Just found out today that Geoff Follin passed away from pancreatic cancer about three or four days ago. I thought I'd come here and listen to some of the incredible music he helped create. That guy created a hell of a legacy. The soundtracks he made stand out for a reason.
Omg had no idea :( rip It’s good that much of his work is uploaded on RU-vid so folks can still appreciate the work he did for many more years to come… artists live on through their work
what no.. aw i just got up this morning and said.. "gotta youtube some silver sufer title music to get the blood going" followed with some target renegade.
If you guys are wondering how the kick is being created... thats not a DCM sample. Its the triangle channel, being pitch shifted down from a high pitch so fast it sounds like a thump. The bass and kick never play at the same time because they're exactly the same channel, but you'd never realise it because its done THAT well. Tim Follin was truly a master of his art.
Source? I know you can do that, but it doesn't sound like that kinda kick to me and i feel like I can hear the Kick and the same time as the bass (case in point, whats happening at 1:28 is just bass and kick in unison). But I might be wrong and eager to know better, so correct me if mistaken.
Run it in an emulator and mute the DPCM channel--most should have an option to do that if you dig around in the settings. You'll hear no difference. Or better yet, isolate the triangle channel! I think what Follin does here is have the triangle quickly slide from the high pitch of the kick to the note of the bass line. So the kick is more like an attack to the actual notes.
@@Weltenmaler this soundtrack is definitely one of the best to steal ideas from to pull off some cool techniques - it's insane that a lot of this was done at all, let alone almost 30 years ago
@@warmCabin you're only partially right here, comrade: the final kick you hear in the mix consists of yes, pitch-shifted triangle AND a little click from the noise channel, without which the kick would be muffled. He also used this particular trick on a number of different titles - for example, in T2's soundtrack there's a brief moment when only the drums play, but then he turns the noise channel off and all we left with is this filtered kick. ahem, *the effect* of a filtered kick.
The fact that 03:43 is just a world selection jingle and is only 7 seconds long but may be one of the coolest 8bit licks I've ever heard really speaks to Tim Follin's talent
When I hear that quote I'm reminded of games like Crysis 1 on PC in 2007 and Ecks vs sever on the GBA or OST of Thunder force IV on The Sega Genesis ( or hell the pokemon GBA soundtracks )
As a composer myself, I just can't believe how they did this back in the day... It's really mind blowing. Imagine your directions being like "alright, so you only have three monophonic channels, and one for noice. And yeah, there is no sequencer so you have to put everything in hex code". And someone made music like THIS!? Un - fucking - believable
I seriously cannot get over how good the music in this game is. I would go so far to say that this is one of the best soundtracks of any NES game ever.
@@williamdrum9899- In assembly basically. - A massive understanding of how the NES Ricoh chip works - A PHAT brain (very important) - No money & A brother PS : RIP Geoff Follins, he died from pancreatic cancer one week ago, he'll be remembered
This game is so hard, it would actually be easier to go outside in a thunderstorm and try to dodge rain. It would be easier to walk barefoot without your toes or heels touching the floor. It would be easier to pick fly shit out of pepper, while wearing boxing gloves!
I can't believe this guy was 19 when he composed this music. I'm that age and I try to make my own music on my channel too, but this is from another world. Respect, Tim Follin!
If you started on Spectrum and Amiga, you had to know a lot of tricks to get rich multichannel sound, and if you knew those tricks when you moved on to NES, you could produce spectacular stuff like this.
For all the people saying this sounds impossible, the NES has five channels. Pulse 1- Melodic tones, can be manipulated with vibrato, pitch slides (which he uses in the first two tracks a lot), tremolo, portamento, volume envelopes, three different pulse widths, fine pitch controls, arpeggio. Pulse 2- Same as above. Another note about arpeggios; they are the traditional "retro" sound, but the reason they are used is because by fluctuating between multiple notes at once, it gives the impression that both notes are playing at the same time. Triangle- a smooth sound that has no volume controls but still can use vibrato/pitch/etc. Normally used for bass. Noise- harsh sounds. Used for sound effects and to improve the drums DPCM- sound samples
The thing about this game is that if you manage to survive long enough to gain all the powerups(and have a turbo controller so you won't destroy your thumb), it actually becomes pretty fun. Hard, but not terribly so. But the second you make one mistake and die, you are suddenly very underpowered. It's almost as if the game was designed for the full power Silver Surfer.
