TIE Fighter - Original Videogame Soundtrack (Released)

This was kind of an on and off project for me, but in the last few days I finally started over from scratch and finished this thing:

TIE Fighter - Original Videogame Soundtrack

It’s not 100% complete, as the flight music during the game gets arranged ingame in realtime using the iMuse engine, thus it’s basically impossible to have all this music used. Yet, a great suite of inflight music from the game can be found here: Ode to Tie

EDIT:

Here you can download the full soundtrack: MP3 / FLAC

I hope you're relieved now ;)

If you mean how to download it, just click the down arrow next to a track name. If that's not what you meant, I don't get it :D

Have you actually listened to my files? If you have the MIDIs, just compare the two...

Well, as I said the inflight music isn't included here, and that's the music you pretty much hear most of the time when playing the game ;)

This is mainly menu and cutscene music (although to me even that music is forever burned into my brains). The "Ode to Tie" link in the first post will give you actual gameplay music.

Content-wise I didn't really add any music, except for some orchestral sound effects (cymbal rolls, string slaps) here and there. "Remastering" is a very broad term, so here's what I did:

Maybe you guys know the concept of a wavetable or a soundfont, wheras the notes a MIDI track contains are played back using samples of pre-recorded instrument sounds. The sample libraries I used (EWQLSO and GPO4) are a bit more sophisticated than what soundfonts are capable of, adding many more functions like different playing styles (legato, staccato, etc.), different instrument sounds depending on playing volume and many controls to shape the sound of a note while it's played.

Carefully assigning the right instrument and playing style to every line of notes in the Tie Fighter MIDIs took the longest time with this, so I hope it sounds as orchestral and "un-synthy" as possible. Of course, there are bigger, better and more expensive sample libraries (not to mention better musicians than me), but I'm quite happy with how they sound now.

Laserschwert said:

This was kind of an on and off project for me, but in the last few days I finally started over from scratch and finished this thing:

TIE Fighter - Original Videogame Soundtrack

Excellent work! You know, LucasArts has lots of MIDI-music games to keep you busy ... :)

Yet, even back in the day of such MIDI-music games as TIE Fighter, many must've played those games sounding like your project ... with this:

Wikipedia - Gravis Ultrasound :

The Gravis UltraSound was unique at the time of its launch (1992) with its use of 'wavetable' sample-based music synthesis technology on the IBM PC platform — the ability to use real-world sound recordings rather than artificial computer-generated waveforms to base a musical instrument on; so a piano sounds like an actual real piano, a trumpet like an actual trumpet, etc. The GUS was remarkable for MIDI playback quality with a large set of instrument patches that could be stored in its own RAM, having up to 32 hardware audio channels.

Here's an old advert:
http://www.csoon.com/issue1/gravis_h.html

An ode to UltraSound (with "the original UltraSound & samples CD" link):
http://multimedia.cx/eggs/ode-to-the-gravis-ultrasound/

And a GUS [Gravis UltraSound] emulator(!):
http://www.deinmeister.de/gusemu/index.html

Spaced Ranger said:

Excellent work! You know, LucasArts has lots of MIDI-music games to keep you busy ... :)

I know, that's why I made THIS site years ago ;)

Spaced Ranger said:

Yet, even back in the day of such MIDI-music games as TIE Fighter, many must've played those games sounding like your project ... with this:

Weeell, I think you're underestimating the work I put into this. I've had a separate wavetable card back "in the days", and there's still worlds between those things (even the Gravis ones) and a library like EWQLSO.

Laserschwert said:

Weeell, I think you're underestimating the work I put into this. ...

I wasn't minimizing your work at all, which sounds great! In fact ... listening to it right now ("Main Hangar"). :) Rather, I was just adding to the conversation, with the MIDI to wavetable hardware available (the Gravis UltraSound was supposed to be the first & best) even when gaming music was in it's infancy.

Your website is awesome, too (going to start perusing it soon)! You really should add that link to your signature. And maybe post more details here on your process, software, hurdles, tips-&-tricks, etc.?

I've updated all tracks, mainly replacing the brass instruments with the much better Hollywood Brass sample library, but also refining each track in general.

As before, the whole soundtrack can be found HERE.

Also Kusi81 updated his inflight-music-suite Ode to Tie X-6.

Truly great stuff! TIE Fighter is still the best Star Wars game I reckon (hence the cover art in my avatar :P). Your project should be the soundtrack if ever there was a remake, or a port to modern systems anyway (oh and yes I have played the Total Conversion for X-Wing Alliance for those who know of it, but it just doesn't FEEL like the original TIE Fighter sadly).

I WISH there'd be a remake for modern systems (or even consoles)... I can't even imagine how awesome the game might possibly look on today's computers.