Ultima III Soundtrack

Before I go into a technical description, let me first extend a huge THANK YOU to Minstrel Dragon for sharing with me many of his 8-bit disassembling / reversing efforts over the years, which included a commented disassembly of this music engine, and without which, I would probably have not made this video.
This video is a conceptual visualization of the Apple II Mockingboard game music engine logic that Kenneth Arnold developed to play his Ultima III musical compositions. And back in 1983, it was the very first full 8-bit computer game soundtrack (yet another "first" in the Ultima series).
For each song, each voice can contain notes and rests (called "Content" in the video) and can also invoke defined patterns of notes and rests. Reusing patterns allowed longer music to take up less RAM. Patterns can be reused across the voices. When voice-specific content is brief, it's displayed alongside an adjacent pattern in this visualization. Sometimes the content is simply short rests unevenly applied to the voices to create echo effects (i.e., in Dungeon and a section in the Exodus music).
Patterns can be transposed upward by a number of semitones, increasing reusability (e.g., "Pattern 5 up 2" means pattern 5 played up two semitones, or one whole step). Unfortunately, this transposition logic was broken in the Commodore 64 port, making the music less interesting (though, through careful comparisons made between the Apple II and C64 engines, Minstrel Dragon found that the note data to be exactly the same).
Years later, these concepts would be generalized (song patterns, and an ordered pattern playlist for each voice), a GUI would be put atop it, and it would be called a tracker.
Ticks per quarter is the delay counter for a quarter note. The larger the number, the longer the duration. If its prime decomposition contains at least one 3, then triplets are supported. In only one song is there a tiny bit of roundoff error (Rule Britannia has q=30, and Arnold choose 7 for sixteenth notes, and 5 for sixteenth triplets). The Wander song is 30 ticksPerQuarter and has a BPM of 123, so for the other songs, the BPM is 30/ticksPerQuarter * 123.
Would be interesting to see if Arnold created this early Mockingboard music engine out of whole cloth, or if it was based on existing engines. For example, through some recent retro-archeology efforts, Chris Abbott has started to discover what music engines C64 composers based their code upon (in one prominent composer's case, it was an early type-in-code book).

[@LTDANMAN44]

WHEN I THINK OF RPG'S THIS SONG COMES TO MIND

[@cpip]

Thank you! The opening music has stuck in my head for close to four decades now. What a delight!

[@EricKinkead]

I know right? It gets to song 7:Exodus and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

[@yourdogsnews]

Your not the only one. Sometimes I sit down at the piano and just start playing it.

[@rivards1]

That's exactly how I played it all the way through on my Apple ][ back then. I think I upgraded to a Phasor before Ultima IV came out. This is still my favorite soundtrack of all the Ultima games, and I have always loved the creepy dungeon theme!

[@Will-xk4nm]

Thank you, David. This is so cool. As I understand it, this is the first full soundtrack for a Western videogame. Wander and the music from Exodus' castle were my favorites. Dungeon is stylistically interesting but I'm glad I didn't have to listen to it for hours on end. Some probably regretted that Mockingboard purchase, lol

[@larsbramer8248]

Great. Thanx. This tune really burned in in hours and hours of gameplay.

[@BeyondWrittenWords]

legendary

[@anttimaki8188]

The 1st part of the Wander was my friends old nokia phone song.

[@Wasabialt]

6:33 Rule Britannia

[@EricKinkead]

This is absolutely Amazing! Now I can't wait to play along and try to learn this on my Yamaha PSR-e463!!! Thank you!!!

[@DavidYoud]

Hey good to see you! Glad you enjoy it, happy Yamahaing. :)

[@lasered97]

And I on my Yamaha PSR SX900 !!! Actually thinking of using some of this as part of a soundtrack for the upcoming anime series I am a part of making SPACE TACOS! Battle Against the evil SPACE OCTOPUS!!! lol !!!! yes it's really going to be a thing...the dungeon music will be the battle music background!\

[@jurispurins8065]

Had a C64 - my ears want SID

[@bryanedewaard858]

I discovered that although the Atari 800 version has all the music, it's a little bit different and sounds generally lower in pitch. I have to wonder if that was done to avoid potential Pokey tuning issues or if the Atari music player is also broken in some way.

[@patrikknoerr9777]

This means something to someone. Thank you. Any chance that can be done for Ultima IV?

[@DavidYoud]

I gave Ultima IV a more conventional treatment: czcams.com/video/6ibvs5z2H9U/video.html

[@SimmeringPotpourri]

IMO the music I didn't like the most was the dungeon music, probably because there isn't any melody but I can't tell you how many hours I sat listening to it as I mapped out all of the dungeons. This was one of my favorite games from the Atari 8-bit.

[@DavidYoud]

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the dungeon music either, but I've had two people tell me since I uploaded this video that that is their favorite of the bunch.

[@lasered97]

That was the entire point...No melody...just an ...effect. And I absolutely loved the genius of it .... I still remember the package arriving by UPS with my Apple ][ version of Ultima III...and the dungeon scene and the opening music...those two just so ingrained in me and would listen to those over and over and over and over and over..... I was on homebound during high school due to health and this game and the music were great for me emotionally...

[@SimmeringPotpourri]

@@lasered97 Probably but for me, it was just way too chaotic to be listening to for extended periods of time, and since I spent a lot of time in the dungeons mapping them out on graff paper, it got annoying really quickly.
Although I toss the box long ago 😭I kept the map and plan to put it in a shadow box and hang it in my retro room with an Ultima IV cloth map that I got my hands on. Such awesome swag back then.

[@lasered97]

@@SimmeringPotpourri check out this promo...using the battle music from Ultima III for a new cartoon series czcams.com/video/XnGL_93WztM/video.html

[@ajeba98]

Do you have the sheet music somewhere to download in a pdf or SIBELIUS format?

[@adamp6320]

I love these so much. Any chance of an Ultima V commodore 128 soundtrack?

[@DavidYoud]

Maybe someday I'll do something with the entire U5 soundtrack. Until then, here's a tune from U5 I did on recorders: czcams.com/video/olpSiDnrpCw/video.html

[@adamp6320]

@@DavidYoud Thank you!