Thanks very much -- glad you enjoyed it.

I have now completed what I hope to be the final rendition of Fool's Gold. I've been working on this theme so much for the past few weeks that it's all starting to become a blur. Many, many nights I've found myself staying up until 5:00 in the morning making change after change to the theme to try and finally get it perfect. I think I've finally gotten as close to that perfection as I can.

In the end, I settled on a different feel for the theme than I originally planned on. I originally wanted it close to Murray's series one theme, but now I've decided that I wanted it a little more like a cross between the album version and the original unused version of the theme -- something a bit darker than anything we've heard on the show. To achieve that, I replaced the staccato string arpeggios with lower, darker cellos instead of the higher violas, and I put in several new kinds of strong, booming percussion, as well as reducing the snares in volume. I've also brought up a few of the synth components in volume, and changed the structure of the theme slightly to incorporate a section from Murray's album version. I hope you'll agree that I've achieved a result such as I intended!

Anyway, without further ado, here is the final version (hopefully) of Fool's Gold!

http://www.dannystewart.com/music/foolsgold_album.mp3

Enjoy!

Final? Bah! What am I going to criticize now?

I know, the strings! They aren't loud enough!

*ducks*

And that's how I want them.

VERY nice alterations, you've altered the pattern of which it goes, and it fits in marvelously, great work

I hate that not at all. ;)

Thanks Ben and Jez. :)

I criticize because everyone else will more than make up for it with praise :P

Someone has to keep you on your toes :cool:

I suppose I could give you some criticism on one bit...erm....the quality! 192 is shoddy, ram it up to 320. :D

I can do better than that! I'm gonna upload that whole sucker as FLAC!

Incredible music! :)

I'm taking Flack! I'm taking heavy FLAC!

Yes, Jez. Have your fun while you can. :P

Thanks so much, Dalek! :D

Stupendous! I watched the youtube videos you had with it but I always wanted to hear the clean version. Til now it never donned on me to check here. xD

Haven't heard the album version yet but the closing version is stuck well in my head. And that's a good thing. :) Keep up the great work!

Ah, the closing version is vastly inferior. Check out my newest version here:

http://www.dannystewart.com/music/foolsgold.mp3

I stopped updating all versions but the album version months back.

Wow, you're right! Stupendous! :) Once more it is stuck in my head quite well now. (And that's a good thing.)

Thanks! I may do a bit more work on it before calling it done. I'm thinking about adding a choir section to it...

go for it I say, it would sound interesting.

Danny, Fools Gold is *really* good and I love it.

I don't know if you've already made them available anywhere, but there are two "versions" of it that I'd love to have.....

Namely, the opening version and closing version you put on YouTube.....

The closing version is the one that you put over the end of Father's Day, so the shorter mix that matches the length of the actual closing theme.

If there are copies of those available that would be amazing. :D

Haha, I have so many versions of Fool's Gold on my hard drive it's hard to keep track. Actually, let me go and count them...

As of this post, I have 25 exported WAV versions of Fool's Gold sitting on my hard drive, some of them dating back to when I started this mix (December 2006), and some dating from last week, which is the last time I updated the mix. I've done a lot with this version of the theme. I have versions ranging from v1 to v3f, an experimental v4 that was ultimately never used, and then my current version, which is version 2.5.1 (don't ask how I somehow went backwards in the version numbering).

Here's the complete file listing:
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version - No Mastering.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version 2.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version Album Version.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2 - Electronic.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2 - Electronic with Derbyshire.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2 - Orchestral.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2 (1).wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v2 Background.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3a.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3b.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3c.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3d.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3e.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Album Version v3f.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Closing v2.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Closing v2.5.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Condensed Closing v2.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Extended v2.5.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Extended v2.5.1.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Opening v2.5.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold Opening v3f.wav
Doctor Who - Fool's Gold v4.wav

I have opening and closing variations that are newer than what was posted on YouTube, but I also have Series 1 style and Series 2 style closing masters that aren't included in the list above -- those are the ones that were used in the YouTube videos and are now, in fact, obsolete. I would be happy to post my newest versions on the site when I have a chance. :)

That would be fantastic Danny...I really like what you've done with Fool's Gold, it works incredibly well. The Fathers Day one on YouTube arguably works better that the current "orchestral" arrangement used on the actual show, which to me is flawed (and also does NOT match the opening music like the series one version did, which is annoying).

