Outcast, The Longest Journey, etc.

[Swordmaster]

For Wednesday fun, here are some links of interest for game music enthusiasts. Some of them you probably know already, but enjoy anyway.

Outcast
The complete score available for free download. Composed by Lennie Moore, performed by The Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

The Longest Journey
The complete score available for free download. Composed by Bjørn Arve Lagim and Tor Linløkken.

Kevin Manthei
Kevin Manthei's site features downloads from his works in Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption, Sacrifice and Wizardry 8, to name but a few.

Michael Giacchino
The composer's website includes information and soundclips from his music in e.g. Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Underground and Secret Weapons over Normandy. Sheet music example from Medal of Honor, too!

iMUSE Island
General LucasArts music information (interviews, for instance), also downloadable fan arrangements/remixes and information on how to obtain original LucasArts music.

Scumm Bar
Downloads for music from the Monkey Island series.

Bart Klepka's Remixes
Lots of remixes, from e.g. Warcraft 2, Dark Forces, System Shock, Master of Magic, Gabriel Knight.

Overclocked Remix
More remixes from a variety of games on different platforms.

[Ivar]

Hi Swordmaster,

What happened with your soundtrack site, in which you'd review new soundtracks?

Ivar

[Swordmaster]

It sort of died, figuratively speaking because I was too busy and literally because the host went down around that time. Some of the reviews are back online at Adventure Gamers, though.

[Zemus]

Http://s-island.mixnmojo.com  - Soundfont Island. My site which has music from Lucasarts games, both in MIDI and OGG format. And no, there's no soundfonts there any more  
Also a few files have non-working links, which will be fixed soon.

By the way, the Outcast soundtrack is also available on the second game CD as CD-audio. Not sure about the DVD-version though.

[This message has been edited by Zemus (edited April 28, 2004).]

[Swordmaster]

Hi Zemus, thanks for the additional link! That also reminds me: LucasArts Soundtracks site at Mixnmojo also has a wide variety of LucasArts music available.

[Swordmaster]

Free downloads for the soundtracks of Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4 are available at EA's website.

[Alistair]

Blizzard (Or rather, Matt Uelmen) has the Diablo II music as well as some bonus outtakes..

- Alistair

[Jan]

I have some more links to add:

Mirsoft - Huge database of game music in many different formats (some quite exotic)

Xtreme Games Music - Almost a thousand musical pieces from various games (formats: GYM, MIDI, MOD, MP3, PSF, PSF2, SID, SPC, TFMX, YM)

Music4Games - Here one can find the latest news on game music composers, soundtracks and concerts. They also have a download section

VGMix - Similar to OverClocked Remix; contains remixes from an impressive number of games

Medal of Honor Rising Sun soundtrack

Deus Ex: Invisible War soundtrackAlexander Brandon's Deus Ex 2 soundtrack

PC Gamescore - I don't think this site is very well-known; nevertheless it's a great source if you're looking for a guide to ripping music from a specific game or for links to downloadable versions. Updated fairly often and contains track listings of some games' soundtracks

And, last but not least:

FTP Game Music - An FTP site containing dozens of games' music tracks. Its only flaw is that it contains very little adventure game music .

I'll dig for more later

[Fancia]

For Amiga music, one simply can't beat ExoticA.

[Tom]

I finally broke out the old LucasArts music CD Joonis and I put together a few years back, and listened to it on my way to work today.  (Well, Joonis put together.  I just mixed and recorded some of the music for it.)  LEC really produced some quality music.  They seem to have captured the game's mood better than Sierra did most of the time.  What was his name, Michael Land?...some wonderful stuff for the MT-32 that really took advantage of the MT-32's capabilites.  He didn't try to push it; do more than the MT-32 could handle.  Whereas there are a lot of Sierra songs I don't care for, I can't say the same thing about LEC soundtracks.

[Zemus]

Yeah, Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian made some great soundtracks while working for Lucasarts. They had the advantage of having developed the imuse engine which made the music much more dynamic. Just play Monkey Island 2 and walk around Woodtick, none of the Sierra games had anything like that.

[Tom]

I remember.  LEC music from those games was difficult to record.  Well, easy to record, but difficult to edit.  They used a lot of SysEx instead of typical patch/instrument changes.  You'd get halfway through recording a song, and a new patch bank was sent to the MT-32.  (When recording MIDI, the SysEx doesn't get recorded, so it was a two-part process: the MIDI data, then the SysEx data.  Sometimes even more than that.)  

