Music in classic and modern video games
 

http://kotaku.com/5821655/why-video-...st-soundtracks

I found this very interesting. It marks the very difference I've been trying to nail down in why I prefer classic game soundtracks to new game soundtracks: classic games had no voice acting. The article points out that games with voice acting cause the brain to focus on the words instead of the music and there's "not enough bandwidth" for our brains to process both voice acting and an interesting soundtrack. The soundtrack takes a backseat to the speech because that's naturally what our brains focus on. This is also why Hollywood movies and video games with a cinematic flow tone down the music for when characters are talking and leave the lead melodies to areas without talking and intro/credits sequences.

This is exactly why I prefer the soundtracks of old and I didn't even realize it: speechless games. Even the soundtracks from LA's games experienced without speech are far more engaging (the music, not necessarily the game). It's a very interesting difference. In the article the author links to two YouTube videos from FFVII, both of a sequence with text and engaging music (yeah, that's most of the game, but you know). One version was the original game presentation and the other with voice acting. The point was to show just how much more effective the music is when there's nothing else to listen to, and it's remarkably true! Maybe you guys understood this difference already, but I've never thought of it that way before. Perhaps that's why I always preferred KQ2+ without voices and why I never found TSL's or Telltale's game soundtracks particularly memorable or striking (though done extremely well). Though I really enjoyed Puzzle Agent's themes....particularly the puzzle themes, because there's no dialogue!

You know, in light of this I really think it'd be great to play a game solely based on gameplay with a rich soundtrack and no dialogue at all. Speech nor text. Just music telling the story. That would be an interesting experience and a fun exercise to score as well. I'll have to do that before I die sometime...

A music maker, brilliant. Truly brilliant. Thank you.

What I like? Doom I , II. Final Fantasy VII, VIII. Simon the Sorcerer.

Thanks for sharing, music maker.

There's an episode of Extra Credits about Videogame Music. Might be worth a watch?

Now I understand why you didn't think that the Curse of Monkey Island soundtrack wasn't notable!

It works the other way around too, actually. When the Monty Python team showed the Holy Grail, they noted that people didn't laugh at their jokes while music was playing in the background. So they made sure that there was no music playing whenever a funny or an important line was said. (Except for the shruberry line, that is.)

I sometimes actually do manage to enjoy soundtracks while they are played along with text, a notable example being Hardtack and Trenchfoot's theme from Tales of Monkey Island. (This might be because of the music's rather strong nature, so it was as loud as the voice acting.) But the example in the article managed to prove the point very well.

I now think that Nintendo actually noticed it many years ago, as I don't know of one game they made with full voice acting. Also, when the characters do say something, their lines are often hated by the fans. ('Listen!')
Thank you for sharing this with us, MusicallyInspired!

I disagree. And there is one big reason for it:

Deus Ex.

There is not one humable theme in Deus Ex. It's all ambient (except for the title theme). Doesn't mean it isn't good, my point is that it's not truly memorable....just that you remember it was good. It did its job and did it well. But that job was not to have memorable themes.

Of course, this article is from the point of view that his opinion is that games with memorable soundtracks have better soundtracks than games with excellent ambient soundtracks. It doesn't mean one or the other is horrible or absent of taste, it just means he (and I) preferred the former. I love the music in Myst and the Portal games, for instance, but there's nothing really you can hum besides the Myst main theme and Still Alive/Want You Gone. And I still prefer the soundtracks of Space Quest and The Secret of Monkey Island to them.

The video Tredlow linked above explains that side of it well.

I have played that game so many times. Yes the main theme is very strong but I can hum a lot of the other music in that game too.
Deus Ex just has both. And it took a long time until another score even got close to that. I just bought that score in the last steam sale. And I bought the super meat boy soundtrack 2 Disc set last year. That one was brilliant too.

I think it depends on the individual as well as the game. I mean I found that Alan Wake had such an awesome soundtrack (both ambient and vocal) that I had to get it so I could listen to it outside of the game.

Well, I remember that The Curse of Monkey Island has a soundtrack that is almost diminished by the song called "A Pirate I Was Meant to Be", which has singing too! Weird!

It's called your mental sketchpad. You've got a limited audio and limited visual processing capability. It's the reason why powerpoints fail to communicate ideas when both text and identical verbal instructions are given, and why verbal communications with associated pictures actually communicate the idea better. We're actually working on a long term project with researchers at Berkley right now concerning human processing.

Music is for moments. Words interfere with those. When dialogue is being spoken music should usually take a backseat, with some exceptions.

This is actually very pertinent to the current field of online education.

8-bit music can be infinitely more terrifying than orchestral music. Hands down.

I think the height of terror was th N64 era.

You know, that's a good point. Even in games from the current generation that I really love, I'm kinda clueless as to what the music sounds like... whereas I can recall just about every track from Monkey Island or Quest for Glory or Final Fantasy 4 off the top of my head.

The only game sound tracks that really left an impression on me recently that I can think of are Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and the Assassin's Creed games.

Silent Hill.

/thread

(but in all seriousness, some very interesting points there)

There are plenty of modern games with fantastic soundtracks. Portal, Whispered World, Dreamfall, S&M 2 and 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Professor Layton, Mirror's Edge, Metal Gear, Halo (especially "In Amber Clad"), and I'm sure plenty more if I thought about it.

Has anyone here played "Superbrothers' Swords & Sworcery" ? Really fantastic game with a minimal narrative and a heavy emphasis on the music.

Again, nobody said that modern game soundtracks were bad. Just that the experience is different because of the shift in focus where voice is concerned.

Never played it. Sounds interesting, though.

Something similar has happened with modern film soundtracks. In the past, composers were allowed to do a full-orchestral score that would catch the attention of the viewer and leave him humming the main theme as he left the cinema.
Nowadays, fashion is to have "subtle" music in modern films. And this is something I don't personally enjoy very much, as I'm a fan of a score that explodes in your face. However, this is something completely normal: There's a period of alternative film scores, and then the orchestral robust ones return for some time, then the alternatives, and so on...

And now, talking about video games... It certainly depends upon the game. Take for example the Medal of Honor series: It started with big heroic Copland-esque music, and now it has turn into something more electronic and modern. This is something that people say its because of the more "realistic" nature of the newer games, but I say nonsense... Morricone often says that if you can't hear the music, it's bad film music. And he has a point. What's the point of making music so subtle that the viewer can't hear it?

But keeping with the Monkey Island series, to me all the games have terrific music. However, a lot of people have complained in the past that Tales isn't "catchy" enough compared to the other games, and while I don't agree with them, they say this because of a reason: The music is buried under sound effects. If you don't have a good ear or aren't paying attention, you'll barely notice it.
This is something quite common with modern films too. When a composer does a big, masculine and robust orchestral score for a big action scene, the sound effects ultimately win and because of this the score gets mixed extremly low, and most people don't notice it.

But as I said, it's simply a normal transition... I have a feeling that the era of big orchestral scores may be just coming back...

I loved Curses' music. I could whistle every tune from just about every scene in that game.

The music in Silent Hill sounds like a bunch of instruments grinding together.

It's also one of the most atmosphere-inducing videogame music ever made.

Also, I'm not a big Halo fan, since I've never really seen what's so great about it, but it's got one of the best theme music I've ever heard.

I get your point. BTW, you still haven't done out requests for your piano versions of ToMI yet!