To feel the music.

[Ernil]

I realise, through my 16 long years of living, that many people are not as musically-oriented as I tend to be. It's a passion on mine.

 

After stating that, I would like to know if the Music of the Monkey Island games influenced others as much as it influenced me. In my (firm) opinion, the music added to the game almost as much as the EXTREME humor added.

 

So my question is...(finally)...Is the music a big part of the game? How big? And most importantly, what songs did you enjoy most out of the whole series?

 

To answer my own question, I loved standing alone, doing nothing on the big map of Melee Island(MI1), and listening to the brilliant music. That rates as the best song of the series for me. Coming close behind would also be the clip in MI1 where you finally (almost) get Elaine, and the two of you love-talk on the dock. It's a carribean love song, and you really cant get better than that.

 

Lets hear your answers.

 

Just a thought,

Farewell,

Ernil

[A_Denial]

I am musically-oriented, it's really the only thing that keeps me interested, emotionally conscious, and alive these days.

 

I like people who are "at one with music", share a special gift.

 

Anyway, I think the Monkey Island music was pretty good. Most of the time, the right kind of music was used to convey the feelings of the moment.

 

I remember ages ago, actually getting a tape recorder, and putting it to the speakers of my PC and recording the intro to 'The Curse of Monkey Island ', it was just that opening sequence, like it was letting you in for something magical and powerful, then letting in with the Monkey score, it was wonderful.

 

I loved the music

[mymipage]

I think the music in the game fitted it just right but it didn't influence me to do wonderful things or anything. My favourite tune was the opening theme to Monkey Island 2. I like the closing theme too.

[hellomoto]

I hate playing the games without the music, they just dont have the same atmosphere.

 

I spent about a week trying to tune my computers drives into the right settings for some version that my mate gave me (i think it was copied but it had the propper disc and everything).

 

My favourite tune has to be...........to hard to choose............the largo entrance tune, well I remembered it for seven years, so, there has to be something in it that I love.

[Reaper Girl]

The music definatly made the monkey...why is everyone looking at me like that?

 

for mood music LeChuck's theme is best, espically when it was "remixed" for Mi2.Gave me chills. And the some of the best music in the seires was coming out of the PC speaker in Mi1

[Thrik]

The music definitely adds hugely to the series for me. I often listen to the entire soundtrack of MI2/3 for pure entertainment because they are just.. brilliant. MI1's was good in that it introduced the original Monkey Island theme plus the LeChuck theme, but I don't feel that the music in it was actually particularly good - but the tunes as we all know are classics.

 

Years ago I also used to listen to the music and thought it'd be awesome to have the ability to play the music myself (and variate it), so I ended up taking lessons with the keyboard and can now play the music pretty well.. once I get my new sequencing keyboard I'll probably share some of it with interesting people.

 

So yeah, MI without the music is not MI in my opinion.

[Thrik]

Oh yeah, I do agree that the Lechuck music is by far the best in the series. It really stood on a level of its own in CMI, where we heard it with so many different variations and styles.

[Tahnee]

LeChuck's theme definitely is a favorite of mine, too--it was remixed all throughout the MI2 soundtrack and if you listen to it all the way through, especially at the end, it's bloody well spooky.

 

I can't say the music's inspired me to, you know, do anything like start [de]composing or anything, but I do love it...and I like picking up little things in it, too. Like, for instance, on the MI2 soundtrack if you listen to the "Voodoo Dolly" one (where LeChuck is first torturing Guybrush with the voodoo doll), you can hear the torture going on in the music. Makes me wince every time I hear it. And I think you can hear echoes of LeChuck's theme in Largo's theme...which makes sense, but anyway.

 

My favorites would be the main theme, the introduction in CMI, closing themes to MI2, and the music the ghosts play in MI1...oh yeah, and the piano piece JoJo the Monkey plays in MI2. That one's spooky.

