45. Composer Paul Leonard-Morgan on Creating the Score for Test Track

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Creating a theme park attraction is an insanely complicated process, but it’s easy to think of them as magic. We’ve heard so much about Imagineering, but that is only part of the story. So many individuals beyond the Imagineers help to put together a new attraction. What we know just scratches the surface of the truth behind the scenes. A perfect example is the music, which is crucial to their success. The score creates the right mood and emotional connection that keeps us coming back for more.

My guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast is Paul Leonard-Morgan, who composed the score for the current version of Test Track at Epcot in Walt Disney World. His work includes the scores for movies like Dredd and Limitless plus TV series like MI-5 and the reboot of Dynasty. Paul is from Glasgow, Scotland and was active in the thriving music scene there alongside talented artists like Belle and Sebastian and Snow Patrol.

This conversation focuses on creating the music for Test Track for the reimagined version that opened in December 2012. Paul worked closely with the Imagineers and wrote a score that connected to the attraction’s futuristic theme. We discuss the challenges writing music for such a large show building with multiple rooms before the ride. Paul describes the differences writing for such a massive attraction versus working on a TV show or movie. He shares great stories from his time working with Disney. We also cover Paul’s work composing the music for the Tron Realm post-show in Shanghai Disneyland.

If you’re a fan of Test Track or just want to learn more about how an attraction score comes together, you should enjoy this podcast.

Learn more about Paul Leonard-Morgan by following him on Facebook or Twitter.

Transcript

Dan Heaton: Hey there. I’m really excited to bring you this interview with Composer Paul Leonard-Morgan about his work and creating the music for the current version of Test Track. It’s a good one. You’re listening to the Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Thanks so much for joining me here on Episode 45 of The Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Now, when we think about theme park attractions, it’s easy to look just on the surface with the Imagineers, particularly with older attractions, but even with newer ones, we’re thinking in terms of the leaders at Disney and the few names that are running the show and all those people are very important. However, there are so many others that were involved in every attraction or even attraction updates that have happened at Disney World and the other Disney parks.

Even when you just think in terms of the music, there’s a few big names that a lot of us think of like Bruce Broughton for example, that are involved in a lot of attractions, but there are other names that aren’t as familiar but are equally talented and played a huge role in making the parks what they are today.

That’s why I was really excited to get to talk to Paul Leonard Morgan, who’s a composer from Glasgow, Scotland, who originally became known through his scores for the film’s Limitless with Bradley Cooper and Dread, which that movie is an incredible update and not Judge Dread. I’m talking about the film Dread with Karl Urban. That is a visceral experience and the score plays a huge role in making that film work. I recently rewatched it and was stunned by how much the music accomplishes without being noticed. So given the fact that he’d done so well it scores for those sci-fi movies, it made sense that Paul would be brought in by Disney to work on the score when they were updating test track in 2012.

That’s largely the focus of my conversation with Paul is what was involved with putting together that score for Test Track, which again, is a really important part of what makes the attraction work. Now it’s more focused on the future with the way it looks, and especially with the music from the more type of mechanical score that they had in the past, which was more about, almost sounded like you were going through an assembly line where this one is a lot more about looking to the future and I think fits really well with the theme of Epcot Center.

Paul does a really nice job in this interview, I think, of talking us through the challenges to create a score for an attraction. The music we shouldn’t notice, but it’s always there. I hope you enjoy hearing from him about what it was like to work with Disney so closely on this attraction. So let’s get to it. Let’s go talk to Paul Leonard-Morgan.

(music)

Dan Heaton: All right, well, my guest today is Paul Leonard-Morgan, who is a BAFTA award-winning composer that’s created many scores for films and TV shows like Dread and Limitless. He also worked on the score for the current version of Test Track at Epcot and a lot more. Paul, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: You are very welcome. Although it should have been the other way round. I’ve got this composer, Paul, who did Test Track who also did Dread and Limitless. Test Track is the most important thing.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, for listeners it might be, but I definitely, I don’t want to undersell what you’ve done. So before we get into any of that, let’s talk a little about your background. Going back to when you were younger, how’d you get interested just in doing music?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: My mom is a music teacher, so she always tried to put me off doing music. She’s like, there’s no money in it. It’s not a job. But yeah, so I started playing piano when I was about four, I guess, and then recorder and different instruments and everyone always laughs at the recorder a bit. I was like, no, I did a diploma on recorder. I know everyone else can play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. And then I studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and studied film music up there in Glasgow.

