Agony Sheet Music

[wanderer]

Originally Posted by Xonder

I gave it a go with a solo piano arrangement made in Musescore: https://musescore.com/user/4982296/scores/1263931

Some alterations and not very polished, but for the most part quite true to the original.

Amazing. Thanks a lot for your work. Consider posting it to Cold Storage.

[Amiga1992]

YEs, very cool, and loved seeing the sheet scroll by with the music!
I wish I could play like that. Always tried to play this on a piano but I lack teh necessary skills, I can only do part of it.

Thanks.

Downloading Musescore 2 (for free) and opening the score there gives even better possibilities with each note being played individually highligted in colours (blue or green). Moreover, by using the arrow keys, you can step through the score listening to each note played as it's highlighted. You can also mark a section of notes and click the loop playback button to have it played repeatedly. Or if you're not sure where the key on the piano is you need to press, you can display the virtual piano keyboard by pressing P and the played key will be highlighted in blue or green just as the notes.

[wanderer]

If it's not too much trouble, could you post the bars where you made the most changes from the original? Indeed though, it feels almost exactly like the original.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Xonder

Thanks.

Downloading Musescore 2 (for free) and opening the score there gives even better possibilities with each note being played individually highligted in colours (blue or green).

I might try that, I am trying to get better and I have tried playing this song many times, succeeding to do so in a very basic form but usually messing up what I do with my left hand

Originally Posted by wanderer

If it's not too much trouble, could you post the bars where you made the most changes from the original? Indeed though, it feels almost exactly like the original.

Basically, I started by "copying" the original pretty much exactly, then made a few tweaks here and there. Well, of course, seeing as the original has strings, I had to replace them with piano chords.

The last bar for sure is not in the original, because the original is looping. The first and second bars have some extra notes for the left hand. Other than that, it's probably pretty much the same, possibly an extra note or two added here and there. I don't remember exactly, because I made most of it a few months ago.

[Amiga1992]

I just made an acid version of the tune with your arrangement, by feeding it to my synths
I'm looking forward to learn how to play this for real!

By the way, I usually play it on a different key, one semitone above what the arrangement you made is. Probably not true to original, but it's easier for me than to play with mostly black keys (I'm a noob)

Originally Posted by Akira

I just made an acid version of the tune with your arrangement, by feeding it to my synths
I'm looking forward to learn how to play this for real!

By the way, I usually play it on a different key, one semitone above what the arrangement you made is. Probably not true to original, but it's easier for me than to play with mostly black keys (I'm a noob)

Transposing the whole score up by one semitone makes it quite a lot easier, it is true. This can easily be done in Musescore 2 by pressing Ctrl+A to mark the whole score, and then the up arrow key once. It messes upp the layout of the notes a little bit, but it should be possible to fix without too much trouble.

The reason why I chose to keep the original key was that it somehow sounds better to me, gives it a bit of a more gloomy, darker feel which I think this piece should have. Or perhaps it's just my imagination.

[wanderer]

I think the original is not what is heard in the game. Tim Wright quote: "When Franck Sauer heard my soundtrack for Agony he loved it, but offered to improve upon the piano samples. At the time I didn’t have access to many great samples, so I naturally agreed. It was only after the game was released that I realised Franck’s samples were in the wrong octave, so the tune wasn’t 100% correct."

It doesn't sound like an octave difference, seems it's a different key.

ExoticA info and links

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Xonder

The reason why I chose to keep the original key was that it somehow sounds better to me, gives it a bit of a more gloomy, darker feel which I think this piece should have. Or perhaps it's just my imagination.

No that's fine, I agree you should have done the original!

Also I do know the samples are out of tune, I wouldn't say a whole octave up, I think they are a bit off by at least a semitone too. That's why I think playing this a semitone up feels easier and natural, because it's probably meant to be played that way, but the samples got fucked in the way.

Anyway, no matter what key you play this tune in, it's a beautiful score.

Originally Posted by wanderer

I think the original is not what is heard in the game. Tim Wright quote: "When Franck Sauer heard my soundtrack for Agony he loved it, but offered to improve upon the piano samples. At the time I didn’t have access to many great samples, so I naturally agreed. It was only after the game was released that I realised Franck’s samples were in the wrong octave, so the tune wasn’t 100% correct."

It doesn't sound like an octave difference, seems it's a different key.

ExoticA info and links

I just listened to the original version from Tim Wright now, and the differences are quite big. The original piece has awful samples and is made in C minor whereas the version that appears in game is in G# minor kind of (although the notes in the mod are not the same as the note values in the Protracker mod (or in whichever program it was made in this version), and seem to be a bit off).

As for the octave differences, for example, the last note of bar 6 is one octave up in the original. Bars 13 and 14 are totally different almost.

All in all, I prefer the modified version, but that might just be because I'm so used to it, or because of the dismal samples in the original. Although at least one note felt wrong in the version that appears in game, So I transposed it one octave up (note 4 in bar 9, right hand), which seems to agree with the original.

As for the differences in octave between the in-game version and the original, I don't have a feeling that they were mistakes. It seems to me Franck Sauer, or whoever it was, took some artistic liberties here and there. For instance, the second half of bar 35 is in minor in the game version, but in major in the original (i.e. not an octave error). A very good change if you ask me, as I feel minor goes better with the mood of the game. The version that appears in the game has a quite different feel to it in general.

Well, what matters, I guess, is that it's a great piece of music, regardless of what version (otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it now 25 years later).