I've always been very fond of this track from the game Settlers II, originally composed by Haiko Ruttmann. But I never felt the original MIDI nor the CD audio original lived up to its full potential.

This is my first attempt at getting there, although it's still not how I wanted. I envisioned it with more brass and more flowing string sections but it's pretty hard to get the dynamics right. For now, I'll upload this version since it's a mostly complete take on it, and I figured others might enjoy it.

I've had a very specific narrative in mind when I imagine an orchestration of this track. Due to the title and nature of the game, I always took it to be a dirge for the land itself (the blooming fields), and this is how I set it up. The focus on the settlers themselves is secondary. Here's how it goes:

The idea for this music, in my head at least, is to split the track into two parts: one shows the pristine wild nature during a warm day of spring, when the fields are blooming with flowers. An ominous sound of trumpets is foreboding the distant arrival of settlers, here to conquer this natural land and destroy it. After a moment of quiet, a sudden change in winds announces the arrival of the settlers in these lands.

The second part is about humans destroying nature in their settling of it, and the frenetic industry and war that results from it. (The strings symbolizing greed and death, with brass and anvils symbolizing industry and war.)

But all of this is just in a small patch of land. Meanwhile, not far from there, other blooming fields await their turn to be conquered and pillaged by the settlers, and we lament their fate under their arrival.

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Anyway, I will probably revisit it later, now that I have a subscription to EastWest's ComposerCloud. But I really am out of my depth in how to use it properly.

This is just me fooling around during the weekend, not a serious attempt at anything.

Orchestration of "The Fields are Blooming" / "Die Felder Bluehen" from "Settlers II"

For the Ludum Dare 49 Game Jam we created the puzzle game Atomic Rock Paper Scissors. The Jam has creators making a game in 72 hours!

You can check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/atomic-rock-paper-scissors

And play it here: https://1ucas.itch.io/atomic-rock-paper-scissors

Since we did not want to use existing assets, I decided to compose the music for the game myself. We never managed to get a title screen and game over screen ready for the Jam, but this is what I came up with for those screens.

I figured I will likely never use it, so I'll put it up here, because why not?

The music for this game was the first time I ever tried seriously compose anything.

Atomic Rock Paper Scissors (Titles)

Atomic Rock Paper Scissors (Game Over)

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS! I'm going to spend a lot more time on this one.

I've been meaning to orchestrate this music for decades, since I feel every single remix or orchestration of it has sucked. This is largely due to the popularity of "Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts", the Super Nintendo re-envisoned game, which features a horrible version of the original arcade music (which was present in all other platforms). But it's what most people are familiar with, sadly.

I was inspired mostly by the original arcade version and the Sega Genesis version.

The tempo here is slower at 143 bpm, as in the Sega Genesis version as opposed to the original ~160 bpm. Despite the instrumentation simplicity, the Sega Genesis version leans creepier than the usual clumsy/slapstick approach everyone does, which I find it much more appropriate.

This is my first main attempt at narrowing down the instrumentation and dynamics for this track. This will likely be completely re-done multiple times in the near future, but I figured I would post it here for future reference.

For this test I went with a more laidback "swingy" style in the beginning, but my idea for this track is for it to get progressively darker, and at some point, match the tempo of the arcade version.

By the way, I fully intend to orchestrate the music of levels 2 (The Village of Decay & Destruction) and 5 (The Castle) as well at some point.

[very very WIP] Ghouls 'n Ghosts - Level 1: The Hill of Torture (Orchestra Remake)

This is the corridor background music loop from the game MDK.

There's no love for this little thing online, so here it is.

MDK - Corridor

This is a short cue composed by Leith Stevens for the "Time Enough At Last" episode of Twilight Zone.

It's a shame we never got a proper soundtrack of this show. It's full of great little tunes like this.

Leith Stevens  - Cue from "Time Enough At Last"(from Twilight Zone)

This is a musical cue heard in the background of a scene in Netflix's "Inside Job", season 2 episode 6, when Rand and Tamiko are in a simulation Paris.

It's short but very nice, and I figured it should be appreciated on its own. 

Sadly, big studios (and even composers)never seem to care for releasing the scores of their shows, so great little tunes like these get lost in time without due appreciation.

