Lemmings music: identifying the songs they are based on

[Adrian060756]

The SEGA Master System version has the most accurate music order as every song gets to be heard in each of the 4 modes and a part from 4 music tracks the rest are repeated twice in each mode.

From what i've personally discovered and learned about the Lemmings songs*

Levels 1 & 18 Can Can (Orpheus In The Underworld) composed by Offenbach
Levels 2 & 19 Pachelbel's Canon In D Major composed by Johann Pachelbel
Levels 3 & 20 (Tailor Made For Blockers) unknown composer
Levels 4 & 21 (Miners And Climbers) unknown composer
Levels 5 & 22 Dance Of The Four Little Swans composed by Tchaikovsky
Levels 6 & 23 Puggs In Space Demo Track By Tim Wright
Levels 7 & 24 (The Ascending Pillar Scenario Disco-Been There, Seen It, Done It,) unknown composer
Levels 8 & 25 How Much Is That Doggie In The Window composed by Bob Merrill in 1952 sung by Patti Page
Levels 9 & 26 Dance Of The Reed Flutes (from the Nutcracker Suite) composed by Tchaikovsky
Levels 10 & 27 (Smile If You Love Lemmings) unknown composer
Levels 11 & 28 Rondo Alla Turca composed by Mozart
Levels 12 & 29 London Bridge Is Falling Down (first published in 1744) unknown composer
Levels 13 & 30 (We All Fall Down) composer unidentified although it may be an original composition by Matt Furniss 1992
Level 14 Miniature Overture (also from the Nutcracker Suite) by Tchaikovsky
Level 15 Scotland The Brave unknown composer

Level 16 She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain - song is originally american and was first sung in the late 1800's by railworker gangs, it is a derivation of a Negro spiritual known as "When the Chariot Comes". unknown composer

Level 17 My Old Man Said Follow The Van composed by Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins song made popular by Marie Lloyd.

Lemmings Title Theme. unknown composer although it may be an original composition by Matt Furniss 1992

Other Songs On The Mega Drive Version:

Level 18 Sunsoft - Sunsoft Special = Overworld, Hebereke / Ufouria Theme Composed By Naoki Kodaka, Nobuyuki Hara, Shinichi Seya 1991

Mega Drive Ending Theme - March Of The Mods composed by Tony Carr http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/smiley.gif" alt=":)" title="Smiley" class="smiley" />

Happy now finlay? No spelling errors.

I'll just add that if Tim Wright and Brian Johnston did compose the ''unknown composer'' tracks, then they're not credited in the SEGA Master System and SEGA Mega Drive versions of Lemmings which is the two versions I personally grew up on so thats why I marked them as unknown. And I believe the Doggie song was out of copyright for a while as old songs tend to go out of copyright after 50 years or so but someone or some music publishing company bought the rights to the song again recently.

And since you like to nitpick on everything I post i'll throw one back at you. It's neither Johnson or Johnstone, it's (Johnston).

[finlay]

The ones you've marked as "Unknown composer" aren't unknown by any means – it's Brian Johnstone (or Johnson, I forget) and Tim Wright, primarily the latter, who composed and arranged the Lemmings music. Some of them are original.

(Also, I hate the practice of naming the tracks after the Fun levels, but that's just me)

(Also, Tchaikovsky, not Thaikovsky. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/undecided.gif" alt=":-\" title="Undecided" class="smiley" /> )

(also why do you keep capitalising every word?)

The order from the Amiga (as far as I know) and Mac versions is:
1. Can-Can
2. Lemming 1 (possibly a derivation of Pachelbel's Canon, but I can't hear that)
3. Tim 2 (original composition by Tim Wright? I don't know what the one Simon has marked is, and it doesn't sound anything like that when I searched it on Youtube)
4. Lemming 2 (original composition by Brian Johnstone & Tim Wright)
5. Tim 8 (Tchaikovsky's Four Little Swans)
6. Tim 3 (original composition)
7. Tim 5 (original)
8. Doggie (IIRC this is the only one of the Lemmings tunes still in copyright)
9. Tim 6 (Tchaikovsky's Reed Flutes from the Nutcracker)
10. Lemming 3 (original)
11. Tim 7 (Mozart's Rondo alla Turca)
12. Tim 9 (London Bridge)
13. Tim 1 (original)
14. Tim 10 (O Little Town of Bethlehem / Forest Green / whatever you want to call it & the riff from The Good the Bad and the Ugly)
15. Tim 4 (original)
16. Ten Lemmings (Ten Green Bottles / Here comes the bride / Funeral march – and some people have applied the name Twang, but I don't know where this comes from)
17. Mountain

This is mostly the same as the SMS version, except for tracks 13, 14, 15 and 17, which Namida already noted, and 16 which was originally 17.