When I was there, I just started working with a lot of bands. Basically Glasgow had this really thriving music scene and there was one studio, Sava Studios, so we were all just kind of based out of there really, and all these bands were there and then they would need string arrangements on their tracks and they were like, oh, he’s a classical dude.

They’re like, well, I’m classical, but I also do drums and everything else. But yeah, I worked with a hundred piece orchestras, so I would start doing strings and brass arrangements and orchestral arrangements for their tracks. Then from there, some of them started asking me to produce their albums and just did some remixes and it really just kind of took off from there. I started doing some film stuff. They like the fact that I work with bands and directors have always liked that whole kind of crossover thing. Then the bands like the fact that you do film stuff, it makes their stuff sound filmy. So everything in life has a knock on effect, doesn’t it?

Dan Heaton: Yeah, and that’s interesting to hear because personally I’m a big fan of Belle & Sebastian who I know were around at that point in Glasgow. How much did you work with them during that time?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: So I did one arrangement with Belle & Sebastian, they’re a fantastic band and they just mostly do their stuff themselves. They have Mick Cook who’s their trumpet player who does most of their arranging, but I helped out on one of their, wasn’t the Peel Sessions, I can’t remember which one it was, but it helped out on one of those. But then Isobel Campbell left, I mean, again, we’ve gone great, but Isobel Campbell left Belle & Sebastian to do her own stuff. So I worked on all of Isobel’s albums with Mark Lanigan and it was really great. We would go and she would say, look, I want it to sound like an old Curtis Mayfield arrangement, or I want it to sound like this. For her it was mostly Nancy Sinatra arrangements actually. She was obsessed in a good way as you should be.

So we would just go off and study the arrangements of that. Then we went down to London and she was fantastic. She would focus on which studios every arrangement of the various tracks were being recorded in, and then we’d go to the various studios and just go and record them with the same kind of lineup. We would record them all at the same time.

You know how a lot of the time you would record instruments separately, so you’ve got installation in the mix, so you do the strings first and then the brass and separate section and so on. But in the sixties it was a case of chuck everyone in the room and you get that whole weird bleed. So you’d have the strings turning up and the horn’s microphone and the horns turning up and the wind microphone and so on. So that’s how we would record all of her stuff really.

It was a lot of experimentation, but wow you to get see that with a full orchestra. And she’s a very dear friend. So it kind of went from working with Belle & Sebastian to them working with Isobel, working on all of Isobel’s stuff, did a remix for Snow Patrol. Everyone knew each other because as I say, there was just this one studio, so it’s not a case of name dropping, it’s just a case of everyone hung out in the same bar together over the road studio and everyone got on. And Richard Colbin, who’s a drummer from Belle & Sebastian, he would go off on tour with Snow Patrol and go and play percussion with them. It was just a case of camaraderie, I guess.

Dan Heaton: Well, cool. And I really like the way that Mark Lanegan and Isobel’s voices really come together. It’s fantastic. So how did you go from that to really working more in the entertainment field and for movies and TV and everything?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: That was always fun. At the same time, I was doing, as I say, some directors asked me to do some short films for them, particularly this one guy David Mackenzie. He had heard the remix I did for Snow Patrol, which is weird because it was, I think about two people in the world had heard it and he was, oh, I love that.

This is before they became huge. And then I got a TV thing and at the same time they got a TV series, the first short film that I’d done picked up a BAFTA, the Best Soundtrack, and then the TV series got nominated for BAFTAs and all that kind of stuff. And that definitely helped. So then I was doing quite a lot of UK work series called Spooks and Silent Witness and stuff. Then I was over here, sorry, here being LA doing some work.

Then I got a call about this film Limitless. So that happened. It was a great and fun project. It was over Christmas 2010, I think it was Limitless, went to Number One around the world and then it all kind of kicked off from there. That was my first big feature, and then it all just got a bit insane. I started working on Dread and Walking with Dinosaurs. I don’t know, it is just weird the way that, so then I didn’t have enough time to do any bands.

Then I was working all on film stuff and then I started working on some games because the game stuff, like the film stuff and yeah, it is great fun. I just liked doing different stuff. Then the Disney thing, Test Track, which is the first Disney thing I’d done. they would work on Test Track and had heard some of my Limitless soundtrack.

