First posting of the day: Frank Klepacki’s C&C: Tiberian Dawn music

Greetings, everyone. This is the first blog post on Command and Conquer Revealed. The purpose of this blog is to give updates and musings on the C&C series, which I will include the Tiberium, Red Alert, and Generals universe. I will also talk about the production that went into the series and what was changed / cut / unused /etc. In fact, I found a huge treasure trove of items that did not make the cut into the C&C series. For today, I will discuss Frank Klepacki’s work on Command and Conquer:Tiberian Dawn.

As we C&C fans know, the TD soundtrack is the most varied soundtrack in the entire series, as his works covered a wide scope of genres including: heavy metal, industrial, pop, hip-hop, ambient, electronic, and orchestral. The popularity of the music was so significant in North America and beyond that Westwood decided to release the CD soundtrack, which is later included in the C&C bundle with Tiberian Dawn and the Covert Ops add-on mission disc. It was also sold on Westwood’s website as well but they’re very quickly sold out on their site and elsewhere. You can try finding the soundtrack over at half.com or eBay.com but it is quite rare to find nowadays.

Here’s what the track list of the actual CD soundtrack:

1. Act on Instinct
2. No Mercy
3. Industrial 1
4. Iron Fist (from “Covert Operations” add-on)
5. We will stop them
6. Radio
7. On the Prowl
8. Re-con (Covert Operations)
9. Drone (Covert Operations)
10. In the Line of Fire
11. Prepare For Battle
12. Depth Charge (Covert Operations)
13. Rain in the Night
14. Creeping Upon (Covert Operations)
15. Target
16. Just do it up
17. C&C Thang
18. To Be Feared
19. Drill (Covert Operations)
20. Full Stop
21. In Trouble
22. Airstrike

Sadly, the CD soundtrack left out numerous memorable songs from the game, such as “Demolition” (working title was “Heavy G”), “Times” (by Klepacki’s band, I AM), “March to Doom”, and “Fight, Win, Prevail!” The latter three songs can be found as redbook audio if you bought the Sega Saturn version of the game, which you can play on a CD stereo (just make sure not to play the first track, as it’s purely data and can damage your speakers!). Another oddity is the naming of some of the songs, confusing some listeners out there, so let me point out their original titles and the ones found in the game (the ones with the brackets are the original song names):

Demolition (Heavy G), Deception (We Will Stop Them), Industrial (Industrial 1), Mechanical Man (Target), Canyon Chase (Industrial 2), To Be Feared (Enemies To Be Feared), Warfare (Full Stop), In Trouble (Looks Like Trouble), and Take ‘Em Out (Just Do It Up 2)

There’s also a number of unused songs found in the in-game files (the scores.mix file), found only in the original MS-DOS version of the game. I will also list them as well:

Heartbreak, Untamed Land (unless you open up the dinosaur missions), Reaching Out, Nod Score Theme, Nod Map Theme, Flight of the Valkyries, Die!!, C&C 80’s Mix (Covert Ops only), variant, shorter low quality versions of Act On Instinct, Enemies To Be Feared, Great Shot!, and Looks Like Trouble (samples used are much different from the final mixes).

There were also a few songs that never made it into the game at all: Die!! (screaming vocalist version), Hold On (Klepacki describe this song as akin to Laurie Anderson), Reload Fire (later used as the Red Alert Credits Theme), and C&C Outtakes Credit Theme (filled with C&C FMV bloopers).

I will also point out that the Sega Saturn version has some songs that were different from the rest. First off, the “Menu Theme” (also known as the GDI Map Theme), “Great Shot!”, “March to Doom”, “Fight, Win Prevail!”, and the edited version of “Times” (by Klepacki’s band, I AM) are in full redbook quality. Secondly, there are even variants of the music! Warfare (Track 11 on the GDI disc) has different instrumentation and intro and In The Line of Fire (Track 10 on the Nod disc) has completely different instrumentation altogether.

For more information on the soundtrack and to listen to the Tiberium Dawn music, check out Frank Klepacki’s website at http://www.frankklepacki.com
. For more information on the making of C&C:TD, go to Frank Klepacki’s website, click on press on the top menu and click on “Commentary: Behind the C&C Soundtrack”.

(EDIT: Fixed some naming and consistency errors on the blog)
(EDIT 2: Fixed the error on the tracklist, added a piece of information on reading Klepacki’s commentary)