Authorship of 8bit game tunes

[pepak]

I wonder, how accurate are author infos for 8-bit game musics? Quite a few games have the same music on different platforms (adjusted to machine's capabilities, of couse) but different composers are listed for them - e.g. Treasure Island Dizzy lists Matt Gray for C64 (at least according to HVSC) while the Spectrum version is credited to David Whittaker. Who did actually compose the music?

On a related note - why did some games on different platforms (even though they were obviously the same games) contain completely different music? Examples would include Savage (Spectrum - D. Whittaker, C64 - J. Tel) or Firefly (Spectrum - probably K. Tinman, C64 - F. Gray).

Another thing that haunts me - I am preparing a presentation about game music, and one of the topics I want to address is game music in relation to film music (because the event will deal mostly with film music, game music is a bonus). I assume that with official movie conversions the use of movie soundtracks was sanctified by the copyright owners, but what was the status of games which apparently had nothing to do with the movies from which the music came? E.g. Lord of the Rings (credited to Ch. Deenen for C64, Amiga and PC version) is so obviously taken from Basil Poledouris' Flesh+Blood that it just can't be accidental - was it a case of someone at Interplay bringing some music and telling Mr. Deenen to adapt it? (A more recent example would be Michael Hoenig's Baldur's Gate).

Thanks for any ideas.

[Analog-X64]

Great topic, there are quite a few C64 tunes that were inspired or based on Popular artists/Movies of that time. Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre have inspired a few tunes here and there.

[Chris Abbott]

I wonder, how accurate are author infos for 8-bit game musics? Quite a few games have the same music on different platforms (adjusted to machine's capabilities, of couse) but different composers are listed for them - e.g. Treasure Island Dizzy lists Matt Gray for C64 (at least according to HVSC) while the Spectrum version is credited to David Whittaker. Who did actually compose the music?

Both. The credits are correct. I don't think, for instance, Matt Gray had a Spectrum driver (did he??).

On a related note - why did some games on different platforms (even though they were obviously the same games) contain completely different music? Examples would include Savage (Spectrum - D. Whittaker, C64 - J. Tel) or Firefly (Spectrum - probably K. Tinman, C64 - F. Gray).

Different development teams with different preferences? Lack of co-ordination? Contractual limitations? Technical limitations? [/quote]

Another thing that haunts me - I am preparing a presentation about game music, and one of the topics I want to address is game music in relation to film music (because the event will deal mostly with film music, game music is a bonus). I assume that with official movie conversions the use of movie soundtracks was sanctified by the copyright owners, but what was the status of games which apparently had nothing to do with the movies from which the music came? E.g. Lord of the Rings (credited to Ch. Deenen for C64, Amiga and PC version) is so obviously taken from Basil Poledouris' Flesh+Blood that it just can't be accidental - was it a case of someone at Interplay bringing some music and telling Mr. Deenen to adapt it? (A more recent example would be Michael Hoenig's Baldur's Gate).

A little from column A, a little from column B. If it was an official licence, the music usually came along: unless there was some contractual problem stopping that happening (for instance, if the composer of the film music had quite a strong contract with the film studio). In other times, music was pinched without permission or copyright (i.e. most of it). The only official Jarre licence I know of was for Captain Blood (Zoolook). Most of the composers at the time weren't great on the intricacies of copyright law and licencing... and neither were a lot of the companies, including some who should have known better. One of the more famous examples of being caught were Elite who had to pay Lionel Bart quite a bit of money for using one of his pieces for Kokotoni Wilf. But I don't think Software Projects paid to use "If I were a rich man" in Jet Set Willy. I might be wrong about that though: it's not like I was there!

If film music was used in a game with no connection to the film, it was almost certainly unlicenced, for the simple reason that setting up the contract to do it officially would have been too difficult, time-consuming and expensive, even if permission was granted (which it probably wouldn't have been, studios being as they are, and their ignorance of music in computer games being almost total).

Chris

[pepak]

Both. The credits are correct. I don't think, for instance, Matt Gray had a Spectrum driver (did he??).

That both did their arrangements I don't dispute. I am interested in who did the music itself (the sequence of notes) - I doubt they cooperated on that. I expect one person created the music and that was then given to different arrangers for each particular machine.

If film music was used in a game with no connection to the film, it was almost certainly unlicenced, for the simple reason that setting up the contract to do it officially would have been too difficult, time-consuming and expensive, even if permission was granted (which it probably wouldn't have been, studios being as they are, and their ignorance of music in computer games being almost total).

That's what I thought. Thanks.

[Waz]

In terms of authorship and composer rights, on 8-bit machines, they're often clearly defined. Because of the fact that the same game could appear on various 8-bit formats, the author of the tune is normally the one who arranged it for that particular machine, because they will have had to do all the arrangement work, make sure that the tune sounds the same (if indeed the software house wants it that way) and will be duly credited in the game as such.

Because of the timing of game releases (normally on the same day across all formats) it can be more difficult to identify who actually composed the tune in the first place. In the case of Treasure Island Dizzy, as with all Dizzy releases the Spectrum version was released first. As such, it's assumed that with that being the original version, the composer would be David Whittaker and the author on the relevant formats would remain the same (ie: Matt Gray for the C64 one.) The other way around also applies: for example Last Ninja 2 was a C64 release first, so any other releases after that would be assumed to cover the C64 soundtrack by Matt Gray (the Amiga does). Hence in that case, Matt Gray is the composer.

Normally, if a game tune on one format covers a tune on another format, and that other format is released first, it is documented in the STIL (SID Tune Information List). If you've not done so already, configure your SID player to pick up where HVSC resides on your hard disk, and it should do the rest for you. There's quite a few examples already in there, I've picked a few out:

Thanatos (/MUSICIANS/H/Hubbard_Rob/Thanatos.sid)
Sigma Seven (/MUSICIANS/H/Hubbard_Rob/Sigma_Seven.sid)
Switchblade (/MUSICIANS/D/Daglish_Ben/Switchblade.sid) - in this case, Ben composed it on the Amiga first, and also then authored the C64 version - which actually is the better soundtrack
Jack The Nipper (/MUSICIANS/D/Daglish_Ben/Jack_the_Nipper.sid)
Army Moves (/MUSICIANS/G/Gray_Fred/Army_Moves.sid)
X-Out (/MUSICIANS/F/FAME/Hendriks_Michael/X-Out_PSID.sid)

One last thing: in terms of arcade conversions, as the software company would normally pay a lot of money for the conversion rights, I would guess this also includes replicating the soundtrack as part of its licence and so paying the arcade company and original composer accordingly.