• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

The Alton Towers Music, Video and Other Multimedia Thread

There is something that has bugged me for, around 15 years. When I discovered that people have put ride themes on YouTube ™

How on earth do you get the soundtrack from the park when it's not officially realised? As an example, the oblivion queue line vids.

I appreciate everyone that does it. God knows it's got me through some times.
 
Slugjc said:
There is something that has bugged me for, around 15 years. When I discovered that people have put ride themes on YouTube ™

How on earth do you get the soundtrack from the park when it's not officially realised? As an example, the oblivion queue line vids.

I appreciate everyone that does it. God knows it's got me through some times.
Click to expand...
I’m assuming that it either got published online during at some point during a marketing campaign, or that somehow someone originally had access to the soundtrack, copied it and it eventually gets leaked online.
 
Before the Alton Towers CD was released by IMAScore, I remember one of the only half-decent recordings of the Spinball soundtrack was created by the person sat in front of one of the area speakers for the duration!
 
I remember it being common for patient enough individuals to sit in front of speakers and record a whole soundtrack. Something I haven't seen anyone do in a long time. We've been blessed with IMA Score soundtrack releases over the last few years (even if they are not the full versions).

Many years ago, when we were all at TTF, someone who worked for Merlin leaked a massive amount of audio from Alton Towers, including area music, ride soundtracks, PA system announcements, and even shelved audio that never got used in the park. I've got a hard drive hidden somewhere with a massive amount of audio on it, thanks to that mysterious member. If I remember correctly, the site team were asked to take the posts/threads down at the time by Merlin. It was a while ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. Not sure if the Oblivion audio was included in all that. I might go digging around for that hard drive and see what's on it.
 
Oblivion station and video audio is stock audio - the rest was done by Tussauds.

There used to be a few of us, myself included, who would hunt audio down and email Tussaud’s Studios’ then audio department or the parks themselves.

Sometimes it was luck of the staff member you spoke to with some being more helpful than others.

Some were released samples like Hocus Pocus Hall - the audio doing the rounds of that is only a sample of the entire track and you can hear the abrupt cut off.

Bernie was the main individual from TS audio who was absolutely lovely in terms of helping and sending out samples but I know he had a lot of people email in!

Sometimes staff would take SD cards home overnight to rip audio and share with others or they would know someone in technical services who could obtain it for them.

However, there was a lot of hierarchy and ganging up on who had what audio and so sometimes it wasn’t the nicest of missions or “arm of the community” to be in.

Sadly, in 2007 Merlin shut down the audio department and it was outsourced entirely to companies/composers which I won’t bore you with listing here!

There was also the big audio leak - it allowed many to enjoy a lot of tracks as explained in posts above which is excellent but, in turn, made Merlin crack down. However, it did kill off the weird power games between audio people but sadly also killed off the audio community in a way.

The company then became reluctant to engage with audio until more recently when IMAScore engaged in the first talks to bring an Alton Towers Soundtrack and then a Thorpe Park one. Since then, merchandising teams have seen more of want for these and now we have streaming for the two parks. We’ve also seen bits released for Alton and Chessington by Simon Allen on YouTube.

However, it’s still a mission with all parks in regards to certain audio and I mean, anything from Legoland and Chessington is an uphill struggle…even if the composer is on board. it sadly comes down to management but also, they can’t just shove anything on streaming as there’s lots of hoops to jump through.

Stuff is out there but sadly the audio side of the community seems to be long dead and gone which is a huge shame and so it’s near on impossible to search and find.

EDIT: Just to add to the above about recording…yes I have some very dodgy recordings from years gone by but in American parks it’s not uncommon for people to do what we call induction recordings using an induction mic and setup - basically gives you a mono soundtrack-like track with no wind, mechanical/other sounds or talking etc
 
Indeed.

There’s quite a few still in my “most wanted” list

Air Full suite
CATCF Full Suite
Original Spinball Whizzer Playlist (jukebox)
TRRR full unrecorded audio
Original Full Towers Street Score in HQ

To be fair I think probably 75% of the towers audio is out there now. Will never happen but I’d love them to release older tracks, feels like leaving money on the shelf
 
Last edited:
I remember joining the community around 2006 and collecting audio files from all the fan sites. TowersTimes, Alton Towers Almanac, and Towers Nerd all had great collections. It was great fun having a bit of a 'black market' for audio files, too. People did get very territorial with it. The big leak was the final nail in the coffin, as all fan sites removed their audio file pages due to Merlin cracking down. It's a huge shame.

I used to collect all visual materials (logos, promotional images, etc.), too, but that is also a lost community. Unfortunately, it’s not so much of a thing now.

Ash said:
Indeed.

There’s quite a few still in my “most wanted” list

Air Full suite
CATCF Full Suite
Spinball Whizzer Playlist
TRRR full unrecorded audio
Original Full Towers Street Score in HQ

To be fair I think probably 75% of the towers audio is out there now. Will never happen but I’d love them to release older tracks, feels like leaving money on the shelf
Click to expand...

It would be great to see older tracks officially released, but I don't think Merlin has ever been interested in it, likely due to the complications with copyright and only a small audience (enthusiasts) being interested. It would be nice to see more recent audio appear on Apple Music/Spotify, etc.,though.
 