Add to that the botched edits they keep doing which to anyone really familiar with the themes jar like mad, and you probably catch my drift.

Anyway...back to the point...if you *are* able at any time to get the opening and closing edits of Fools Gold up, I would be eternally grateful! :D

Doctor Who - Fool's Gold v2.6

Extended Theme: MP3 FLAC
Opening Theme: MP3 FLAC
Closing Theme: MP3 FLAC

Fantastic! I prefer your previous release of the album-style extended theme because the middle-eight is louder but it's still great. If I ever get an iPod(it's a nifty piece of hardware but at the moment there's absolutely nothing I could do with it that I couldn't just do on my computer) then Fool's Gold will probably be the first to go on it.

The bassline of Fool's Gold sounds a little different from the usual Derbyshire blassline I noticed... it's a little drummier(even without the drums in the background). That's not a problem, infact I really like it! But did you alter samples of the Derbyshire bassline to make it sound like that or did you find out how to frighteningly closely replicate it on a synthesizer?
(If you mentioned why it sounds like that in the first post I'm sorry. I'm a little dense sometimes. ._.)

... and what the heck is a FLAC file?

Thank you. Although I don't know what you mean about the middle-eight being louder... I don't believe I've changed the volumes on any of the main melody instruments. Are you referring to the Derbyshire melody or the brass sections?

No worries. The Derbyshire bassline and Derbyshire melody are both straight out of the original theme. The Derbyshire bassline sounds punchier for a couple possible reasons... for one, I've heavily boosted the mid to high range frequencies on the Derbyshire bassline (as Murray did on his version) to make it come through clearer in the mix. Additionally, I have a couple of additional electronic basslines that were synthesized by me playing over top of the Derbyshire bassline. Sometimes the sounds of each tend to meld together to form that final punchier sound.

For the record, the Derbyshire bassline cannot be replicated on a synthesizer. Give up now. :P

FLAC is a lossless form of audio compression. When you listen to an MP3 file, you are essentially listening to compressed audio. With most forms of audio compression, you are sacrificing some of the original audio data in order to get the file size down that much. This is what's known as lossy compression. FLAC, however, unlike MP3 compression, is lossless compression. The audio is compressed, but you lose no audio data whatsoever in the process. It's a much more ideal format for music storage than lossy compression. As Pete linked above, you can get the FLAC codec from their web site. With that, FLAC will play in most media players.

I'm talking about the brass sections. In the previous release it sounded more pronounced, it had more going on behind it.

Thanks, now I'll never attempt to try and wind up hurting myself. :P

Thanks!
I'll download the FLAC codec, but I haven't encountered any losses when I record things into MP3. I've recorded sevral things, including a song I bought from iTunes and MIDI files into mp3s with WavePad and they didn't loose anything.

I don't believe I changed any of the volumes on the brass sections -- in fact, I had just raised the brass sections in volume between version 2.5 and 2.6, so they should be clearer now. Additionally, the goal in Fool's Gold has always been to have the Derbyshire elements lead the way, and the orchestra provide merely an underscoring for those elements. This is how the mix is supposed to be (something Murray seems to have forgotten).

Good. I've already hurt myself enough trying it. :P

I don't think you understand -- audio files always lose information when they are compressed to MP3. MP3 sacrifices certain minute details about the audio file in order to save space. Even if it sounds the same to your ears, audio information that was present in the original file has been lost forever once that information has been encoded to MP3. That's just how the compression algorithm works.

So you're saying even if a song was already an mp3 to begin with, if it's recorded from the soundcard in an uncoded format and is encoded to mp3 it'll loose more data? ... great, now you've gone and made me paranoid. :confused:

... ah, sorry for flying off topic like that. I'm downloading the FLAC version now. Now that you've told me all this I probably will notice a difference. :P

Well, first of all, songs don't come in MP3 format... There will always be a "perfect" version, usually the original master copy that's recorded, that comes first. It may be compressed before it gets to you... like when someone encodes an MP3 and puts it up on the internet. But again there was a "perfect" lossless version to begin with. The audio data stored on audio CDs for example is lossless (or nearly lossless), but then when you rip it to MP3, you lose some of the audio data that was present on the original CD.

