Test Track music composer Zain Effendi’s quest for Epcot’s sound | Interview
Test Track at Epcot has over 70 minutes of new music composed by Zain Effendi, who rode the Disney thrill ride over and over to get it right.
Test Track at Walt Disney World’s Epcot near Orlando, Fla., reopened on July 22, 2025, after a year-long refurbishment. Accompanying the revamped ride experience is a new soundtrack created “from the ground up,” as composer Zain Effendi describes it. The Test Track soundtrack is available today on music streaming platforms.
Scoring a new version of the fastest ride in any Disney theme park was no small task. Effendi composed all the music for the project, from the entrance plaza and queue to the ride itself.
Photo courtesy of Zain Effendi
“I learned so much about the psychology behind these attractions and how to keep things flowing, how to keep energy flowing, and how to do it the Disney way,” Effendi told us.
That being said, Test Track wasn’t his first collaboration with Walt Disney Imagineering; he’d previously written music for the Galactic Starcruiser “Star Wars hotel,” as well as all of DJ R-3X’s tracks for inside Oga’s Cantina in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, including some in Ewokese.
Photo by Blake Taylor
Each Disney theme park project is different, but for Test Track, the project’s visuals were already established by the time Effendi joined.
For Test Track’s onboard ride experience, Disney sent Effendi a POV video ridethrough, which he approached the same way a film composer writes music for a locked picture. The music had to fit each scene, with rider’s viewpoint and the vehicle’s speed informing the tone and length of any given composition Effendi wrote for the ride.
For Test Track’s entrance plaza and queue, writing the music didn’t come as easily. Effendi had only one piece of concept artwork (pictured below) to inspire 24 minutes of the exterior’s music suite. To take on the challenge, Effendi distilled the work ahead of him into its simplest creative expression: “It’s the same starting out as any project. You’re looking for, ‘What is that sound?’ What is Test Track and what does it sound like?”
As for the queue, Effendi faced a different challenge. The ride is a linear experience the guest encounters in a sequential order, with the music accompanying that journey. A queue, by contrast, is an open space that anyone might join at any time in the soundtrack.
“During the queue, the music can never die down. You never know when someone’s going to arrive,” Effendi explained. “At any point when they arrive, you want them to experience the thrill and sensation of what they’re about to go on. To write music that is constant energy is always a challenge because everything has a dip and a flow. All songs have a bridge, and a verse before the chorus, whereas with this, it’s really all chorus.”
For research, Effendi embarked into the wilds of standing in line for other Epcot attractions, finding particular inspiration in the Hollywood-esque feel of the queue for Soarin’ Around the World.
For the finishing touches, Effendi rode the in-progress Test Track after Epcot closed for the evening over and over with Imagineers, fine-tuning his music for each scene.
Ultimately, Effendi’s 14 months of work on the attraction boiled down to one question: “What excited me when I was seven years old and I went to Test Track?” He hopes his music elicits that same feeling for guests in the reimagined version of the ride.
You can find Zain Effendi on Instagram, where he posts behind-the-scenes looks at his creative process and music projects.
As for the visuals of Test Track, we interviewed Dan Brookwell, senior production designer at Walt Disney Imagineering. Check out our conversation with him.
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