Mothership Tuba Jim Self
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:03 pm
Does anyone know what kind of horn Jim used for the Mothership scene on Close Encounters? Whatever it was sounded BIG obviously. Those double pedal A flats were incredible.
The story going around a while back on the old board was that Tommy Johnson had a conflict, so Jim Self was called in. He showed up with an F tuba, played the part, the signal was run through an octave divider, and only the dropped octave was used. I had seen this story at least a couple of times on the old board, but searching it earlier today failed to bring up any references to it.
His tone on the soundtrack is great, but a little distorted, so I suppose it could be true, but I can't find any corroborating information on it. For pure, beautiful tuba tone, Jim is hard to beat