The "hose-oon" from Predator 2 Anything Morricone did with I Cantori Moderni choir Ciaramella in his score I magi randagi The band Altan Urag in Mongol Hurdy-gurdy at the start of The Cape Main Title Bagpipes in Battlestar Galactica's space battles Car in Brake
I've even got a couple of David Van Tieghem's albums from the 80s. I first got to know him through his collab with Laurie Anderson. You can see him at work in her Home of the Brave film.
Dave and I were in high school band together (both marching and concert). We were all lunatics. It was only a few years ago that I came across his stuff since. His Letterman appearance in the 80s is what caught my eye originally:
Heh, can still remember Dave doing a Frank Zappa routine on the bus heading to a football game. We were nuts and drove our "Mr. Holland" crazy at times but when it came to the music we did the job. And then some. I remained friends with our top percussionist, who became a Mr. Holland himself, well into our 50s when he succumbed to MS-related causes which had started manifesting themselves in college. There was talent, all right, in them days and some went on and made something of it.
Me? The sax & clarinet were retired after h.s. The comedy act has endured.
P.S. The same night of the Laurie Anderson played at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, the Clash played Kiel Opera House (St. Louis). This was the Clash after Mick Jones left to form Big Audio Dynamite, so I had a tough decision on which concert. I chose Laurie Anderson, a girl I was dating chose the Clash. She said after the concert she was drinking in some bar down on Laclede's Landing and saw Anderson and Joe Strummer bump into each other! That I would have loved to see.
Yes, this was totally off topic, but someone mentioned David Van Tieghem . . .
One of my favorites is from television, namely the "rustic sound" Vic Mizzy devised for "Green Acres," with the signature "pig grunt" sound on bass harmonica, fuzz guitar and woodwinds. Was always impressed with the huge sound he got on his MT theme with just a handful of players: guitar, bass harmonica, organ, drums, mallet player (timpani, xylophone and glock), woodwind (one player with a Maestro WW device) and bass (ah, the wonders of amplified sound!)
Speaking of Emil Richards, I once asked him how he got all of those magical sounds on "Bewitched" scores (particularly the early third season shows, which I knew he played on). He said one of their "tricks" was to play the glockenspiel using finger cymbals to strike the (glockenspiel) bars. You can hear the sound particularly well in the ep "Witches and Warlocks Are My Favorite Things," the segment where Tabitha's magic powers are evaluated (and one of the first color episodes filmed).
I can't really add to this but the mix of instruments in Alien I still think is the most brilliant, effective and perfectly-suited thing Goldsmith ever did. I want to hear more about the rolling marbles though; that I hadn't heard about...
Can't believe I forgot this one: the tuned mini cowbells (doubling the French horns) John Barry used in the opening bars of the "Born Free" main title. Beautiful, ethereal sound (interestingly, only used in the film recording, not the re-recorded score album).
Regarding Born Free, is it possible that the film score was recorded in the US, and that the re-record was in london--and that Barry and/or Sid Margo couldn't come up with the mini-cowbells?
Let's add the use of a Superball on Chinatown. Goldsmith had someone rubbing a Superball against a piece of wood to achieve that weird wailing sound heard later in the score.
Was it a piece of wood or the bottom of the waterphone?
Speaking of Goldsmith, the conch shell heard in the opening credits of Alien qualifies for this thread.
And then there's the Theremin in The Day The Earth Stood Still.
