Ultima IV C64 Soundtrack Sheet Music
Vložit
- čas přidán 22. 08. 2024
- Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar soundtrack composed by Kenneth W. Arnold, 1985.
Sheet music available for both NTSC tuning (youdzone.com/ud...) and PAL tuning (youdzone.com/ud.... Note: PAL has MUCH friendly keys to play in.
Arnold composed the C64 3-voice Ultima IV music in such a way that it is easily played on the piano (no changes were made to the original notes in these transcriptions).
This was my childhood. I received a non-official version of Ultima 4, no instructions -- nothing. Also my English was weak. So I learned how to play from scratch and learned (old) English along the way. All this to say I played this game thousands of hours. Thanks!
Not having an instruction manual was how we did it as well. Figuring out spells and grinding our way through without knowing what we were doing was rough especially when the light spell was the only one to use only one reagent.
My favorite Ultima music. Ultima 6 is my 2nd favorite.
So glad I found this. For decades now, every now and again, one of these songs pops up in my head, and it plays for a good while. And I miss it. Brings me right back. :)
For me toooo
@@camelliaruth The suspense and the mystery in the game was unparalleled, and the whole moon-gate concept together with this music was just spectacular.
Like Star Wars, the music MADE this game. Brilliant playing, thank you.
Thank you so much. These were the favourite tunes of my childhood, and now I can practice them on my keyboards :)
Thanks, I have learned the Towne theme on Piano - nice to come her and check the pace... Great job. Love this game - and Kenneth Arnolds contribution to the music score!
So great! The music set the mood so well.
Love this ⚔️
Thanks for this. The Atari version didn't have music, which was so disappointing after the brilliant U3 soundtrack. I never finished U4, and that was part of the reason.
I've been searching for this for a long time. Thanks so much for your sharing.
Lovely!
Excellent work, this really brings me back. It's interesting and strange that the PAL version has the much more sensible keys for the songs; surely they were composed in G, D, C, Bb etc. and not those keys with 4,5,6 sharps or flats. Knowing that they were composed in NTSC-land, there must be an interesting story here. Were incorrect SID pitch tables used?
Maybe so. Stranger still, the Apple II mockingboard versions all seem to be pitched two whole steps down from the NTSC C64 tuning.
I'm triggered. In a good way. Thank you! Long live Lord British!
This is great. Do you have any interest in incorporating the additional voices from the Apple ][ version? For what it's worth, C64 (NTSC) was my Ultima IV, so this still sounds perfect for me. Thanks.
Thanks! No (immediate) plans to transcribe the Apple version.
In Ultima III, the Apple and C64 both use 3-voice polyphony. When I compare the Apple and C64 versions of Ultima IV music, it seems clear to me that Arnold crafted it as three voice, then added additional voices for the Apple (as opposed to composing it with more voices, and then trimming it down to three for the Commodore). In my opinion, some (not all) of the voices in the mockingboard version seem superfluous, even getting in the way at times. Fortunately, this was not the case with Ultima V.
@@DavidYoud Interesting! I know that one version uses additional voices to add more of an extended strum effect in the "Townes" song compared to the c64. I assumed this was the Apple version, translated to MIDI by "Minstrel Dragon," but I might be wrong on that detail. Now that you mention it, having looked at those MIDI files, many of the songs do have a lot of redundancy with the extra voices.
@@Darrenor64 Minstrel was perhaps the first to programmatically extract note content from the Ultimas. He and I share a love of all things Kenneth Arnold. Great guy, but one rarely runs into him at meetups or conferences. I got to spend a full day with him once in Disneyland (California).
Do you know if sheet music was ever published for Ultima Onlines soundtrack?
All of the Ultima games except 9 have a digital based score. Meaning SID Chip or Mido or what ever other sound chip was used in diffrent computers. While Ultima 9 was horrible as a game. The soundtrack is beautiful. But I'd love to see someone do a Commodore 64 8 bit version of all the music in the game. I love the Ultima 9 Buccanerrs Den theme the most. Also they never made the Ultima 6 for the Commodore 64 have the music from the game like on the PC. They just reusrd the Ultima 5's Ultima theme and that was it due to space of course. I used to just sit back and play so much sid music on my C=64. I miss those days. I have a few sid emulators. But finding up to date songs done on the C=64 is almost impossible. The most up to date song I found was Fireflys and even that songs pretty old now.
