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Riffing on Tolkien: The Conceptualization, Production, and Dissemination of Music in The Lord of the Rings

[Editor's note: this sidebar was written by John Pratt, a videographer who accompanied Chance Thomas during the recording sessions for The Lord of the Rings and captured the experience on video.]

Vivendi Universal was interested in getting some documentary footage for the Lord of the Rings game development project, and contracted me to do the job. A novel could be written about the week Chance recorded the master themes for the Lord of the Rings game series for Vivendi-Universal, but here are some highlights of our adventure.

To begin, when I arrived at the recording studio, I immediately sensed something was wrong. I set up the camera overlooking the orchestra, but Chance was spending most of his time talking to the control room, so I grabbed a little camera, and followed him back into the control room when he left the orchestra. Apparently, Chance had brought all the MIDI tracks and some of the scoring data on removable hard drives, as he had agreed to do in advance. But nobody realized that moving to a new operating system in Chance's home studio was going to send things to Mordor. His drives were in a Windows XP-compatible format, but the studio had only Windows 98 and ME machines, and they would not read Chance's drives.

Even though Chance didn't come unglued, it was very tense. I jumped on my cell phone and called a friend to beg him rush a Windows XP computer over to us. When the machine arrived, we transferred Chance's many gigs of hard drive data to the new PC. We then found out that the studio didn't have Mac OS X yet, so I had to run to my office to grab another Mac to go cross-platform with the data. Somehow, through sheer faith and talent, Chance got through the first session with good results while the computer nightmare was being fought.

An orchestra is an expensive group of people to have sitting around waiting, but Chance remained calm -- impressive given that he had been sleeping very little for several weeks, with thousands of dollars ticking away by the hour and five more days of recording to go. While the orchestra sat there racking up a big tab, Glen Neibaur, the head engineer, was making a sync track from temp tracks that Chance had brought on a separate CD. The sync track wasn't ideal, but enough for timing.

After we got all of Chance's MIDI and Pro Tools session information uploaded to Glen, the feel of individual instruments and sections were easier to focus on. Before each section was recorded, Chance gave the musicians a quick background describing the Tolkien race and events that were being depicted. I think the time he invested paid off in a huge way, because of the heart and soul that the musicians put into the work afterwards.

The vocal choir was predominantly composed of members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and their first order of business was to make a big change from their normal religious work with uplifting anthems, to creeping us out wailing incantations in the Black Speech of Sauron. Plenty of jokes went back and forth about having to repent after the recording session, but I think they got a real kick out of doing some difficult and eerie dissonance for a change. They pulled it off so well your hair will stand on end.

The string section then got to hear the choir's work on the Sauron theme while they were playing their difficult part of the theme. They came alive, and actually started to ask Chance for permission to do additional takes, because they felt they could do better on certain sections (and they were good to start with).

For the Dwarves' theme, Chance had the men's choir actually march in place side-to-side while they were singing, because the feel of the caverns and the monotonous work and labor of the Dwarves was not coming through. To my amazement, simply excellent singing was transformed into the grandeur of generations of tireless hammers echoing into songs of celebration in the finished halls of Khazad Dum. The underlying themes and passions of Tolkien's races started to come alive to me in ways I never imagined.

After recording choirs and orchestras, Chance and I drove about an hour south of Salt Lake City to Steve Lerud's Lakeside Studios to record solo instruments. Chance never got a break, and slept less than two hours a night for the whole week. He would hand-write notes and inflections for each musician all night after recording sessions. There was a stack six inches high of sheet music that he went through in one week, maybe more. The talented crew at LA East told me that other composers have teams of assistants working on arrangements, but that Chance does it all himself. This was a labor of love, in the way that Tolkien wrote.

Chance did not let his exhaustion in any way slow him down, and several musicians let me know that Chance's scores are some of the most difficult they had ever played in years of recording Hollywood soundtracks. There were long days of take after take.

With 110 hours of battle in 5 days behind us, it was time to mix the final stereo tracks. As the "Overture of Men" in its first draft came charging over the Tannoys in the control room, I found myself standing with Eomer, before the fallen Theoden, looking at the black wave of orcs pouring over the Pelennor Fields surrounding Minas Tirith. My despair urged me to run for the forests and hide in cowardice, but I took up my sword, and with the blare of horns all around me I heard the voice of Eomer rising above the din of battle “RIDE NOW FOR WRATH, RIDE NOW FOR RUIN!” and I remembered that all men die, but that we make our name in the way that we live and fight! As the black ships sailed up the great river, bringing the enemy reinforcements, our cold anger turned to joy and shouting, as Aragorn’s black flag unfurled high, and the uncrowned King of Gondor leapt from the ships into the hordes of screaming orcs. Our kin had come through the Paths of the Dead beyond hope to turn the day for the future of Men!

In recording, as in battle, there is so much more sweat, defeat and suffering, than triumph and celebration. Nobody wants to remember how hard it was, and how impossible the victory seemed in the distant and uncertain future. Recording video and audio to make Themes worthy of Tolkien’s work turned into a literal battle against the odds. As I stood in the control room fighting the tears of emotion, I saw the scenes of conflict and compromise in the Lord of the Rings wash over me, as years of reading the series culminated in an unfolding aural vision of the future of the race of men. It was a triumphant ending! A glorious finale!

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