And yes, if you open an MP3 file in a sound editor and just hit File > Save, File > Save, File > Save repeatedly over and over, you will lose some audio information each time you do that. That's why it's not a good practice to take something that's already in MP3 format, modify it in some way, then resave it as a new MP3 file. Additional audio information will be lost in the process.

No problem. If it means anything, a couple of people have told me that the FLAC version of Fool's Gold sounds considerably sharper, clearer, and all around better than its MP3-compressed counterpart, so I hope you enjoy it. :)

It's downloading really really slowly... when I downloaded it the first time it was quicker but then my computer started to hate firefox again and the download got all error-y. Now I'm downloaded it in IE and it's been two minutes already and it's just at 2%...
I use high-speed broadband, so that is NOT normal.

I'll just try it again later.

Serves you right for using IE. I feel unclean now, with people accessing my site using evil. :P

I downloaded it(WITH firefox. :P) and this time my computer didn't start hating it. Although, it wouldn't play... I installed the codec. I used the program the codec put on my desktop to decode it into a wav file and now it's playing... I do see a bit of a difference. It's a bit sharper, like you said. :)

Glad you're enjoying it. Also, I realize why you think the brass sounds less sharp now -- a month or two ago I went in and replaced all the brass instruments from ensemble versions to singular versions. For example, instead of 4 trombones, 4 trumpets, and 6 French horns, it's now just one of each. Doing it that way gives me greater control over the sound, and a sharper feel on all the notes, but it does make it a bit less bombastic. But then again, I hate the bombasticness of the current theme, so I'm glad it's lessened. ;)

Thanks for posting these Danny, they're great! Fantastic stuff.

Would you also be able to post the slightly earlier version (opening and closing) as used on the YouTube videoas? I'd love to have those versions as well! :D

I'm not sure if I have the opening still... it was just a quick edit I threw together. I'll dig the closing out from somewhere though... I know I still have that. (It was, however, made from an older version, so it will not be the same.)

Development on Fool's Gold has stopped for the time being though -- I sent my latest version of Fool's Gold to Murray Gold to see what he thought of it, and he wasn't as impressed with it as I'd hoped he would be. Still, he provided some valuable comments, and it helped me to get a feel for the direction I'm going to take the mix from here. I'm very glad he was on hand and willing to share his expertise with me for this -- it should make the mix turn out even better in the end! I haven't been feeling very inspired lately, though, so I don't know when I'll pick up the mix next and continue working on it. I may start it from scratch or I may push forward from where I am now -- depends on how much progress I can make doing either. ;)

Don't feel uninspired. For starters, it's great he took the time to evaluate it at all, and actually the fact that that he gave it a proper critical overview rather than just saying "yeah it's nice" is quite a tribute to you. He clearly takes your efforts seriously.

It doesn't need starting from scratch. Maybe take what he says on board. Or just some of it. Or none of it! He's giving you his opinion, what he likes and what he thinks works does not have to be exactly the same as what you like and what you think works.

Sure I can understand you're disappointed - but don't take it personally. He clearly respects your efforts or he wouldn't bother with such an honest, if not that complimentary, appraisal.

Well, don't misunderstand me. I'm feeling uninspired just because I haven't had any particular bursts of inspiration lately -- not because of Murray's comments! I agree, Murray's been good to me and it's nice of him to help out.

I understand that, however obviously Murray's views are important because for one thing, my mix was based on his theme, and for another, I did send him the theme, didn't I? :P

And as far as starting over, I find it helpful to start things over when they don't work. Starting over for me does not mean throwing away a lot of work. It just means a fresh start and a new beginning, which is often the most helpful thing I can do.

I'm not taking it personally. In fact, Murray thought I took his criticism very well (based on my response). He's actually been giving me some good advice lately (especially after the incident that took place earlier this year, it seems we're beginning to move past that finally). He's being a great help and I appreciate it.

I am very pleased to announce that a brand new and fully updated version of Fool's Gold is now available. With deepest thanks to Murray Gold for his invaluable insights and personal assistance with making this mix the best it can possibly be. I owe him a great deal, and it's been an honor and a privilege sharing this mix with him and receiving his guidance.

Doctor Who - Fool's Gold v2.7.7f

That's incredible, Danny! Your hard efforts have really paid off!

Well done! :D

Thank you very much, James! I'm thrilled you're enjoying the new version of the mix. It wasn't all me though -- Murray's assistance made all this possible. :D