Wing Commander's music

Am I alone in my preference for the original WC1 / WC2 tracks? Compositionally, I felt they were stronger, and only afflicted by their dated instrumentation.
I've never like playing favourites as I like all the WC soundtracks in general, but I think I would say I prefer Team Fat's WC music to Oldziey's too. Which is not to say that I dislike Oldziey's fine orchestral-style productions at all.

Perhaps it's because of the variety of music styles in WC1/2. AFAIK, Oldziey did all of the music for WC3/4, whereas Team Fat + Origin's musicians involved a number of composers. The cheesy square-wave tune in the Claw's simulator, the swingy grooves of the rec rooms (Swing Commander and those poker games), the sleepy lullaby of the Claw's barracks, the calm military marches of the briefings and the Concordia's bridge and flight deck, the intense rush of the scramble jingle, the parade fanfare of the medal award ceremonies, the imperial grandeur of the Kilrathi theme, the light-hearted and uplifting "Off Duty" track, Nenad Vugrinec's piano solos for Jazz in the Connie's observation deck scenes, the anticipation woven into the torpedo run jingle... the collaborative effort into the early WCs' soundtracks reveals itself as a beautiful blending of various musical textures which I enjoy immensely.

In contrast, the background music on the Victory was just that - pieces which lent themselves to a more ambient style rather than having a distinctive melody (the jazzy bar music is an exception to this). IIRC, WC4 didn't even have any background music for on-ship scenes. I think the creative team relied on the FMV to create the varied atmosphere rather than the music, which was necessary in the older WCs. But I don't meant to put down Oldziey's efforts at all. The FMV compositions had a grand, cinematic feel to them, especially in the introduction pieces (sensible, since they represent the games' first impressions), and the inflight music is much more lively than the calm, shipboard ambience (reflecting combat, etc, of course).

I remember the instructions to Oldziey regarding the Prophecy soundtrack, and while I understand the creative decision (Prophecy being a new chapter in the WC saga), I appreciate Oldziey's frustrations in trying to satisfy their demands. But while the dark ambience of the music in the first two CDs of Prophecy might be dismissed easily by fans, I actually liked the music of the third CD, especially the calm inflight (non-combat) music played at the start of misisons.

Regarding technological limitations, Oldziey did a good job on the re-orchestrations for the Kilrathi Saga, IMHO. I actually find the WC4 soundtrack to be the worst in this area, simply because of the monoaural recordings. I don't care much for multi-channel surround sound, but the aural landscape simply opens up with the jump from one to two channels and the WC4 inflight music (I know the FMV and credits music were stereo) suffered as a result of this shortcoming.

I could keep going about the other games' soundtracks, but I think I better stop now before something happens and I lose the contents of this post. :)
 
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Maybe you should contact him - let him know fans are interested in such a thing
Unfortunatly I dont have that account anymore and I dont think he has posted for years so probably wouldnt check his messages anyway! His website isnt even up anymore. Im sure the Fatman would know how to get a hold of him and you guys would be far better at contacting him than me from the looks of things :) Still, if you can find an email address for me to write to I would do that, if you wanted.

I do wonder if he ever worked any further on these new tracks, as much as I prefer Wing 3 onwards I did find them interesting and enjoyable.

even though Wing One has already been released...

:) I know, I meant it in regards to if he had any more recent tracks he just hadent shown to anyone.

Ed
 
Unfortunatly I dont have that account anymore and I dont think he has posted for years so probably wouldnt check his messages anyway! His website isnt even up anymore. Im sure the Fatman would know how to get a hold of him and you guys would be far better at contacting him than me from the looks of things Still, if you can find an email address for me to write to I would do that, if you wanted.

I dispatched my man Friday to track him down - if he's out there, we'll let him know we love his music. :)
 
Without the pro version of quicktime?

What are you talking about? It's just an MP3 file. Download it to your harddrive like any other file and play it with media player or something. Don't left click the link. Just right click the link and choose "save targer as" from the menu.

Edit: Yeah your file associations are all set to quicktime and will play in the browser if you left click. You should be able to change the file associations in both windows and the quicktime preferences
 
Uber bump I know, but the wing one announcement led me here! - is there a copy of this file anywhere on the CIC servers?
 