People use stuff as temp music, so they’ll lay in some of your music as temp to find out whether it works or not. It doesn’t mean you can’t do a different style, but it’s a lot easier for them in an edit suite just for everyone to sit around going, does that kind of thing work on our project? Does that kind of thing, can we imagine that as our ride or our film or whatever and say, yeah, yeah, that works quite well. So it gives you a starting point, I guess, for a discussion.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, and that’s interesting that because I coming at it from mostly a visitor’s perspective to a theme park with Test Track, to see that side of it and how they really comes together is really interesting to me. So Test Track was a ride that originally had a different soundtrack. They redid it when you became involved in 2012, I think is when it was reopened. So when they brought you in, were you basically feeling like you were starting from scratch or did you have any look back at what was done before on the earlier version?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: I still haven’t heard the music from Test Track one or anything else. I find it incredibly hard to listen to original music and then get that out of your head. So it was much more a case of they said, look, this is a really iconic ride. I knew about Test Track anyway. I’d never been to EPCOT Center, but I knew about it. So they just started filling me in and this is what it’s about. They showed me some visuals of it and they showed you a kind of rough movie of what it’s going to be like in the various parts of the ride. Obviously it’s not a high quality render, but it’s just to give you enough of an idea. The most important thing for me was seeing some of what they call a mood board, which is some of the visuals.

It then really helps just to give you a vibe for it. Then I just went away and started writing a suite, which is what I do in films quite a lot, is before you actually write individual tracks, you go off and write, I don’t know, a five-minute, six-minute suite with lots of arcs and dynamics and ups and downs to give them an idea of some of the thematic material which you’ll use on it. I think one of the things, the first things that Todd, who is the musical directors on it, he took me down music supervisors.

He took me to Disneyland in LA. It was the day that the Cars ride opened. I remember this so clearly because I’m struggling to imagine, again, I’ve always loved Disney, but never really done the parks coming from Glasgow in Scotland, they haven’t really opened up other than Paris, which I’ve been to, but it’s a kind of different experience.

So it took me and we basically went on as many rides as we possibly could that day to show me the whole experience of how music works as you are going in, as you are in the line, the purpose of music and how it works with different speakers. So there’s quite a technical aspect to it as well.I remember it was 110 degrees and there were people waiting in line for the Cars ride for two and a half hours. I remember Todd just basically getting me to the front of the line because we’re trying to go on as many rides during the day as we could for the experience and to learn about it.

I felt awful. I’m like, I’m so sorry, don’t hate me, but this is great. I’m so sorry. Yeah, so that was how that was the first steps was really just going around and studying how music works in Disney Parks and the Imagineers are just, they are phenomenal people. Their minds are insane. I think the wonderful thing about them is that all of this stuff just works. And unless you actually know the reason why different pieces of music are playing in different parts of the park, it should just work without you realizing about it. It’s like music in a film, you shouldn’t be aware of it necessarily, and suddenly it’s like, oh wow, this is really helping my emotional journey. So yeah, they’re really clever dudes.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And it’s interesting because that Cars Ride is actually, the ride system is very similar to Test Track. It’s not the same ride at all, but I don’t know how much that helped. So after you did that help with figuring out what was so different about a theme park as you dug into it further, what were some of the big differences you noticed and how you would write music for that versus writing for Dread or Limitless or something like that?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Okay, so the main difference is that it’s called nonlinear. If you stick on a CD or you download something from iTunes or whatever else, you are listening to your track from N Seconds in. So you are listening to the track and its entirety or if you listen to it on the radio, if you go into Test Track or any of the rides you don’t know, or me as a composer, I don’t know at what stage those people are going to come in because the music’s playing the entire time it’s on the loop.

So there’s never a beginning and there’s never an ending really in the sense that they might walk in at one minute, 32 on the track, someone else walks in at 50 seconds on the track, someone else walks in at two minutes on the track. Everyone’s got to have the same experience, but it’s not like you’re just going in listens to the track starting from one.

So most of them are kind of three-and-a-half minute tracks on loop, and we have what’s called a null point loop, which means that there can be absolutely no click on it. If you were to look at a waveform and a computer is all got to be, they have to match exactly at that end so that by the time that they loop, they just loop over and over and over and over and over and you never hear any clicks.