[Joshi]

The first time I played the game, my speakers wouldn't work right and so I used the internal speaker. i don't know if anyones every done that, but it sounded brilliant, just how MI was meant to be heard (this was the floppy version by the way). But you don't have volume control on internal speaker, so my mother, who was watching TV in teh same room assked me to turn them off. I played the entire game sounless and still enjoyd it. Now I have the CD version, and whilst the music is excellent, it'll never play up to the internal speaker version. Ah nostalgia.

[elTee]

Yes, the music in Monkey Island is supremely important to me. Like Joshi, I played the game on internal speaker originally, and still sometimes do just for pleasure.

 

I agree with Thrik, Monkey Island 1 isn't outstanding really, other than that it introduces the main theme, the superior LeChuck theme and the original (and better, in my opinion) Scumm Bar theme. Monkey Island 2 is where it all started.

 

The introduction of iMUSE and midi to the Monkey Island series is pivotal. Just the introduction to the second game left me grinning from ear to ear, purely because it was the old Monkey Island music but it was all jazzed up. And iMUSE really did make the music complete. In Monkey Island 1, music only played in certain places - for example, the Scumm Bar. When you entered the music started, and when you left, it stopped. In Monkey Island 2, the music never stopped playing - it simply, seamlessly changed from one theme to another. And each theme was a masterpiece in itself. Its a testament to the work of Michael Land and the rest of the music staff who worked on the game, because each theme takes on a variation at certain times in order to set mood. A perfect example - the Mardi-Gras fish fry. The party music itself is a delight to behold, and then when you steal the fish and get chased by the chef, the tempo ups and the tune takes on a more frantic tone. Magic.

 

And the best piece of music, in terms of.. well, sheer musical ability, is the ending. When LeChuck is lying in the tunnel, legless, and Guybrush is uncovering secrets about his past - and then you take the mask off. All of a sudden, the deep brooding music morphs magically into the Monkey Island theme. Utterly brilliant. And then, the end credits music itself is an awesome audial treat - all the main character themes flow between each other, culminating once again in the main theme.

 

And yet, the music still hadn't reached its peak. 1996, and enter The Curse of Monkey Island. Here, the amazing quality of the compositional work of Monkey Island 2 could finally be matched to truly stunning sound quality. Midi was a thing of the past, and despite not using an orchestra, the score for the third Monkey Island game is movie-like in its professionalism and beauty. Of course, the main theme is your first impression of the score - and what an introduction! Truly, the opening to the Curse of Monkey Island must be heralded as one of the greatest moments in gaming history. But the music didn't stop there...

 

Finally, the cutscenes end and we find ourselves on Plunder Island. The first place I went to was Puerto Pollo - and it was literally music to my ears. I had feared that the music would somehow not be able to match its predecessor, but this first new theme immediately removed all doubt from my mind. Later, I would get to go into the Barbery Coast, and be treated to yet another beautiful theme.

 

Despite this, the best music in The Curse of Monkey Island was to be found on disc 2 - chiefly, Blood Island. The music on the rollercoaster was beautifully done; how it slipped in and out of the LeChuck theme, but for me the high-point of the game was in and around the Goodsoup Hotel. It is one of the most criminally overlooked themes in the history of LucasArts, but the music that plays at the hotel exteriors is stunning. The tone is absolutely dead on for conveying the sense of former glory - you know, purely from the music, that this is somehow a tragic place. And when you enter the hotel, before you even see Griswold propping up the bar, you know, and I mean know that this hotel is to all intents and purposes dead. You know there are no guests, and you know that something terrible must have happened to this grand place in order for that to happen. And, it being an adventure game, you know you're going to have to resolve the problem, whatever it is. And that is a truly delicious prospect, for that to hit you just by entering the hotel and listening to the music.

 

And somehow I knew that the music in the Monkey Island games was never going to get any better than this. Escape From Monkey Island had a good soundtrack, but instead of re-recording the Scumm Bar theme from the original game they made a new one. And, to be fair, its a great piece of music - just not as good as the original one. Could there be more of an opposite to the start of the Curse of Monkey Island? The third game introduced new and beautiful music that will never go away, but the fourth in the series seemed too.. flat. It didn't have the soul of its predecessors, and this showed in even the main theme, which was little more than a trimmed down version of the one used in CMI anyway. I guess the music in Escape From Monkey Island is very good, but I can't listen to it in the same way as the Curse of Monkey Island soundtrack. It just simply falls short.