Ash said:
Indeed.

There’s quite a few still in my “most wanted” list

Air Full suite
CATCF Full Suite
Spinball Whizzer Playlist
TRRR full unrecorded audio
Original Full Towers Street Score in HQ

To be fair I think probably 75% of the towers audio is out there now. Will never happen but I’d love them to release older tracks, feels like leaving money on the shelf
Click to expand...
Some good choices there. Especially airs and Towers Street.

This isn't Merlin related, but I'd love to see Los Piratas music emerge on the Internet in the future!
 
Steve74 said:
Do you mean the score written by Graham Smart?
Click to expand...

I do.

I have the Graham smart FLAC of just the towers street theme (around 6 mins) and the 13 mins whole suite but that’s only 192kbs from memory.

So the whole suite at HQ is the dream.
 
Last edited:
Ash said:
I do.

I have the Graham smart FLAC of just the towers street theme (around 6 mins) and the 20 mins hole suite but that’s 192kbs from memory.

So the whole suite at HQ is the dream.
Click to expand...
I've no idea where you got the FLAC version from but you can buy the Towers Street music here on one of these albums (I don't know the quality though)

Graham Smart

Graham Smart. UK.
graham-smart.bandcamp.com graham-smart.bandcamp.com
 
Ash said:
There’s quite a few still in my “most wanted” list

Air Full suite
CATCF Full Suite
Spinball Whizzer Playlist
TRRR full unrecorded audio
Original Full Towers Street Score in HQ
Click to expand...
When you say Air/CATCF Full Suite do you mean announcements/ride & queue audio/different tracks from different seasons?

In regards to TRRR, I’ve never heard of any rumours of the full set of radio recordings and files being out there in the wild compared to WWTP. Spinball too.

I think I may have a text file somewhere of every song featured on TRRR if that helps?
 
Imagination said:
When you say Air/CATCF Full Suite do you mean announcements/ride & queue audio/different tracks from different seasons?

In regards to TRRR, I’ve never heard of any rumours of the full set of radio recordings and files being out there in the wild compared to WWTP. Spinball too.

I think I may have a text file somewhere of every song featured on TRRR if that helps?
Click to expand...

For Air I just mean the general soundtrack,I’m sure there were different longer versions in the station, queue line etc different to the 3:27 that’s available. Although happy to be told otherwise.

CATCF I mean similar. There is the external audio and some of the internal out there and weird and wonderful versions of some of the inside and the lift. But it’s certainly not complete or in good quality.

Thanks for the TRR but I already have that in a playlist I think Alton put an almost complete one on Spotify not that long ago.

It’s the bits of “radio” chat in between missing.

The spinball jukebox playlist, I know bits but not everything and it’s harder and harder to remember now.
 
Imagination said:
I think I may have a text file somewhere of every song featured on TRRR if that helps?
Click to expand...
Possibly worth posting as a reply, regardless, to make it easier for others to find? A playlist hardly breaks copyright legislation after all, and we have been talking about how much we hate gatekeeping!
 
Air was 3:30 loop around plaza and queue - including station I believe. The only variation was the queue bridge/merge points which played the ambient part of the main theme on loop with the queue line instructions played on top.

Then there was the London Eye original theme used as the Air 2006 theme and then two variants of the Air 2007/08 theme when they decided to switch things up with the TS suite being part of it etc.

CatCF had the normal exterior queue in 2006, before being updated to include factory sounds ontop and then changed to play Cloud Cuckoo Land’s area audio with the factory sounds on top.

The boat ride had the original Oompa Loompa song soundtrack before abruptly being replaced with the weird cuts of exterior theme in place of the oompa songs.

Then there was the audio from the different videos and the lift, along with an unused exit corridor/demo theme.

That’s all as far as I’m aware but original Air announcements and a couple of the CatCF stuff I don’t think have seen the light of day.

GooseOnTheLoose said:
Possibly worth posting as a reply, regardless, to make it easier for others to find? A playlist hardly breaks copyright legislation after all, and we have been talking about how much we hate gatekeeping!
Click to expand...

Of course! I’ll try and hunt down where it’s saved to and post it up. 😄
 
TRRR:
A little less conversation
Are you gonna be my girl - Jet
Bat out of hell - Meat loaf
Block buster - The Sweet
Breakout - Foo Fighters
Burn baby burn
Crazy crazy nights - Kiss
Crocodile Rock - Elton John
Devil Gate Drive - Suzi Quattro
Don’t stop me now - Queen
Driving in my car - madness
Final countdown - Europe
Great balls of fire
Hot in the city - billy idol
(I can’t get no) satisfaction - Rolling Stones
I drove all night
Greased lightning mix
Jump - Van Halen
Killer Queen - Queen
Legs - ZZ top
Let’s stick together
Livin on a prayer - Bon jovi
Lovely Rita - the Beatles
Ring of fire - Jonny cash
Simply irresistible - Robert palmer
Smells like teen spirit - nirvana
Stuck in the middle with you
Sweet child o mine - guns n roses
Teenage dirtbag - wheatus
The race - yelo
Town called malice - the jam
Walk this way - run dmc
We built this city
White wedding - billy idol
You give love a bad name - bon jovi
You spin me round - dead or alive
20th century boy - T rex
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top