Didn't Sierra "attempt" an IMUSE-like system, digitally, with LSL-Love For Sail?  It's something AGDI has been trying to immitate, but no luck so far when using AGS to make the games.

[Marten]

I'm particular to the system used in Lucasart's "The Dig."  Music would wait to a certain note before transitioning when you had moved from one screen to another, so there was a continual flow and the music segued smoothly between themes.

[Zemus]

Didn't Sierra "attempt" an IMUSE-like system, digitally, with LSL-Love For Sail? It's something AGDI has been trying to immitate, but no luck so far when using AGS to make the games.

When I played Love For Sail, I noticed onlystatic themes for every scene and cutscene. I didn't think it was very dynamic.
To make an imuse-like engine work with AGS, AGS itself needs to be able to change music clips based on where you are in the tune. I don't know if the engine is capable of see how long a certain theme has played, but if it has then it should be possible with some scripting.
Oooh, if you add a timer and set it to start at the exact same time the theme starts, it should be possible to change themes with different cues depending on where in the theme you currently are.
Again, I would like to mention the Woodtick scene as a place where they use different cues between the themes depending on how long a theme has played

When I record LEC's music with Cakewalk, all the sysex messages end up in track 1 so I can usually get everything in one take. However, getting the main sysex bank that the game sends before it starts, is difficult. Sometimes I have to download it several times from the module to get the correct sounds (mainly the reggae bass and the ladder-sounds since those were the only custom instruments LEC used).

[Tom]

That's what I'm referring to, the patch banks that are sent, via SysEx, during a song.  There's the initial  bank before the start of the game, then many others throughout the game.  The majority of the MIDI is pretty standard MIDI data (patch changes, volume changes, and so forth.)  They change instruments often by sending a new bank (though a very limited bank) to the MT-32.  And you'll note, the Program numbers sometimes don't change; only the instrument changes.  LEC used very few memory patches in their games, they just kept replacing the sounds in the memory positions via SysEx.  

Cakewalk records SysEx?  I've never been able to get a MIDI sequencer to record real-time SysEx; it's always a seperate function.

[Zemus]

I use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 and you can choose whether or not to record sysex under the recording options.

[Tom]

Really...??   I have Cakewalk ProAudio 8 but haven't used it for anything.  I should install it and see if it'll do the same thing as v9.  That would be great!  Glad you brought this to my attention.  I don't think I've ever checked to see if Orchestrator Pro will do that.  I just assumed it wouldn't.

On a totally non-related note...

I threw out an old P90 PC a few weeks ago when I replaced my music computer with a Celeron 500.  Anyway, the old thing has been sitting in my garage, next to my garbage can, collecting dust and spider webs.  I opened the case today, one last time...just to be sure there was nothing I could use in it, and there was my SW60XG soundcard!!  Nearly threw the thing out!!

[Zemus]

I simply set it to record channels 1-10 on their corresponding tracks and turn on sysex under the recording options. Afterwards I get a file like this: http://s-island.mixnmojo.com/music/03_-_Woodtick.zip with all the sysex-messages collected in track 1. BTW, Cakewalk has "always use sysex banks for MIDI files (instead of sysex data)" turned on by default. It tended to mess up the recordings for me by automatically turning all the sysex data into tiny banks separately from the MIDI-file.

[Tom]

"always use sysex banks for MIDI files (instead of sysex data)"

I'm not sure what you mean by this?  Shouldn't that be the other way around?

But I do understand what you mean by all the little, split-up banks of SysEx data.  This is something you see all the time with the MT-32 because the SysEx banks are so huge  (17kb  wow...that's really big.  Sarcasm.)  But Orchestrator and Cakewalk will split the bank into something like 124 byte blocks of data.  Very bothersome at times.  But I haven't had the need to record 'Monkey Island' in some time.    Dealing with GM, GS, and XG, I haven't had to worry about big SysEx files...uless you consider 22 bytes a big file.

I know what I have to do, now.  Find my Monkey Decoder Wheel and try recording some MI again, with SysEx enabled.  

Glad you brought all this up.  Taught this old fart some new things to look at in MIDI recording.  Thanks!

[Zemus]

Yeah, it shold be the other way around
When that option is turned on, Cakewalk will automatically put all the sysex data you record into tiny banks in the sysex-bank list and simply use a number to refer to that bank in track 1. So when Monkey Island 2 transmits like 30-40 messages when the game boots up, you'll end up with 30-40 8 bytes long banks