You’re not aware of that loop. But this is then the tricky thing with something like Test Track, because if you picture yourself going around on that line, there are tons of different parts while you’re on that line, you go through different rooms. So there’s actually about eight different tracks playing at the same time. And if you have eight different tracks playing, then you obviously have this huge cacophony of sound.

It just sounds like, oh my God, what is this? It’s a headache if you have them playing, there’s a speaker in room one, there’s a speaker in room two, there’s a speaker in room three, and they’re all playing different music. It’s going to absolutely do you in. So it was a huge challenge because basically what you’re doing is right. I walked into the room of Test Track. So the first track that you hear when you see the car, when you go in, that’s the kind of big announcement track. So that’s a nice big track. That’s all cool.

You then walk along a little bit and then you are into room two. Even though it’s the same room, it’s kind of little dividers. So room two’s got to work in tandem with room one if I’m playing that piece of music at the same time, but it can’t. It’s got to have the same kind of chord structure, but it needs to be different enough from room one that you realize subliminally that you are then in the next room. So that might be a stripped down version. It might have, for example, instead of brass and drums and strings playing, it might have little pits of strings going.

And then you go through there into room three and suddenly the strings might have a solo cello playing with it. So it evolves as you go around that entire place. But the point of it is that hopefully the audience don’t notice it’s supposed to be a subliminal, I use that word because you don’t want people to notice the joining parts. So as you go through, it’s like hearing all these different elements of the track so that by the time you get to the end of a line after, well, it depends, 45 minutes could be 1:45. What you don’t want is people just getting incredibly bored with a three-and-a-half minute track on loop. So all of these different elements have got to have enough interest that it’s taking you on an immersive journey really. So it is actually pretty tricky.

It sounds, oh great, it’s just stick on a piece of music. But the thought process behind it of all the different speakers and all the different parts of the rooms playing different elements which you’ve written. So all the tracks have got to have the same BPM, all the tracks have got to be in the same key, and they can’t really vary from the key changes because otherwise the speakers in room one are going to sound different from the speakers in room five, which is going to sound weird, but you are listening to that same track for 1:45, you’re going to be bored out of your skull unless there’s enough motion going on with it. So yeah. God, I sound so boring and geeky, don’t I? It is one of those things that if it works, it should just work and you’re not aware of it.

But if it doesn’t work, it sounds weird. And I remember going to Disney in January this year with my kids and I was passing, do you know the Carousel at Disneyland? So the Carousel’s on the left, and I think it’s Toad Hall or something on the right hand side. You have basically, I noticed it again, really only now geeky about this kind of stuff. I had the Carousel music on the left and then on the speed as I’m walking down the middle between the Carousel and the ride on the right and the right on the right had a kind of acoustic version of this, the same music on the Carousel, but it was different.

Then there was another speaker, I was like, this is doing Test Track. I’m suddenly going around the whole of Disney going, oh, that’s how they did that. I phoned out John, the head of music at Disney, and just said, dude, that is an incredible job because I really haven’t noticed it at all. And suddenly it’s like, wow, this, because again, if you picture all the different music in the park is going at different BPMs, it’s going to sound weird. It’s going to give you a headache if you’re going down it all at different times.

Dan Heaton: No, that’s really interesting because I’ve been to some parks, local parks or regional or whatnot where you get stuck in a line with a loop that goes over and over, or there’s one where you’re listening to music for a ride and then they have some dance music playing too close and it’s just this…

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Six Flags.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, Six Flags. Exactly. Here where I live, or they’re having somebody on a megaphone yelling at you to come do a carnival game, whatever. So your point is really good because going through Test Track, you do have that sense of moving forward and the line is usually very long. But yeah, it’s rare at Disney parks, especially with some of the more modern attractions to have that experience. So I totally get what you’re saying because it’s tricky. I mean, the show building for Test Track is gigantic. So you mentioned you went to Disneyland and you hadn’t been there. Were you able to go before it opened and go to Epcot and actually experience how your music would sound in there with the Imagineers?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Oh yeah. And again, one of the things, absolute kudos to these guys, the Disney guys, they value music so much as you should with their rich heritage, but they value it so much that basically anything you want within reason, they will help you achieve. One of the things they say is, look, so we started off like that. So we wrote the music and we spoke about it and they said, well, look, part of the test track stuff is yes. There are different parts of it, but part of it is the line itself. Part of it is the music, what we call the announcement music, which is blasting out of the speakers outside when you hear it as you’re walking past going, oh, that’s Test Track. So that cannot be a three-and-a-half minute track because that on loop all day would drive anybody insane.

