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Transformers Music Restoration Project: Season One Complete!

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Zobovor

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Sep 19, 2016, 9:01:58 PM9/19/16
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After over two years' worth of work, the background music from the first season of the original Transformers cartoon series has been rebuilt, restored, and remastered:

http://thetfcog.com/music/season1g1soundtrack.zip

The themes are in chonological order as they appear in the show. Here's a track listing:

01 Season One Theme (0:32)
02 Mysterious (1:13)
03 Cybertron I (0:16)
04 Teletraan I (1:25)
05 Emergency (1:33)
06 Scene Transition, Short Version (0:02)
07 Attack! (1:36)
08 Plan (1:38)
09 Evil Decepticons I (1:36)
10 Blasting Off (1:52)
11 Battle (1:45)
12 Commercial Bumper (0:07)
13 Evil Decepticons II (0:31)
14 Industrial Theme (1:42)
15 Wounded (1:40)
16 Peaceful Autobots (1:01)
17 Ambition (1:07)
18 The Battle Plan (1:03)
19 Gathering Resources (1:46)
20 Panic! (0:12)
21 Ruins (0:27)
22 Searching (1:09)
23 Season One Credits (0:42)
24 Problem (1:42)
25 Peace I (1:54)
26 Darkest Hour/Autobot Fanfare V (0:37)
27 Peace II (0:35)
28 Autobot Fanfare I (0:26)
29 Autobot Fanfare II (0:25)
30 Autobot Fanfare III (0:14)
31 Generic Rock-Disco Theme (2:54)
32 Decepticon Fanfare I (0:14)
33 Tragedy (0:16)
34 They'll Be Back I (0:39)
35 Grand Entrance (1:55)
36 Out of This World (0:21)
37 No One Will Leave Alive! (0:34)
38 They'll Be Back II (0:38)
39 Wounded Heroes (0:24)
40 Discovery II (0:18)
41 Peace III (0:22)
42 Discovery I (0:29)
43 Autobot Fanfare IV (0:10)
44 Nemesis I (2:18)
45 Autobot Fanfare VI (0:06)
46 Evil Defeated (0:27)
47 Noble Autobots (1:16)
48 Escape (1:45)
49 Survival (1:44)
50 Schemes (1:51)
51 Working (0:42)
52 Crisis (1:55)
53 Decepticon Fanfare II (0:10)
54 Revival (2:14)
55 Decepticon Terror (1:48)
56 Decepticon Activity Spotted (2:34)
57 Preparing for Battle (1:50)
58 Flight of the Decepticons (0:23)
59 The Test (0:12)
60 Autobot Fanfare VII (0:05)
61 Finale I (0:36)
62 Somewhere in India (0:33)
63 Spike's Darkest Hour (0:30)
64 Decepticon Fanfare III (0:06)
65 The Autobots (1:41)
66 Decepticon Fanfare IV (0:09)
67 Autobot Fanfare VIII (0:04)
68 Chaos (1:34)
69 Finale II (1:04)
70 Cybertron II (0:17)
71 Decepticon Fanfare V (0:08)
72 Sneaky/Decepticon Fanfare VI (0:29)

(Total running time: 1:05:25)

Note: None of these are the actual track names. Some of them are of my own creation, while others were working names that we kept because I didn't see any reason to come up with anything different.

For those coming into this late, there was a previous attempt by another fan to build complete musical tracks of some of the themes from the show. If you have the right computer software and a little know-how, you can rip the six-channel soundtrack from the episodes on DVD and you get a mostly dialogue channel, mostly sound effects channel, mostly music channel, etc. So, it's possible to construct music from the show without any character speech overlapping it. The problem is those pesky sound effects. A lot of the earlier attempts, which have been hosted online on sites like TFCog for a number of years, still have robotic metal footfalls, laser blasts, wind blowing in the background, and so forth.

Jim Figurski found these samples of background music and realized he might be able to make them even better. He had access to some pretty sophisticated sound editing software and started up a Kickstarter fundraiser to try to make it happen. I was told about the project some months down the road, and wanted to offer my knowledge of the show and its music. I ended up becoming a lot more involved in the project than expected, creating documents detailing every instance of Transformers music used in animation along with time codes detailing where a specific piece of music could be found in any episode (not just Transformers, but also in series like G.I. Joe, Robotix, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and Dungeons & Dragons, which all drew from a shared music library).

