* MISCELLANEOUS

The music is distributed for FREE for your personal listening and editing pleasure.

Anyway, its use implies the acceptance of a license and specific terms of use, as described below: the music is released as copyrighted under the "freeware" model, and absolutely not as part of the public domain.

The same terms of license apply to all parts of the music, including samples and instruments, unless otherwise noted. Keep in mind that those terms may be modified by myself at any time without any notification. The official and latest version of this license is available on my website, located at http://www.arachnosoft.com. Be sure to check it when necessary.

* DISTRIBUTION

You are free to distribute the music to anyone you want, under any format, as long as you keep the final user informed about the origin of the music, its author, and its official availability on my website, http://www.arachnosoft.com.

If you want to distribute the music in another format than the ones I offer to you (MP3, OGG, etc.), I would like you to contact me before, to keep me informed on the use of my music.

You are of course free to distribute the original package, as found on my website. I'd like to be also informed by e-mail if you do so.

In any case, you MUST specify clearly that the music has been produced by me, Maxime Abbey, and that the original and latest versions are available on my website, http://www.arachnosoft.com.

Moreover, the distribution must be done freely, or in exchange of a small amount of money aimed at covering distribution fees and/or supports (CD-ROM, disks...). Any commercial distribution is covered by the commercial usage terms of this license, as described below.

* USAGE

You are entirely free to use and listen to the music for your personal pleasure and to convert in any format to suit your listening needs, as long as it does not harm anyone and complies with the terms of this license.

If you want to use the music on your own creations (software, website, CD-ROM, presentation, magazine, etc), whatever is your project, please contact me to keep me informed about it, even if any use in non-commercial projects is encouraged. However, any commercial use MUST be discussed with me before anything. All parts of the music are concerned, even the samples and the instruments, as, unless otherwise noted, all have been build and recorded by myself.

You are fully allowed to modify or remix the music as you want, but if you want to distribute a modified version, you must indicate that you've used my own work as basis, and that you are the author of this modified version. Moreover, I would be pleased to be informed about your work.

A MIDI file requires a MIDI file player, and is aimed to be played through a MIDI synthesizer, either hardware or software. The sound quality of a MIDI file mostly relies on the sound quality of the MIDI synthesizer used to reproduce it.

You should already have at least a software MIDI synthesizer on your computer, as most recent operating systems come with their own built-in MIDI synthesizer. But you can get and install additional software synthesizers if you are not satisfied with the sounds of your current one. WinGroove, Yamaha S-YXG, Roland HyperCanvas and SynthFont are quite popular software MIDI synthesizers.

However, for maximal enjoyment, I recommend the use of a good hardware General MIDI synthesizer, such as those from the most well-known manufacturers (Roland, Yamaha, Korg...) or those which come with the Creative line of soundcards (Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, X-Fi...), using a good sound bank.

For Creative cards, and any software which supports SoundFonts, such as SynthFont, there are many good SoundFont General MIDI banks available on the Internet for MIDI file listening: Magic SoundFont, Unison, Fluid, SYnerGi, Mega Sound Bank, Crisis, Titanic SoundFont, RealFont, Utopia Live! are a few examples among many others.

I made the original IT version using sounds from my own SoundFont bank. Check the documentation included with the IT version for more information about those sounds and how to get them.

As MIDI file player, for Windows, I STRONGLY recommend vanBasco's Karaoke Player, available at http://www.vanbasco.com, but any MIDI file player should be able to reproduce my music, including Winamp, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, KbMedia Player, and many, many others.

The IT versions of my music are the original versions. They are thus the ones susceptible to offer the best sound quality, because the IT format is a lossless (without compression) format.

Unless explicitly noted, my music in IT format do not use any special features or effects offered by OpenMPT, the software I used to compose the music. As a result, it should be readable and editable in most IT-compatible players and trackers.

For Windows, I recommend OpenMPT (open-source version of the famous ModPlug Tracker) to edit this music, and any recent ImpulseTracker file player to listen to it: OpenMPT, ModPlug Player, Winamp and XMPlay are a few examples of free audio file players under Windows supporting my IT files.

The MP3 and OGG versions of the music offered on this page aim at providing a more common format, for your convenience, because of their usability in any software (such as Winamp) or hardware (portable audio players, car audio...) compatible with the format.

These versions have been rendered from the IT versions, first in high-quality WAVE lossless format using OpenMPT, then converted into compressed MP3 or OGG format, using a bitrate of 192 kbps.

Unless explicitly noted, they sound identical to the original IT version available on my website, except for the lossy compression of the MP3 or OGG format.

Most of the files available for download on this website are distributed as a compressed file in ZIP format, in order to reduce their download size. So, to open a ZIP file, you must use software able to uncompress this file format. There are plenty of them, free and commercial ones, among them: WinZip, UltimateZip, IZArc, PowerArchiver...

To uncompress a ZIP file, you have to open the wanted file into the software with the File - Open Archive menu, then, the contents of the file being displayed, use the Extract command, generally in a menu named Actions, select a folder on your hard drive where you want to place the file. The software uncompresses the ZIP file, and the files will be then available in the folder you've selected.

These instructions are also valid for most other compressed file formats (like RAR files, for example).

Along with "Arabian Feelings", this song remains one of my favourites among all my personal works. More than five years after the release of the first version, here is a new, entirely reworked-from-scratch track, based on that same little melody.

The first version, as most of my early works, was a very repeative mix of melodies. With this new version, I wanted to keep the same ideas, while introducing some new stuff, which you'll discover when looking after the first two minutes of the song.

Just like with "Arabian Feelings", I tried to split this song into several parts, either by using different instruments, or by covering different registers.

As a sidenote, this new version is also inspired from a song by Karsten Koch, "The Hidden Empire".

Released on 05-31-2007
Technical information: 20 channels, duration of 8:14.

Four years after the release of the first version, here is the new version of one of my very own tunes, "Arabian Feelings". Not a game music or film soundtrack this time, but a music I started to compose myself as soon as I heard a little piece of oriental music while walking on a street.

To correct the main defaults of the first version which was quite repeatitive, this new version comes with some new melodies and fresh ideas, mainly inspired from the oriental and "space-sounding" instruments I've used in it. It's also partly inspired by an excellent music track by Karsten Koch, named "Jupiter's Orbit".

Released on 08-01-2006
Technical information: 16 channels, duration of 7:10.

This music is the "underwater theme" from "Operation Stealth", a 1990 game by Delphine Software (released as "James Bond: The Stealth Affair" in the USA).

Another game music work from me, inspired, as usual, from the original soundtrack in AdLib/PC/MS-DOS and Amiga formats.

Released on 07-01-2006
Technical information: 12 channels, duration of 1:35.

Here is my version of certainly one of the most well-known (if not THE most) tunes from the famous video game "Lemmings".

Indeed, first appeared on the first game from the "Lemmings" series in 1990, this music has been reused in other variants of the game, including "Lemmings 2: The Tribes".

Released on 03-18-2006
Technical information: 7 channels, duration of 1:47.

This archive contains all the musical files I've composed and produced between May 2001 and October 2002, organized into a single file, in order to keep track of my computer-assisted music history.

Indeed, due to the release, as of early 2006, of music pieces entirely made with new tools and knowledge, I estimate that my previous tunes, which are already several years old, do no longer match my current view of computer-assisted music production, and do not reflect what I'm able to produce nowadays.

As a result, I've decided, instead of stopping releasing my old works, to group them in a single collection, which could make a visible distinction between my old and current releases.

Download Maxime Abbey's Legacy Collection

All versions included, this arrangement totalizes 5529 downloads so far.