Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 9m4 Trouble in Prison.
This cue is 52 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury. The sheet music also contains a 5 bar "Optional Addenda", which may not have been recorded.
Here's the tops of the sketch and the orchestrated score:
Now let's listen to the cue together. I've uploaded two versions, one with the optional addenda as a mockup and one without (thanks to Faleel and ThePenitantMan1 on jwfan for figuring out the mockup):
At 0:00 the cue begins with a quiet rendition of the Imperial March to underscore the last of Lando's conversation with Vader.
Some brief transitional material at 0:08 as Boba Fett and Lando walk off, and then a soft woodwinds rendition of the Droids motif as Chewie continues to work on fixing C-3PO at 0:14.
The stormtroopers drop off Han at 0:36, accompanied with some transitional brass. Soft strings and woodwinds accompany Chewie walking with him over to the bed so he can lay down.
A woodwind rendition of the Love theme plays at 1:04 as Leia enters and comforts him.
More transitional brass at 1:17 as Lando enters. Some tense music as he speaks at 1:24 builds into full fight music for a few brief seconds at 1:48 as Han attempts to get a punch off.
Some strings at 1:52 as Lando composes himself, followed by another brass transition for his exit at 2:04, and more Love theme as Han struggles to get up at 2:08.
In the original cue this leads to some final dark ominous strings for the wipe to the carbon freeze chamber at 2:21.
In the optional addenda, this is instead replaced with a full fledged Imperial March statement after the wipe, reminiscent of some of the Imperial fleet transitions earlier in the score. Thus, the cue ends...
No picture edits appear to have been made between scoring and recording, and no music edits were made either.
Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers written in the sketch it was likely recorded in late January. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses take 272. There's also a take 274 written on the first page but it's crossed out.
There is no take number written for the optional addenda, which indicates to me it probably wasn't recorded; although it is possible that it was recorded as an alternate take that simply wasn't used, and since it's not in the performance edit that would explain why we've never heard it. That explanation is not entirely satisfactory to me, as there is another cue in this score with an alternate ending (12m3 Finale) which we know was recorded, and two alternate take numbers are listed in that sketch.
This cue has been officially released on one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 9m4 Trouble in Prison can be heard:
From 0:00-end of disc 2 track 8 "Deal with the Dark Lord" on the 1997 album.
The 1997 release is complete with a clean opening and ending (though without the optional addenda), and thankfully is the correct mix.
Unfortunately, it does play at the wrong speed, but this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:
1997 set needs to be sped up by 0.600
For my edit above I used a speed corrected copy of the 1997 set.
For the optional addenda I used a mockup made by Faleel on JWFan, though ThePenitentMan1 also assisted with mockup creation.
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 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze. See you then!