Leisure Suit Larry 3 - CM-64 Soundtrack

[Ari]

Hi all,
I've recently (finally) completed my CM-64 mix of the Leisure Suit Larry 3 soundtrack.
I started working on this project in 2007 and while I finished most of the work that year, I only recently completed the final touches and recorded it to digital format.

You can download the soundtrack in both MP3 and FLAC format here:
MP3 download
FLAC download

Also, just for the heck of it, I created a YouTube video of the soundtrack as well. You can find it here.

Hope you enjoy it!

[goatmeal1]

Thank you, Ari ! I look forward to listening to this.

[Spikey]

Thanks Ari. I will give feedback in due time. From a very brief listen, I can say your Nontoonyt Island track suffers from problems with Tom's MIDI - the fretless bass track is wrong (I think it has an Adlib track as well as the MT track, from memory?) and the piano should convert to an electric piano (2, I think), not a honkytonk or Piano 1.

Lots of it sounds promising, if close to Tom's tracks.

[Ari]

I don't think the track has an extra AdLib track, because these were always on tracks 1 or 11-16, and the LSL3 MIDIs have none of that.
Also, 'wrong' is a bit of a funny way of describing the mix, as the changes I made were essentially a matter of personal choice.
It's fine if you don't agree with my choice, of course, the question is, how it sounds overall.

[Spikey]

I don't think the track has an extra AdLib track, because these were always on tracks 1 or 11-16, and the LSL3 MIDIs have none of that.
Also, 'wrong' is a bit of a funny way of describing the mix, as the changes I made were essentially a matter of personal choice.
It's fine if you don't agree with my choice, of course, the question is, how it sounds overall.

I looked this up years ago. When editing the Larry 3 soundtrack myself for the first time, the fretless bass sounded completely different than I remembered in Tom's versions, and for a long time I thought I'd done something wrong! However that wasn't to be the case.
It's very simple but extremely weird - the game sends incorrect data for the Nontoonyt track! It includes both the MT-32 bass AND the Adlib bass (channels 2 and 7). They run on different octaves and the MT-32 one uses pitch bend. Channel 2 is the correct bass as per the extracted MT-32 track (and sounds more correct). Channel 7 is a different octave, and has no pitch bend. It's designed for the Adlib (or other lower order synth) track. For some reason the track was put in the 2-10 range instead of 1 or 11-16.
I can confirm this by referring to my archives - extracted tracks and my recorded tracks. My recorded tracks come out the same as Tom's, with the extra bass, and also the Adlib and other tracks on channel 1 and 11-16 get recorded. My extracted MT-32 tracks come out without the 2nd fretless track (and also label it as 'm', meaning MT-32 only, as no other letters are mentioned like 'a' for Adlib).

So, I need to take back that Tom made a mistake - he unintentionally reproduced some sort of coding error where an Adlib/other track slipped through and is sent by the MT-32 driver.


As for your CM-64 versions, personal choice is subjective. I'll never say you did something "wrong" that was a choice! As you are well aware, we all would make different choices. I would go back and make many different choices to "enhanced" versions I myself did years ago. And you can't please everybody, as you also know. Hopefully you now realise my 'wrong' referred to the source MIDI, not something you personally were responsible for.
I also haven't listened to them with headphones, which will give me a different POV. Still, I think Nontoonyt in my personal opinion, given it's an electric piano in the MT-32 version, a faithful conversion would result in it being one in a GM version. But making it acoustic isn't some sort of hanging offence


On a totally different note, is it possible for you to do easily, or did you in your edits, do a complete CM-64 version? I would love to hear that. Nothing wrong with what you did and I mean no disrespect at all, but I am *extremely* familiar with the Roland MT-32 version of this score, so it'd be cool to hear it all be PCM (and not SC-55!).

[Ari]

I looked this up years ago. When editing the Larry 3 soundtrack myself for the first time, the fretless bass sounded completely different than I remembered in Tom's versions, and for a long time I thought I'd done something wrong! However that wasn't to be the case.
It's very simple but extremely weird - the game sends incorrect data for the Nontoonyt track! It includes both the MT-32 bass AND the Adlib bass (channels 2 and 7). They run on different octaves and the MT-32 one uses pitch bend. Channel 2 is the correct bass as per the extracted MT-32 track (and sounds more correct). Channel 7 is a different octave, and has no pitch bend. It's designed for the Adlib (or other lower order synth) track. For some reason the track was put in the 2-10 range instead of 1 or 11-16.
I can confirm this by referring to my archives - extracted tracks and my recorded tracks. My recorded tracks come out the same as Tom's, with the extra bass, and also the Adlib and other tracks on channel 1 and 11-16 get recorded. My extracted MT-32 tracks come out without the 2nd fretless track (and also label it as 'm', meaning MT-32 only, as no other letters are mentioned like 'a' for Adlib).

