Nabeel Ansari

My mixing process has (d)evolved from: Get inspiration, work on remix for a week or two, getting feedback from my friends like Zircon and Willrock To: Get assigned to do remix for [x] project directed by DarkeSword Procrastinate for months Stay up until 5AM doing mix before due date ??? Done!

Seems like chorus and strings = film score style and apparently that is bad?

I see the expanding texture of VGM as a good thing. The fact that every song no longer has to be a catchy melody with a triangle bass line allows for better narrative elements. The Darksiders II soundtrack is melodic, but doesn't really have any fantastic traditional melodies (all right, it has a few, Abyssal Plains and Crowfather are pretty great). It's the combination of timbre and rhythm that made it have its identity. It's not anything compositionally amazing, but it is an amazing soundtrack nonetheless. It is unique and each track has its own place in the narrative. I listened to it at least 50 times before ever actually playing the game. It boils down to your taste in music. If you only actually like and ever liked game music, of course you're not going to like non-catchy music. But with expanding types of gameplay and narrative means catchy music isn't always appropriate. We're not playing many side scrollers and straight up turn based RPG's anymore. I do agree the generic factor that comes into play with very popular genres (FP shooters). The market is saturated with games that are all the same, which gives the illusion that game composers are writing the same music over and over again out of laziness when it's actually the market genre diversity. I think the problem is modern games, not specifically "game music lost its way". If we saw more, in AAA, turn-based RPG's, side scrollera, isometric games (Pokemon still has good music, surprised no one said that), we would see the catchy music comeback, because it's appropriate there. Of course this won't ever happen.

I played the NES a lot when I was little just like everybody else.

The oldest game music I ever listen to in original form is SNES. NES sounds just don't do it for me.

It's too good, it doesn't count.

The point is that if you're going to say that modern game examples are cherry picked (as everyone who is trying to assert that VG Music has "lost its way" are doing to save their argument), you also have to acknowledge that examples of what game music "used to be" are also cherry picked. That is what Shrack is saying. The claim that modern good music is rare is equally as unsubstantiated as the claim that bad old game music is rare.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay I like your voice.

Then make a thread and ask for recommendations of melodic modern game soundtracks. You'll be met with lots and lots of replies.

Do you not understand the concept of market saturation? "Great music" (as you define it) isn't shrinking. It's actually growing. There's also a proportionately larger number of games with ambient soundtracks (which for some reason people think is a bad thing). You're looking at a ratio but asserting it as absolute value. If a man eats two apples and four bananas, that's not a big difference. If he eats 4 apples and 8 bananas, the ratio difference is exactly the same, but he still ate more apples than he did before, and eat more bananas than apples than he did before, but it's the same ratio. Bingo ^

This isn't quite true. You don't need an instrument for each of these things, you simply need to fill the roles. Good solo piano music, for example, fills all of these roles. Texture doesn't care about what specific instruments you have, it cares about the abstract functions of voices. More independent voices is fuller. In homophonic music, the general definition is "melody with harmonic rhythmic support". This can be a wailing guitar with rhythms and bass support, it could be a piano right hand with left hand support, it could be a flute and violin section with brass and low string support, it could be an ocarina with a lute support. What matters is the number of independent voices, not necessarily the number of instruments. Since powerchords are monophonic (parallel movement), you would only really see that as one voice. The bass line usually plays only one note at a time, that's another voice. Lead singer or guitar is another voice. Percussion isn't usually tonal, so it's just rhythmic support. Similarly, you can write multiple independent voices on one instrument, like piano (properly voice-lead chords can be two, three, or even four voices at a time, and that doesn't include right hand), and still have it be full. The more tonally and texturally complex something is, the more it must be concentrated on to appreciate and enjoy, which is why it is more unapproachable to someone who doesn't really care about theory or musicology. Simplistic orchestral music is done so in a way where there is a lot of parallel movement (reducing a lot of components to be thought of as one collective voice, which is more easily recognized by the ear). If all the sections of an orchestra were contrapuntally imposed on one another, things would get very complicated very quickly (actually I think you would still need to have parallel movement in places, because there are more sections than notes in the scale). It would sound fantastical, but nothing you could hum.

Stop generalizing. You're just trolling at this point. What I just quoted has been debunked through this entire thread and yet you still continue saying it with a straight face.

All game music is generic except for the game music that isn't. We've reached a very profound conclusion. You should read the thread, you'll find pretty much everything you said has been addressed.

I very much disagree. A game composer's job by definition is to write music to fit a game. It's not to write music that he can also release as an album on iTunes.

We do, and if you paid attention to the multitudes of examples posted in this thread, you would plainly see that. As already stated, strong melody kind of music is INAPPRPORIATE in certain types of narratives and settings, which is why more ambient and atmospheric music is employed because the trend of mainstream gaming has been gravitating towards: -violence -large narrative -epic scenes If you listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, for example, you will hear some pretty good melodies. They'll also be completely outnumbered by more atmospheric and less thematic music used in the film. This is true with a game like Assassin's Creed 4. It has a lot of good melodies, but also a lot of less melodic music. Why? It's a very large narrative with a lot of tracks, and if every track played during every part of the game had a strong catchy melody, it would distract from the game itself. You didn't have this problem with a game like Mega Man 2 because it is literally JUMP N' SHOOT MAN There's nothing to the game other than jumping and shooting. Play the game on mute, it will not be nearly as enjoyable. Like stated previously, old games relied on their music to convey mood and setting because they didn't have voiceover dialog, VFX, the capacity for recorded and rendered sound design (instead of oscillating a white noise generator and calling it an airplane). Game audio is more complex and more ambitious than it has ever been. Strong homophonic music has taken a back seat in so-called "most" of the mainstream games because it just isn't appropriate for the kinds of games these are compared to old games.

