Lego Island – dB | David Barrows

#ReformTheLegoPolice! New fan arrangement of “Lego Island Police, Extended”, by Dave Barrows, released in June 2020! (see below).

Also here’s a June 2020 rendition of the “Lego Island Police Extended” piece, which I wrote for the 1990s computer game “Lego Island”, for sax quintet.

Background

In the mid-to-late 1990s I got a call from a friend named David Patch, a very talented fine artist, who’s also had a long career working in the field of computer games and animation. He was working as an artist on a game under development called “Lego Island” and asked if I’d like to contribute some music.

Naturally I said yes, and created some music that ended up being used in the game. It’s the part of the game where the player is building a police helicopter, and my piece is playing in the background. The game became extremely popular, and my tune seems to have become a sort of cult classic among fans.

It was kind of a one-off gig for me, but a cool credential to have. I got a copy of the game and was able to say I’ve done some music for a computer game. Years went by and I kind of filed it away. Then something interesting began happening.

I started getting these emails through my website from a new generation of people who were telling me how important that piece of music was to them, how it inspired them to take up the sax, etc. Some were asking if I still had the original masters etc (I don’t, unfortunately). One was doing a serious research project on the game, and game development in general. Another was doing a compilation of the music from the game. I even got interviewed for a documentary about it.

(And, there is an open-source sequel to the game being developed (Project Island) – my long-time musical collaborator Mark Schleunes and I have contributed music for that also – stay tuned)!

Fans have posted versions of my tune in various places:

The short version of the tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZbnt-nP0hc

The “extended” version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Ir5HzoX_0

One showing the building of the helicopter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk0d7poDNbU

A Lego Island walkthrough vid has over 4 million views: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lego+island

Update!

Then, in June 2020, a young fan, Miles Torres, a.k.a. “daypeecone”, emailed asking me to play sax on his arrangement of my tune. We exchanged a few more emails, and upon hearing his demo I was impressed with how accurately he had copped the feel of the original backing track. I agreed to play on it. To refresh my memory I transcribed my original sax part (sax players, here’s the transcription!):

LegoIslandPoliceExtended

So I recorded a new sax part, Miles dropped it into his project and then posted it on SoundCloud – this is a better quality version than any others that exist out there. Nice work @daypeecone!

Tech notes

Some fans who emailed have asked about how I produced that track technically.

Back in those days (the 90s), the Alesis ADAT was an incredibly popular machine for doing digital recording; it was before hard disk recording became ubiquitous; so basically I was using some earlier version of MOTU’s Digital Performer program, and had an ADAT machine slaved to it. So I programmed the MIDI, probably with a Roland keyboard, and I probably used sounds from the Roland device to do the backing track; and then I just recorded the audio onto the ADAT. So the keyboard (which produced the sounds) was slaved to Digital Performer via a MIDI interface and a MIDI cable. I did have a good mic, it was either an Earthworks mic or a Sennheiser C414 (I forget exactly when I bought those mics but I still have them today and still use them frequently). So yes I probably just programmed the backing track, then laid down the alto part on top of it. The alto I had in those days was a Chinese knock-off of a modern Selmer. The new version of the sax part (recorded in June 2020) was recorded on my Selmer Mark VI, with the Sennheiser C414 mic, using ProTools.

About the piece

I’ve actually had that bass line in my head since I myself was a senior in high school, or maybe even earlier. It’s a kind of cartoon-music lick, loosely based on the Raymond Scott tune “Powerhouse” (in his classic tune the lick comes in about 1:15, check it out here); that lick was also nicked by the band Rush in their tune La Villa Strangiato (I was, and still am, a big Rush fan, and this is where I first heard this lick in the late 70s or early 80s). Their version of the lick comes in at about 7:50, here).

My version was originally a piece with the somewhat pretentious (but seemingly now portentous) title of “The Rise and Fall of Western Civilization”, and I played it for a packed auditorium at my high school (Fairfax High, in L.A.), with another sax player friend from high school. The whole audience was snapping their fingers in time. That was cool. Eventually (a couple years after Lego) I recorded another version of that piece on my 2000 CD called “House Music”; on that CD it’s called “Rise and Fall”. I recorded two versions on that CD; similar yet different from the Lego version. When the well-known Latin percussionist Pete Escovedo heard my version (I did my CD release party at his club Mr. E’s back around 2000), he said, “now that sounds like jazz.” High praise, I thought.

Anyway that’s the story of my involvement with Lego Island, and it seems to continue to unfold, so I’ll update this page with any new developments.