Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Original Video Game Soundtrack) was jointly composed by Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab for the 2023 video game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The official soundtrack was released digitally on April 28, 2023, by Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts in collaboration with Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney, concurrently with the game and an album of diegetic music heard in Pyloon's Saloon entitled Sounds from the Galactic Skylanes (Original Music from Star Wars Jedi: Survivor).[6]
On December 15, 2023, the vinyl record producer Waxwork Records announced that they would be creating the official vinyl release for the soundtrack, with pre-orders immediately opening.[7] The double LP was released March, 2024. Sides A and B were found on a blue lightsaber-colored 150 gram vinyl, and sides C and D were found on a red lightsaber-colored 150 gram vinyl. The vinyl release also included two heavyweight gatefold record jackets with matte satin coating and an 11"x11" four-page booklet. Unlike the digital release, the vinyl release only had 27 tracks from the soundtrack.[4]
In February 2024, at the 2024 GRAMMY Awards, the score for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor won the award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media.[8]
Track listing[]
The tracks are listed by the order of the original soundtrack.
Digital Soundtrack[]
Total Time: 3 hours 57 minutes
| Track | Length |
|---|---|
| "Dark Times" | 5:54 |
| "The Undercity" | 8:45 |
| "Crash Landing" | 5:22 |
| "A Frontier Welcome" | 3:15 |
| "The Bedlam Raiders" | 5:10 |
| "Where the Nekkos Roam" | 5:01 |
| "Beast's Maw" | 2:25 |
| "Phon'Qi Caverns" | 2:06 |
| "Rambler's Reach" | 3:56 |
| "Gen'Dai" | 1:13 |
| "Beneath the Cantina" | 7:50 |
| "The Forest's Secret" | 7:06 |
| "Basalt Scars" | 2:27 |
| "Garrison" | 3:31 |
| "Haven" | 5:54 |
| "Release Me" | 4:24 |
| "Desert Ruins" | 4:59 |
| "The Ancients" | 3:52 |
| "Into the Storm" | 5:22 |
| "Fields of Dusk - Orchestral Version" | 4:41 |
| "Campfire" | 3:13 |
| "The Narkis Anchorites" | 4:04 |
| "Unforgiving Sands" | 8:02 |
| "Pilgrim's Path" | 4:40 |
| "The Sacred Mesa" | 8:57 |
| "Trident" | 6:05 |
| "Flight" | 3:25 |
| "Relics of War" | 8:38 |
| "To the Rescue" | 2:31 |
| "Shattered Moon" | 9:50 |
| "Course Collider" | 5:54 |
| "Warrior's Code" | 7:08 |
| "Mogu in the Mist" | 6:14 |
| "Above the Clouds" | 6:36 |
| "Grand Oculus" | 7:12 |
| "A Step Too Far" | 10:05 |
| "Siege" | 3:07 |
| "The Visitor" | 10:08 |
| "Nova Garon" | 4:01 |
| "Rage" | 5:27 |
| "The Abyss" | 4:36 |
| "Brothers" | 5:18 |
| "Through Darkness" | 5:35 |
| "Cold Dawn" | 3:32 |
Vinyl LP[]
Side A
- "Dark Times"
- "The Undercity"
- "A Frontier Welcome"
- "The Bedlam Raiders"
- "Where the Nekkos Roam"
- "Beast's Maw"
- "Phon'Qi Caverns"
Side B
- "Gen'Dai"
- "Beneath the Cantina"
- "Haven"
- "Desert Ruins"
- "The Ancients"
- "Fields of Dusk (Orchestral Version)
- "Campfire"
Side C
- "Pilgrim's Path"
- "The Sacred Mesa"
- "Flight"
- "Shattered Moon"
- "Course Collider"
- "Warrior's Code"
Side D
- "Mogu in the Mist"
- "Above the Clouds"
- "Siege"
- "The Visitor"
- "Rage"
- "Through Darkness"
- "Cold Dawn"
Development[]
The soundtrack for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was recorded with a world-renowned orchestra at Abbey Road Studios over a period more than 30 days, with additional recording sessions at Synchron Stage in Vienna, Austria. The duo also recorded each orchestral section independently, unlike the score for the first game of the series, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and implemented many non-orchestral and bespoke instruments to augment the soundscape. The over 8 hours of music was cut down into nearly four hours for digital release.[9]
One of the narrative starting points for the score was addressing the different views of Cal, Cere, and Bode on life and the struggle against the Empire, especially in how it relates to family. As such, they introduced a new, unsettling theme for the Empire that leaned into its inescapable grasp over the galaxy. They strove to evoke a primal dread and hopelessness that reflected Cal's disposition at points in the narrative. In fact, they modeled this theme over the sinus rhythm of a heart, with an angular melody and a familiar, repetitive nature.[9]
Orchestra[]
The large orchestral instrumentation for the score included many traditional orchestral instruments, but also custom instruments designed by the music team. The woodwind section included three flutes (with one doubling as piccolo), three oboes (with one doubling as cor anglais), four clarinets (with one doubling as E-flat clarinet and two doubling as B-flat bass clarinet), four basset horns that doubled as contrabass clarinets, and three bassoons (with one doubling as contrabassoon). The brass section featured six French horns that doubled as Wagner tubas, four trumpets, four trombones (two tenor and two bass, one doubling as contrabass trombone), four euphoniums, and a tuba. There were four harps, three pianos, a celeste, and an organ. The 60-piece string section included 16 first violins, 16 second violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, and 6 basses. Other traditional instruments included world flutes, a dulcimer, a cimbalom, a gamelan, and guitars.[10]
