The Second Sense: The Music of Tomorrowland

Quick! What's the first thing you think of in association with the phrase “Disneyland music”?

If you're like most people...uh...probably nothing, actually. Most people are not familiar enough with Disneyland to have an automatic response to that phrase. But if you're in the minority that are, then you probably instantly thought of “Yo Ho” or “It's a Small World (After All)” or “Grim Grinning Ghosts.” Or “In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room.” Maybe “Baroque Hoedown,” which wasn't composed for Disneyland but is almost exclusively known as the Main Street Electrical Parade theme.

In any case, it probably won't be something from Tomorrowland that pops into your head. It's not that the area has no music to call its own—on the contrary, it has lots, both now and in the past. It's more that Tomorrowland's unique melodies have been progressively downplayed over the years as more IP has moved in, bringing its own accompanying soundtracks. It's been nearly fifteen years since any new compositions were created for Tomorrowland, but fortunately, there's a lot of good stuff to hear if you know where to listen!

(And a lot more to be found on Disneyland retrospective albums and in niche collections!)

It Came From the Fandom: Magical Soundtracks

Here we go again. I seem to be relying on these types of posts more frequently lately. I gotta get my groove back somehow.

The fan content I choose to highlight this time around is Magical Soundtracks, a YouTube channel that posts, almost exclusively, music from the Disney theme parks. Their particular area of specialization is music loops, be they from themed areas, shops, restaurants...even hotel lobbies and special seasonal events. Here's a timely one, considering the Year of the Pig starts tomorrow:

I'm always excited to see that they've updated, especially since the quality is so high—many theme park music archivists rely on induction recordings and shotgun microphones, which tend to produce listenable but not stellar audio. Magical Soundtracks, I believe, obtains reference recordings of loops and then reconstructs them using source tracks. So there's a lot of hands-on editing work that goes into this channel as well. The results literally speak for themselves.

Here's a few more of my favorites from this channel:

Have a listen!

The Second Sense: Top 5 Holiday Music Loops

As long as we're thinking about Christmas music...

This isn't the first time I've gone off about the area music loops in the Disneyland Resort and it probably won't be the last. But we're solidly into the Christmas season now, with all its attendant responsibilities, and I need to write and post something simple. Simple...like one of the most basic delights of the holiday season at Disneyland: the temporary replacement of many area music loops with holiday versions.

Background music is a key element in creating themed atmosphere (or atmosphere at all, really), and this is especially true when the theme involves Christmas, because the intergenerationally familiar music is such a big part of the holiday. Disneyland's holiday loops are generally excellent for their purpose, but only about half of them are much good for any other purpose—i.e. general seasonal listening. I'll pull up the New Orleans Square waterfront loop as part of my Disneyland Christmas lineup, but not when I just feel like getting my holiday spirit on. Dixieland jazz isn't a normal part of my music listening habits.

But there are a handful of these loops from both parks, past and present, that I absolutely adore on their own merits, not just because they remind me of Disneyland. Here they are, in reverse order of my preference, so that the best is saved for last!

The Second Sense: A Halloween Song For Every Land

In my various ruminations about how to further dress up the Disneyland Resort for the Halloween season, I have touched on the subject of seasonal music loops. I always include a few examples in my proposals—songs with spooky subject matter in the right genre for the area—but this time I thought I'd try something a little different and come up with one signature Halloween song for each area in both parks.

And for an extra bit of challenge...none of them can be Disney tunes. No “Skeleton Dance,” no “Headless Horseman,” no “This Is Halloween.” The Disney theme parks are in danger of losing themselves completely in self-reference, so I'm pulling back from that a bit.

Be fairly warned...this is a video-heavy post.

The Second Sense: Some Thoughts On Music Loops

To my U.S. fans, happy Labor Day! To my Canadian fans, Happy Labour Day! (My desk calendar at work lists them separately.)

I collect Disney theme park music and audio. If that surprises you...welcome to my blog! I have a huge archive for you to get caught up on! Anyway, this obsession extends not just to the soundtracks of individual attractions, but to the so-called “music loops” that provide atmosphere in open areas, attraction queues, and even shops. As far as I can tell, these started being used in 1971; presumably the first few were created for Magic Kingdom but also installed in Disneyland because why not?

Most loops run anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour before repeating, and traditionally they have been composed of instrumental music rather than vocal recordings. Recently, however, there has been a shift toward the use of actual songs* in music loops, often very well-known songs, and I think this is a bit of a mistake.

