Joel McNeely

Ask and you will receive. Jim asked for my music to Disneyland's Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln to be put up. It's now in the 'filmography' section only because, well, a theme park section seems a little much. Thanks for asking. I'm sad this show was taken down, but maybe it'll be put back up sometime. I did the score to Tokyo Disney Seas' Tower of Terror last year. That was a blast. I went over there and wound up redoing a lot of the more ambient score after seeing and hearing the space. I had my laptop with Pro Tools and sampler software and was composing on the actual construction site in a hard hat!

Okay, so since I posted the Lincoln piece, I thought I might as well post Tower of Terror Tokyo exit music too! It was inspired by Citizen Kane. A sort of noir homage to Herr Herrmann, at least in the introduction. It was intended to be sort of retro and old and moldy. Enjoy!
As to your question of fife music in Lincoln, yes you are correct. I recorded a fife and drum piece, which they edited into the exit music. Good ears. How many times did you see this attraction????

David, you ask for more unreleased Soldier music. There are some really long battle cues, but I never thought they made a decent listen. Kind of unrelenting. I'll hunt around though. As to this score, it was a difficult slog. Due to record company deadlines we had to release the soundtrack BEFORE I was even done recording! That's why the album is at best a mediocre listen. It was no one's fault; it just got away from us. Most of the music I was most proud of never made the record. We did this crazy instrumentation inspired by all of the wacky Herrmann experiments. 3 brass choirs spread left, center, and right. Almost 70 brass players! They took pictures at the session because they had never been all together on one date before. The strings were violas, cellos, and basses (no violins!) along with percussion in a 360-degree ring around the whole thing. Because it was recorded in surround you got these tom-tom patterns whipping around your head. It was an interesting experiment. Did it make the score any better? Maybe not. I do know this: it is never a bad thing to experiment.