Public Commander Keen Forum

I didn't see a thread for this, so here it is now! Post your own remixes and Keen-related musical compositions here.

I'll start because I just made this while learning to use Ableton. (It's the 2nd thing I've made in it.) It's an "Eat Your Vegetables" remake.
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-kepple/ea ... bles-remix

That was fun, TMST! I have to say, the clipped releases of the melody's first few notes combined with the already short duration of the bass/marimba accompaniment made those particular few seconds sound hokey, but the rest of the composition was fun to listen to. Thanks for sharing!

Heehee... That was great! Do another if you have so much spare time.
The chords at 0:43 feel like the song could be taken into one of those far-out never-ending jazz tangents. Love it when the wild sawtooth appears. You'll have to swing by my place to give me Ableton lessons once you deem yourself pro.

I also did a thing for this thread because it needs more replies.
https://youtu.be/4CVMKEc4wuM

I dig it. The beginning has maybe kind of a detective vibe.

I did a couple of Keen remixes years ago but I think I already posted 'em here at some point. Or if not here then on a previous version of the forum...

Excellent postings. Have nothing to offer right now. I think I once made a horrible, crudely overdubbed version of Fribbulous Xax music on cassettes when I was ten, on my violin, tin whistle and, uh, some percussion. I doubt it still exists.

Pretty damn sweet tune, that.

Violin you say, Benvolio? I can't compose digitally but perhaps I could whip up something with my violin now you've given me the idea...

Here are 8-bit covers of some Atroxian Realm music I made with Famitracker last month (the Scrolling Story one has a slight edit done by proYorp):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iy6Ys ... uoUzWrVw9c

Here are 8-bit covers of some Atroxian Realm music I made with Famitracker last month

Nice! I always get excited when people do Atroxian Realm remixes. By the way, for any AR remixes on YouTube, I'm happy to add them to the game's soundtrack playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo5cVtF ... MdKZHDfH-s

While we're already on Atroxian Realm note, I'd like to post my rendition of "Great Ziggurat" music I made some time ago. Most of instruments are improved, and this is how I imagine the music should originally have sounded like:
https://soundcloud.com/hisymak/atroxian ... t-ziggurat

I can easily remix more tracks this way, but Great Ziggutat is the track that gets the best improvement from all.

I've said this before, but I really do like this style. It manages to capture the unique, old school spirit of the IMF format while also sounding a bit more modern. If you do have/make other AR remixes in this style, I'd love to hear them. It's kind of crazy, but I still listen to the AR soundtrack from time to time, despite however many hundreds of times I heard many of those tracks loop during development. I just love Gamebird's music so much. Makes me dream of what a sequel soundtrack could be...

Gridlock wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2020 4:07If you do have/make other AR remixes in this style, I'd love to hear them.

I could indeed do that, however, be aware, that some of the tracks unfortunately sound worse than the originals, which was the main reason I did not do that. That is mostly caused by different way how IMF utilizes the voices on the OPL chip (but that's for some more detailed technical explanation), which cannot be easily replicated in my method. And for some reason, some of the MIDIs play at different speed than the original in-game music.
If IMF format supported OPL3, your in-game music could sound much richer, pretty much similar to what I could produce. However that would significantly increase the needed space and memory. A compromise would be implementing double-voice instrument support, which means one instrument utilizes two OPL voices to produce a sound, with optional detuning of the second voice. This is greatly used in Doom's DMX sound library and I'm taking big advantage of that.
So if you want, I could record the entire soundtrack, or choose only those tracks that sound better or at least same good as the originals.

So if you want, I could record the entire soundtrack, or choose only those tracks that sound better or at least same good as the originals.

I don't think it's worth spending too much time on this unless you want to. If it's easy enough to record all of them, then why not, but otherwise I think it'd be great to hear just the best ones. This is really just for fun. I don't plan on making any attempts to overhaul the actual in-game tracks.

Gridlock wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:57I don't think it's worth spending too much time on this unless you want to. If it's easy enough to record all of them, then why not, but otherwise I think it'd be great to hear just the best ones. This is really just for fun. I don't plan on making any attempts to overhaul the actual in-game tracks.

So, I finally made it!
https://youtu.be/vXDKZe6AuFU
As I said, I recorded only part of the music tracks, not all of them. Enjoy and let me know your thoughts, if any.

The beginning sounds like an 8bit version of a Star Wars music.

This is really cool! It's a treat to hear new, improved renditions of these themes. I've added this video to the AR soundtrack playlist.

Some of the tracks work better than others, for sure. It seems that switching formats sometimes causes certain instruments to get lost (like the strings in Exile of the Krile), but then other instruments end up sounding a lot better. A few tracks seem especially improved in this format, like The Elder, which was one that I struggled quite a lot with on the instrumentation. And Sky Sanctum, wow, having a better organ instrument adds a lot to the opening of that track.

And yeah, I love that terminator text music. Maybe I could actually make use of that in the future.

I haven't had a chance to listen to every track intently yet, but I'm really enjoying this. Thank you for taking the time to make these!