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General Park Music


Welsh Boy

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Hello there everyone, My inspiration for this thread came from Thorpe Park's Park Music Thread. As that one is for discussion on Thorpe Park's music only, I decided that I would set one up for every other park (Disney, Six Flags, Busch Gardens etc).The first thing that I wuod like to know is:Is there anywhere I can find the park music from Busch Gardens Tampa or not?Welsh

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Hello there everyone, My inspiration for this thread came from Thorpe Park's Park Music Thread. As that one is for discussion on Thorpe Park's music only, I decided that I would set one up for every other park (Disney, Six Flags, Busch Gardens etc).The first thing that I wuod like to know is:Is there anywhere I can find the park music from Busch Gardens Tampa or not?Welsh

Hmmmm idk where you could find it, but you could try searching on google and find a website where you download it...thats what I do if I wanna download soundtracks and stuff
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  • 7 years later...

Just an old thread I decided to revive

 

I absolutely love theme park music/soundtracks because when I listen to them, I'll associate them with the ride and it'll sometimes bring back memories of the ride itself. 

I know I may have given the impression that theming isn't my favoured part (I still like theming, just not to an extent) but theme park music is what sets it for me; being a passionate musician only makes me appreciate it more.

 

My favourite soundrack has to be Space Mountain Mission 2's onboard audio. As much I like the force, the music made it that much better that it is even in my top 10.

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4 hours ago, 'Airtime Falcon' said:

Just an old thread I decided to revive

 

I absolutely love theme park music/soundtracks because when I listen to them, I'll associate them with the ride and it'll sometimes bring back memories of the ride itself. 

I know I may have given the impression that theming isn't my favoured part (I still like theming, just not to an extent) but theme park music is what sets it for me; being a passionate musician only makes me appreciate it more.

 

My favourite soundrack has to be Space Mountain Mission 2's onboard audio. As much I like the force, the music made it that much better that it is even in my top 10.

  

Totally relate to your post - I rode Space Mountain back in 2000 and absolutely loved the music to it (am I right in thinking that they changed the audio?) it took a little while to find (as finding stuff like that back then wasn't as easy as it is these days) but yeah - bought back memories!  

 

I love love theming too but music just really evokes emotions - and when it's theme park related it's generally uplifting - I have a fair few theme park/ride soundtracks on my iPhone playlist which I always listen to when out walking.  Can't beat a bit of Samurai music when power walking!

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Phantasialand in general. The parks music shares melodies across all the rides which have IMA treatment, which is a very nice consistency and almost easter egg. 

And no, not Chiapas, Talocan definitely has the best piece they have made in terms of power. It's seriously impressive stuff and uses the chiapas 'end of the world' melody extremely well as a grand finale. A shame they haven't released a proper audio for it yet;

 

But anyway, I've said this before, IMAscore is great. But, their music has a habit of being generic, theatrical scores that could be used on any ride anywhere. With the exceptions of rides such as the smiler and helix (and sort of Chiapas I guess, and probably a couple others) their scores could easily be used between rides and all that, and just be one score back to back because they suffer from using similar structures, techniques, rhythms and more. Really unique music for a ride that is also really cool and memorable is hard to find; I commonly get some of IMA's work muddled up with which melody goes with what, however with the likes of Chiapas, Smiler & Helix which all use themed diagetic noises amazingly, along with completely subverting traditional score techniques and structures, they're hard to forget.

 

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I find IMA score make music to sound great on a YouTube clip playing from a laptop, or in a board room meeting maybe, but usually sounding way too hard, overpowering and homogenous in an actual ride. It's often like someone's playing a very over-indulgent movie trailer in your ear, in a queueline.

Their sonics and synthesising are great, but it's often so exaggerated by its LOUD mastering and ends up sounding very generic with cliched orchestra thrown everywhere too.

They're cool but flash in the pan compared to a lot of simpler, more imaginative theme park music. They can do fierce drama but not ambiance.

