Blake's 7 - The Liberator Music Suite - Series A (1978)

[@Jokie155]

The high contrast shot with the star in the background is just such a spectacular visual you don't get anywhere else.

[@modehead101]

If they ever had the good sense to release Dudley's incidental music for B7 on vinyl, I would be the first in line to buy it. It's amazing that the music for this show was never commercially released.

[@matthewtygert1053]

Man, I think I could watch this all day. By God, she's beautiful. "Sinfully beautiful" is how I always phrase it. It's *obscene* how majestic this ship is, from any angle, even sideways. They seemed to put a lot of thought into filming Liberator at different angles to showcase the design, and it never failed to hit the mark. Just a masterpiece. Even the eccentricities, such as her near-but-not-quite-perfect trifoil symmetry, with the bottom nacelles being at different angles and on shorter pylons. There's simply no part of the design that goes awry. *Additionally:* The way you kept the scenes playing in realtime to the suite is just delightful, a sort of purified trip down memory lane. Despite being born eight years after the famous finale in America, I grew up watching this show, and it's always great fun remembering those happy times. I drew a great big Zen on my wall in crayon at the foot of my bed, and, given he's been *painted over* rather than scrubbed off, I get a nice warm feeling knowing he's still there.

[@skurge101]

Awesome music and one of the most incredible Ship designs in all of film and tv!

[@darlenewaldron3621]

Thank you for this. Blake's 7 had excellent incidental music.

[@blakesliberator3197]

S1 incidental music is just so _perfect._ ❤

[@ajc4477]

Dudley Simpson's music is probably the main reason I loved the show so much. It's weird how I can listen to this and not think of all the music he created for Who - despite their obvious similarities.

[@timdickinson7304]

Wonderful, wonderful work as always. The Liberator themes never fail to bring a little lump in my throat. Nicely edited too. I look forward to season B!

[@doctorzerkalosmonitorzone6154]

Thanks so much Tim for the generous words. Agreed completely about the Liberator themes! I'm curious how many scripts Dudley had seen - or what had David Maloney outlined to him about the show ahead - when he began work on scoring the series and the Liberator in particular. He just seems to get straight away what the Liberator will go on to represent - this glittering, majestic beacon of hope that will become such a powerful symbol of resistance against the Federation - it's all there in the way he scores the Liberator's first appearance with that glistening statement and then the development of the main theme as Blake, Jenna and Avon enter the flight deck for the first time. I'm thinking of the contrast with the first Star Wars film in 1977 - John Williams doesn't yet know the significance of Darth Vader's character and so he doesn't give him a prominent theme until The Empire Strikes Back when it's clear how important Vader is! But those early Liberator cues from Dudley suggest that he was thinking ahead about the rest of the series (or the first season at least!) and the mythic status that the Liberator was going to take on - I wonder how far ahead he'd read or what conversations he'd had with David Maloney or was it just his excellent musico-dramatic instincts on the basis of what he saw and read in 'Space Fall'?! Glorious cues however he arrived at them! I think the cue for the first appearance of the Liberator in 'The Web' (at 02:47) might be one of my favourites - that initial heroic burst and then the warmth of the following chords - the crew haven't done that much yet but the ship is already marked out as a bringer of hope and a safe place (maybe that's why Blake is fast asleep!).

[@timdickinson7304]

@@doctorzerkalosmonitorzone6154 I'd not considered John Williams and Darth Vader. I might need to revisit this! It's interesting to imagine some kind of 'setting the tone' meeting - triumphant for the Liberator, and dark, brooding brass for the Federation - the central cues. I have to agree with you about that first moment on the flight deck in Space Fall, and that opening cue in 'The Web' is magical. I also have a lot of time for a similar opening cue in 'Mission to Destiny' and a later one at the moment where The Liberator comes into detector range of the Ortega, and Blake tells Zen to activate the main screen. Just one of many wonderful moments. Thanks again for putting these suites together - we really are spoiled!

[@peterpowell8827]

Ha ha love it. ❤️ never did find out what it's about. Or who built the ship.

[@Eltonlaleham]

I say the best characters in B7, are Avon, Vila and arch-enemy Servalan those three stayed for all 4 seasons of B7 whereas other characters came and sadly went.

[@Chris4ord]

How did you do this? Wow I’ve listen to your other series A-D but here with the visuals I can see how much you’ve isolated. Amazing

[@doctorzerkalosmonitorzone6154]

Thanks so much Chris - and for listening to the other suites too! - am so glad you've enjoyed them. I used a blend of Pro Tools and Audacity to do the audio editing. The big help was the Paulstretch effect in Audacity as that enabled me to extend a lot of notes or sustained chords that would otherwise have dialogue over them. Dudley will often finish a cue for a shot of the Liberator with a sustained chord which will continue and decay into the next shot - maybe an interior of the Liberator with the crew talking - but there might be two or three seconds of that chord before the dialogue comes in and that's all Paulstretch needs to get to work - it can stretch small fragments of audio and extend them for remarkable lengths of time without much appreciable loss in the quality of the audio (whereas the time stretch effect in Pro Tools introduces obvious loss of quality and sonic artefacts). You'll see people doing that with KZbin videos where they've used Paulstretch to extend a four minute pop song for over an hour and transformed it into an instant ambient 'classic' ;- ) So, I'm indebted to Paulstretch really for being able to isolate as much as the music as possible from the dialogue, footsteps etc. I did some loops as well in a few places - Dudley might compose a rhythmic phrase and repeat it several times in succession, so if there's dialogue over part of that cue, in some cases I was able to sample the 'clean' dialogue free section and edit it in over the part where there was dialogue (there's a good example of that in the Series C suite from 'Powerplay' where Avon and Dayna hide in the service tunnels - Avon says 'quickly!' but I was able to mask that by sampling the repeated rhythmic phrase from elsewhere in that cue and dropping it in over the moment where there is Avon's dialogue). It's not the same as having the original isolated music recordings - but they're all presumed lost (if not destroyed!) so I hope it can give at least a sense of what they might be like.

[@Chris4ord]

@@doctorzerkalosmonitorzone6154 amazing work and thanks for taking the time to explain the magic. Have seen your other videos since this comment and they are just incredible. (Sarcophagus deserves its own score from start to finish in my opinion) but honestly thanks so much for sharing and going to the trouble to match the visual. It’s like watching something at the proms with the score over the scenes. Thank you

[@doctorzerkalosmonitorzone6154]

@@Chris4ord Agreed completely about 'Sarcophagus' - that's one of my favourites too. It's one I had recorded on tape cassette, when I was a kid, by putting the tape recorder up close to the TV (this was looooong before DVD box sets, streaming and the like!) so used to listen to that one a lot growing up and it's such a distinctive sonic experience - really difficult to tell where the dividing line between Dudley's score and Elizabeth Parker's sound design is in that one. Plus Dayna's song! A Blake's 7/Dudley Simpson Prom at the Albert Hall would be amazing! That's something to dream about - I'd love to think somebody might do that one day (they did an orchestral arrangement of some of his splendid music from 'City of Death' at a Doctor Who Prom about ten years ago and it was wonderful but all too brief). Many thanks again for the kind words and encouragement :- )