What did you think of Ultima X's music? czcams.com/video/DovoNWJMAbo/video.html
@@DavidYoud I thought Ultima X was canceled? I knew it was in the works. I'll have to listen.
3:22 What part of the game does this music occur at?
Both the C64 and Apple II versions (perhaps more) contained this song, but it was never used in the game. Someone on the VGM site writes:
"I suspect that track 9, which is unused in the Apple II version, was supposed to play when using the 'Hole up and camp' command. That's where it plays in the Sega Master System version at least. That this song is included in both the dungeon (MUSD) and (MUSO) files, which are the only environments where camping is possible, but not in the others also speaks for this hypothesis."
@@DavidYoud Thanks. I played it on Atari, and I vaguely remember it played when approaching, entering, or when inside Castle Britannia.
@@DavidYoud What's interesting is that this music was the "Castle" theme for Ultima 3. But when you activate it via the "music" command in the Commodore 64 version (I assume also Apple 2 Mockingboard) of U4, by pressing the undocumented "letter" keys on the main menu, and I forgot which letter activates this, pressing "2", "3" and "4" and "5" just lead to a series of repeating notes, 2-5 tones in length. Or maybe those repeated notes are from the (C)astle command, with (C) playing the Castle Britian theme, and 2-5 playing those strange notes. I could go check on VICE, but anyway, if that's the case, then this "original" fanfare theme played only when you pressed "4" on the other scores (right after the Shrine/Peer at Gem music). I never knew why it was like this, way back in 1986 :(
😢😏
How is the tuning of the PAL version different?
PAL will be a slightly lower pitch and slower tempo.
NTSC pitch frequencies: codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:ntsc_frequency_table
PAL pitch frequencies: codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:pal_frequency_table
TAB PLEASE! What the heck is this stuff? lol
Your tempo is way off on the first track.
You saw the "NTSC tempo" part, right?
@@DavidYoud All of them are NTSC tempo, RIGHT?
@@jussilindkvist4032 Hiya Jussi. I just booted up Ultima IV on a real NTSC C64. The first track takes 91 second to play. BPM = beats per measure (3) * the number of measures (69) / song length (91 sec) * 60 = 136.48BPM. 140BPM (on the sheet music) not close enough for ya? What BPM do you measure on your end?
UPDATE! Ah, in my haste, I forgot that the sheet music shows a tempo change half way through the piece, from 140BPM to 125BPM (see above sheet music for first track). So let me measure this more carefully...
First, let's see if the sheet music is consistent with its stated BPMs:
The first half (before the tempo change) takes 45 seconds and 34 measures. 34 measures / 45 seconds * 3 beats per measure * 60 sec per min = 136BPM. That's pretty close to the stated 140BPM, but why is it not the same? Well, there's +0.17 extra music from the 1/6th-of-a-bar pickup at the start that I didn't put into this calculation. From the music software perspective, the 140BPM covers that whole pickup bar, which is why the estimate came in slightly low (with the extra measure, it would have calculated at exactly 140BPM).
And for the 2nd half, which has a stated BPM of 125:
35 measures / 51 seconds * 3 * 60 = 123.53, very close to the stated 125BPM.
Now to test against a real NTSC Commodore 64 (my actual childhood C64, by the way):
1st half: 34 measures / 44 seconds * 3 beats per measure * 60 sec per min = 139.09BPM, very close!
2nd half: 35 measures / 51 seconds * 3 * 60 = 123.53BPM, an exact match
So, these tempos are nearly spot on. I'm curious as to what NTSC reference (which emulator?) is creating wildly different tempos for you?
@@DavidYoud I'm not talking about the whole song, the series of triplets is what throws it off. They are played too fast.
@@jussilindkvist4032 You could be right -- if so, it's a slight difference in playback from the original. From a sheet music perspective, the piece clearly contains triplets. I doubt you'd recommend a different notation there, since it clearly calls for three notes spanning the duration of two.
Perhaps Sibelius (the sheet music software) overly time compresses triplet playback, or perhaps Ken Arnold slightly widened the triplet duration (less likely, but easy to check in the SID data). Either way, you clearly have a good ear, and it's always nice to meet someone else who cares about these details like I do.
i would fight anyonehere