Thinking about radio astronomy and frequency modulation….
Let’s Make Beautiful Music Together
So working on Mars time keeps me busy and I don’t have as much time to make music as I’d like to. And when I do sit down to work on something I just don’t have the time to make it perfect so I thought I’d try an experiment! Here are two rough songs that I’ve been working on for not nearly enough time. If anyone out there is interested in making them really sing, I’m also linking to the Garageband source files so you can go to town and spice them up or completely change them. My only request is that you please please please send me whatever you come up with because I’d love to hear it!!!
Seropi meeting
Alex was gracious enough to meet up with me (at Intelligentsia coffee) while I was working in Pasadena for the week. It was a lot of fun to meet him and I hope we can work together in the future. I was in Pasadena working at JPL in a training exercise as a member of the Mars Science Laboratory science team, and I’ll be spending quite a bit of time there before and after the rover lands.
Alex Seropian and Craig Hardgrove
Swirls Sheet Music
Hi everyone!
I’ve received a handful of requests over the years for sheet music to the Marathon songs. Most requests are for Swirls. I finally got around to writing down the basic melody for Swirls today as sheet music. It’s surprisingly difficult to write this stuff out! I apologize in advance for how “3rd grade art class” look of this, but I hope it is helpful to those of you who have been looking for piano sheet music for Marathon songs. Hopefully there will be more to come, at least for some of the more popular songs.
–Craig
QuickTime 2.0 Music Updated
Thanks to continued diligence on the Marathon Story Forum, we now have finalized versions of the QuickTime 2.0 soundtrack, with increased volumes and album art. I’ve included two versions, one of .m4a files for iTunes and a .mp3 version that is ready for AlephOne (with appropriate track titles).
You can grab them both at http://www.themarathonmusic.com/downloads.html
That’s All She Wrote, Fat Man!
It’s done! 7 years! It feels good, and I’m even more happy to still be proud of the results. Fat Man is now available to download from my website.
Fat Man was one of my favorite tracks from the original game and there honestly wasn’t much I wanted to change other than updating some instruments. Because of that, I decided to change the main chord progression to match my favorite song from the soundtrack, Swirls, as well as add a few lines from Leela. I thought it would be fitting to end the soundtrack the way I started, since Swirls and Leela were the first songs I remade. I took a pretty creative license with the Fat Man solo at the end of the song. Alex Seropian did a really awesome job with the solo and when I tried to reproduce it I realized it was better to leave his version alone and try to experiment a bit with the theme he created. Fat Man is quick, both in tempo and in overall length, so the song builds really fast and then ends even more abruptly. It’s just a fun song and it was a great way to end the soundtrack.
If all goes well, this wont be the last you’ll be hearing from me regarding the remakes. More news soon, hopefully.
–Craig
A Fat Man is Incoming…
Putting the finishing touches on Fat Man today. The soundtrack is almost complete!
Released! Freedom
You can listen at www.themarathonmusic.com or download by clicking here.
Freedom… boy, this one was difficult. I went through at least 2 complete overhauls before landing on this version. I hate to say it, but the original version of Freedom was never one of my favorites and that was never more clear to me than during the process of creating the remake. The issue really stems from the sequence of notes that comprise the main theme. It’s too chromatic for me to get into, so I eliminated a few notes to give it a bit more of a groove. I relied heavily on beats and drums as well, and had to rely on my old stand-by, circuit dialog. In the end, I’m happy with the way it turned out. I hope that you will find it very much in the spirit of the original song but with a similar flavor to the rest of my soundtrack remakes.
And with that… I’m on to Fat Man, my last remake, which will complete the soundtrack. I’m very excited.
–Craig
Released! New Pacific
You can listen at www.themarathonmusic.com or download by clicking here.
A minimal re-design on this one. This song always felt like more of sketch to me, and it really serves as a great intro or prelude to New Pacific (Reprise). I ditched some of the more alien sounds, similar to what I did for Reprise. I’m looking forward to working on the next 2 songs, Fat Man and Freedom. Not sure in which order I’ll work on them but I suspect Freedom is next.
Marathon Music 