The expansive percussion section included an anvil, bell tree, crotales, cymbals (a sizzle, two suspended bright and a suspended dark), a bass drum, a brake drum, a frame drum, a military field drum, three snare drums, glockenspiel, large and small gongs, magic wands (metal rods in a fun shape), a Mahler hammer, marimba, mark tree, piatti, three ribbon crashers, three surdos, large, medium, small, and shime taikos, three tam-tams, assorted toms, triangles, tubular bells, a 6 drum tympani, vibraphone, wind gong, woodblocks, and a xylophone. Some non-instrumental items which were used as percussion instruments were a foil tray, a glass jar, metal pipes, and puili sticks.[10] In the Basalt Forest music, Haab also incorporated the sounds of a rare wooden tongue drum and a metal tongue drum to help create a mysterious atmosphere.[11]
Custom and unconventional instruments included modifying the sound of pianos by affixing Blu-Tack, a thick putty used to secure items to walls, to the strings of all three upright pianos to create a muted effect, which they featured prominently in music on Koboh. The music team called this the "Blu Tak treatment." Their order of Blu-Tack was large enough that they received a worried phone call from the supplier wondering why someone would need 200 packs of it.[12]
Another bespoke instrument was what the team called bottle chimes. This instrument, created by Gordy Haab after hearing a half-full insulated water bottle fall over in a tennis court, consisted of 17 insulated water bottles of different heights and diameters hanging from a bar, like other chimes. He could independently adjust the pitch produced by each bottle within the approximate range of a perfect fourth (or a perfect second for the smallest bottle) by changing the amount of water. The suspension heights of the bottles were arranged to represent the white and black keys of a piano, with the lowest note being a B-flat and the highest being the D an octave-and-a-half up. In multiple places throughout the score, especially in the music for the Viscid Bog, Haab would use tympani mallets to roll a sustained note starting in the middle of the instrument, before fanning out and working slowly down chromatically. This created a sort of metallic descending glissando. Haab recorded the instrument in his personal studio, but the team played his recordings through the speakers at Abbey Road Studios so that they could be captured with the microphone array used for the rest of the instruments before adding effects.[13]
Notes and references[]
- โ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Original Video Game Soundtrack) on Barnes & Noble's official website (backup link)
- โ
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Original Video Game Soundtrack) Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab on Amazon.com (backup link)
- โ Spotify: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Original Video Game Soundtrack) on Spotify.com (archived from the original on January 6, 2024)
- โ 4.0 4.1 Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on waxworkrecords.com (archived from the original on February 5, 2024)
- โ
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on StarWars.com (backup link) dates Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to five years after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which in turn take place in 14 BBY per Star Wars: Timelines. As such, Jedi: Survivor must occur in 9 BBY.
- โ
Disney Music (@DisneyMusic) on Twitter: "Trust only in the Force .... Star Wars Jedi Survivor is LIVE! Listen to Sounds from the Galactic Skylanes album, out now: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWUgUvAPAFxdh?si=55067ec094164e4b" (backup link)
- โ Waxwork Records (@waxworkrecords) on Twitter: "In collaboration with Walt Disney Records, today we are thrilled to launch pre-orders for STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR Original Video Game Soundtrack 2xLP by Stephen Barton & Gordy Haab! The highly anticipated album to the Grammy nominated soundtrack is available here" (backup link)
- โ Grammy Awards 2024: See the complete list of winners by Madeline Cisneros on Entertainment Weekly (February 4, 2024) (archived from the original on February 5, 2024)
- โ 9.0 9.1 The Audio Source Magazine Fall/Winter 2023 on Issuu (archived from the original on February 2, 2024)
- โ 10.0 10.1 Star Wars Jedi Survivor - Complete Score.pdf on app.box.com (archived from the original)
- โ
Technique - Tongue Drums on the Stephen Barton YouTube channel (December 27, 2023) (backup link)
- โ Technique - The Blu Tak Piano on the Stephen Barton YouTube channel (December 24, 2023) (backup link)
- โ Technique - Bottle Chimes on the Stephen Barton YouTube channel (December 26, 2023) (backup link)
External links[]
- Spotify: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Original Video Game Soundtrack) on Spotify.com (archived from the original on January 6, 2024)
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on waxworkrecords.com (archived from the original on February 5, 2024)