Tag: Disney

Snow White (2025) film poster

Snow White

Transcription of Songs Old and New

SoS’s latest Disney feature is Snow White; a musical with over a dozen songs featuring choirs and multiple characters that needed transcription to sheet music for localization. In addition, some songs had separate edits for the film’s soundtrack album, requiring review and sometimes completely different sheet music.

One of the highlights of the project was the inclusion of some of Disney’s earliest songs, like “Heigh Ho”. Our work provided the opportunity to dissect and marvel at the superb musical craft that causes these songs to remain classics nearly 90 years later. And, yes, there was some whistling while we worked!

Gold lettering shows “Disney Mufasa The Lion King” on a black background.
Disney - Mufasa: The Lion King. Movie poster shows Mufasa characters on a snowy mountaintop. Text reads, “The story of an orphan who would be king… in theaters December 20 in Dolby Cinema, Read D 3D, and IMAX.” Credits are small and hard to discern in this image.

Mufasa: The Lion King

The end-of-year theatrical releases continue with “Mufasa: The Lion King”. SoS has been working on this film throughout the last year, providing music transcription for localization.

Our work began almost a year ago, transcribing small sections of character performances to create sheet music used by language territories to cast local voice actors. During postproduction the work continued, transcribing full versions of the songs and updating those transcriptions whenever edits to the film affected the vocals. The amount of music and number of characters in the film made this no small task.

“Mufasa: The Lion King” is in theaters worldwide December 20.

Beyond Multi-language Video

Disney showcases Moana 2 song “Beyond” in 27 languages

Symbols of Sound created the notated vocal transcriptions used to localize Moana 2 in 45 languages. Disney featured 27 versions of the song “Beyond” in this video.

The video is another excellent feat of voice-matching actors recreating the tone and interpretation of the original performance while adapting it to their local languages. The performances are a reminder of the amazing international collaboration required to bring the quality and passion of Disney films to worldwide audiences.

Photos of Mark Mancina, Danita Ng-Poss, and Jason Poss. Text overlay reads, “Film Music Live with Daniel Schweiger. Mark Mancina / Danita Ng-Poss & Jason Poss 1PM (4pm EST) Monday December 9th

Moana 2 Interview

Live YouTube chat with composer Mark Mancina, Danita Ng-Poss, and Jason Poss

LIVE EVENT – December 9 at 1 pm (13:00) PST / 21:00 UTC/GMT

Join Moana 2 composer Mark Mancina, and song transcribers Danita Ng-Poss & Jason Poss, for a live chat on the Film Music Live YouTube Channel hosted by Daniel Schweiger. Bring your questions, and join the discussion Monday, Dec. 9, here:

<Film Music Live with MARK MANCINA, DANITA NG-POSS & JASON POSS>

If you are not able to attend the live discussion, you can watch the recorded video at the same link.

Moana 2 movie poster

Moana 2

Can I get a "chee-hoo” in 45 languages?

Moana 2, the most recent SoS transcription project, has released in theaters. As with the first film in 2016, Symbols of Sound worked with Disney Character Voices International to transcribe the vocal performances and create sheet music for localization of the film into 45 languages.

Along with the common slate of languages, Moana 2 is dubbed into both Māori and soon Hawaiian. The Māori version is being released in New Zealand simultaneously with the English version. The Hawaiian version, to be dubbed later, is planned to feature Auliʻi Cravalho, who plays Moana in the English version.