So, I need to take back that Tom made a mistake - he unintentionally reproduced some sort of coding error where an Adlib/other track slipped through and is sent by the MT-32 driver.

I guess I'm so used to Tom's MIDI version, that I never considered there's an extra (and erroneous) bass there. I can erase or mute the channel easily enough, of course, but somehow it sounds to me like something's missing, and the bass line isn't quite as full as it should be.
I'll have to rerecord the track, I guess. No biggie. As for the piano, I do prefer it that way, so I think I'll keep it.

As for your CM-64 versions, personal choice is subjective. I'll never say you did something "wrong" that was a choice! As you are well aware, we all would make different choices. I would go back and make many different choices to "enhanced" versions I myself did years ago. And you can't please everybody, as you also know. Hopefully you now realise my 'wrong' referred to the source MIDI, not something you personally were responsible for.
I also haven't listened to them with headphones, which will give me a different POV. Still, I think Nontoonyt in my personal opinion, given it's an electric piano in the MT-32 version, a faithful conversion would result in it being one in a GM version. But making it acoustic isn't some sort of hanging offence

Glad to be pardoned.

On a totally different note, is it possible for you to do easily, or did you in your edits, do a complete CM-64 version? I would love to hear that. Nothing wrong with what you did and I mean no disrespect at all, but I am *extremely* familiar with the Roland MT-32 version of this score, so it'd be cool to hear it all be PCM (and not SC-55!).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. As you know, the Roland CM-64 is a CM-32L and CM-32P combined into a single unit. Leaving some of the instruments in the CM-32L part and switching others to the CM-32P part is making it a complete CM-64 version.
If you're asking me to do a complete CM-32P version - with only the PCM part - then I'm sorry to say it'll be quite impossible (at least for me), as the CM-32P part lacks quite a few instruments such as a French horns, flute, oboe, synth sounds and its' own rhythm part. While it's possible to add SN-U110 expansion cards (of which I lack several) to the PCM part, you can only add one at a time, so unless I record each track separately, I'd be missing some instruments.
All in all, I think the MT-32/CM-32L part has some unique and excellent sounding patches - especially with custom ones - so doing an all PCM soundtrack would really hurt the overall sound.
BTW, there are a couple of themes where I did replace almost all the LA patches with PCM parts, but I can't do this for the entire soundtrack.

[Spikey]

Aha, gotcha. Yeah, I meant the CM-32P. I understand what you mean.

But sometimes I enjoy hearing conversions, even if they're inferior, because they give you the chance to hear the score fresh. If I do ever complete a Larry 3 "enhanced" version, which I would love to do someday, I would replace or mix many of the MT-32 parts, even the good ones, because almost everybody would have heard the default MT-32 tracks many, many times over by now. Although, I would keep and mix many of them as well, as you indicated, the MT-32 composition by Mike Dana is absolutely wonderful.

As for the bass in Nontoonyt, you don't have to change anything, I mainly wanted to explain that it was "technically incorrect", despite being on Tom's MIDI soundtrack and soundtrack CD (we get used to the versions we know, and they "become" official, despite not always being!). I used to prefer it with the 2 bass lines, but I actually prefer the solo one these days. It sounds more exploratory and lonely and solitary. Probably why even though I like Tom's (and your) acoustic piano choice, I prefer an electric piano these days because I think it's what the track is "going for" with its style. But I still enjoy Tom's 2000 version, with the 2 basses and the acoustic piano track.

[Ari]

Ok, here's a version with the single bass track. After listening to it only a couple of times, I think I could grow to prefer it over Tom's version. In time...
As for switching the piano track to electric piano, well... I'll let you be the judge. Here it is, just for you.

[Spikey]

Hey, like you I've been hearing this stuff for 20 years or so, so you have to get used to things!

I'll check them out soon. I have exams this week, so a bit busy.

[Spikey]

Question - with Dewey, did the piano track get replaced with a steel guitar?