The International House of Mojo

Great interview! I've only discovered it by now...

I'm so glad to read a new LucasArts related music interview. I makes me feel really nostalgic and think back to those great Michael Land interviews Telarium did for his Michael Land fan page during the glory days. And I also remember the extreme excitement I had when I've got the chance to do those Clint Bajakian, Peter McConnell and Jeff Kliment interviews (still available here: http://imuse.mixnmojo.com/interviews.shtml ... although I feel a little guilty for not updating iMuse Island any longer...)

I appreciate the fact that LucasArts (a company that I still have very fond emotions for, due to its legacy, but that I recently only considered as SW license reseller) has still a talented and passionate in-house musician. His lengthly answers to this interview, and the fact that he has been posting several messages on the lucasarts.com forum really show how much efforts and care to detail had been put into the SE's music. And having the game now on steam and on the iPhone, I must say that I'm really excited by the result! So, I really want to take the occasion to recognize Jesse's work... I hope he's reading this... Otherwise Laswerschwert might want to pass the message ;)

Hmm... Too bad the gold guy sequence with his original cue has been cut from the game.

On the other hand, I don't want to forget to praise Michael Land's work on Tales either! Though very different in style, and though I was a little disappointed about music compression and not using live musicians, I must say that it's great to get brand new Monkey Island music. It really has a very ambient feeling to it, and I love that how it brings the interactivity back (jungle, docks...). Michael's work with character based themes during the cutscene orchestration is also great as usual.

I'd just recommend to turn the SFX volume a little down... Actually both in Tales and SMI SE. It really makes the music come out cleaner!

Oh well, with these two excellent Monkey Island projects at the same time, it is pretty clear that the glory days are back! :)

Also, cudos to The Tingler and Laserschwert... Nice to meet you again! And I'd also be very interested to read Telarium's and Jimmi Thøgersen's take on the new Monkey Island soundtracks... Perhaps they've posted their opinion already somewhere, but then I must have missed it. Just like this interview until now. But I was very pleased when I've just found out that Highland Productions (highland.mixnmojo.com) plan to release new stuff on July the 30th :)

Cheers,
LGH from an abandoned (iMuse) Island...

Hopefully if they do release a Special Edition Soundtrack, they'll include the Maniac Mansion Theme as a bonus track.

I have the strong "feeling" that that might actually be the case ;)

Great interview! Kudos!

I've just checked my version and Track 22 appears to be the sea shore sound played when you walk along the docks?

Yeah, you're right. I think that it's actually audio track 20 (track 21 on the cd itself if you count the data track as track 1).

Ah yes that makes more sense :)

Glad to hear it finally officially confirmed that track 22 never actually plays in the game. That baffled me forever.

Truly a great interview :)

Great interview. Nice to see Jesse taking so much pride in the music.

What a fantastic interview, there are so many cool little gems of insight there that I don't know where to start.

I'm possibly more excited about hearing the soundtrack than actually playing the game now :)

I have only one question: Is there any way to hear that new version of the Maniac Mansion theme? I'd love it.

I thought that too. The big tease!

That was an excellent interview. Thank you Jesse and Laserschwert.

So... how does it feel? LucasArts interviews are back.

And I didn't even have to asked... he asked ME if I'd be interested in doing an interview.

I'd been thinking the last couple of weeks had been too good to be true but that confirms it: This is all a dream and I'm going to wake up any second.

I agree, a really good interview. Not that I was particularly worried, but I'm impressed with the lengths Harlin went to in order to stay faithful to the original game - especially considering he wasn't a nostalgic fan of it to begin with.

Excitement remains high... this is good stuff! Like Ben, I can't wait for this one.

That was really interesting, I cant wait to hear the new music, it sounds like it'll be excellent.

I also love the fact that the cue names ended up coming from Laserschwert. Talk about things coming full circle.

To be honest, I don't remember if I made up the cue-names... I think I got the soundtrack from the Scumm Bar, and it already had the names. Not sure though.

I've a feeling I did, actually. :P Ghost Ship Shuffle in particular I remember putting into Windows CD Player because I thought it flowed well.

Although I can't remember where I wrote them down. Must've been on the forum somewhere.

I remember that whole incident, here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showpost.php?p=1408172&postcount=21

Heh, I remember getting into a big argument about that! That was only about the Curse song titles though.

I could be wrong about naming the Secret music tracks, but I definitely have a memory of three of them. I'd just found out you could play the Monkey Island 1 CD in a regular CD player, but as they all came up with Track 01 etc I remember putting listening to them and putting in names.

'Ghost Ship Shuffle' because it flowed well, 'The Journey' because it sounded cool but didn't really make any sense, and 'Guybrush & Elaine' I can remember putting the ampersand in instead of 'and'. I do that a lot, like with Indiana Jones titles.

If I wrote them anywhere it would've been on the iMuse Island forum, where I hung out at more than Mojo itself. Unfortunately that forum's down now.

I only vaguely remember that :-P

I just remembered that someone brought the point up once, and it was kind of funny because it seemed so pointless to me. (I think I said at the time that if there was a credit list for the filenames, I wouldn't have read it.)

But I find it hilarious to think that after all these years, those track titles are now being used BY LucasArts to name the new musical cues. Regardless of who 'named' them, it was the site that was the source for this, so as far as I'm concerned the credit is Laserschwert's.

I'd think the credit simply goes to the Mojo-community.