Music in classic and modern video games

[Vainamoinen]

I cannot agree much with the article - it was a very interesting read, though!

Take the work of John Williams, one of the most confident and iconic melodists in Hollywood. His most famous themes are instantly recognizable—Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park—but those themes never play while characters are speaking on-screen. They play during action sequences, or perhaps during the opening or closing credits. When it comes time for characters to talk, those sorts of strong themes fade away, replaced by broader, less intrusive chords—called "pads"—which allow actors' voices to be easily understood.

This idea is presented as an indisputable fact in the article, while I see it more as a necessary tendency in movies. But movie composers also have the tendency to put most heart into the central scenes, and those might very well be scenes in which voices are heard. Interestingly, the writer contradicts himself with his examples. For example, the central Jurassic Park motif is indeed heard first while the protagonists are speaking.

An idea the article does not even touch upon is the very individual feel of early VG music due to the brutal sound limitations of early computers and consoles: Very few sound channels, very few and bad-sounding "instruments", scarcely much memory reserved for the soundtrack. How do you cope with that as a composer? You rely on a very strong, repetitive and present melody or musical motif. For me, that is quite a defining thing in VG music.

Originally Posted by Trenchfoot

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...

I wouldn't call it "subtle". Hans Zimmer's present minimalist endeavors are hardly subtle, but they are also quite unhummable (is that a word?). Less motif seems to be a fashion, not something that is necessarily requested from modern composers. Granted, I was floored when Final Fantasy X suddenly switched to more "ambient" music, while I expected the exact opposite from Nobuo Uematsu.

Originally Posted by Scnew

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.

I do not agree, with all my heart, as a long-time VG music explorer, collector and buyer. Many of my most valued video game scores are from games I haven't even played; and there are even two CDs labelled "Video game music" where a corresponding game does not even exist.

Before I start listing wonderful video game music through the ages, here's a final thought. If we assume that the arguments this article makes were 100% correct, we'd still have to expect ever "worse" movie scores, but not video game scores. That is because narrative scenes - which might constitute an entire movie - would get the less intrusive music, but gameplay/ scenes in which the player is in control, which should constitute most of a game, and TTG take heed, might receive the better, louder, more intrusive, more hummable tunes.

[MusicallyInspired]

The article isn't saying that music composed in a more "ambient" way is worse, just that he doesn't prefer it. But there IS a clear difference. Once you realize this it's not really about defending it so much as it is about having differing tastes. There are fantastic soundtracks on both ends. For games I've both played and not played. I just happen to prefer one style over the other.

And as to the Jurassic Park reference, they're not really having a whole conversation about anything, just a couple exclamations of wonder, that's it.

[IsaacDavner]

Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time
So I’m glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive

[Scnew]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

There are plenty of modern games with fantastic soundtracks. Portal

I either agree with or haven't played with the other games you mentioned, but Portal?

Does that even have any music besides the song at the end and the little Aperture Science ditty that plays on the radios?

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by Scnew

I either agree with or haven't played with the other games you mentioned, but Portal?

Does that even have any music besides the song at the end and the little Aperture Science ditty that plays on the radios?

Well actually I meant Portal 2 sorry Portal 1's is definitely more toward the ambient side but Portal 2 has a lot of strong themes, like Cave Johnson's in the Science cave.

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by IsaacDavner

Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time
So I’m glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive

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[Astro Gnocci]

What i love about this article is that it's one of those things that just seems so obvious once you've read it. I've often wondered why i never seemed to notice the music much in movies or video games, without ever really thinking about it, but it just clicked while reading this guy.

I'm one of those guys who could sing every theme from MI2 but never quite understood when someone said that CMI's soundtrack was just as great (not that i ever thought CMI's music was bad in any way, it just never really hooked me). I was watching some MI2:SE videos the other day to hear how the voices sounded and while i did enjoy them, i couldn't help but feel disapointed at the very same themes i've been in love with for so long. Part of it is certainly nostalgia for the old midi sound but the distracting side effect of the voice acting just seems obvious now.

It's interesting that hit the road gets mentionned in the article... It's also among my short "best video game sountracks ever" list, but i remember that for some reasons the voices didn't work when i first played it (for years i thought the game didn't actually have any voiceovers)...

The same thing happens in just about any song, actually. That's why no one's playing solos or fancy stuff while a singer's singing; it's not so much that you want the vocals to be heard clearly, it's that everyone is gonna focus on them anyway so you'd better not distract from them.


Thanks for this great read anyway

[der_ketzer]

some games also do that on purpose. Like most RPGs. They have unmemorable music so you don't notice how little there is during the 50+ hours you play the game. For Example the Elderscrolls-series. Great main themes but the rest is remarkably unremarkable.

[DAISHI]

I actually think Oblivion's town music is pretty fantastic.

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally Posted by der_ketzer

some games also do that on purpose. Like most RPGs. They have unmemorable music so you don't notice how little there is during the 50+ hours you play the game. For Example the Elderscrolls-series. Great main themes but the rest is remarkably unremarkable.

Not Arena or Daggerfall. Those games had great "forefront" soundtracks. Every game since then has certainly been very ambient, though. Well, besides Battlespire possibly.

[Alcoremortis]

While I do love old soundtracks a lot, there are many modern game soundtracks (with voice acting) that I also quite enjoy. Like the Starcraft II soundtrack, Age of Empires II soundtrack (okay...not exactly modern, but there was voice acting in it), Trine, Magicka...actually, I just realized that most of these have little speaking while the music is playing. Hmm...maybe there is something to this argument after all. Well... looks like some "research" must be done on the subject.

-slinks off to computer-

[DAISHI]

It's very rarely that the most memorable songs overlap speaking, unless the song has previously been heard.

[dinkydoo]

A very interesting article...I guess I have a different take on the influence of music in games, because anything I play is usually a browser based game and therefore a bit crap (Skyrama, Castle Empire)....so I usually turn the music off