BREAKING NEWS: The Fatman Releases Wing Commander II Album
Here's a welcome holiday surprise: George "The Fatman" Sanger has released a new 45-track album covering his work on Wing Commander II and Wing Commander Academy! It's a stunningly curated collection with an excellent introduction from Sanger and extensive notes on individual tracks. It includes not just properly formatted and recorded versions of the final music but also longer versions of tracks that were cut to save disk space at the time. Amazing stuff… and it's just the start! While this release from The Fatman represents his work on the game, curator Xeenmusic has a complete release in the works that covers all of the game's composers. You can learn more and purchase a digital copy on Bandcamp.
ABOUT THIS SOUNDTRACK
My memory of Wing Commander II is foggy and complex, and I am ready to be proven wrong on any of what I recall and say here.
Dave Govett, Team Fat's wizard of and lead composer behind Wing I, was busy on other projects when the call came in to do Wing II. And besides, I wanted to see what would happen if I took the lead on an orchestral soundtrack myself. I was ready to shift from the Govett-lead John Williams/Star Wars feeling to a galloping, hybrid of a Danny Elfman/Batman-esque theme (which I came maybe a little too close to—as have SO many composers since that score came out!) with something adventurous and triumphant, elements recalling old Western and WWII movies I grew up with. I had a Grand Vision of a main theme in that vein, a romantic theme, a blues theme, and Dave's Wing Commander I themes, all teased in an opening overture and all integrated into each other in unexpected ways throughout the game.
What I didn't realize was that other composers were writing for the game as well!
For a number of years, Team Fat and I had been the golden boys of PC music in the USA, especially where Origin and the MT-32 were concerned. But around the time of WCII, musical responsibility and control for Origin's audio was shifting to their very capable in-house team. As the listener will hear, Martin Galway as producer and the other composers did a beautiful job, and the project no doubt came out to be the thing you love because of their efforts and talents. That said, when a CD was released without my knowledge, revealing that the released product contained music that I wasn't aware existed, it was a bit of a shock. I confess I suffered the prima donna’s disappointment at not having the entire stage to myself, but more significantly the creative result was, if wonderful, not so fully integrated as what I thought I had been working on.
So it’s with delight that I come back to this so many years later, all that behind me, and realize with an open and happy ear and heart that I was part of a bigger team than I knew. As so often happens, what you thought you were going for is not necessarily what's supposed to be. The best way, they say, to make God laugh is to make plans. Time has passed and here we are, all, I hope, smiling to be able to listen to and enjoy this fine body of work from more composers, more talented than I'd realized, and so, so lovingly and painstakingly assembled by Andrew Harrington.
They say that when a drop falls into the ocean it isn't lost—it opens up and lets the entire ocean in. So it’s about time I put this message out: Hey Martin, Dana, Herman, John, Nenad and Kirk— Fantastic work. and... Welcome to Team Fat!!!!
-The Fat Man—George Alistair Sanger
5/1/2024
ABOUT THIS RELEASE
The “Just the FAT” edition of the Wing Commander II soundtrack included only the compositions done by George A. Sanger and his team, all recorded with an authentic Roland MT-32 unit. The MT-32’s limited polyphony has a tendency to cause notes to be dropped/lost when a composition more advanced than the device can handle is played. This is especially noticeable on instruments with many rapid successive notes, such as a harp glissando.
To prevent this limitation from being part of the recordings, the process for any tracks that this polyphony has been exceeded is this: Break the theme into the least number of sections necessary until there is no longer any notation lost. Then, after recording each of these sections separately, to mix them together. Therefore, the pieces may be heard without this defect being present.
While designing Wing Commander II, the programming team had a responsibility to balance and reduce memory usage, both in terms of harddrive space and RAM. As a result, many of the longer themes had their lengths reduced toward the end of development with the note “big memory spender”. Thankfully the longer versions of all of George Sanger’s tracks were able to be recovered for this release (unlike that of the other composers).
A majority of themes from Wing Commander I were reused in Wing Commander II. Wing Commander: Academy later used a selection of themes from both games, plus had additional themes composed by John Tipton and Kirk Winterrowd.
- Andrew Harrington
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Most music has been newly recorded with a real Roland MT-32 from a combination of the original MIDI files converted from George A. Sanger’s archived Digital Performer project files, as well as extracted MIDI data from the game where these do not exist.
Andrew Harrington's detailed track-by-track by track commentary, also available as a .doc file as a bonus item when the album is purchased, is combination of observable technical notes, as well as extracts from various internal correspondences between the designers. All track titles are based on the original filenames and/or titles found in these papers. For any reused tracks initially composed for Wing Commander I, commentary is lacking unless there is a notable difference between its Wing Commander II/Academy counterpart. For those tracks, the listener is advised to consult the commentary included with the “Wing Commander I – MT-32 Archival Edition”.
Go to www.patreon.com/xeenmusic to watch for the complete version of WC II music and other great rare and retro soundtracks.
credits
released December 24, 2024
MUSIC COMPOSED AND ARRANGED BY
Floyd Domino
David Govett
Herman Miller
David Sanger
George A. Sanger
Archival Edition Production Xeen Music
Recording and Editing Andrew Harrington
Linear Notes and Research Andrew Harrington
Album Cover Andrew Harrington
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