Firstly, instrumental music can readily fade into the background and provide atmosphere without demanding attention, while vocals (especially familiar ones) can be quite distracting. There's no way around it—we humans are social animals, our interactions are mostly mediated vocally, and thus human voices are more attention-grabbing than any other sound.

Secondly, songs tend to be more instantly recognizable than instrumentals (since most people listen to vocal recordings more often than they listen to instrumental music), and extremely recognizable music inevitably reminds people of the context from which they recognize it, rather than immersing them in the setting of the park as it is supposed to. (This video describes a similar problem with respect to film soundtracks that lean heavily on established pop music.) Some of the most lackluster music loops in the Disneyland Resort have to be the ones throughout Cars Land, which just sound like “oldies” radio stations and make me feel less like I'm in a small town in a fantastic world of living cars, and more like I'm in the car with my Baby Boomer parents controlling the radio.**

Armchair Imagineering: Halloween Music Loops

As the Halloween season gets into gear, I naturally start thinking about how Disneyland could improve their Halloween offerings. If you've been following me for a while, you might remember this post. Or perhaps not. Either way, this week I've decided to focus on an element of seasonal theme parkery* that I only touched on back then: music loops.

The great majority of themed areas in the Disneyland Resort include some sort of background music loop that can be heard throughout all or part of the area. During the winter holiday seasom, AKA “Christmas,” several areas play a special seasonal loop in lieu of the normal one. So with Halloween becoming as big a deal as Christmas in terms of decorations, live entertainment, etc....why not shore it up with music?

Part of the problem, of course—maybe the biggest part—is that there isn't a lot of immediately recognizable “Halloween music” out there. Sure, there are a few hits that all the radio stations play in October—“Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett, “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, and “Dead Man's Party” by Oingo Boingo being some of the most noteworthy—but nothing like the dozens of standard Christmas hymns and carols, which get covered and re-arranged into every conceivable musical genre so that no theme park music designer could fail to find what they're looking for.

So is this a fruitless project, then? Of course not. I would hardly have taken it far enough to post if it were. While the “canon” of Halloween music is very slim indeed and might seem too contemporary for the various historical and fantastical realms present in Disneyland, a little research turns up dozens of songs about ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires, and assorted things that go bump in the night, going right back to the Jazz Age and even earlier.

So here, in (relative) brief, are some ideas for music that could be used to enhance Disneyland's Halloween seasonal flair!

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 5

All good things must come to an end, and here we are. For the very last leg of this playlist, covering California Adventure, I'm going to change up my methodology—rather than meticulously covering every noteworthy attraction in every land, I'm going to pick theme songs for each land and just the standout attractions therein. California Adventure hasn't been around as long as Disneyland and has spent much of that time flailing for purpose; it hasn't had much of a chance to build up a roster of instant memory-making music. On the flipside, songs in praise of California itself aren't exactly rare. So let's see what we wind up with!

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 4

We've made it all the way to Part 4 of my “layman's Disneyland playlist” (previous installments can be found here, here, and here). All that's left for the main park is Mickey's Toontown and Tomorrowland. I may or may not also tackle California Adventure, but for now, we're in the home stretch!

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 3

The playlist project continues! (Just checking in? First check out Part 1 and Part 2!) Fantasyland is so rich in attractions, and the song choices are so obvious, that it gets an installment all to itself.

Now, “obvious” doesn't mean “automatic.” The dark rides tend to sample pretty liberally from their source materials' soundtracks, and in limiting myself to one song per attraction, I have to do some heavy pruning to pick the best one.

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 2

The mission: To assemble the perfect Disneyland playlist, referencing every themed land and major attraction, using only songs and instrumental music that a relative newbie to the hobby would be able to readily find. There's no need to dive into limited-edition multi-disc park soundtracks, the “Disneyland Forever” archives, or the murky depths of torrent streaming.*

Last week, I covered Main Street, USA and Adventureland. This week...the mission continues!

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 1

In analyzing the new area loop for the Esplanade last week, I got to thinking about what such a music loop is, and the answer was both obvious and food for further thought: it's a themed playlist. Users of Pandora and similar internet radio services will be familiar with this concept—you choose a set of songs (and/or instrumental pieces) to enhance a mood, illustrate a concept, or otherwise adhere to, well, a theme. Think of the mixtapes of “makeout music” people would put together back in the day when tapes were still a thing. Or a student's “study playlist,” comprising songs that help them concentrate on their academic work.

