Author: John Chivers via YouTube
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Gainsborough Minuet composed by Louis Levy; main theme by Bretton Byrd.
Cover photo from British comedy guide, with hasty colourisation by me.
I’m working my way through Will Hay films again and the theme from Where There’s A Will got stuck in my head. To be fair, it makes a change from the theme from Ask A Policeman being stuck in my head, which is more common!
As it’s even deprived me of sleep, I decided to exorcise it by creating my own version of the theme using Cubase Artist 11 with various VST virtual instrument plug-ins. The drums, as ever, are performed on my Alesis Crimson II electric drum kit triggering software drums (Superior Drummer 3). Otherwise, all instruments are played via an Akai MIDI keyboard.
I struggle to pull myself away from my favourite instrumentation – Mellotrons, Rickenbacker bass, ARP Pro Soloist keyboard, Taurus bass pedal and other Moog sounds, because this is a sound palette I just love, so these are the dominant sounds in use here.
Interesting here is I decided to create a tempo track which tracks the tempo changes in the original theme (it speeds up and slows down throughout) and perform to that for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it would make referencing the original easy and secondly, it would allow me to synchronise the music to the original opening titles, as I have done here.
If you haven’t seen the Will Hay film, it’s worth a watch, as is all his film output!