Your nostalgic favor for strongly homophonic music prompts you to dismiss music of other texture as "forgettable". All you're doing is showing lack of understanding on the role of audio in a moving picture. See past posts by Rama, Derrit, Moseph, etc. Though I will agree that there are subpar composers in game audio, just as there also were way back when. No, personal taste doesn't allow you to dismiss something as generic simply because it is not texturally homophonic. You completely missed the point of what I was saying. I know this because you took what I said so completely literally that you didn't even bother thinking about what I said. Sound design is an art form. It is not a copout or lazy subset of music composition. It is a separate art form in its entirety, and judging good sound design (which games only started having AFTER hardware limitations were lifted) by principles of homophonic music is like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.

Reminds of this: Mario - Tchaikovsky -

What are you talking about? The scene of NES Mario walking on bricks with a pastel blue sky really spoke to my heart.

How does that NOT STICK?! That is as melodic and catchy as Mario music gets.

Also, I am really depressed no one has mentioned Paper Mario 3DS's soundtrack. It's all live jazz, with plenty of really catchy melodies with great accompaniment and performance too. Also, Kingdoms of Amalur is pretty great. Sounds a bit Howard Shore, Lord of the Rings style, done by Grant Kirkhope.

My response to instances of sharing the article: If you don't think game music is melodic or memorable anymore, you really just don't play a lot of games and as a result you don't really know what you're talking about. Also, most people are forgetting that the game market is saturated A.F. Just because everyone and their grandma is making video games doesn't mean people aren't making games with good music anymore. There's just a lot of different kinds next to them because: more games need more composers, more composers means more opportunities for different approaches to game music. Also means more people who didn't compose back in the 80s and 90s for games so they don't enforce such a horizontal emphasis in their music. It doesn't make it bad or forgettable music, and if it does to you, you don't know how to appreciate music to its fullest and your opinions are naive. Pointing out what the guy in the article said, it summed up to "music without a catchy melody is forgettable". Which is just... hilarious. And honestly, when people complain that sometimes game parts don't have music, they're forgetting that sometimes silence is the best music. For example, if you have a strong melody during a really intense, suspenseful moment in a narrative, it will actually detract from the scene and destroy it. I just watched a movie last night, called The Raid. There is almost no music or background sound design of any kind, and that design choice makes it possibly the most incredibly edge-of-your-seat suspenseful movie I've ever seen. Agreed, to reiterate: catchy music is inappropriate in a lot of contexts.

Names they make sense (not trying to be crass, just agreeing with you) Also, I personally am fond of Mixolydian. It's major without the leading tone, which makes some really nice progressions. The v7 (minor 7th chord built on 5^) resolution to I is one of my favorite chord movements next to V - i.

Not really jazz theory, actually I think only a small amount of jazz theory has been covered here. We've been focusing on secondary dominance, modes, and modulations, and these things are all centuries old. But yes, it is a nice grab bag of theory tidbits from multiple perspectives.

Quick rundown: Diatonic scale - C major Ionian starts on C Dorian starts on D Phrygian starts on E Lydian starts on F Mixolydian starts on G Aeolian starts on A Locrian starts on B Sure, you know this already (I think). But look at the scale patterns, just by comparing D dorian to D minor, E phrygian to E minor, F Lydian to F major, etc.: Ionian - Major Dorian - Minor with a raised 6^ (thus affecting all chords with 6^) - no leading tone, dominant must raise the 7th for strong leading Phrygian - Minor with a lowered 2^ (thus affecting all chords with 2^) - no leading tone, dominant must raise the 7th for strong leading Lydian - Major with a raised 4th (thus affecting all chords with 4^) Mixolydian - Major with a lowered 7^ (thus affecting all chords with 7^) - no leading tone, dominant must raise the 7th for strong leading Aeolian - Natural minor - no leading tone, dominant must raise the 7th for strong leading Locrian - Phrygian with a lowered 5^, or minor with a lowered 2^ and 5^. You can not resolve in Locrian mode (the 5th of the tonic chord is flat, and therefore a tritone), so I advise you don't tonicize with a Locrian scale, or if you do, leave out the flat 5^ (or raise it when resolving). Back centuries in the days of modal music, Locrian didn't even exist for that reason. It was recognized more recently out of desire to name an all naturals scale starting on B.

If you can read music fine, then look up 4-part voice leading. It is the most naturally intuitive way to study 7th chord and triad functions. The reason voice leading is important is because if you just played these chords on the keyboard in closed root position, the chord functions actually become destroyed. For example: In a 7th chord, the 7th interval tone of that chord resolves downward by step, but it never appears that way unless you just play the straight 7th chord that's a scale step downward. If you don't resolve each tone of the chord in its own right (hence "voice leading", treating each "voice" in the chord as its own line that leads to the next note), you get a disjunct resolution and it's not as harmonically rich. If you can't read music well enough, I do suggest learning, but if you don't want to, I'm not sure if there are many resources that demonstrate these principles in piano roll. Generally intervals have almost no meaning in the piano roll (a diminished 7th and a major 6th look the same for example, so it's harder to identify the functions of what you're dealing with), and intervals are really important in voice leading. I have been there so many times.