The tracks repeat in this order throughout the game, so that 17 levels later you will hear the same track again... the special levels don't break the order, but instead replace the music they would have by this order with the track dictated by their special set (Beast I, Menacing, Awesome, Beast II). Because 119 is a multiple of 17, this leads to the quirk that Track #1 is heard 8 times (2 per set), while most other tracks are heard 7 times. Track #5 (Four Little Swans) is replaced by Beast I in Fun 22 and Track #7 is replaced by Awesome in Taxing 15, so they're only heard 6 times. By another quirk, Tricky 14 and Mayhem 22 are an exact multiple of 17 levels apart, so both of them replace Track #10 (Lemming 3), and it's only heard a total of 5 times in the game – which is annoying because I think it's one of the best tracks.

[Nortaneous]

I think the MOD file format does have places for track names that may have the name of the various songs, I'll have to check though.

It does, and sometimes MOD authors will leave comments in the instrument or sample names. (If anyone's ever ripped the music from the DOS game Chain Reaction, that's a good example; I'd upload one as an example but I don't have them on this computer. It's fairly standard practice, though, so most MODs should work.) Can check using most MOD players, although I've found XMPlay to work best and most intuitively.

[finlay]

Happy now finlay? No spelling errors.

I'll just add that if Tim Wright and Brian Johnston did compose the ''unknown composer'' tracks, then they're not credited in the SEGA Master System and SEGA Mega Drive versions of Lemmings which is the two versions I personally grew up on so thats why I marked them as unknown. And I believe the Doggie song was out of copyright for a while as old songs tend to go out of copyright after 50 years or so but someone or some music publishing company bought the rights to the song again recently.

And since you like to nitpick on everything I post i'll throw one back at you. It's neither Johnson or Johnstone, it's (Johnston).

Lol... sorry, I don't mean to be nasty. I only just happened to notice this, though, it might be worth making a new reply rather than just editing.

If they're not credited, that's Sunsoft's fault, then. They should be. IIRC from the mega drive version's credits, they only credited the staff at Sunsoft who made that particular version, and not the staff at DMA who made the original game – which I found a little bit odd.

How much is that doggie in the window? was written in 1952, so it very much was in copyright when Lemmings was made in 1991, if the rule is 50 years.

and yeah, my bad http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

[Adrian060756]

If they're not credited, that's Sunsoft's fault, then. They should be. IIRC from the mega drive version's credits, they only credited the staff at Sunsoft who made that particular version, and not the staff at DMA who made the original game – which I found a little bit odd.

How much is that doggie in the window? was written in 1952, so it very much was in copyright when Lemmings was made in 1991, if the rule is 50 years.

and yeah, my bad http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

I agree with you here, Sunsoft just like many Japanese gaming publishers and companies are god-awful at crediting and giving proper credit where credit is due. The Mega Drive version credits Hirohiko Takayama as the only music composer through out the whole game when he was only the arranger of the Mega Drive-Genesis soundtrack, Tsukamoto was the guy that actually programmed all the 16-bit FM and PSG synths into the game while the Master System version didn't even bother to credit anybody, not even the guy who did the 8-bit Master System conversions = Matt Furniss. His name is completely absent from the game aswell as the 2 or 3 other Probe developers who made the 8-bit Lemmings game (Mark Knowles, Dominic Wood etc). The SNES version is also guilty of wrongful credit of musical composition. In my ears, Hirohiko Takayama is a genius for his arrangements of the tunes in the Mega Drive soundtrack but even I know he never actually composed any of the pieces.

And as for the Doggie song (Tim 8 or whatever) Yes, very true about the 50 year copyright thing when the original Lemmings game was made but I was refering to sometime later around 2008-2009 when the song was out of copyright, now it has been bought again. Lol even the sing-song ''Happy Birthday'' is copyrighted these days.

[finlay]

Hmmm, I dunno about that. In any case, I don't particularly like the fact that companies seem to be able to extend copyrights by buying them. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a 50 year rule in the first place.*

Also, it was referred to as "Doggie" in the files – not all of them had the confusing Tim # titles, which as far as I know indicates that Tim Wright was the composer. Doggie was removed from some versions; it's not in the PS1 version, for instance, presumably for the copyright reason (neither was Tim 10, or the various special levels). The PS1 version also has a different order, which I can't remember off the top of my head, and if you fail a level and start again, it'll use the next track in line, unlike the original where the tracks are fixed for each level (if that makes sense).

*actually, Wikipedia says it's Life+70 years in the US and UK, or 70 years from creation in the UK (95 years from creation in the US). I don't really understand how it can be both, but that period isn't up yet either way. Of course, it is 50 elsewhere.

[ccexplore]

I agree with you here, Sunsoft just like many Japanese gaming publishers and companies are god-awful at crediting and giving proper credit where credit is due.

Though in the case of Lemmings, it's kinda funny when you consider that Tim didn't exactly credit Tchaikovsky or the other composers that he borrowed the non-copyrighted tunes from either, so I guess you can argue the Japanese were simply following suit.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />  Kinda sux though that they even neglected crediting some of the developers involved with the ports.

==========

That said, I'm not sure it's standard practice for a port to credit individuals on the original game.  Typically they would mention maybe the whole company (ie. DMA) who made the original version, or the publisher they bought the porting rights from.  And in some cases they may even credit one or two key game designers from the original, but I think it's less common to individually credit everyone from the original.  Of course it depends on how much they want to devote to credits.  I'm sure with certain games that have much longer credit rolls, you are likely to see more crediting given.

