LET THERE BE MUSIC

As you will have read on The Unmutual, the 50th anniversary of 'The Prisoner' has inspired events, releases, articles, and much fan activitiy.

None are more interesting than a project from Peter Horgan, in which he has created an alternative theme music for the series!

Inspired by the now-defunct possible 'The Prisoner' computer game, Peter constructed an alternative theme in 2014. Dormant until now, Peter now plans to release it on YouTube on 29th September.

Peter Writes:

"In 2014 the unmutual website ran an intriguing article (http://theunmutual.co.uk/villagegame.htm) by Wm. Maher who had worked with Patrick McGoohan to develop a computer game based on the Prisoner. Sadly, for a variety of reasons (and please read the article as it is fascinating), the game was not completed before Patrick's passing. Bill was relaunching the project and was looking for contributors to bring the game to fruition and I decided to accept the challenge.

It appeared from the article that they had secured the rights to Ron Grainer's powerful theme so I wondered how I should approach "auditioning" to supply incidental music to perhaps play in other parts of the game. I decided to compose a piece that would emulate the style of the original theme rather than provide a contemporary sounding score.

Information on the original recording is hard to come by as evidenced by this article by Larry Hall who put together the first release of The Prisoner Soundtrack album: http://www.geocities.ws/ffa_archives/issue_28/arch_2.3.htm


This did however give me a starting point on what instruments to include. I then decided (just to make life harder!) to see if I could compose a piece that synced with the intro sequence. The sound quality on the original is a product of the time and although I could have attempted to match the sonic landscape by limiting frequencies and degrading the fidelity of the sound, I opted to go for a hybrid; I used instruments from the original theme tune but employed modern recording techniques in the hope that it might be an approximation of what Ron Grainer might sound like if he had today's technology 50 years ago.

The game has not yet come to market but I hope some day we all get to see it as he hints there is a big reveal that he worked on and agreed with Patrick.

As the 50th Anniversary of the first UK broadcast approached I decided to dust this down and share it with other fans as part of the celebrations in commemorating one of the most unique and enduring TV shows that we will ever see. It was great fun making it. I hope you enjoy it."

Please watch this short video to learn more about this online event: https://youtu.be/0SvgbcsSDAQ

With thanks to Peter Horgan for this news item. News announced 22/9/17.

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