Shore orchestrated the music himself, and conducted all of the orchestral sessions and many of the choral and soloist sessions. In keeping with his operatic vision, Shore used the three scripts and the book itself to write themes even before having film reels to compose to. As a result, Shore spent nearly four years on the composition, compared to a period of 6–8 weeks per film, and a week or two of recording, as practiced by most film composers. For the recording process, which extended over four weeks per film, he composed the music in long suite-like pieces for the orchestra to go through during a day of playing, rather than short cues, lending greater cohesion to the music. Only a few minutes of finalized music were recorded each day to allow for input from director Peter Jackson and revisions to the music and performance Jackson gave Shore direction and had each theme played to him as a mock-up and by the orchestra before approving it. All of the music production (which overlapped with the films' editing process) was supervised by Jackson who often asked for significant changes to the music, which is unusual for film music.