Dissecting Enigma Force

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#1

Sakura didn’t really rock with me today so I decided to something more creative and started a project on Enigma Force, a classic from about exactly 30 years back. Worked on this:

(Another version, Enigma Force VGM - YouTube)

(And yet another, more faithful to the original I think Enigma Force (C64) - Main theme - YouTube)

Looking at DaTuner Lite, it says there’s a lot of B, C#, A# and G#. Maybe F# and G too. This process is a bit harder than one might think, perhaps a spectral analyzer or another type of application would be better? Anyway, is this a dead giveaway for a major scale, I think it’s in major…? Have to check some references.

I tried to hum it to my tuner app, and I tried to whistle it, it’s hopeless. It seems I’m using a different pitch with fixed (???) intervals every time, it doesn’t work for this but I take it means I’m a natural born shamisen musician :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

So. Karl mentioned he’s working on some soft to convert midi into tabs a few years back. So I went looking for a midi and surprise surprise, there’s one for this game/theme as well. Loaded into LMMS already so I have the notes …

Notes seem to be C, C#, D#, E, F, F#, G#, A#, B.

Things are so easy nowadays 0.o

#3

And already put it into niagari using Karl’s excellent web apps. Can’t wait till morning to try it out!

Computers are awesome B-)

I mean… it’s just the opening verse… but it’s a start =)

#4

Well what can I say? There is a reason I work with computers as a profession :slight_smile:

It’s fun when you find a song that fits the shamisen. Remember that if you have the MIDI file you can easily transpose all tracks in it to fit the range of the instrument so that you can actually play along.

#5

So the intro is the same four notes transposed into four different (descending) scales… that’s the easiest way for me to describe it, at least. With 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (1) being the do re mi fa so la ti (do) tones of the major scale, each riff is a slight variation of 4 3 2 3, 3 2 1.

The the main part kicks in around 0:53, and it uses a major scale (with the first note being the high “do” in the scale, except the fourth is raised/sharp. So that’s 1 2 3 4# 5 6 7 1, or in the key of C: C D E F# G A B (C).

Then the second part at ~1:08 goes 4314314143143141… using the non-sharp 4. Followed by 32732732 or something.

Then at 1:40 or so it transposes and goes somewhere else and it’s time for me to do something else. But, there you go. Good luck! Don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t get it… this tune seems like it’d be a major challenge to even find the melody on a shamisen, let alone make it sound good, especially for a beginner. This might be a “stretch” goal for the coming year… :slight_smile:

#6

Thanks for the analysis! Maybe there’s an easier way to make some sense out of it than putting every note from the midi manually to Shamisen Composer :slight_smile:

Actually when I’ve been playing just the few measures for intro, it sounds recognizable for me, and is not even really hard to play… I think I’ll work on a larger part of the song sometime soon, it looks like some real results could be achieved with some time and effort. Making it sound good, that’s another story :wink:

I tried the same with themes from Commando and Rambo II (the games on C-64 :wink: ). They are much more difficult - I ended up with a chord of 2 notes in Commando and it didn’t sound recognizable at all, Rambo II was a bit better but it’s hard to play - you play 7 on ichi no ito and immediately jump fast to 7 on san no ito, then you move your hand back to start playing from 5 on ni no ito. Both these tunes play with timing, eg. there’s 3/8 notes, four of 1/8 in a rapid succession and so on.

Enigma Force though seemed to have one clear melody when looking at midi. It’s also one of those tunes I found myself humming even before finding it on youtube and decades after I last played the game, I think.

© 2020 Kyle Abbott