Machines with the Best Music

[Matt McIrvin]

Doctor Who, of course, features the classic Doctor Who theme. It's not the greatest arrangement, but it's better than the one they were using on the TV show in the Sylvester McCoy era.

 

[kane11]

Johnny Mnemonic have most "climatic" soundtrack of all pinball tables, in my opinion of course, but there much more tables have awesome music, i like Dirty Harry to.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

...and in that vein, Star Trek: The Next Generation's use of the TV theme (actually composed by Jerry Goldsmith for Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and various bits of the show's incidental music is superb.

 

[jkonami]

The Black Hole "music" was clearly the product of non-musicians; it's just an ascending chromatic scale. Very easy to code.

(Now I'm imagining a table themed to the awful Disney movie by that name that would use its undeservedly terrific John Barry score. It was one of the last movies with an overture, which was this happy John Williams-esque adventure march, but the main title theme that follows is a masterpiece of dark, scary atmospherics.)

Oh I wouldn't dare classify BH's simple arpeggio as music, just wanted to point out that it's headache inducing. And I'm well aware of John Barry's awesome score for Black Hole - I actually liked that movie a lot, but I was a kid when it came out so that might be why. But I agree, the title sequence music is bad ass.

 

[jkonami]

Isn't it just the song from Golden Earing put on repeat?

You know I didn't even realize this until I was sitting in Five Guys the other day (great burger joint for those of you who aren't blessed) and that song came on the radio. When the guitar solo came up, I was like - holy crap! that's the TZ music! It makes perfect sense, and I had heard the song before, but not in a while and not since I had played a ton of TZ on Future Pinball. I was actually a bit disappointed that it wasn't original music, though. I noticed a lot of sound clips and music get recycled between Lawlor Pins.. like "Don't play with the clock!" from Funhouse, for example, which is also in TZ, just sped up a little. I know there's more but I can't think of them.

Think they'll have any licensing issues with Golden Earring? Nobody seems all that concerned about it, I guess it's not a prob.

 

[The Wolfman]

I love all pinball tunes made for the Yamaha YM2151 sound chip, most of them are brilliant compositions:
Funhouse, Taxi, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Pinbot.

And I kinda like the soundtrack of Junk Yard. It perfectly fits the theme! That "shoot again" piano riff puts a smile on my face.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

I played FIREPOWER that somebody had hooked up external home audio speakers and a powerd subwoofer WOW! Not the greatest sounds but when you can feel it its a whole new experience, wich makes me want to see other tables like KINGS of STEEL with all synthysised sounds with BASS.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

It took me a very long time to realize that too, about the TZ music--probably because the only time I'd really heard the song was when Golden Earring appeared on Saturday Night Live around 1982! But it stuck in my head sufficiently to make the pinball music naggingly familiar, and sometime in the Nineties I realized that it was actually a song called "Twilight Zone".

 

[spoonman]

Great thread idea!

I have to say The Simpsons music always makes me happier.

Some others I enjoy:

High Speed II (La Grange)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD10ZVlup0I

Tommy Pinball - The Who - Sally Simpson (no relation to the Simpsons)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRgXLG0sZDw

Tommy Pinball - High Score music (It sounds a bit like Pin*Bot is singing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzY64Jizzyc