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It's funny that you chose this one as an example of a typical town theme, especially since it contains some elements like synthesized drum beats that usually are not found in town themes in JRPGs. Especially the beginning part gives me more of a "Save Screen" vibe than a town. Later on, the peaceful melody and selection of harmonies and melodic lines clearly is more "peaceful town", but still I think for example Kakariko Village from Zelda: A Link to the Past is a better example of stereotypical "town themes". I think the main aspect of JRPG town themes is that there is no sense of threat audible in the music. The songs are usually downtempo, have some beautiful melodies played on serene, soothing instruments. They often have some kind of strings/pads for the chords to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere, and the chords are predominantly major ones. When there are too many minor chords in there it mutates more into a love/sadness theme, so the major chords play a major role here (no pun intended Instrumentation is also a very important aspect, as town themes usually have little to no percussion in them. If anything, it's some light stuff like shakers or tambourines. There are of course examples like Secret of Mana's town theme, but that one also has a very happy vibe to it because of its jumpy melody and cute instrumentation. Generally the instruments are non-threatening in nature. Harsh sounds like electric guitars, heavy drums or deep basses/brass are usually left out to create a more natural, soft mood that doesn't feel too dramatic. The song structure is also usually more predictable, so the player gets the feeling they know the place and there will be no surprises, and they can feel right at home without fearing any threatening dangers or battles. I think those are the main ingredients to create a typical JRPG town theme that fits into all those classic games.

The People's Remix Competition 306 PRCv12-20 Hello everyone and Welcome to the People's Remix Competition! Last round, nobody won so I decided to pick a source myself. I might do a short remix of the SMW2 source this week. Source: Blaster Master (NES) - Level 8 MIDI MIDI 2 Youtube Link Source Information ThaSauce link: Click here to submit To submit a song at the compo page a ThaSauce account is required. If anyone has problems with registering or uploading the song to ThaSauce, please upload the song somewhere else and post a download link in the thread. I recommend Soundcloud, don't forget to allow downloads to enable me to upload the song at ThaSauce. To register and submit, do the following. Click the ThaSauce link. Click the 'You are not logged in' button in the upper right. Click on 'register' (at the bottom). Read the terms and click 'I agree to these terms'. If you don't agree with them, upload the song somewhere else and post a download link as mentioned above (by doing that, you allow me to upload the song at ThaSauce. Continue the process by filling in your information. A confirmation mail will be send. There might be some issues with it (meaning that you don't get it), if that is the case, upload the song somewhere else as described above. Once registered, login with your username and password, go to the mentioned page and submit the song. If you want submit two or more songs you can create multiple ThaSauce accounts or upload the song somewhere else and post the download link. PRC instructions Limitations at ThaSauce require your entry to be 20 MB or less in size. Length for length's sake and MIDI rips are not allowed (only as Bonus Mixes). Entries must be posted in the ThaSauce link by Wednesday October 7th 2015 at 10:59 am ThaSauce time (17:00 UTC, 18:00 GMT), check the ThaSauce page for the exact time left. Two days extension. You may enter as many mixes as you like and work with as many people as you like on each mix. You are free to create a second ThaSauce account for that, it's needed to be able to upload a second remix. You can also upload it somewhere else and put a download link in this thread Do not make qualitative comments on an entry until the results of the vote have been posted in this thread. Mixers cannot vote for themselves but if they vote they recieve a free first place vote added onto their score. The winner of this round may select the source for PRC307. The winner of last round can only take part by submitting a bonus mix. You can find the full rules list at this page as well. GOOD LUCK! PRC ThaSauce Home Page!

I've used this as an example of game music studies often as a speaker and organizer of panels, and I want to kick off this forum's discussion by putting this question to everyone. First, listen to what in my opinion is the most "towny" theme of any piece of game music: Ragnarok Online's "Theme to Prontera." I have suggested to music scholars and friends alike that I could play this piece of music for just about anyone with any amount of gaming experience and they'd know it's a town theme from some kind of Japanese RPG. My questions to you all: Why is this the case? Is there something quintessential about this particular piece of music, or would it work with, say, the Lufia II town theme just as easily? There's a lot of tonic going on, but imo there's more to it than that, and I'd love to pin some specific characteristics onto various jRPG town themes to help connect them. You could replace "town" with "battle," "field," etc. and it still mostly works -- the rest of the Ragnarok Online soundtrack continues to conform to this notion of musical location quite nicely. Other related questions to consider: Can we identify a piece of game music as "from a jRPG" more generally, and if so, what elements do those tracks share? Is it important to consider that first word in the jRPG acronym -- Japanese -- more strongly than the rest of this post has done? I'd love to hear some thoughts!

The winner of last round won't have a vote that counts twice this time.