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+1 for the Magic Valley soundtrack being fab. :wub:

 

I've heard the 'IMAScore music sounds very similar' point raised a few times, but it doesn't really bother me.  All of their stuff works with the attractions they've been designed for, and with little knowledge of audio tech, I (and I guess the majority of people) don't really pick up on all the niggles that some do.

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I feel that some soundtracks from IMAScore take a long time to really get into the music itself (not all soundtracks, themes like Helix or The Smiler don't count).

E.g. the Galactica theme takes a while to get started so I end up getting bored waiting for it to get really good (and I can't skip or else I ruin the effect), it isn't bad but it's just long. I prefer the original Air theme where sections were not overly long which helped with my attention span. The individual sections were also very unique and overall there was great flow to it which is why I love it ^_^

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The DBGT music when you listen in isolation has a lot more subtleties and works better as an instrumental piece of music, sounds creepy and lends to the imagination. Which is all very good, but on the ride however it was one of the worst parts about the experience for me. Over dramamtic music constantly going from quiet to predictably LOUD in your ear, with no actual feeling created by it, largely just generic horror movie soundtrack to fill the space. Once inside, there was ambient music when I went but it worked so little that the room felt dead.

It's a very subjective thing I suppose. Theme park music used to use a lot of melodies and 'themed' instrumentation, being very creative. IMA score do things very differently - not a bad thing. Their idea of themed music (wherever I've heard it largely, other attractions I'm sure are better) is to be really overpowering, create lots of soundscape, with dramatic SFX all racked up like a movie trailer, and no real rhythm or melody.

 

Metallic sci fi sounds, crackling distortion, percussive stabs, etc, all hammering down the point. Then some VERY unimaginative, standard tunes are thrown in.  The combination, to me, is all very fake, so on-the-nose without creating much real fun. And actually quite easy to create that sound with modern music tech.

 

The biggest problem is, it seems, the studios like Merlin who think they don't need to do as much work if they choose IMAscore because their soundtracks are "so good" that it creates the atmosphere for them.  Instead, it comes off like an OTT soundtrack playing to an empty space and it doesn't work. IMAscore are a fantastic studio then, but maybe arent being used in the right way. The recent 'rescoring' of whole parks into IMAscore soundtracks proves this. No changes to the areas, just get IMAscore in for the sake of it to produce the same product over and over, as required. Homogenising the whole park without really improving anything.

 

Such a shame I think, because so much of IMAscore's popularity is through their social media and branding rather than them being the greatest composers on earth. Even so I LOVED The Smiler soundtrack when it first came out, I thought finally music that dares to be out-there, suitably overpowering and powered up for such a ride, and creative soundscape, but even that had the tiresome cliched HA HA HA theme repeating so much it was annoying.

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I really dislike flucht De demon sound track. It feels very messy. Even Galactica isn't the best. I feel the best theme comes from Disney (soarin theme is perfect) or European parks like gardaland. If you hear Fuga Da Gardaland soundtrack, it has multiple pieces with similarities of where it plays (for instance you hear a sort of happy, heroic soundtrack in the tunnel after the first drop). It creates a fantastic atmosphere!

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I would suggest that a lot of it would depend on the park's requirements/demands from the soundtrack... Chiapas has several variants on the theme throughout the ride changing along constantly, so IMAScore can do stuff like that, guess though many parks won't desire that level of commitment as it costs top monies...

 

Klugheim is similar, but nowhere near as catchy imo... The best theme park tunes are the repetitive ones after all, even Tussauds knew that...

 

A lot of park music relies on the context though, hearing it outside of the ride/park doesn't work really, I thought Blue Fire's soundtrack was iffy for years until I actually heard it properly and it suddenly clicked into place...

 

IMAScore's success is certainly hard branding and also no doubt being a sudden dedicated signpost for themed music... Parks no longer need to source a composer and just get one company to do it... They saw a gap in the market and it's worked...

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  • 3 months later...

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