Oolite Bulletins

So I started up Oolite and was surprised to not hear the familiar tones of the Commodore 64's opening anthem. Fair enough; it wasn't the original version anyway. It got me curious, though: which versions of Elite had music? I know I could try emulating each one to see, but I figured someone probably had a ready answer to the question.

FredMSloniker wrote:

So I started up Oolite and was surprised to not hear the familiar tones of the Commodore 64's opening anthem. Fair enough; it wasn't the original version anyway.

I think the obvious reason would be copyright. If the original score was copyrighted (and I strongly assume it was) you can't use it without permission. Therefore a completely new tune was composed for Oolite.

Don't know about music of various Elite versions, though.

There is no copyright on The Blue Danube music itself as it was composed over 70 years ago, there will be copyright on individual arrangements and performances, but there is nothing to stop anyone doing a new funky Oolite arrangement.

True, and it is used as docking music in Oolite. However, I honestly don't remember whether it was used as the 'opening anthem' (= theme music while seeing the spinning Cobra) as well, and that's what the question was about. I thought there was probably something else.

PC Elite Plus opens with The Blue Danube.

There must be something about The Blue Danube and space travel... Anyone remember 2001: A Space Odyssey?

uua90 wrote:

There must be something about The Blue Danube and space travel... Anyone remember 2001: A Space Odyssey?

That's why The Blue Danube is used. David Braben was inspired by the music in the 1968 film.

Commander McLane wrote:

True, and it is used as docking music in Oolite. However, I honestly don't remember whether it was used as the 'opening anthem' (= theme music while seeing the spinning Cobra) as well, and that's what the question was about. I thought there was probably something else.

There is! Click and listen! It's an awesome little ditty, and as far as I know original to Elite.

So nobody knows if any of the other versions had music?

EDIT: The NES version did, as I suspected it would. A remix of the opening ditty from the C64, and some in-flight music too.

If you look here at Ian Bell's home page there is some more information. The original theme is by C Abbot. Not sure who that is, haven't googled him, but I guess that that would indicate that there are copyright issues with the theme song.

Well here are some toys: I found the C64 SID theme at the HSVC and ran it through sid2midi and imported the results into garageband.

Now if you feel like remixing David Dunn and Aidan Bell's 1985 original, you can.

http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite.sid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/C64EliteTheme.mid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite-Theme.band.zip

I mixed my own... http://www.aegidian.org/music/GCW-EliteThemeMix.mp3

Steve wrote:

uua90 wrote:

There must be something about The Blue Danube and space travel... Anyone remember 2001: A Space Odyssey?

That's why The Blue Danube is used. David Braben was inspired by the music in the 1968 film.

Whoops, forgot 2001 came before Elite.

aegidian wrote:

I mixed my own... http://www.aegidian.org/music/GCW-EliteThemeMix.mp3

Ha, that's excellent! Love the sort of samba feel to it, sounds a bit like supermarket muzak too, can we have it playing over the commodity market screen

aegidian wrote:

Well here are some toys: I found the C64 SID theme at the HSVC and ran it through sid2midi and imported the results into garageband.

Now if you feel like remixing David Dunn and Aidan Bell's 1985 original, you can.

http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite.sid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/C64EliteTheme.mid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite-Theme.band.zip

I gone all nostalgic now...

I learned more about the creation of "music" (or atleast sound) - peeking and poking my way through various Attack Sustain Decay and Release attributes and waveforms of the 64s three voice SID chip that I almost wanted to be a musician at the end of it!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

aegidian wrote:

Well here are some toys: I found the C64 SID theme at the HSVC and ran it through sid2midi and imported the results into garageband.

Now if you feel like remixing David Dunn and Aidan Bell's 1985 original, you can.

http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite.sid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/C64EliteTheme.mid
http://www.aegidian.org/music/Elite-Theme.band.zip

I gone all nostalgic now...

I learned more about the creation of "music" (or atleast sound) - peeking and poking my way through various Attack Sustain Decay and Release attributes and waveforms of the 64s three voice SID chip that I almost wanted to be a musician at the end of it!

Go for is DH.

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