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)