ReMI Soundtrack Project

[BillyCheers]

Hi everyone,

 

the wish for a soundtrack has already been expressed several times and since I myself can hardly wait to hear the great tracks from our MI trio all around the clock, I would like to do the work in the next few days (weeks?) and record the most important cues (= almost all) so that you can hear them as a nicely edited soundtrack. A few pieces are already on YouTube - but that was only five pieces so far and nothing really followed or has anyone seen/heard anything else there? Also an official soundtrack (if at all) could take some time to get released (too much time).

 

Before I start, I wanted to ask if someone else is already working on it. There is no need to do the work twice...  

 

I also wanted to know if anyone knows what the legal situation is. I think recording and listening to the music for my own purposes should not be a problem. But how would it be, if I want to share them here with the forum or upload them to YouTube, so that others could listen to them as well? Could I get in trouble with that?

[Remi]

I know anything I've posted to YouTube gets flagged as copyrighted but OK to share. That does mean they -- presumably Devolver -- can take it down at a moment's notice, but that seems unlikely, at least for now. (Might change if they do an OST.)

[Laserschwert]

I've already recorded the first 30 minutes of music from the game today (rough estimation, I haven't edited anything yet), and from the looks of it, it'll be a massive tracklist (and quite difficult to deal with variations). My only chronology change is that I've moved the chapter card to AFTER the opening credits (instead of at the very start), and my tracklist up to now looks like this:

 

1. Main Menu

2. Underground Tunnels Prelude

3. Big Whoop Main Square

4. Scurvy Dogs Shack

5. Outhouse

6. Big Whoop Park

7. Story Time

8. Opening Titles

9. Chapter Card

10. Revisiting the Lookout

11. Mêlée Island Docks

12. The SCUMM Bar

13. New Pirate Leaders

14. Mêlée Island Low Street / Old Pirate Leaders / High Street

 

The Big Whoop area sounds like one seamless track, but the side tracks actually have their own loop points, so they can be made into separate tracks. A difficult one is the park area, where the sword training has a variation of the loop, but it only plays for a few seconds, until the sword fight is over. So it'll be quite difficult to capture a full loop of that one. For now, the Lookout track was the only one where I noticed an actual outro once you leave the screen. Mêlée Island for now sounds like one big loop, cross-fading through its variations, but that's where I stopped recording. Maybe for the sakes of a shorter tracklist, more cues can be combined, but then again, if you want to play specific cues, you would have to search though a long track, which isn't ideal either.

 

That being said, I don't know if I manage to go through the whole game like this. Maybe it CAN work as a team effort. BUT: I think it might make more sense to wait until we have working extraction tools for the music tracks. It'll still be work to compile a working album out of those snippets.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by Laserschwert

[BillyCheers]

5 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

I've already recorded the first 30 minutes of music from the game today (rough estimation, I haven't edited anything yet), and from the looks of it, it'll be a massive tracklist (and quite difficult to deal with variations). My only chronology change is that I've moved the chapter card to AFTER the opening credits (instead of at the very start), and my tracklist up to now looks like this:

 

1. Main Menu

2. Underground Tunnels Prelude

3. Big Whoop Main Square

4. Scurvy Dogs Shack

5. Outhouse

6. Big Whoop Park

7. Story Time

8. Opening Titles

9. Chapter Card

10. Revisiting the Lookout

11. Mêlée Island Docks

12. The SCUMM Bar

13. New Pirate Leaders

14. Mêlée Island Low Street / Old Pirate Leaders / High Street

 

The Big Whoop area sounds like one seamless track, but the side tracks actually have their own loop points, so they can be made into separate tracks. A difficult one is the park area, where the sword training has a variation of the loop, but it only plays for a few seconds, until the sword fight is over. So it'll be quite difficult to capture a full loop of that one. For now, the Lookout track was the only one where I noticed an actual outro once you leave the screen. Mêlée Island for now sounds like one big loop, cross-fading through its variations, but that's where I stopped recording. Maybe for the sakes of a shorter tracklist, more cues can be combined, but then again, if you want to play specific cues, you would have to search though a long track, which isn't ideal either.

 

That being said, I don't know if I manage to go through the whole game like this. Maybe it CAN work as a team effort. BUT: I think it might make more sense to wait until we have working extraction tools for the music tracks. It'll still be work to compile a working album out of those snippets.