What Todd and John had said was, look, they said, look, imagine it as a band, it’s a kind of slightly futuristic band because it’s a futuristic ride, but that band is then going to play all of the tracks. So it’s like making a CD played by this band, which is going to be coming out of the speakers at the front. So when you think of it like that, it’s like, well, what futuristic instruments would you have?

What sounds on a synthesizer would you have playing with this? So it was a mixture of orchestra and synths and drums. And I think I wrote five tracks in total. Each of the tracks were about five or six minutes. So you’ve got a total of about 30, 35 minutes on loop on those ones. But having done that, they then have to balance out Steven and these various audio guys have to work out how it’s going to sound in the park.

So this is my first ever experience. I mean, imagine you are a huge Disney fan like I am, and you’ve never been to the Epcot Center. They flew me over and I got off the plane and I was working like a madman on this film, and I remember I was so tired, got off the plane and what was it? I was in LA for this game session.

I’ve flown back to Glasgow to go and see my wife and kids flew back to London because I was doing some theater and then flew straight from there to Orlando. They got a car from me, from Orlando, took me straight to the park, and it was 10 o’clock at night and the parks just shutting up. Yeah, you’ve got the firework display going on and the first thing I hear are the get out the car in the Epcot Center is my music blasting out of the speakers.

It’s the first thing I’ve ever experienced in the Epcot Center. Say, Hey, this is cool. So they were trying that out, but of course the ride wasn’t finished yet. The track was in place, but they were still doing all of the, obviously the tracks the first thing that gets laid, and then after that they’re building the structure around it and we had to mix it.

So what happens is I’m sat, and again, bear in mind, I’ve never done this before, so this is the coolest thing out like a kid in a candy store. So I sat on one of the cars, I’m wearing a hard hat, John sat next to me wearing a hard hat. Todd is there and the mixer is there. So the mixer has her pro tools set up on a laptop. So the ride goes, and I’m going, yeah, no, they’ve got lots and lots of speakers on this ride.

Some of the rides have the speakers actually on the carriage itself. Others just have tons of speakers along the ride. So one of the elements you notice on Test Track is you kind of wait there and then it takes you up right to the beginning of just before the car zooms off. You have this little five second sting. So you get on that and I’m going, yeah, well, as you come through this bit, this bit, it feels like the music should have a crescendo. So it gets louder. Obviously with an orchestra, you have a crescendo.

Well, how do you achieve that when the car’s traveling at pace or you’re going up a ramp? So they do this incredible programming where the different speakers play louder depending on where you are. We try that, but what happens is at the end of the ride, we all get off the ride, she takes her laptop, she plugs it with a USB cable into the front bonnet, the carriage of this carriage uploads the mix, and then we all get back on, and then we do the ride again.

So Test Track goes up to 70 miles an hour, whatever else. I’m in shorts and t-shirt because just comes to us thinking, oh, this will be fine. It’ll be Orlando, of course, by this time it’s 11 o’clock in the evening, and then we get off and we do it again, right? This bit needs done this bit, needs done at two o’clock in the morning, and I think I’ve never seen anyone mix wirelessly before.

So literally it’s from the laptop and they’re doing it and it’s uploading it to somewhere else and okay, I’m freezing cold because there’s no, there’s nothing, there’s no, what you call it building. It’s just literally that ride. So we were doing that ride for about three and a half hours, and I’m in shorts and t-shirts at two in the morning. It’s like, I need to go to bed now, but I mean what, because obviously you need to do that while there’s no one else in the park.

So we did that and then went to bed, and then the next day did exactly the same thing. It took 10:00 PM and then we started doing some more mixing. And then obviously you then go into the after show stuff. When you come off the ride and then there’s tons of music playing. So the same kind of thing, you just go around and listen to the levels of the speakers and does it need a bit more bass or does it need a bit more this?

So it’s completely different from if you picture a film when you’re dubbing a film, you go into a dub suite. I mean, it’s basically sitting in a theater and you just mix it in a theater and you listen to how it sounds. Well, how the heck do you do that in an open space at Test Track when there’s 400 speakers around the place. So that is your dub suite. The dub suite is the ride. So you’re just sitting there. So yeah, absolutely incredible experience.

Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. That sounds amazing.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: The best job out, it’s amazing.

