Axel F is the instrumental theme of all three Beverly Hills Cop movies, first viewed on December 5, 1984.
The song was so popular that several video game musicians arranged it not only for fun, but also used it in completely unrelated games. Barry Leitch's career started when a friend bet £5 he could not arrange Axel F in Electrosound 64.
Title
This song is named after the movie's protagonist Axel Foley and officially spelled without period.
Composition
The original arrangement is in F minor.
Games
Tron Construction Set (C64)
In-game, the melody of Axel F plays on a sawtooth wave in C minor.
It sounds the same on every SID chip.
Rhythm Construction Set (C64)
In this example song, drums are arranged in Rhythm Construction Set, and the bass of Axel F on a sawtooth wave in Commodore 64 BASIC V2.
The cymbals sound different on every SID chip because they use SID's inconsistent high-pass filter.
Soundmonitor (C64)
Hülsbeck was fascinated that a song could be composed only of bass, drums and melody, and spent a long time analyzing this.
In 1986, he programmed a music editor called Soundmonitor, arranged Axel F in A minor, and sold both together to a magazine. The demo scene easily (and lazily) made further remixes.
It sounds the same on every SID chip.
Suicide Voyage (C64)
Axel F is erroneously tuned at 424 Hz and closest to D♯ minor.
The percussion at 0:16–0:32 sounds different on every SID chip because it uses SID's inconsistent band-pass filter.
Planet Attack (A8)
Beverly Hills Cop (C64)
It sounds the same on every SID chip.
Beverly Hills Cop (AMI)
Klaren originally arranged Axel F for fun in 1988 and spread it in the demo scene under his handle "Master Blaster". The songname is "datafetch3", all samples are from The Ultimate Soundtracker (AMI), and the driver is The D.O.C SoundTracker V2.0.
About 1½ years later, someone used it in the official game. David Whittaker is credited in the manual, probably because he did all other ports, but it makes little sense as he had his own driver. According to ExoticA, Klaren was never paid.
Beverly Hills Cop (AST)
To record one loop plus 10 seconds, the SNDH rip was loaded in foobar2000 with SC68 Player.
Beverly Hills Cop (CPC)
Beverly Hills Cop (ZXS)
Das Schwert Skar (C64)
Axel F in C minor makes up 4% of an otherwise original composition, arranged using Soundmonitor.
It sounds the same on every SID chip. In the rip, it is 5:42–6:04 of track 1.
Drumeditor (C64)
Axel F in A minor was published as an example song with Drumeditor in a magazine.
The reverse cymbal at 0:14 and 1:02 sounds different on every SID chip because it uses SID's inconsistent low-pass filter. All other drums are almost mute on the 8580.
Twiinz! (ZXS)
The part at 1:23-1:35 incorporates a segment from the song.
VGA-BoulderStar (DOS)
Axel F starts whenever:
- the title screen appears.
- in the menu, you select SOUNDTRACK I and then GAME START or CONTINUE.
- you press V in-game.
It stops whenever the menu appears. It never loops; you have to manually restart it.
The driver is unidentified, except that it is the same as in Spacestar (DOS). Both games were developed by Andreas Lübbers of Standsoft and published by Schenk & Horn.
Air Rescue (A8)
Brick Breaker (W16)
The file is named BOPN.WAV (possibly short for "Brick Breaker Opener"), 11025 Hz, 8-bit, mono.
Furball's Adventure (W16)
Plays in a cycle music (Daytime only).
Return of the Jedi (C64)
Axel F is the second song in a medley, arranged using Master Composer and unnoticedly tuned at 434 Hz.
It sounds the same on every SID chip. In the rip, it is 0:22–0:36 of track 1.
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