Okay, that’s already pretty cool! 
 

Doing the complete soundtrack by recording it, will be a loooot of work I guess.

My first thought of doing it was: Playing through some different cues by recording it and changing the rooms by feel. This won’t of course be 100% accurate but could be the easiest way of enjoying the different music with the transitions. For example, I would have recorded the music, while going through the different areas of LeChuck’s ship while staying at each room at about 1 or 2 minutes (or how long it is till the loop starts again?) and then cutting this whole segment in small tracks. That way you can listen to the entire “medley” without interruptions and skipping to a specific track. (At least for my “Woodtick” medley it worked perfectly fine.)

 

You’re right, it would be wise to wait for an extraction tool. But could we estimate how long that would take? I know I can’t do something like that and I wouldn’t want to wait for weeks or months before playing at least some of my favorite tracks outside of the game.

I’d be totally up to make it a team work. I’ve got some time at the moment and would be glad to help each other out that way. If we’d decide to do that we should have course talk a bit about how and with what tools to do it (so that we’re on the same page). But I understand that it’s a bit of a time thing and working on it together won’t change that entirely. 

 

Maybe pm me and tell me what you think in the end?  

[BillyCheers]

Many hours later...

 

Here is the first suite I made for LeChuck's ship (Chapters to the different cues are in the description):

 

 

Happy listening!  

[Jake]

The music in this game is so good. This is a great rip and arrangement. 
 

LeShip has tiny musical homages to as many LeChuck, ghost, and ghost pirate moments that it can possibly squeeze in. I love it. 

[KestrelPi]

I get that we're used to just making the soundtracks ourselves as Monkey Island fans because it's been a poor track record on official soundtracks... but given that we don't know what the soundtrack plans are at the moment, I hope we get something official.

 

I was slightly lamenting that most of the best music moments in the game are old themes. And they're all extremely good, but given the strength of MI2 and EMI's to an extent I was hoping for more original themes that were memorable. I still think I wish we'd heard some more, but someone pointed out that the quarantine ship music is quite catchy - is that from anything? I don't immediately recognise it.

 

Any other original standouts?

[Romão]

Do I hear Wagner's Tanhauser when approaching the castle in Brrr Muda?

[BillyCheers]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

I get that we're used to just making the soundtracks ourselves as Monkey Island fans because it's been a poor track record on official soundtracks... but given that we don't know what the soundtrack plans are at the moment, I hope we get something official.

Sure, we all do! But in the meantime, why not compile the best tracks for outside the game? I know I can't wait...🤷‍♂️

 

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

I was slightly lamenting that most of the best music moments in the game are old themes. And they're all extremely good, but given the strength of MI2 and EMI's to an extent I was hoping for more original themes that were memorable. I still think I wish we'd heard some more (…)

Yes, as said before, most of the themes are reused. But the arrangements are so well done, that I can't complain. I'm pretty happy with the soundtrack!

 

 

Therefore ... here some more:

 

 

 

 

[Laserschwert]

A little addition from me as well (track markers can be found in the video description).

EDIT: New version with track names.

EDIT 2: Newer version with tracker names.
 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Laserschwert

[Laserschwert]

The first few seconds of the "Underwater" track above contain a harp riff that reminds me of the Spinner Cay cue:
 

 

[BillyCheers]

I've uploaded a few more pieces from the soundtrack: Mêlee Island Suite, In the Forrest, The Scumm Bar Suite, International House of Mojo Suite, LeShip at the Docks and the Fish Shop.

 

Since there's a music ripper in the works, I think I'll maybe just do the Scurvy Island Suite and then wait for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can also listen to all tracks of Laserschwert and me in this playlist:

 

 

 

Have fun!  

[Romão]

One piece of music I particularly loved was when Guybrush frees Murray in Leship's hold (right after we hear a rendition of Murray's theme from TOMI). The music in that "room" changes once you can explore the whole ship (it then becomes a variation within the whole Leship music suite), and you never get that piece of music again. It was quite fantastic:

 

 

Edited September 27, 2022 by Romão

[Laserschwert]

I like how the Fish Shop music is basically a variation of the Scumm Bar theme.

[BillyCheers]

I've added a few cutscene pieces from Part II and III, that I had already recorded (all in the playlist).

 

And here's also the Scurvy Island Suite, I was working on yesterday:

 

 

I really like this one! It just puts you in a good mood!  