Dan Heaton: You have a very hard job now. I know it’s a lot of work, especially like you said, you’re traveling around the country. I’m sure there’s a point at 2:00 AM where you’re like, am I? What am I doing?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Completely. But honestly, I will never forget that the first piece of music I ever hear in Epcot is my music blasting out Disneyland out of Disney World. Yeah, I mean, no one ever knows that stuff. Behind the scenes you’re having a heart attack because the ride isn’t finished. It is two in the morning and you’ve been doing the same rollercoaster for four hours. It’s just as well, I don’t get stuck on coasters, but it was amazing. And the interesting part of this is that I did a video game called Battlefield Hardline about six months later, and they had really liked my Dread soundtrack, but the thing that prepared me the most for writing music for games was at this ride, because games work in a very similar way, which is that you have different elements playing at different times.

It’s kind of worked in layers. And it’s because again, if you work on a game, picture it, you’re never playing at exactly the same time as say someone on the other side of the country. So this kind of loop-based music, but never quite knowing where the loop starts and the different layers that come on. I said to the guy, this is so funny. This is some violent shoot them up. It was like, yeah, but my experience was from an Epcot Center ride. It’s weird how one job has an effect on something else.

Dan Heaton: Exactly, yeah. And so I believe you also worked on a project with Disney in Shanghai in some form. Could you talk about that?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: The after show stuff? So we call it the after show, as in after the ride, yeah, on Tron. So Joe and DAFT Punk had done the main ride. Phenomenal, absolutely great job. Again, I just remember seeing the actual visuals of this just and before it’s built, this is awesome. I want to be on that motorbike. Again, they go at serious speeds. Yeah, so again, the brief of that was pretty much, well, look, this is going to be after shows.

So you’ve come off the ride, you’re going around all the different rooms, so it’s got to be in that kind of Tron land. There are some of the big screens of the background. You’re playing some of the games afterwards as hang around. It was all the music for that. Then there’s a kind of two minute showpiece that comes up every, I think, 20 minutes.

So that’s something the whole room goes dark and this music blasts out. It’s really good fun because that was very different from Test Track in the sense that it had to be quite Tron. So it is, you’ve got your staccato strings, you’ve got your big bombs underneath it, you’ve got your drums going with it, and it’s again, very futuristic. It was really good fun to do.

Then similarly, there is about a 40-minute suite where we use the original Tron music and tied that together with some original music that I wrote. So it’s not just Tron, it’s not just stuff that I wrote, but stuff in between it. Again, it sounds like a nice fluid 40-minute suite, which then loops at the end of 40 minutes without you hearing a loop point. Again, very, very different, but it’s the same feel as far as the technical aspect.

You come off the ride, you’re still immersed in what’s going on. You don’t want to blow people with massively loud music because the main point of the ride is the ride itself, but you’re still trying to create an immersive experience so that people are still enjoying the ride and still being there. They’ve queued for however long they’ve lined up, so they want to have another 10 minutes there just to enjoy being there before they go off. So yeah, it was great. You’re getting to work with some Tron material. I mean, it’s absolutely legendary and iconic, isn’t it?

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. And it’s interesting because with Test Track people often talk about the newer version as feeling a little bit like Tron at times. I mean just because it’s more futuristic and you’re on a car, but it has that kind of similar feel. So it’s interesting that they had to work.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Someone did a mashup as well, didn’t they, where they did a podcast, not a podcast, but something of a pod where they’d done music, but I loved the fans. They’re amazing. They’d taken the Tron music and fit it to the exact duration of the ride so that when the ride takes off, you’re supposed to press play on this and it should last the duration of the ride. So you’re listening to the Tron music for the duration of the ride, basically.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, you could put on headphones and just ride it through.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: I think that was the idea, but honestly, I love it. I mean, the feedback, again, I love it when you welcome projects where the fans are so passionate because the feedback that I got, I think I had one person complained that it wasn’t like Test Track 1. And again, fair enough, I have no idea. It wasn’t supposed to be. But overwhelmingly, they all got in touch and said, this is one of the best parts of Epcot. The ride’s fantastic and the music really enhances it, brings it up to date. We absolutely adore it. And yeah, I forward them onto the Disney guys sometimes just to say, this actually makes me feel proud because now I’ve got kids and I have relations that go to EPCOT Center and say, Hey, we went to the Test Track ride and heard your stuff.