[scabb]

I always felt that Monkey Island 2 had better sounds. Some of the tunes in Curse were a little too irritating, such as the ship battle theme (Which, annoyingly, they decided to re-use for Escape) and some of the Plunder Island music. The Barbery Coast gets a lot less fun after a while.

 

I don't know, I just didn't particularly like the whole "style" - I didn't like the main themes as much as I did in MI2, and most of the music was either annoying or not prominent enough. Tracks like Rollercoaster win, though.

[Drk]

Just a thought.

I remember running CMI for the very first time. During the intro there is this moment , when Guybrush gets "awaken" by a cannon ball shot and we see Plunder Island fort & LeChuck's ship fighting. What then happens with the music is just awesome. There's a moment of silence and suddenly the main theme bursts, accompanied by something like "hooray!". I love it- there's everything in it : yeah!after so many years MI is finally back and it'll kick ass ; we did it !; there's also the feeling of being a part of community...I remember my eyes got a little wet back then .

[elTee]

Yeah, Drk - thats what I was trying to say, somewhere in there. All doubts anyone had about the third Monkey Island game dissapeared as soon as that main theme started up - great!

[Bushmeister]

Well, I like nearly all of the music from MI1 and MI2, and some from EMI, but only a little, but I would have to rate the CMI intro music, like many others have, as one of my favourite MI music pieces.

[Thrik]

With Monkey Island 1, the music had very catchy themes that I could hum along to away from the game, but the music itself wasn't particularly impressive. It had limited instruments and very little variation in general. Then Lechuck's Revenge took those brilliant tunes and turned them into awesome music thanks to the powerful style used in the game. Alongside iMuse, you had one of the best soundtracks ever.

 

Of course, Curse of Monkey Island went one step further and took the music from midi to recorded sound, which was just awesome. When I first heard the Monkey Island theme in that level of quality I could have cried - the last time I'd heard it was more or less on my age-old computer in Lechuck's Revenge with a terrible soundcard. It was a great moment, and it got better and better as familiar old tunes returned throughout the game.

 

Escape from Monkey Island had a good soundtrack, but it fails to live up to Curse of Monkey Island. The main letdown was the fact that ambience and such was mixed into it in a way that didn't compliment the music. In CMI, the wave sounds and such actually went "with" the music and it sounded fine - in EMI this is not so. It annoyingly interrupts the music and makes it tedious to listen to. With that said, EMI does have some very nice music beneath this which is enjoyable to listen to, but it also has many dodgy tracks.

 

One thing I noticed in EMI was that the same tune (heard if you open the menu) is used constantly throughout the game. This is all well and good, but the thing is that the theme doesn't really match kind of character like the other themes do, it's just used in random places - from the lawyers to the ending. If they wanted it to symolize the game's theme they should have used the MI theme.. but that's just my opinion.

[Ghostalone]

I remember the first time i played CMI, i knew the second the music came on during the intro i was right at home, it was all so magical with the curly mystical clouds. But i definatly think that MI2 was the strongest musically, only game i know that could come close is Zelda, but even Zelda is sometimes weak musically.

[Joshi]

Well, I said my bit about the first game, now for an overveiw.

 

Mi1. Lucastones said those things about the intro to CMI and how brilliant it was with the intro music having such quality and proffesionalism about it. And I agree wholeheartedly. But when I first played SOMI with the CD music on it, I was blown away with what they could actually do with simple Midi music. Again showing the talent of the music makers and their ability to really set the tone for the game as being mysteriopus, in a world not quite like ours. And then the words 'The Secret of Monkey Island' comes along and suddenlywe get thrown into this huge musical score. that's just great.

 

Mi2. What can I say, again like Luicastones, the intoduction of iMUSE was a bgi success. The background music was brilliant and a pleasure to listen to whilst not distracting you from the game. It blendied in well with each situation and was a nice difference from Mi1. It was truely and brilliantly original.