[demone]

5 minutes ago, BillyCheers said:

I've added a few cutscene pieces from Part II and III, that I had already recorded (all in the playlist).

 

And here's also the Scurvy Island Suite, I was working on yesterday:

 

 

I really like this one! It just puts you in a good mood!  

Yes! I was waiting for this one in particular. Thank you! 

[Jake]

Mojo has just posted all the unedited OGGs to twitter so I assume tools are coming soon. 
 

From the game rips I made a 20 minute edit of LeShip which includes all the variants and also weaves in the Murray intro cutscene as a mid-song bridge into the Murray track, and closes on the spyglass cutscene, since it ended up working out well as a way to end the track.

https://remi.mojodb.com/music/LeShip.mp3

[Laserschwert]

I've already started editing on my end as well. That's a LOT of material.

[Romão]

1 hour ago, Jake said:

Mojo has just posted all the unedited OGGs to twitter so I assume tools are coming soon. 
 

From the game rips I made a 20 minute edit of LeShip which includes all the variants and also weaves in the Murray intro cutscene as a mid-song bridge into the Murray track, and closes on the spyglass cutscene, since it ended up working out well as a way to end the track. 

https://remi.mojodb.com/music/LeShip.mp3

 

That is fantastic. You've managed to get a wonderful musical flow with your editing.

 

With this game, it's like every island or large location is a big-scale Woodtick suite all on its own. You don't really get, for the most part, instantly recognizable "room specific" themes, but rather, each room has music that is a variation on the musical identity of the larger location, so nearly all the locations within an island, for example, will be a part of a larger musical whole. It does give each island a very distinctive and strong musical identity, albeit at the expense of greater variation of color and mood in the soundtrack.

 

In that sense, I reckon the listening experience of the soundtrack might be best served by long suites, combining all the different "room" variations of each location into a single track (something like Melee Island Suite, LeShip Suite, etc.), rather that having a bunch 2 minute tracks playing in sequence.

[Jake]

30 minutes ago, Romão said:

In that sense, I reckon the listening experience of the soundtrack might be best served by long suites, combining all the different "room" variations of each location into a single track (something like Melee Island Suite, LeShip Suite, etc.), rather that having a bunch 2 minute tracks playing in sequence.

Thank you 😊

 

And I agree. I initially tried to split it up into ten 10ish minute pieces or three 7ish minute pieces or something, so the album could have more variety, but it works best as it does in game, as a giant suite. 

[LuigiHann]

As somebody does a 3-5 minute track for Brr-muda that I can stick on my Christmas playlist, I'll be happy. 

(I suppose I can always cut one down myself)

 

I really do hope we get an official album for this one, if for no other reason, then because it'll be interesting to see how the composers choose to arrange these dynamic themes themselves. 

[BillyCheers]

On 10/2/2022 at 3:28 PM, Jake said:

Mojo has just posted all the unedited OGGs to twitter so I assume tools are coming soon. 
 

From the game rips I made a 20 minute edit of LeShip which includes all the variants and also weaves in the Murray intro cutscene as a mid-song bridge into the Murray track, and closes on the spyglass cutscene, since it ended up working out well as a way to end the track. 

This is great! Suites are definitely best for this soundtrack. I think I'd cut it in different track so I can skip to the several parts (and still be able to listen to the whole suite from beginning to end). Could you post the time stamps for each section?

[Jake]

1 hour ago, BillyCheers said:

Could you post the time stamps for each section?

Approx:

 

00:00 LeShip Main
02:44 Lower Deck
05:30 Crow's Nest
08:15 Murray
11:08 Underwater
13:54 LeChuck
16:38 Spyglass
19:25 Spy Ship Cutscene

Agreed it probably makes sense to do this as gapless 

[BillyCheers]

13 minutes ago, Jake said:

Approx:

 

00:00 LeShip Main
02:44 Lower Deck
05:30 Crow's Nest
08:15 Murray
11:08 Underwater
13:54 LeChuck
16:38 Spyglass
19:25 Spy Ship Cutscene

Agreed it probably makes sense to do this as gapless 

Thanks! Your suite sounds good! Well done! 😊

Unfortunately I don’t have that much time this week or I’d look into it more.

But does it make sense in general to split the work for a “complete” soundtrack with suites?

[IllidanS4]

I've extracted, processed and uploaded the tracks to my channel:

 

 

Enjoy!