But it makes me feel cool knowing that doing a film is awesome and you see it up on screen and it’s a good buzz and you work very hard in it and it’s great. But there’s something about the longevity of Disney stuff where I don’t know, is that heritage, once you’ve got your piece there, it’s going to be there for at least 10 years. So it’s not many people when you’re starting out go, oh, have a piece of music at Epcot, at Disney World at Disneyland, or you get to work on a short film or whatever. These are things which have longevity, which you can show your kids in years to come and go, yeah, I worked on that. I dunno, it’s pretty cool.

Dan Heaton: Oh, it’s great. And I think with Test Track, I don’t get the sense they’re going to be changing that anytime soon. It’s pretty timeless in terms of being futuristic. It’s not going to seem dated in five years or something. And the music is that way too.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: I don’t think so. I mean, the blue is funny, the blue lighting that they have on that as you go down. I remember looking at the time going, oh, I’d like that in my house. They were like, give it 10 years. It should be. It should be kind in everybody’s mainstream by then with the thing. But I think they did such an incredible job on the style, on the art direction. The ride producer Trevor, he was incredibly supportive.

Sometimes it takes a while to get on a client’s wavelength when you’re writing to find out what it is. So you work with the director of a film or you work with the creative director of a ride to try and work out what it is that is their vision for this. And there’s something incredibly satisfying when you really get it. And as a team, you look at it at the end and go, yeah, this is great, and feedback’s great, and everybody just loved the ride.

The fact that people would want to, obviously, hopefully they don’t have to line up for an hour and a half, but even if they do, the fact that people want to give it that much time because they know that the experience that they’re going to get is not just about the ride itself, but it’s about the pre-write, it’s about the pre-show and the after show. It’s about that whole experience of being there. It is that immersive experience. So it’s not just your two-minute ride, but it is having a look at all of the stuff beforehand and all of the stuff after. So yeah.

Dan Heaton: Well, great. Yeah, I have two daughters, but my older daughter’s nine, and the last trip we took, I asked her what’s the thing, she’s her favorite, what does she want to do the most? And it was Test Track. So it’s doing something right. I’m not just saying that it’s, it’s a true story. So would you consider, obviously you probably would, but would you consider doing another theme park attraction down the road if it arose?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Yeah. I love the people. And for me, I get offered quite a lot of work. There’s at least so many hours in a day, so you’ve really got to work out what jobs you actually want to do. One of the things that you look at when you’re looking at a project of if I’m going to be working on a project for a year or if I’m going to be working on a project for a month, or if I’m going to work on a project for a week, it varies. But most projects for films are a couple of months.

A Disney project would be a couple of months. You kind of go, well, I’m going to be working really hard on this. A it is got to creatively float my boat. So it’s got to be something that I’m really going to be able to put myself into and it’s going to give me a lot of satisfaction being able to write for that.

So it’s not just, oh, I just want it to sound like this, or, oh, I just want it to sound like this. But it’s like, Hey, what would you bring to this job? But the other incredibly important part is the people. And it really is the Imagineers are just, oh, what a bunch of guys. I love that, and we’re all dear friends now after this, but they’re incredible people. They’re so supportive.

Again, it is just such a rarity that you get to work with people that value music as much as Disney. And that really does count for something as an artist when someone says, what can we do to help you bring your vision to life? You give them not a list, but it’s like, well, I would really like this many players and I would really like this, and this would be really helpful if we could do this. And they’re just like, right, go for it. This is going to be in the park for however long we want to make sure that it sounds right.

Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. Well, this has been great to talk to you about this, and I really appreciate it. So if listeners want to learn more about it, I know you have so many projects you’ve worked on, we’ve barely even mentioned most of them. Is there a good place online for them to go to catch up with what you’re want? Yeah,

Paul Leonard-Morgan: Go find my Facebook page. I don’t think they want your data. Just go, remember what it is, Facebook slash Paul Leonard Morgan. I think there’s only one Paul Leonard Morgan around. So go Google it. It’ll be in there.

Dan Heaton: Okay, great. And I’ll post the links on the show notes and on the blog page so everybody can find it. Well, Paul, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for doing it.

Paul Leonard-Morgan: You are most welcome.

Dan Heaton: I’d like to give a special thanks to Paul for taking the time out of what I know is a very busy schedule to speak with me here on the podcast. And also thanks to Fritz at St. Rose Management for helping to set up this interview, which was a real treat to do.

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