What is Krell? Louis & Bebe Barron - Ancient Krell Music (Forbidden Planet) & More

video upload by SoundtracksForLiving

You'll often see videos with references to "Krell" patches. Where did the reference come from? The 1956 film Forbidden Planet and specifically the sounds created for it by Bebe and Louis Barron. The Krell was the intelligent alien race in the film. The above is a playlist I found of various Krell style compositions starting with "Louis & Bebe Barron - Ancient Krell Music." The actual style of composition is considered Musique Concrete which began in the 1940s, much earlier than the film.

"Musique concrète (French pronunciation: ​[myzik kɔ̃.kʁɛt], meaning 'concrete music') is a genre of electroacoustic music that is made in part from acousmatic sound, or sound without an apparent originating cause. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre, and so on. Originally contrasted with 'pure' elektronische Musik (based solely on the production and manipulation of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds), the theoretical basis of musique concrète as a compositional practice was developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the early 1940s."

And on the soundtrack for Forbidden Planet via Wikipedia:

"Forbidden Planet‍ '​s innovative electronic music score, credited as 'electronic tonalities,' partly to avoid having to pay any of the film industry music guild fees,[citation needed] was composed by Bebe and Louis Barron. MGM producer Dore Schary discovered the couple quite by chance at a beatnik nightclub in Greenwich Village while on a family Christmas visit to New York City; Schary hired them on the spot to compose his film's musical score. While the theremin (which was not used in Forbidden Planet) had been used on the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), the Barrons' electronic composition is credited with being the first completely electronic film score; their soundtrack preceded the invention of the Moog synthesizer by eight years (1964).

Using ideas and procedures from the book, Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) by the mathematician and electrical engineer Norbert Wiener, Louis Barron constructed his own electronic circuits that he used to generate the score's 'bleeps, blurps, whirs, whines, throbs, hums, and screeches'.[12] Most of these sounds were generated using an electronic circuit called a 'ring modulator'. After recording the basic sounds, the Barrons further manipulated the sounds by adding other effects, such as reverberation and delay, and reversing or changing the speeds of certain sounds.[21]

Since Bebe and Louis Barron did not belong to the Musicians Union, their work could not be considered for an Academy Award, in either the 'soundtrack' or the 'sound effects' categories. MGM declined to publish a soundtrack album at the same time that Forbidden Planet was released. However, film composer and conductor David Rose later published a 7" (18 cm) single of his original main title theme that he had recorded at the MGM Studios in Culver City during March 1956. His main title theme had been discarded when Rose, who had originally been hired to compose the musical score in 1955, was discharged from the project by Dore Schary sometime between Christmas 1955 and New Year’s Day. The film's original theatrical trailer contains snippets of Rose's score, the tapes of which Rose reportedly later destroyed.[22]

The Barrons finally released their soundtrack in 1976 as an LP album for the film's 20th anniversary; it was on their very own Planet Records label (later changed to Small Planet Records and distributed by GNP Crescendo Records). The LP was premiered at MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Kansas City, MO over the 1976 Labor Day weekend, as part of a 20th Anniversary celebration of Forbidden Planet held at that Worldcon; the Barrons were there promoting their album's first release, signing all the copies sold at the convention. They also introduced the first of three packed-house screenings that showed an MGM 35mm fine grain vault print in original CinemaScope and stereophonic sound. A decade later, in 1986, their soundtrack was released on a music CD for the film's 30th Anniversary, with a six-page color booklet containing images from Forbidden Planet, plus liner notes from the composers, Bebe and Louis Barron, and Bill Malone.[21]"

So now when you see a Krell patch posted here on MATRIXSYNTH, you'll know exactly where the reference came from; Bebe & Louis Barron, in 1956, for the film Forbidden Planet.