 

Mi3. Wel here it was, the first Mi game with professional caribbean music that you could hum. Not that you couldn't hum the others, nor were they not brilliantly carribeic (it that a word?). But this truly did take your breath away. We see the map of the tri island area, as it blows away, it's like a trumpet fanfare, except without the trumpets or fanfare, leaving you with just the feeling. as we pan over to guybrush, the music slows to a steady pace of waiting... waiting... and waiting. and then we hear the cannon. And all music stops. we look over to see the fight at Plunder island, and the words 'Monkey Island' appear on the screen with the smae trumpet fanfare feeling, only bigger, and then, as we see the opening credits, we feel the game has really started.

 

MI4. It stole a lot from CMI. What it didn't steal was annoying. The end.

 

What? I'm not going for A+ here?

[Ray Jones]

hey ernil .. i know what you mean. the mi sound is just brilliant!

 

i am very passionated by that carribean lovesons (as you call it) too. and i think the did a good "second" part in MI2 for that in elaines villa on booty island, where you have to get the map piece from her ..

 

i also like the melee island map theme but more i liked that circus theme which is running while youre visiting the fettuccinis .. plus the theme at scabb island, which is different at each place ..

 

not to forget the CMI themes which are not that classical but therefore "best" quality and VERY VERY groovy, too!

 

 

[Mr.Burger]

chris, i like good music. i like playing good music. bad music just isn't my thing. i know music and i can actually explain, without opinion, how bad music differs from good music. when i have attempted this previously, however, with stupid people they simply accuse me over and over of being opinionated and so i categorize them subconsciously as what they are - stupid people.

 

michael land is one of my music gods.

[Gabez]

I think music is very very important in a game, especially one from the adventure genre. It can make a really huge difference to the overall quality in my opinion, and the MI games all use music to great effect. My favourites would have to be in Monkey Island two though - like the Woodtick theme, which just oozes atmosphere.

[Drk]

Yeah, it's also one of my favourite tracks. I find Woodtick (especially Wally's score) very nostalgic, full of serenity, but in a good way-without any negative aspects.

[Gabez]

Exactly. I also love the Barbary coast music, the lawyers music, almost all of the scabb island music... the list goes on. It was really great to download the soundtracks and listen to them again from the Monkey Island Soundtracks site.

[Bushmeister]

Music can make all the difference in a game. Other games I remember with good music ... well I thought that Baldur's Gate 1+2 were both very atmospheric thanks to good music and voice acting, as was Grim Fandango. Also, I have a particular liking to the Lost Woods tune from Zelda: A Link To The Past.

[kilohoku]

2 Notes I have to put here....

 

I hope, as anybody else inflicted with the limitations of a 56k modem, to be getting cable soon. (I actually have a job that can support it, I just have yet to receive my first paycheck)

 

As soon as I have cable, I will be sarting my own site, not in competition with the Scummbar, but as a slightly different experience. After all, who could compete with the gory ( Um.. I mean Glory) of the Scummbar.

 

The point I'm making is that, I have been slaving away, trying to create MP3's from Lechuck's Revenge Midi files. (I know some have been mad before, but mine will have a different feel to them)

 

As soon as I have web space, and cable, they will be hitting the net.

 

Secondly, anyone who likes MI music, and the humor in the game will be interested in what Steve Burns (The orriginal Host of Blues Clues) is doing now.

 

He is writing music. He has one album out now. It's music that is quite good. It's aimed at adults, not kids.

 

To find out for yourself, go here.

 

Here is a fan-based site for him.

 

This is a good postingboard for his dear fans.

 

This place is a good site that keeps track of where he tours. I even have a post there.

 

You can even download some of his music here.

 

Go check it out, it's cool.

[Thrik]

Hope you do well with your site.

 

The Scumm Bar does have all of the Lechuck's Revenge in mp3 format, you might want to check those out to make sure they're not too similar before you go ahead with it.