The theme of the Esplanade music loop is, of course, “The Disneyland Resort.” The objective is to give arriving guests a foretaste of the sorts of attractions the two parks offer. I would say it succeeds (even without any reference to the Haunted Mansion), although first-time guests may not pay much attention or connect the rides they go on later with the snippets of music they heard upon arriving. They will probably at least recognize the tunes, and so the loop sets an appropriate “wonderful world of Disney” atmosphere.

We Disneyland fans, of course, like to create our own playlists honoring the park(s). Of course, ours generally consist of music and even non-musical audio taken directly from the attractions, live entertainment, and other experiences within the parks. We scour released albums and the internet for as much genuine Disneyland music as we can lay our hands on, and arrange it geographically, land by land, to create the perfect, comprehensive collection.

My Disneyland playlist easily occupies a 40-hour work week. Not that I'm bragging.

But suppose you didn't have access to all these specialized theme park albums? Suppose you wanted to create a working Disneyland playlist from the much more commonly found Disney film soundtracks and general genre music? Say, one song per significant attraction, maybe another to bring across the ambiance of each land? It wouldn't be 40 hours long, obviously, but it might occupy a long drive. (Such as the drive to Disneyland? Well, that depends on where you live.)

It needn't be completely devoid of park-specific melodies, as many of the more successful songs have been released on Disney compilation albums. Additionally, many of the individual performers and groups that have been stationed at Disneyland over the years have released recordings, some of which are still available.

For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing my version of such a thing. I've had to break it into segments because this post would be unfathomably long otherwise. So here's Part 1—Main Street and Adventureland.

The Second Sense: Esplanade Music Loop Updated!

Pretty short this week, but I've been busy and I'd rather give you something than nothing.

Over a year ago at this point, I did a post focusing on the music loop that plays non-stop in the Disneyland Esplanade. Outside of the winter holiday season, the same one had been in use since the opening of California Adventure, despite numerous changes occurring in both parks that made some tracks irrelevant and invited replacements to hint at the newer attractions.

Well, as of about a week ago, according to reports from my colleagues at Mousebits, the loop has finally been updated! I haven't gotten a chance to hear it yet, but we do have a breakdown of the track list, and in the broad strokes at least, the changes line up with many of my suggestions. Tracks representing attractions which have gone extinct since 2001 have been dropped, and quite a few new ones have been added to illustrate what has debuted in the interim. Beyond that, even many of the melodies that are still relevant have been traded for variations or substitutions. Less than a third of the music from the previous loop remains—a significant transformation!

The Second Sense: The Townsfolk of Main Street, USA

Main Street, USA is themed as an idealized 1900s American small town, where everyone knows everyone else, children respect their elders, and folks are happy to help each other out in a time of need. You know...the kind that probably never really existed, at least not to the extent our national nostalgia supposes. But either way, you can't have such a town without the townsfolk.

Who are the residents of Main Street, USA? Are they just the Cast Members that we see manning the shops and eateries? You could take that assumption for granted and stop there, but if you did, you'd be missing the fascinating meat of the story. There are a number of small (but highly important to those involved) dramas playing out right under our noses in this town. You'll never find them if you merely look for them.

You have to listen for them instead.

Your two main sources are the party line telephones in the Market House, and the second-story windows of East Center Street. Pay attention, note the instances of recurring names and concepts, and you can get...not a complete picture, by any means, but some interesting—and potentially alarming—connections start to crop up...

The Second Sense: Updating the Esplanade Area Music Loop

First impressions are important, and the first taste of Disneyland we get upon arriving is—

Okay, good point. The music for the Mickey and Friends parking structure—or Toy Story parking lot, or whichever alternate lot you choose—is whatever you, personally, decide to play in your car for the drive. That doesn't really count for our purposes. But the second impression we get is—

Fair enough. Now knock it off. Once we are past all that, we arrive at the Disneyland Resort Esplanade, whose music loop has—

OH COME ON! Are you gonna nitpick this thing to death or are you gonna let me get on with the post?

Okay. That's better.

Ahem.

The Second Sense/Armchair Imagineering: Updating the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique Music Loop

Some Disneyland background music loops are custom-recorded just for the park, painstakingly planned and executed to be something entirely unique. Some are what we call “needle-drop”—assembled from existing pieces in a particular style or genre that supports the theme of the area, shop, or restaurant where they are played. Needle-drop loops often make use of edits and cross-fades in order to avoid sounding too much like an amateur mix tape and omit portions, usually vocals, that might be distracting or intrusive.

