Hamish

18 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

Thanks for the interesting info and discussion about this tune.

I am pretty sure it's not coded into the Spectrum version. The whole game code has been analysed, there is an excellent disassembly, no mysteries left, at least not of this kind.

When I listened to the tune you posted in MID format, I couldn't identify it, but I had an association with a movie (I'm not sure if it's a real movie or a figment of my imagination) about a composer who suffers from a creator's block, but then starts hearing this tune in his head, it keeps haunting him, and he tries to discover where it comes from. And gradually he discovers that he was a child survivor of the Holocaust (which he didn't remember, perhaps pushed out of his memory) and that the tune was something from his childhood. And then he beats his creator's block and composes a magnificent symphony based on this tune, which he dedicates to other survivors (or something along these lines; is there really such a movie? 😮)

I asked ChatGPT about it and it said it didn't know of such a movie, but that the synopsis showed great promise! Time to write to Spielberg ...

On 10/19/2023 at 2:15 PM, CPL said:

I love the Steve Wetherill tune. I guess because it was the one I grew up with, but for me that is THE Jet Set Willy theme.

Me too. It actually slightly spoiled JSW2 for me that it didn't have Steve's in-game music!

On 10/19/2023 at 2:15 PM, CPL said:

All the music in my JSW Scrolling Edition remake is variations on that theme, and it changes style depending on which room you are in. I made a musical tour video of all the variations to send to Steve Wetherill to check he was OK with me playing with and arranging his composition. He's fine with it, thankfully. I'll post the video here if people are interested.

I would love to see / hear this!

Turns out it's an original composition by Steve Wetherill, who did the MSX port: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1190683880796002&postID=5991347669152922159

Ah, excellent -- DigitalDuck's tip that it was in JSW online led me to this: it's the in-game music in the MSX version.

Are we sure that this music isn't already encoded into the Spectrum version? Seems quite a coincidence that it should be here but not there...

I would also still love to find out what this music is...! I'm sorta assuming it's something classical (or at least, out of copyright)?

I just posted the following at "Unusual Pokes", but just noticed this forum which might be a more appropriate place to ask.

Having now seen the depth into which you guys have gone exploring the in-game music, though, I am wonder whether I must have dreamed the whole thing. Just in case...

Hello everyone,

In my youth, I bought a second-hand ZX Spectrum with a cassette tape on which a POKEd version of JSW had been saved.

The POKEs appeared to have at least three effects:

1. Remove copy protection
2. Infinite lives
3. Easter egg in-game music (replacing Hall of the Mountain King)
4. (...possibly also some of the official bugfixes?)

I can still remember the music, or a close approximation. Here it is in ABC notation:

M:3/4
E |: A2 B | c2 d | e2 f | e d c | d2 e | d c B | c2 d | c B E
A2 B | c2 d | e2 f | e d c | d2 e | d c E | A3 | -A2 A
a2 g | f2 e | f2 g | f e d | e2 f | e d c | d2 e | d c A
a2 g | f2 e | f2 g | f e d | e d c | d c B | c B A | B A ^G
A B c | B c d | c d e | d e f
^G A B | A B c | B c d | c d e
a g f | g f e | f e d | e d c
d c B | c B A | E3 | -E2 E :|

You can easily hear this by pasting it at https://abc.rectanglered.com/. Alternatively, I have attached a MIDI file to this post.

I remember the sum total of bytes POKEd being way fewer than the number of notes above, so I figured at the time that the music must be an alternative soundtrack already hidden within the game.

I have tried searching for this melody on various services, without success.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Might it be an original composition by Matthew Smith?

Many thanks,

Hamish

query.mid