I only discovered the mountain of compositional power and technical prowess that are the Follin brothers late last year. OH.MY.GOD. these guys knew how to bring a sound chip to its knees and then some.
Oh dude you can do some really awesome trickery if somebody would write a sound driver for it. The DCPM is a 7bit sample unit, why not do like the ZX spectrum and literally write multiple channels of audio and play it out through that?
FUTURE10S Oh, I know how it's done, I'm just that for the average person, they would think it wouldn't be possible for the NES to make music this good-sounding. BTW, Follin didn't use DCPM samples for drums, he actually used the triangle wave channel for the bass part of the drums
What? No no no I'm talking about a theoretical method of playing music using ONLY the DCPM, no squares or triangles, etc; making a sample of music lasting about 17ms in software kind of how music was done on the ZX Spectrum's beeper and then having the DCPM play that. Also I got exports from Follin's sound driver, featuring an unused Terminator 2 track. It wasn't anything super special though.
fun fact since this game was released in 1990 that means Tim Follin would've been around 19 years old or younger at the time of composing this music along with Geoff Follin.
Oh my fucking god, this is up there with the Mega Man games for having banging NES osts AND THIS IS FROM A FUCKING SILVER SURFER GAME. Tim and Geoff literally were just flexing here.
Never seen the game, vaguely remember an AVGN episode shitting on game hard, but the music is an absolute masterpiece. Seems to be one of the pinnacles of chiptune. Unbelievable. Tim Follin!
Checked out this video cause of the Nerd mentioning he has the soundtrack on vinyl and wow. Chills on the first listen. Grad also does an amazing job uploading soundtracks in high quality so big ups to him as well as Tim Follin for this amazing composition
As someone who grew up playing the NES, I never even knew this game existed, so I heard this for the first time a couple of days ago. What an absolutely incredible soundtrack. This ranks up there with the best of them. Now to check out the other OST's that Tim has produced. Stellar work!
@@pentexsucks43 yeah, i hate that, this kinda sounds egoistic... "things can be good only today, if theyre old and good, theyre definitely ahead of its time"...
@@AAAAAA-hv5qp alternately we can be positive about it and shout out those other neat chiptune composers instead of dunking on people for their honestly understandable wording within a specific context
It's probably because the majority of NES soundtracks didn't sound like this or Journey to Silius. If you're trying to replicate the style of something you go with the most well-known version of the style, not a niche (but awesome) variant that coexisted with it. I feel like you knew that and just wanted to shit on indie games. There's plenty of valid things to criticize but "not having a soundtrack similar to 2 specific games out of 700+ NES games" is not one of them my man.
i mean that's not exactly fair, just listen to "the buzz in the grotto" from shovel knight: king of cards, or "hitting close to home" from shovel knight: spectre of torment whether or not you agree they succeeded, it's pretty obvious they TRIED.
Melts my mind how this is making my subwoofer ThUMP this hard... Like its _kicking the living daylights_ out of this sub. I would have never been able to hear this kind of bass on a common TV room set up back in the 80s... Yet he engineered the song to have it anyway... It just throws down, holy crap.
The fact that this sounds like music from The Messenger sells how well this is done. It sounds like a modern day game trying to emulate the NES but with current tech, rather than ACTUALLY being a NES
You know, there is really no point in going on. I mean its not like there is a pot of gold waiting for me on the tv as a reward. If I beat the game, it will probably just say the end. To continue playing, you would have to be a fucking nerd! ~Description of my life lately. said very accurately by AVGN
This music is so good it almost seems uncharacteristic or even *anachronistic* for a NES game. I swear when I turned this on for the first time I vomited shitbricks while having an eargasm.
Oh my gawd this game was so hard. I got about 2 levels from beating it; it was something my Dad would rent for me from time to time when I was sick/home from school.
3:51 : The first time I've heard this music, it was 7 years ago from Schmutz06. And 7 years ago, I think it was a remix. Not an original one. It's so amazing that the NES can make this kind of masterpiece!
I remember back in like 93' my older sister had this game and I was like 4 playing it, this intro was like HOLY FUCK! I'm still amazed that the NES could handle a soundtrack like this, hands down the best soundtrack for NES
And the most impressive part is the fact that the NES soundchip has 4 channels. The composer itself doesn't used the DCPM channel, built-in in the soundchip.
@@cps1247 Wait, how is the bell chiming done then? It's played simultaneously with the drums, so it can't be the triangle channel! It has to be a DCPM sample!
