 0:06.
More Yoda theme at 0:23, this time on the oboes. This eventually fades away at the rotating angle shot at 0:35, leaving us with a dark hint of the Imperial March.
A short pause at 0:43, and then more Imperial March as Luke asks about the Dark Side at 0:47. Some light woodwinds for Yoda's reply, though these quickly fade to silence as well.
Some light strings at 1:01 lead into a flute rendition of the Force theme for Yoda's speech at 1:06. This too, fades, leaving us with some final harp and strings as Luke places Yoda down. Thus, the cue ends...
This cue went almost entirely unused in the final cut. Evidently the filmmakers decided that they didn't like it, and that they preferred the scene with silence. Only the final five seconds were used as an intro/lead-in to the next cue, and even these play so quietly that they're barely audible.
In the final theatrical cut:
0:00-1:36 = silence
1:36-end = 6m4 Training a Jedi 1:36-end
Thanks to the date on the orchestrated sheet we know that this cue was recorded on December 28, 1979, the second day of the recording sessions. I'm unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses take 35.
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, 6m4 Training a Jedi can be heard:
From 0:00-0:47 of track 3 "The Training of a Jedi Knight" on the 1980/2018 albums
From 0:00-0:47 of disc 2 track 12 "The Training of a Jedi Knight" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-1:40 of disc 1 track 11 "The Training of a Jedi Knight/The Magic Tree" on the 1997 album.
Every album has the clean opening, and no albums have the clean ending. Unfortunately, the 1993 set is the only album with the film mix - and as you can see from the timestamps it doesn't contain the entire cue.
For the video above I used as much of the 1993 set as I could, segueing to the 1997 remix at 0:43. Unfortunately this edit is sort of noticeable due to the severe drop in quality but I tried to mask it as best I could. I did everything I could to avoid using the 1997 set here. Unfortunately, the film mix doesn't appear to be available anywhere; this cue wasn't even used in the radio drama.
Two other things of note about the 1993 set:
- There's a 7db dropout in the left channel at 0:35. This is extremely obvious and sounds absolutely dreadful. I have no idea how this happened. I corrected it by raising the volume of the affected section by 7 db
- The left channel on the 1993 set is substantially louder than the right channel. I fixed this by lowering the corrected left channel by 4 db.
I wasn't able to verify the cue's speed due to it not being used in the film, though the two albums seemed to sync with each other/the clip above without issue.
Lastly, due to no clean ending existing I used an AI tool to derive one from the 1997 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 6m5-7m1 The Magic Tree. See you then!