My role will grow even more now that we're working on season two. The previous attempt at archiving the music was successful in building nearly every theme used during the show's first season, but while I was cataloguing the show, I realized that there were many themes from season two and three that had not been archived at all. Building a theme involves digging through every episode in which that music is used and trying to piece it together like a puzzle. Not every episode will play a complete theme in its entirety, though... frequently the music was edited to fit the animated scenes, so actually it's more like a puzzle where you sometimes find yourself creating new puzzle pieces to fit the gaps. Once I have built a complete theme, I will send it along to Jim so he can work his magic with his editing software.

I make it sound a lot easier than it is. What Jim does with this music is like what a professional photograph restoration artist does with a grainy, dog-eared Polaroid. He systematically tries to eliminate every background sound... every computer beep, every falling rock, every transformation sound effect. When there are no clean sources of music available, he'll cannibalize sounds from elsewhere in a track, extending notes to cover up unwanted sounds or pitching notes up or down to get them to match. He's dug through orchestral sound archives online, hunting for the sound of just the right cymbal clash or a trumpet flourish. He's not just cleaning up this music; sometimes he's actually rebuilding parts of it. He sometimes sends me work-in-progress files so I can critique his progress, offer suggestions, or simply praise his efforts. He seeks my final approval on every theme before I give it the go-ahead to release it to the world. Of course, I am such a huge fan of the show and its music that I would never sign off on a piece of music that did not sound authentic!

Of particular note is the track "No One Will Leave Alive!", whose music was only used once in a single episode, and it was a scene with lots of transforming and fusion cannon blasts and boulders crumbling. The fact that Jim was able to create a track you can listen to is nothing short of a miracle.

I cannot emphasize enough how much work and how many long hours Jim has poured into this project. He really believes in making this music sound as close as possible to the way an officially-released, CD-quality soundtrack might sound. They have been teasing us with the notion of an official release for years, but it still hasn't happened and maybe never will. Even if Robert J. Walsh does finally produce a compilation of the themes he wrote, though, it still won't encompass the contributions Johnny Douglas made to the series.

Enjoy! Let me know which ones are your favorite tracks!


Zob (partial to "Survival" myself)

David Connell

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Sep 20, 2016, 9:48:14 AM9/20/16
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On Monday, September 19, 2016 at 9:01:58 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> After over two years' worth of work, the background music from the first season of the original Transformers cartoon series has been rebuilt, restored, and remastered:
>
> http://thetfcog.com/music/season1g1soundtrack.zip


<Snip>
>
> Enjoy! Let me know which ones are your favorite tracks!
>
>
> Zob (partial to "Survival" myself)

Well, I know what I'll be downloading at lunchtime ...

Zobovor

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Sep 20, 2016, 9:56:23 PM9/20/16
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On Monday, September 19, 2016 at 7:01:58 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> After over two years' worth of work, the background music from the first
> season of the original Transformers cartoon series has been rebuilt,
> restored, and remastered.

While Jim and I both agreed that the fidelity of the soundtrack should be as high as possible to fully appreciate the nuances of the music, there are a few fans who want a lower-quality version that's easier/faster to download, can work on their mobile devices, etc. So, somebody put one together (I have not downloaded this version so I cannot personally vouch for it):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_pOcbYtCrXGQ1BTQW5VMENreFE/view


Zob (now if we can just get all the folks who uploaded the old, crappy versions of the soundtrack to YouTube to replace them with the new version!)

David Connell

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Sep 21, 2016, 9:19:09 AM9/21/16
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The high-quality version works perfectly on my phone! It was awesome listening to the music, trying to match each piece to the scenes it was used in, and just experiencing an often overlooked aspect of the franchise. Thanks so much!

Shin Hibiki

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Sep 25, 2016, 2:39:04 AM9/25/16
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Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:

>After over two years' worth of work, the background music from the first season of the original Transformers cartoon series has been rebuilt, restored, and remastered:
>
> http://thetfcog.com/music/season1g1soundtrack.zip

I've said this to you before, and I've said it to Jim, but at
the risk of giving you a big head, I will say it again. I personally
believe this to be one of the most significant contributions that has
ever been made to the fandom, especially for something that is not a
commercial product. I mean, you didn't have access to master tapes,
and yet here we are. Two years may be a long time, but you delivered
what the pros have been promising on and off for more than a decade
with nothing to show. I am biased toward musical-type stuff, but I
felt much the same about this project when it was announced as I did
about the TFTM soundtrack when it was released. (Was that really
almost 20 years ago already?)
I thought maybe you guys were going to take a break, but I see
that Jim is already slaving away on Season 2. Does it have as many
new themes as S1, given that they re-used a lot of S1 stuff?