[Adrian060756]

Though in the case of Lemmings, it's kinda funny when you consider that Tim didn't exactly credit Tchaikovsky or the other composers that he borrowed the non-copyrighted tunes from either, so I guess you can argue the Japanese were simply following suit.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />  Kinda sux though that they even neglected crediting some of the developers involved with the ports.

==========

That said, I'm not sure it's standard practice for a port to credit individuals on the original game.  Typically they would mention maybe the whole company (ie. DMA) who made the original version, or the publisher they bought the porting rights from.  And in some cases they may even credit one or two key game designers from the original, but I think it's less common to individually credit everyone from the original.  Of course it depends on how much they want to devote to credits.  I'm sure with certain games that have much longer credit rolls, you are likely to see more crediting given.

Thats true about Tim Wright, he's just as bad as the Japanese, although thats most likely DMA's fault as a whole just like Sunsoft and not so much the individual involved, but i'm glad he got away with the Doggie song if it really was copyrighted around the time of the original 1991 game on the Amiga because if he didn't put it in, chances are the others wouldn't have included that song in the other Lemmings ports. But looking back at older generations of video games like say the third generation of NES & Master System, almost all of those old games have no ending credits when the player happens to reach the end of the game, usually just get greeted with a ''The End'' or ''Game Over''. Fast-forward to today's generation of video games and you'll notice that alot more credit and detail is given in games.

Matt Furniss on the SEGA Master System had a very noticable sound on the games he worked on, you could always tell it was him who did the music conversion in a Master System game as he would always use different sounds not heard often on the Master System when compared to the many hundreds of other Master System games that used the same white noise sound for drums and the same square wave octaves. Matt always threw in the bassey sawtooth wave here and there for certain tracks making them sound more like the NES in exchange for giving up the white noise sound. Anyway the point i'm getting at is that I knew all along that Matt Furniss was responsible for the Master System Lemmings soundtrack and I remember feeling pissed off after finally finishing the game and discovering that his name wasn't mentioned in the 4 second credit screen. Why? He's mentioned in Back To The Future III, Alien 3, Prince Of Persia, Chuck Rock and many other Master System audio conversion games but not Lemmings when Lemmings has to be his greatest 8-bit work on that console. 18 Tracks all wonderfully arranged, well almost apart from Level 5's theme giving me a headache.

The point is that it would have been great to see credit given where credit is due in the older games. As ccexplore posted -  ''Kinda sux though that they even neglected crediting some of the developers involved with the ports''. Indeed it does.

[DragonsLover]

*Sigh* I noticed my post has been deleted. That's fine, I just read the posts above and I understood I posted too fast once again. I have the feeling I never stop to fail here or posting uninteresting stuff related to Lemmings, probably because I'm not as active as most of you or haven't enough knowledge about the saga. I guess I should stop posting around here then, that should be better... http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cry.gif" alt=":'(" title="Cry" class="smiley" />

And sorry for that little off-topicness.

[finlay]

*Sigh* I noticed my post has been deleted. That's fine, I just read the posts above and I understood I posted too fast once again. I have the feeling I never stop to fail here or posting uninteresting stuff related to Lemmings, probably because I'm not as active as most of you or haven't enough knowledge about the saga. I guess I should stop posting around here then, that should be better... http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cry.gif" alt=":'(" title="Cry" class="smiley" />

And sorry for that little off-topicness.

Huh? who deleted it if not you? that's really odd... don't stop posting, anyway...

certainly if your post was deleted, my post in reply to yours was as well... which is a bit, well, annoying, because it might mean someone's f***ing around with my posts....

[Adam]

I can assure you that I haven't been messing with anyone's posts. Will get the server guys to look into it.

[ccexplore]

2. Lemming 1 (possibly a derivation of Pachelbel's Canon, but I can't hear that)

That's a fairly good point.  The harmonic progression (ie. bass) is fairly similar to that in Pachelbel's Canon, but even that isn't an exact match (the Canon does I V vi iii IV I IV V, while Lemmings1 does I V vi iii IV V I V).  And the melody is fairly different, not to mention that Lemmings1 is obviously not a canon.  So it's a (very) loose match at best.

3. Tim 2 (original composition by Tim Wright? I don't know what the one Simon has marked is, and it doesn't sound anything like that when I searched it on Youtube)

Also have to agree with Finlay on that one.  If http://tinyurl.com/6vlmjcy" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">this is what Simon has in mind for "good night ladies", it's even more tenuous a connection to Tim2 than Pachelbel is to Lemmings1.  Hear Tim2 on DOS http://tinyurl.com/7jwvxym" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">here (starting around 7:27).

[finlay]

Good Night Ladies is a bit of an odd song... halfway through it sort of segues into "Mary had a little lamb" and back again... http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/shocked.gif" alt=":o" title="Shocked" class="smiley" />

[ccexplore]

I think that might just be the particular arrangement that one a capella group made, not sure if all versions are like that.

[finlay]

Oh no, it's like that on all the versions I tried. I was trying to work out what tune it was that I recognised the other day, and only just figured it out now upon relistening.