Full Metal Jacket, the Martha Stewart Way!

["Stephen P. Goodman" <spgoodman@earthlight.net>]

I remember reading an article / interview about Suzanne Vega in Musician
when Full Metal Jacket came out, that credited her with a lot of the
soundtrack's incidental music.  On the strength of this I bought the
soundtrack the first time I saw it on CD, and I highly recommend it.  While
there's also other songs like "Wooly Bully", "Hello Vietnam" and "These
Boots are Made for Walkin'" there's a lot of the incidental music.  I don't
have the CD here in the UK with me, bought in 1988, but a look at CDNOW's
listing has "Abigail Mead Mead" listed as composer.  Of course I can't find
the archive of the article-in-question, but as Suzanne Vega was one of the
early users of the Fairlight, I'm now wondering whether she helped 
"Abigail"
produce the pieces.

My favorite piece on the album is "Leonard", which takes place during the
latrine freak-out scene.  Reeeeal creepy stuff, lovely textures.

I think the "metal scraping" sounds you're talking about are partially in
this piece, and given Suzanne Vega's use (at least in the 80s) of "found
objects" along with the Fairlight, it could very well be sampled metal
scraping with enhancement, possibly via a ring modulation/flanging effect.

Try using a manual knife-sharpening tool or stone, and sample the sound of 
a
big knife being brought across it.  Record several layers of equal length
and slightly similar speeds of knife-scraping.  Put the resultant layers
together, and flange lightly, remembering not to squelch the hiss involved.
This should give you a reasonably metallic scraping sound like you desire.
Tune to taste.

It's a GOOD thing. :)

"John Tidwell" <wedgehed@yahoo.com> put forth:
>
> Abigail Mead is the name given in the credits. A
> little internet research reveals that "Abigail" is in fact
> Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Stanley Kubrick. I also
> find that she used a Fairlight Series III sampler,
> which was the state of the art device in 1987 when
> the movie was made. I think you can still buy them if
> you have a spare $60,000 or so.
>
> All of which leads to my question.........
>
> What the hell kind of sound did she sample & what on
> earth did she do to it to get "that sound". It sounds
> like 2 pieces of metal grinding against each other in
> a melodic way. Let me rephrase that, 2 enormous pieces
> of metal grinding....in a melodic way.