The Terminator Theme, But It’s A Slow Jam

In his latest video, synthesist Espen Kraft shares his take on The Terminator Theme, from Brad Fiedel’s soundtrack to the 1984 film, The Terminator.

And his take on The Terminator Theme is to turn it into a slow jam.

“I’ve always wanted to make an arrangement of the classic Terminator theme in a more romantic or nostalgic way,” he says.

The video starts with his arrangement of the classic theme, and then moves on to demonstrating the set of Korg DSS-1 sounds that he used.

Here’s what he has to say about the technical details:

“The Korg DSS-1 is the Terminator among samplers in terms filter power. I mean seriously, not much comes close to what this machine can do. Highly underrated. It eats the almost all other synthesizers for breakfast when it comes to sheer power.

Gear used in the demo:

Korg DSS-1 – all synths
Korg MS10 – bass (just a little bit)
Korg KR-55 – Kick and hats

All the delays heard is coming from the two internal delay lines in the DSS-1 itself.

Some of the sounds have external reverbs on them, from Valhalla VintageVerb.”

5 thoughts on “The Terminator Theme, But It’s A Slow Jam

  1. Yeesh, not into it. The sounds are great, playing is great, and a slow nostalgic take works… but the melody got badly, badly mangled here. Like, crushed under a printing press level mangled.

    “I know now why you cry… because the melody to my themesong has been… Terminated.”

    I don’t mean to be all Judgmental, and since my CPU is a neural net processor, a learning computer, I know that I could grow to like all sorts of takes on the Terminator theme. But this one, nope, just didn’t work for me.

    1. Totally unnecessary reply. You could have just said nothing. There is literally nothing positive about you giving feedback like that. “I don’t mean to be all Judgmental”, and then you go on and be all judgmental.

      I personally thorughly enjoyed it. Yes, the melody is somewhat reinterpreted but once you see where its going, and the original melody reveals itself, its very satisfying. I thought it was a really imaginative interpretation, with a beautiful laid back quality that complimented the original versions nicely. I could listen to an album of this. In fact, I felt you reinterpreted it in such an original way that you could have simply written your own melody and had a totally original track rather than a cover version. I would encourage you to run with this tonal palette and make a few more track in that vein using your own melodies. Well done.

  2. While it is a SLOW time to get the theme going, I appreciate the nod the Brad’s composition.
    The mix is decent and this is very soothing.

    The Korg DSS sounds fantastic here!

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