[Gario]

Hello everyone!

I have no clue how many of you analyze music (for fun, to learn something, for anything really - to be honest, I've analyzed music longer than I've written it ), but I'm gonna throw this up and see where it goes. For the sake of this thread, it's probably wise to only bring up VG music (it's OCR, after all), but if you want to bring up anything outside that genre, be my guest - I'd be more than happy to discuss it (and I'm sure others would, too)!

Now, if your not a music theorist or anything, that's fine - if you listen to music I'm sure you've heard interesting things in a song and it's caught your interest, yet you also noticed no one else heard the same thing. The point of this thread is to show other people some very interesting musical tricks and the like that you've heard in a song but others may not have. Don't worry about any technical language - just try to get the point across as best as you can. Perhaps there will be other people here that can clarify the technical tricks that occur and help you learn how to use the techniques better.

If you want to just comment on another person's analysis, please feel free - I encourage discussion on the discoveries of others. Please keep the flames down, however - really, I don't know what anyone could flame about here, but you never know.

I'll start the discussion by talking about my favorite VG music... well, basically of all time.



That's right, Silver Surfer, baby!

In particular, I'm looking at the Title theme. Every track on this game kicks ass, but this one has a pretty exceptional level of ass-kickage. It is one of the most advanced piece of chiptunage out there, and I'm here to show you all why.

The degree of single-channel polyphonic lines is absolutely incredible. Basically, a single channel may only play a single note at a time, but the way the notes are played imply more than one line (or instrument) at a time. Using the power of Emulation (I own the game, don't worry), I'll separate the channels so the effects I'm talking about are easier to hear...

A single rectangle wave...

An example of that 'polyphonic line' occurs well at 0:09 - 0:23 (and again at 1:12 - 1:32). There is a note that is quickly played an octave above is an example of a polyphonic line in action. Remember, a single channel may never play more than one sound at a time, so in fact the sound cuts out when the higher note is being played. Now, this isn't the only VG soundtrack that does this, but the way the Follin brothers do it, however, is so seemless it deserves some special attention.

Listening to it closely, it sounds like they took the waveform and had it play the low sound first, filling the ear with the low sound before introducing the upper 'blip' then immediately returning to the lower sound. The effect that comes from that particular placement is that the ear retains the sound of the lower note while the higher note plays, thus giving the illusion that two sounds are playing (when that is physically impossible, given the hardware). Even more interesting is that the higher note is implied in your brain, so you fill out the octave throughout the span of the note in your mind.

Now throughout this song these polyphonic lines occur all the time. Take a look at the other rectangle wave playing in this song (there are two given at any time in a NES game). 0:16 - 0:53 sounds like a series of chords (that's right, chords) playing through when it is only physically possible for a single note to be playing at any given time. It's easier to hear what they do, and the trick is pretty common in NES & C64 games, in general - arrpegiate chords as fast as the system can play the notes in order to make a single line play complex chord structures. However, the Follin brothers use this in conjunction with other not-so-easy-to-hear polyphonic tricks to create a rich, complex environment unmatched by any other game on the NES system (it even challenges most 16-bit systems soundscape, as well, IMHO).

The best is still to come, however... the Triangle wave.

Seriously, what the hell?! 0:09 - 1:16 may repeat the same thing over and over again, but damn, is it a hell of a line to repeat! There's not one, not two but three (possibly even four) instruments being implied there. The pulsing bass, a strong, diving bass drum, and the weaker toms and snare... all on the channel that cannot even fluctuate the volume (let alone play more than one sound at a time). Simply amazing (especially when you add the noise channel [which cover the hats and the 'snare' of the drums] to the triangle to create a full array of drums with the bass - without ever using the PCM!). Now, this isn't unique (Megaman 3's intro triangle does the exact same thing), but I've never heard a game that does nearly as seemlessly.

How did they do it?

The toms and the snare are designed similarly to the rectangle wave I discussed above - the sound cuts out for such a short time that the ear still percieves the bass sound as something that is playing when it is not. The diving bass drum, though, lasts longer than those short sounds - basically past the threshold of when we imply and connect the sounds mentally. I believe that they first hit the bass note sound, followed it by a sudden change to the bass drum sound which dives back into the bass sound again(cutting out for the snare and toms whenever they needed to). Because the sound dives into the original bass it ends up sounding like a part of the bass. However, because of the music before (0:00 - 0:09), the bass drum sound also sounds like a bass drum. Using the power of context and cutting sound out, they created three or four different sounds using a single sound at a time.

