Originally Posted by
Ken Allen
Here are the tracks I have committed to including on Under The Half Dome, in no particular order.
1. Toccata in G minor and 2 Part Invention in C major - Opening organ piece from The Colonel's Bequest played in the style of E. Power Biggs, followed by a two part Bach-like invention that was also reused in Jones In The Fast Lane. Presented here for the first time as originally composed.
2. Back To The Sequel Suite - Between 10-15 minutes devoted to embellishing the themes from the opening of Space Quest 4 - from opening splash screen to the streets of Xenon.
3. It's A Wacky World - Theme from Wacky Funsters as I originally envisioned it.
4. I'd Love To Be In Love (With You) - A torchy song of unrequited love from The Colonel's Bequest
5. The Audition March - A piece I wrote for my audition tape when I applied to Sierra. This is the song that got me hired.
6. Honky-tonk Space Saloon - The rejected cantina music proposed for SQ4. It was based on the notion that there was a bucking bronco ride animating in the background of the scene. Both this song and the animating bucking bronco ended up on the cutting room floor.
7. Keeping Up With Jones - A song of conspicuous consumerism in one person's quest to keep up with the Joneses, from Jones In The Fast Lane.
8. North Wind Bring Me Home - written for Jim Wall's adventure game, Blue Force. Composed in the style of Bruce Hornsby, this song portrays life of a modern fisherman and his desire that the forces of nature impose themselves to reunite him with his loved ones.
9. Racing In Circles - from Road and Track Racing by Accolade. My first game piece as a freelance game composer.
10. Vulcan Fury Suite - An extended version of the music I composed for the trailer of the Interplay game, Star Trek - Secret of Vulcan Fury. This gives you an idea where I would have gone with the orchestra had the game been developed.
11. 'Cuz I Live By The Sea - The beach hermit's theme from King's Quest 5. Ever wonder why this guy lives by himself on the beach? This song provides some clues.
12. Callahan's Cross Time Saloon Discarded Theme - I composed the music for the adventure game Callahan's Cross Time Saloon, designed by Josh Mandel. Spider Robinson, the author of the book upon which this game was based, had written and recorded a song about the story, and my main theme was replaced. Here, for the first time, the main theme I intended for this game makes it's debut.
13. Let's Go Shopping - After spending the first half of SQ4 confronting Vohaul's goons, jumping through a rip in the space-game continuum, fending off living sludge puddles and zombified Xenonites, evading police droids and sequel police, surviving captivity by Amazonian females and defeating the menacing swamp slug in Jaws-type blaze-of-a-finish, your captors decide to take you shopping to the Space Galleria. Let's Go Shopping has been reworked for this album as a proper parody of The Beach Boy's California Girls.
14. Ringworld - The theme music from the first game where I was the lead designer, Return To Ringworld. The game is based on Larry Niven's Known Space novels and features a novel play-mechanic where players are allowed to switch between the three main characters to advance the plot when faced with a puzzle they were not able to solve at the moment.
15. Dr Brain's Inner Sanctum - The theme song to Castle of Doctor Brain which also pays tribute to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. My idea here was to chose a piece of familiar classical music and update it, you know, for kids. (The musical quote from Roundabout has been removed.)
16. A Zillion Miles Per Hour - The skimmer music from Space Quest 1. Motion sickness bag advisable.
17. Countdown To Doom - This piece plays on SQ4 as you (the player) solve one of the final puzzles in the game, deleting Vohaul's consciousness and vile personality from the mega-mainframe. The music is an orchestral exercise in point and counterpoint and variations on a theme,becoming more and more intense as each layer is added. But between you and me, I'm basically milking 60 seconds of music to a piece that is four or five times longer but under the guise of proper musical techniques.
18. I See By Your Hands... - Updated and embellished music that plays as the gypsy fortune teller in King's Quest 5 speaks of your fate. This puts the magic 8 ball to shame.
19. One Simple Touch - Another love song, but this time from the Jim Walls adventure, Blue Force.
20. Computerized Word Jazz - From Jones In The Fast Lane and in tribute to Ken Nordine and his coffee house inspired performances in spoken word which he's dubbed "word jazz", this track takes the meandering mindlessness of the original tune and adds nonsensical poetry one would have thought a computer generated and voice acted in such a way as to honor Mr Nordine.
21. Meet Slater - With music inspired by Rhapsody In Blue, the theme to the VGA version of Oil's Well presents a new character in the Sierra cast, Slater the Dinosaur.
22. Space Questin' - Written in the style of ZZ Top for Space Quest 1 VGA, this song now includes lyrics that chronicle the adventures of Roger Wilco on his six-game space quest.
23. And Then There Was The Time At The Magmetheus Cantina - Remember the cantina from SQ4? This recording presents that music with flare and pizzaz in the style of an over-the-top big band era performance - but about two-thirds the way through, a special surprise visit by Two Guys From Andromeda along with their entourage changes the way music is performed in this Cantina forever!
24. Space Quest and The Original Spinal Frontier (SQ5 discard theme) - By now, many know I was the original composer for SQ5 more than 20 years ago. And because of some pretty dumb reasons, partly of my own doing, my music was discarded in favor of an underscore composed by two perfectly capable composers then on the Sierra payroll. Now for the first time ever, I resurrect my original musical score composed for the first 10 - 15 minutes of the opening for Space Quest 5.
There you have it. 24 tracks for Under The Half Dome, somewhere north of 90 minutes of updated, rewritten, freshly performed music for you and Sierra game fans everywhere.
Ken Allen, Sierra Online Composer, has a Music Kickstarter Going (Ends Feb. 21)
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