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Credits

Last updated 29 September 2026

The short version

Cosy Little Empire is made by Magic Zebra Ltd, with the help of some brilliant open-source software and fonts. Thank you to everyone who makes them.

Made by

Music

The music is our own laid-back arrangements of tunes that are in the public domain: Gymnopédie No. 1 and Gnossienne No. 1 (Erik Satie), In the Hall of the Mountain King and Morning Mood (Edvard Grieg), the Habanera from Carmen (Georges Bizet), Für Elise, the Moonlight Sonata and the Ode to Joy (Ludwig van Beethoven), Flight of the Bumblebee (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), Ride of the Valkyries (Richard Wagner), the big tune from Jupiter (Gustav Holst), Clair de lune (Claude Debussy), Canon in D (Johann Pachelbel), Prelude in C (Johann Sebastian Bach), King Porter Stomp (Jelly Roll Morton), Bill Bailey (Hughie Cannon), Back Water Blues (Bessie Smith), and the traditional Oh My Darling Clementine, The Animals Went in Two by Two (When Johnny Comes Marching Home), When the Saints Go Marching In, John Henry, Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor and Scarborough Fair. The blues, rags and lo-fi beats (Front Porch Blues, Rocking Chair Blues, Blue Kettle, Sunny Side Shuffle, Rainy Window, Late Bus Home, Tea Break, Night Shift, Sunday Papers, Steam on the Glass and Slippers On), the jazz (The Cosyford Caper, Saturday Swing and A Satisfying Little Job) and the funk (Tumble Dryer, Sock Exchange Strut and Parish Council Shuffle) are our own.

Clair de lune and the Moonlight Sonata are played note for note from public-domain editions by the Mutopia Project (the Moonlight Sonata from Francisco Tárrega's arrangement, adapted by Jeffrey Olson). Thank you!

Gnossienne No. 1 is played from Knute Snortum's edition for the Mutopia Project, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence; our score of it (music/gnossienne-1.json) is shared under the same licence.

The piano is the Salamander Grand Piano, recorded by Alexander Holm, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence (a selection of its samples, as prepared by the Tone.js project).

The double bass (the plucked contrabass) and the flute are from VSCO 2 Community Edition by Versilian Studios; the vibraphone, the shaker and the reggae kit (snare, cross-stick, toms, hi-hats, congas, tumba and bongos) are from their Versilian Community Sample Library. The brushes are Karoryfer's Swirly Drums, and the ride cymbal and the hip-hop kit are Virtuosity Drums by Versilian Studios and Karoryfer. All of these were generously given to the public domain (CC0).

The electric piano is a Wurlitzer EP200 sampled by Greg Sullivan (SFZ conversion by kinwie, via sfzinstruments), used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. We trimmed, retuned and lengthened the samples and converted them to MP3.

The slap bass is from GeneralUser GS by S. Christian Collins, which he shares free to use in software. We let each note ring on and die away naturally and converted them to MP3.

The Cosyford Harbour Shanty Crew play traditional sea songs and tunes: The Trumpet Hornpipe (from Captain Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland, 1903), Soon May the Wellerman Come, The Sailor's Hornpipe (the College Hornpipe), Blow the Man Down, Early in the Morning and South Australia. Their accordion is the Button Accordion HN from FreePats (a Hohner, recorded by Jeff Stauffer); their fiddle is the solo violin from VSCO 2 Community Edition; their bodhrán (two frame drums), the cajón, the claps, the tambourine and the woodblock are from the Versilian Community Sample Library. All CC0. We looped the accordion's notes and retuned and trimmed the rest.

Open-source software

Fonts

Fredoka, © The Fredoka Project Authors; Playfair Display, © The Playfair Display Project Authors; Lora, © The Lora Project Authors. All three are used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, via Fontsource.