- Shin Hibiki, Noble Autobots and Finale II

----
The race ain't over yet, baby
It's only just begun
They thought they had it won, baby
But soon we'll have 'em on the run

Zobovor

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Sep 25, 2016, 2:09:14 PM9/25/16
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On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 12:39:04 AM UTC-6, Shin Hibiki wrote:

> I personally believe this to be one of the most significant contributions
> that has ever been made to the fandom, especially for something that is not a
> commercial product.

Squee! Comments like this make it all worth it.

> I thought maybe you guys were going to take a break, but I see
> that Jim is already slaving away on Season 2. Does it have as many
> new themes as S1, given that they re-used a lot of S1 stuff?

By my count, there were 74 unique themes introduced during the second season. Now, a small handful of these are super short, like the few seconds of Walkman music we hear during "Kremzeek!" The G.I. Joe commercial bumper theme used in "The Autobot Run" is also included because it's technically part of the Transformers sound library. Most of them are legitimate background music, though.

Some of them you can already find online in a raw, unremastered state, but there are about 36 of them that you can't find anywhere because they've never been pieced together before. Some of them are, in my opinion, the best music from the show. Season two is going to be a lot more work for me personally than season one was, since I'm going to be the one assembling pieces of music together for Jim to work his magic on. Depending on the source material, sometimes I'll have to pull from a dozen different episodes to get a clean build. It's a lot of work, but I think Jim has still put in way more hours than I have.

There's a little less work to do for season three and four since there were fewer episodes produced and fewer new themes written (only about 44 unique themes from 1986-87). I can't wait to dig into season three because I love the 1980's synthesizer music so much.


Zob (truth be told, I have absolutely no idea how many themes from "Carnage in C-Minor" are actually in C minor)

Ramen Junkie

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Sep 28, 2016, 8:40:18 PM9/28/16
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On 9/19/2016 8:01 PM, Zobovor wrote:
> After over two years' worth of work, the background music from the first season of the original Transformers cartoon series has been rebuilt, restored, and remastered:
>
> Note: None of these are the actual track names. Some of them are of my own creation, while others were working names that we kept because I didn't see any reason to come up with anything different.
>
> For those coming into this late, there was a previous attempt by another fan to build complete musical tracks of some of the themes from the show. If you have the right computer software and a little know-how, you can rip the six-channel soundtrack from the episodes on DVD and you get a mostly dialogue channel, mostly sound effects channel, mostly music channel, etc. So, it's possible to construct music from the show without any character speech overlapping it. The problem is those pesky sound effects. A lot of the earlier attempts, which have been hosted online on sites like TFCog for a number of years, still have robotic metal footfalls, laser blasts, wind blowing in the background, and so forth.
>

That's some pretty amazing work. Good call on piecing everything
together from the various episodes and shows to be sure.
--
Ramen Junkie

Supreme Dictator for Life, alt.games.final-fantasy

Shin Hibiki

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Oct 21, 2016, 11:42:45 PM10/21/16
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Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:

>The G.I. Joe commercial bumper theme used in "The Autobot Run" is also included because it's technically part of the Transformers sound library.

Heh. Just one of a zillion weird things about that episode.
Fun fact, I think that was the last first-run pre-Movie episode I ever
saw, as it didn't show up in the rotation until very late here for
some reason.

- Shin Hibiki, not that I was missing anything...

groovygoth666

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May 13, 2021, 10:43:36 PM5/13/21
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Sorry to revive an old thread, I've been searching for a way to contact Zob and google led me to here.

Thank you so much for yours and Jimbos work on getting this soundtrack out there, I donated to the original kickstarter and that was definitely money well spent.

I know it's been a few years since the completion of this project, but if you don't mind would it be okay to pick your brain?

I've been working on recreating the soundtrack to each episode, which your guide has been a great resource, I'm on episode 4 of season one "Transport To Oblivion" and have got stuck on a few seconds at the 14 minute mark, as lazerbeak arrives at Decepticon HQ and flies past the screen, in your guide it's listed as Autobot Fanfare II, but only the ending is used and before that something else plays, possibly with the Decepticon motif and I'm having trouble figuring out what it is. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks again.

Zobovor

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May 13, 2021, 11:56:38 PM5/13/21
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On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 8:43:36 PM UTC-6, groovygoth666 wrote:

> Sorry to revive an old thread, I've been searching for a way to contact Zob and google led me to here.

