Atari ST music sources and inspirations

[Zolaerla]

I couldn't find a topic like this one. This is about music from the Atari ST coming from real life or vice versa. Years ago it became a bit of an obsession to track down some of the sources of old game music, esp. since a lot of the pieces are still stuck in my head today. I'm not going to list everything all at once since I have quite the list going, however...

 

The first is obvious, Captain Blood, which is sourced from Jarre's Ethnicolor (one of my favorite pieces of music):

 

 

However, what I found the most interesting is that most of the music from Bard's Tale is actually by a renaissance composer, William Byrd. We might as well call it Byrd's Tale. I could never source Badh'r Kilnfest or Traveller Tune. There are numerous YouTube videos of each of these, so I am listing ones that make it really obvious they're the same music. But listening to most of William Byrd's other music sounds like hearing more tracks for Bard's Tale that never existed in the game.

 

Falkentyne's Fury is actually variations on "John Come Kiss Me Now" (FW10 / MB81) by William Byrd. This is an old English folk song that predates William Byrd's variations, but no earlier record of it exists that I could find. The game uses variations 1, 3 and 4, though they are played in 3, 4, 1 order.

 

 

 

Seeker's Ballad (Wayland's Watch on the Apple IIGS version) is actually "Earl of Salisbury", Pavane (PA6 MB15a) by William Byrd in 1612/1613:

 

Wayland's Watch (Badhr Kilnfest on Apple IIGS) is actually "Earl of Salisbury", Galliard (PA7 MB15b) by William Byrd:

 

 

And Lucklaran is actually "The Carman's Whistle" (NE34 FW58 MB36) by William Byrd (original by Robert Johnson or his father John Johnson). This uses all but the first 4 measures of variation 2, then all of variation 3, then all of variation 4.

 

 

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Zolaerla

[ggn]

Oh boy, this thread is opening a huge can o' worms!

 

Basically https://sndh.atari.org is your friend for finding out covers and music inspired from other media. As an example I typed "Zoolook" (as I saw the youtube link at the top of this page) into the search box and got 5 results: https://sndh.atari.org/?p=searchdone.

 

Also, Demozoo is a great resource for this, as they are tagging 'sampledemo' with all the releases that have directly sampled music: https://demozoo.org/productions/tagged/sampledemo/

 

Just for funzies, I'll toss in a couple of my productions:

 

Baby, Instant Soup Doesn't Really Grab Me (https://demozoo.org/productions/131289/) features Dmitri Shostakovich's Waltz No. 2 (with some artistic manipulation by myself): 

 

Sweetness follows (https://demozoo.org/productions/148710/) features 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, arranged by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100625).

 

That's all for now, I wish everyone fun in discovering new and bizarre samplings!

[+DarkLord]

Awesome work guys! I've always loved the "tunes" in The Bards Tale, still one of my favorite

Atari ST RPG's. I revisit it at least a couple of times a year... 

 

[popsicle]

Ooo, I'll play!

 

Iron Lord's main title track is an ancient Spanish renaissance tune:

 

[Zolaerla]

The intro to Gods is a real song called "Into the Wonderful" by Nation 12:

 

[ggn]

Speaking about the Bitmaps, some other obvious ones:

Xenon 2: Megablast used a sample from Bomb The Bass' song:

And Magic pockets contained samples from Betty Boo's "Doin' the do":

From what I recall, they had a partnership with Rhythm King records, so they could use their catalog of songs.

[tresas]

I listened to Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinoxe today, and started humming Enchanted Land... :p