Put all of these channels together and you get an amazingly complex soundscape using only four channels (and one of them can only make different samples of white noise). The parts were certainly great, but the sum of the parts compliment each other so well that they really amount to more as a whole.

Basically, I've always been amazed by their complete mastery over the hardware that the Follin brothers had. I could go on for pages about other little tricks and doodads that they used in this song alone (that's besides the other eight great songs written for this game), but I want to leave room for others to bring something else up (and possibly bring up those doodads at another time). Don't worry about the size of my post - I don't expect anyone to spend over an hour writing an analysis of anything on here (although it certainly would be welcome!). In fact, any other analysis I make will more than likely be shorter than this, but I just love that soundtrack so damn much. If you notice something interesting that you don't believe anyone else has heard in a song, post it here!

[prophetik music]

hey, this is pretty cool. good stuff. i never knew that about the soundtrack for this game - i had heard it before, and i thought it was pretty good, but i didn't really notice the degree of complexity that was going on.

[anosou]

TWILIGHT ZONE!

Just wrote a shorter not-very-in-depth thing on Worms 2 ( http://anosou.com/?p=96 )!

Also, I'm currently working on my first academic paper in musicology, an analysis of parts of the Jade Cocoon soundtrack. I chose not to analyze the whole thing but choose tracks that were representative for the soundtrack as a whole.. though this is in Swedish I might eventually translate the 10 pages to english for anyone who's interested.

Anyway, I approve of this thread and idea!

[prophetik music]

i'd be interested in your term paper. sounds interesting.

[anosou]

Originally Posted by the prophet of mephisto

i'd be interested in your term paper. sounds interesting.

Your interest in my interests is interesting.

I've gotten some requests from VGMdb to translate it too. It should be done (Swedish version) Thursday. Then we're having a day to go through all papers in group and give criticism, then I have a chance to correct any mistakes or such.

After that, translation might happen. We're talking early June. However it's 10 pages and I'm not a native speaker so I won't promise anything but if enough people shows some interest it's more probable

[McVaffe]

Originally Posted by Gario

Hello everyone!

...stuff...

How the hell did you ever figure out all this crap? This is insane. I'm glad I got into game music after the Super NES era... this crap is so ridiculous (but impressive).

Great read (especially for someone like me - who knows next to nothing about chiptunes) - and I loved how you included the sound files as examples. U get a smiley.

=)

there.

[Gario]

I liked your take on Worms 2 soundtrack, AnSo... I need to go out and listen to it soon so I can figure out what 'squidgy' means, but when I do I'll learn something new (which is always awesome).

By the way, what is your musicology paper about? I'm always interested in new things when it comes to music - not to mention a swedish take on something (Americans always try to overcomplicate things with their 'experimentalism'...). Person #2 to show interest .

[anosou]

Originally Posted by McVaffe

How the hell did you ever figure out all this crap? This is insane. I'm glad I got into game music after the Super NES era... this crap is so ridiculous (but impressive).

Great read (especially for someone like me - who knows next to nothing about chiptunes) - and I loved how you included the sound files as examples. U get a smiley.

=)

there.

I feel you man, I got interested around PS1 :D

Originally Posted by Gario

I liked your take on Worms 2 soundtrack, AnSo... I need to go out and listen to it soon so I can figure out what 'squidgy' means, but when I do I'll learn something new (which is always awesome).

By the way, what is your musicology paper about? I'm always interested in new things when it comes to music - not to mention a swedish take on something (Americans always try to overcomplicate things with their 'experimentalism'...). Person #2 to show interest .

Thanks, squidgy was a fun word to pick, right? Elastic also works. But you'll see what I mean if you listen

My paper is an analysis of the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon. I do some in-depth analysis (including sheet music transcriptions) of around 10 tracks I feel are representative for the soundtrack as a whole and then talk about how the music works in it's context. Finally presenting some conclusions about the work, typical and/or unique traits for the music and similar stuff.

I was thinking about comparing it to soundtracks from the same genre/era (PS1 JRPGs from the latter half of the 1990's) but that soon got out of hand when the analysis was 9 pages and the paper should be max 10 :D

[Zephyr]

I'd heard this main theme many times, and I always considered it chiptune mastery, but I'd never realized what they were doing on such a tight channel limit! I love this soundtrack too.
Check out some of the other songs if you haven't yet everyone, this one has a sweet melody, and it sound's processed, but I'm not sure if that was even possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J0H5...eature=related

[Moseph]

AnSo, I'd like to read your paper, too. I spent the last two semesters arguing with the musicologists in my classes, and now that summer break is here, I'm beginning to miss what I guess would more properly be termed our "scholarly exchange of ideas."