What a shame.

Paris simulation background score from Inside Job S02E06 (by Ryan Elder)

I recently reverse-engineered the 1996 game SimTunes just for fun, and then decided to make a rendition of "Bad Apple!!" entirely within it as an extra challenge. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXXYwafu3EU

However, the right tempo of 138 BPM is not possible within SimTunes, and the Virtual Machine emulations are very choppy and inconsistent, so the audio kind of sucks.

So I decided to write a script that reconstructs the audio directly, by simulating the motion of the Bugz, thus getting a clean "perfect" audio output.

SimTunes audio is entirely at 11025 Hz, so quality isn't amazing, but this is the best case scenario possible. :)

The custom code also allows me to set any tempo I want, so I made it 138 BPM as the original song.

Enjoy!

"Bad Apple!!" but with SimTunes (reconstruction at proper tempo)

This is from the 1985 movie Brewster's Millions, and I've been trying to find what this is for the past couple of months. It's played by a string group in a fancy dinner party in the movie. There's no soundtrack listing on this music anywhere (only the ending credits song), and there wasn't a soundtrack released.

I've got reliable information denying that the film's composer, Ry Cooder, had any involvement on the creation of this piece.

Immediately after this music is played in the film, the same quartet plays Scott Joplin's "Paragon Rag."

Can anyone identify it?

According to the cellist in the scene itself (not reliable after 30+ years) and some string quartet specialists, this seems to be a variation on Glazunov's "5 Novelettes Op.15, Interludium in modo antico. Andante.". Unfortunately, it's not an exact match, but it's as close as we'll ever get, I suppose.

If anyone finds an exact match elsewhere, I'm willing to reward them.

Unknown music from 1985 movie "Brewster's Millions"

Chiptunes Orchestrated: "Draconus" by Adam Gilmore

Not super happy with this one, it was my first attempt at this ever. I'll revisit this track later because it deserves more.

Orchestrated Game Music - Super Metroid - "Upper Norfair / Hot Lava Area" by Kenji Yamamoto

Still needs some work. I'll probably try again in the future.

Orchestrated Game Music - Super Metroid - "Lower Brinstar" by Kenji Yamamoto

A simple remake of Bobby Prince's "Rumba", composed for Apogee's Software "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold". Here rendered as a sort of jazz band.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold - Rumba (Story) -- Jazz remake

A simple remake of Bobby Prince's "Dark Halls", composed for Apogee's Software "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold".

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold - Dark Hall -- Remake

Community s02e07 shortscore

Hey Arnold - Short bit from "Heat" (Loop)

Walking tripod sound effect from War of the Worlds

"Mysterioso Pizzicato" is a classic "spooky theme", here on a bassoon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterioso_Pizzicato

"Mysterioso Pizzicato" ("spooky theme")

What if the ratio of frequencies between two octaves was 3, and not 2? How would we distribute the 12-equal temperament notes differently in our music?

Picking a fixed point note (in this case G4), we can modify the notes to try that idea out. Here's a Mozart piece adjusted in such a way.

In such a setup 12 notes in the scale wouldn't have special arithmetic properties anymore, but I'm uncertain about how to create a modified scale and mapping to achieve that.

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I've been informed this is closely related to the Bohlen-Pierce scale! Neat!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohlen%E2%80%93Pierce_scale

Mozart's Sonata For Piano In C Major', K .5'5, Allegro, with 3:1 octaves centered at G4

What if going UP an octave HALVED the frequency, instead of doubling it? You are effectively reversing the scale.

Here's a Mozart piece under such a transformation.

This is the same algorithm as in the previous case where octaves are mapped to a 3:1 ratio, except we set the target octave ratio to 1:2 instead of the original 2:1.

Mozart - Sonata For Piano In C Major', K .5'5, Allegro (reversed scale centered at G4)

WIP for Jakub Husak's "His Dark Majesty" song #4, for the Atari computers.

Haven't touched this one in a while. I'm mostly unhappy with the instrumentation, the timbres are not right yet. Those fast pulsing notes work better in the chiptune, I'm trying to capture that with an orchestra thing.

But here it is anyway, for the record. I'll significantly change this at some point.

lucasvb

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