And sometimes, the sound engineers just cheat, and use songs and music straight from Disney's own library of soundtracks. It's certainly not bad music, but it's so obvious. Lazy, even—how much thought or effort can it possibly take to devise a playlist for a location in Disneyland that uses nothing but the soundtrack versions of well-known Disney songs?

My case in point here will be the background music loop that plays in the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and has since this location was known as Once Upon a Time...A Princess Shoppe.* As you might guess, this loop consists entirely of songs, and a few instrumental pieces, from some of Disney's animated “Princess movies”...specifically, the first six such movies, which constituted the entirety of the Disney Princess brand when it was first launched and when the shop first assumed that identity in 2002. (Previously, it had been the Tinker Bell Toy Shoppe.)

So far, so predictable. If you're going to sell Princess merch, you might as well do it with songs sung by and about your star characters playing in the background. A while back, as a service to my fellow Disney theme park music archivists at Mousebits, I spent some time in the shop just jotting down the playlist and noting any edits made to the tracks. At home, I looked over my notes and assigned a logical “beginning point” for the loop, and wound up with this:

The Second Sense: Area Music at Christmastime

I've snarked about Christmas Creep a couple of times on this blog, but I'll be honest: I enjoy the Christmas season. And the thing I like most about it is not getting presents or watching corny Christmas specials, but the atmosphere. The weather becomes delightfully chilly (not exactly cold, here in Southern California), sparkling decorations go up everywhere, and it seems like the only time of year when mainstream society accepts the idea of benevolent magic—philosophically, if not in fact.

And the music! I know I'm not alone in having familiar Christmas music wired directly to the nostalgia centers of my brain. Religious or secular, it doesn't matter (and this is coming from someone who hasn't identified as Christian for at least twenty years). The highly specific context in which this music is usually heard is what gives it its power to enthrall: Because it is Christmas music, when we hear it we are psychologically transported to that intersection of time (winter), space (shopping malls, Grandma's house, a gingerbread village) and attitude (peace on earth and goodwill toward all) that the holiday represents. They say smell is the most emotionally charged sense, but in my experience, hearing can do just fine under the right circumstances.

Disneyland is awesome with Christmas music.

The park is awesome with Christmas in general. As I've mentioned before, it's still a newbie at Halloween, but it's had a lock on Christmas since...well, since December of 1955. Christmas parades, Christmas carolers, Christmas character costumes, Christmas versions of standard attractions. And of course, Christmas music. Practically every part of the park has at least one music loop swapped out for a Christmas-themed one at the tail end of the year. This being a post in the category of The Second Sense, it will be my very great pleasure to take you on a tour of all of them, starting outside the gates of Disneyland proper.

The Second Sense: Adventureland Music Loops

It would be nice—I guess—to close out Adventureland August with a bang, but the Disneyland Dilettante isn't just about the E-tickets and momentous events. The smaller stuff definitely has its place here too...maybe even a more cherished place, considering how often it's overlooked by not only the general park-going public but even the aficionados. There are entire websites dedicated to extolling the virtues of the Haunted Mansion or catering to the exalted fraternity of Jungle Cruise skippers, but when was the last time you saw even the smallest blog post praising the Silhouette Studio?

This blog post is not about the Silhouette Studio. It's about a feature of Disneyland that actually does have a following (though it's still definitely a niche interest by normal standards): background music.* This is one of those under-appreciated but absolutely essential parts of the Disneyland experience, like the standards of cleanliness. Most guests don't really notice that it's there. They might not overtly notice if it were gone...but they would certainly feel the detriment on some level. What would Main Street be without its light orchestra instrumentals? The New Orleans Square riverfront without its lively Dixieland jazz? Frontierland without its Western folk tunes or Fantasyland without its (gasp) actual Disney songs?

And where would Adventureland be without its...uh...hang on...huh.

Adventureland does not have an overall area music loop. I can think of potential reasons for this oddity. Perhaps there aren't enough good places along the walkway to install speakers for such ambiance. Perhaps the diversity of the locations represented is such that no single loop could adequately serve. Perhaps it was decided that any ambient music would detract from the impression of a remote area where survival is Priority Number One and performing arts are an unaffordable luxury.

Or maybe, given how narrow the walkable space is, an overall loop would clash with the queue loops for the individual attractions. Because Adventureland does have a plethora of background music tailored to its specific offerings. This, of course, is one way to get around the second issue mentioned above. So let's take a tour!