It's funny, my tastes have changed over the years. I used to like the wc4 orchestral music the most (even ripped the soundtracks from the discs back when it wasn't an easy thing to do!), and got really excited about the techno-industrial soundtracks from prophecy (of course, industrial was all the rage back then)...

But now I think I'm all the way back to siding with the wc1-2 era music - I guess nostalgia is sweeter the older you get huh?

If anyone remembers the game 'Star Control', a group of musicians did remixes for all the music a little while back - would love to see that happen for WC...
 
cheers AD.
Agreed that it would be nice to have something akin to the precursors remix project, it would also be nice to have something akin to the SC2 3do source code release! - does Chris Roberts have the rights to any of the consoles instead of EA? (that is after all how toys for bob managed to release the sc2 code - because they didnt know the PC version, only the 3do.)
 
Ok Loaf here you go, Ive uploaded it to my site:

www.edbradshawmusic.com/Wing_Commander_1_Theme_BETA.mp3
Oh wow, now that sounds awesome. I was always a fan of the WC1 and WC2 music. This MP3 - while not perfect - shows how awesome a fully orchestrated OST would sound like.

I even remember talking to Mark Knight, who converted the original music to Amiga soundfiles about the music years ago! I asked, if there was an "arranged" version planned for the Amiga CD³² release, since he did this great orchestral soundtrack to "Captive II - Liberation" for the CD³² as well. But there wasn't anything like that planned. :(
 
Speaking of the Wing Commander 1 Theme, there seem to be two "schools of thought" how it is supposed to sound. The difference is which instrument/track is dominant playing in the foreground.

Compare the music in Kilrathi Saga and the one from that Team Fat album that was in the news a few days ago... I always thought how it sounds in Kilrathi Saga [I'll call this "variation A" from now on] is the way it's "supposed to be", and versions I found online which do it the other way 'round ["variation B"] to be "crappy renditions", so I was quite startled when I realized that Fatman himself released an album with the track in "variation B"-style.

I can see how both versions have their own appeal. Variation B sounds more "celebrational", while Variation A has a more serious, "grand" appeal.

But well, what do you think, what's the way it was initially supposed to be? Having Variation B on the Fatman album doesn't prove anything, because it's a long way back, and he just could have changed his mind about it... Also I noticed one track was titled "Defending the Claw" but the track is that of Rescue missions, i.e. defending some other ship, not the Claw (while there is no special theme for defending the claw...) So you see, they've taken some leeway anyway.
 
I believe the 'Wing One' album is made up of the game's MIDIs played through the original Roland MT-32 they were composed on... it should be pretty close to the original music.

Check out this version of the WC1 music, from the 1991 FM Towns port's Redbook tracks: https://www.wcnews.com/music/albums.shtml#wc10 I'm terrible at music but I'm pretty sure it should be similar to Wing One.

The Kilrathi Saga digital music is *not* how the music was originally supposed to sound--it has all been redone/updated by a different composer (partially for legal reasons).

The original name of the track you mentioned has always been 'Goal Line - Defending the Claw'--the name itself is inside the MIDIs you can extract from the original game.
 
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Oh, thanks for clearing that up...

When I was younger I always had a SoundBlaster card, and on that the music sounded very similar to how it sounds in Kilrathi Saga. I always figured that's the way it's supposed to sound as Wing Commander was known as a "killer app" for SoundBlaster... but when it was composed on the Roland MT-32 the difference makes sense.


Also cool to know there's "internal names" to all the tracks, now I know how to reference them.

For example, I always liked the "Intense Combat" music and was disappointed how rarely it played... and even if it played, it often didn't play out very long but went back to "Regular Combat" quickly...
 
Your memory may be playing tricks on you. The Kilrathi Saga re-orchestration sounds much better* than what the humble Sound Blaster can put out. :)

*Disclaimer: I mean in terms of instrumental reproduction, I'm not making a comment on whether the old synthesised version is better or worse than the orchestral tracks in terms of subjective listening pleasure.
 
I just love that oldschool adlib stuff. But still... where's a fully orchestrated (or at least fake orchestra using a good synthesizer) Wing Commander I and II OST? :(
 
Yeah well, I know these. They are not truly orchestrated, imho. There are a lot of orchestra arranges out there, especially from japanese games. But Wing Commander is truly lacking.
 
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