One of the reasons I continue to use my old dinosaur AOL account is to make it easier for people to contact me, since I've been around forever. But apparently my brilliant scheme backfired in this case. Sorry!

> Thank you so much for yours and Jimbos work on getting this soundtrack out there, I donated to the original kickstarter and that was definitely money well spent.

Glad you enjoy the soundtrack. It really was a labor of love.

> As lazerbeak arrives at Decepticon HQ and flies past the screen, in your guide it's listed as Autobot Fanfare II, but only the ending is used and before that something else plays, possibly with the Decepticon motif and I'm having trouble figuring out what it is.

Just as a warning, my guide tends to be inaccurate in places. For example, I totally failed to identify "Nemesis III" because to me it just sounds like the other two slow-moving pieces with lots of cellos. My brain does not register that as music.

So, onto "Transport to Oblivion." Man, that scene is noisy. So many sound effects. And, for the purposes of sound editing, Laserbeak's noises were treated as sound effects, not character dialogue, so all his screeching is still audible even with the dialogue track removed from the equation.

At 13:49 to 14:04 it's all docking tower sound effects and Laserbeak being incessant. I can hardly make out any musical notes at all. That's probably why I didn't add it to my list, because it was pretty much all noise. But after some careful listening and many, many replays, it's actually "Spike's Darkest Hour." So I was wrong; it appears much earlier in the show than I had thought.

Hopefully this was of some help to you!


Zob (adds paper towns to maps just because I can)

groovygoth666

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May 14, 2021, 1:08:53 AM5/14/21
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On Friday, May 14, 2021 at 4:56:38 AM UTC+1, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 8:43:36 PM UTC-6, groovygoth666 wrote:

> One of the reasons I continue to use my old dinosaur AOL account is to make it easier for people to contact me, since I've been around forever. But apparently my brilliant scheme backfired in this case. Sorry!

Honestly I wasn't too sure where to look for you, so just typed Transformers Zob into google and this was one of the top results.

> Just as a warning, my guide tends to be inaccurate in places. For example, I totally failed to identify "Nemesis III" because to me it just sounds like the other two slow-moving pieces with lots of cellos. My brain does not register that as music.

Well so far it has made this incredibly easier than it would have been, even if a track is heavily edited knowing which one it is was super useful. My editing skills are limited so it doesn't have to be perfect but close enough. And it's understanable how the odd thing could be missed here and there.

> So, onto "Transport to Oblivion." Man, that scene is noisy. So many sound effects. And, for the purposes of sound editing, Laserbeak's noises were treated as sound effects, not character dialogue, so all his screeching is still audible even with the dialogue track removed from the equation.
>
> At 13:49 to 14:04 it's all docking tower sound effects and Laserbeak being incessant. I can hardly make out any musical notes at all. That's probably why I didn't add it to my list, because it was pretty much all noise. But after some careful listening and many, many replays, it's actually "Spike's Darkest Hour." So I was wrong; it appears much earlier in the show than I had thought.

Yeah the sound effects covering all of it was where I really struggled to find the start of those few notes and with it being so short didn't help. Yep that's it! Crazy to think they'd use only a couple of seconds for something that was possible written for a later episode.

> Hopefully this was of some help to you!

You are amazing and that was incredibly helpful! If I get stuck again would you mind me calling on you for help?

Zobovor

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May 14, 2021, 3:35:04 PM5/14/21
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On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 11:08:53 PM UTC-6, groovygoth666 wrote:

> You are amazing and that was incredibly helpful! If I get stuck again would you mind me calling on you for help?

Yes, absolutely. I love talking about this stuff.


Zob

groovygoth666

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May 22, 2021, 6:02:10 AM5/22/21
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Awesome, thanks a lot. I've finished Transport to Oblivion and have made a start on Roll For It, but so far so good!

groovygoth666

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May 29, 2021, 3:03:06 AM5/29/21
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On Saturday, May 22, 2021 at 11:02:10 AM UTC+1, groovygoth666 wrote:

Well I spoke to soon, it definetly got harder about half way through! But finally finished. You can really tell there were two editors working on this, as they both have different ways of editing which can make it a bit frustrating.

Just some updates for your timecodes on Roll For It, at 11:15 is “Mysterious”, 11:53 “Ruins”, 12:59 is the original “Peace III”, 17:23 “Peace III” (Alternate Ending) is here instead and unfortunately it seems a couple of seconds are missing (I tried looping it but didn't sound right) and finally I think 21:39 is “Autobot Fanfare V” before going into “Autobot Fanfare I”.
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