PriZm

Hey folks, it's been years (decades?)! I'd stopped doing music for a while but got back into it recently and made an instrumental rock guitar album with strong retro video game influences. Allow me the shamelessly plug it @: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1J4ORYXownWtYqcNjVevdm Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/album/un-autre-adieu/1681984400 YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/search?q=Pascal+Jette+Un+Autre+Adieu Or delete this if this is against guidelines ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I might be able to help you. let me know your preferred method and I'll get it for you.

I want to add that no matter how talented you are at something, you are going to hit a plateau at some point. In that case, talent can actually be a hindrance. If progress has always come easily to you, it's easy to get frustrated once you hit that plateau. But in order to be truly great, you have to overcome it.

I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I could never be a singer even if I practiced non-stop. Unlike this girl: EDIT: unless you're trying to learn a language, I think age doesn't really matter. There are some notorious late-bloomers in pretty much every field. If you have the talent, the age at which you started practicing/learning doesn't really matter if you work hard!

Everybody bitches about it. Just not always on the internet. You shouldn't assume that news that are popular on the internet are necessarily representative of the real world. But I agree that it's just 'cool' right now to hate on capcom and there is no real reason they are any worse than any other company other that a few testimonials and (very) vocal megaman fans. EDIT: I agree that the Megaman 1 soundtrack is awesome. Cutman?

Something being subjective doesn't mean that there aren't patterns that will be globally more appreciated. It doesn't mean opinions will vary wildly and randomly either. I believe music, like any other art, is about intention. If you write a piece by randomly throwing notes on a sheet and your intention was to be as random as possible, then you just wrote a good piece! Whether it is interesting to other people is another question, though. Your paragraph gave me the impression that you think that music as an art form has been improving in (at least) the past few centuries. If there is such a thing as 'improving' music, why indeed listen to what was written in the past since what is written today is better anyways? Did I misunderstand what you meant? The reason I think people are learning music theory (and even practicing technique) is because it gives them more vocabulary. If you listen to a Beethoven song, for example, and there is a part of the song that you really like and you want to replicate the feeling it gives you while trying to be original, you need theory to be able to know why the song made you feel this way and how to structure your own. All the rules exist because they give people the necessary vocabulary to express their vision, their intention. Interesting aside: all the people I know who have undergone serious formal music training have become less elitist (for lack of a better word) as they learned. I think all the criteria you have identified that make a song good are a good example of intention. When I listen to metal, I like my drums and guitars loud because I think metal expresses 'in-your-faceness' and I get frustrated when it sounds weak. Of course, there could be a way to pull off metal with weak drums that would be nice. I have a dubious literary analogy but I think it will get the point across. Let's say I want to express that my character is very angry. The phrase "He was so angry that he wanted to shout at everyone, even strangers!" is pretty weak. Why? Because my intention was to illustrate that someone was extremely angry, but the weakness of the 'shout at everyone' part kinda defeats the whole intention. Regarding complexity, let's just say I completely disagree. I don't think repetition is inherently bad and that avoiding repetition in your song makes it harder to write and therefore better. I don't think there is a 'perfect' amount of reverb or panning for every sound in a mix either. Look at the Judge Decision subforum, you'll often see them arguing about what they liked or didn't in a song. To answer my own question, I personally like Terra's theme more than The Dance of Eternity. Does that make me "wrong"? It's objectively less complex, has 'cheap' sounds (i.e. low production complexity) and pretty flat dynamics. I just like the melody because I think it's beautiful. Also, don't fuck around.

In an ideal world, I would agree with you. However, I think you are neglecting the political approach in favor of the academic one. The only thing we know for certain is that she wants to mitigate the prevalence of the damsel in distress trope. What better way than to stir up heated discussions about the issue, where you obviously have the moral high ground? Preaching to the choir, yes, but you are enforcing already existing ideas and making the group more vocal. You're giving ammunition to major media outlets; I wouldn't be surprised at all if game reviewers started to bring up tired usage of the damsel in distress trope in their reviews because of her videos or, more specifically, because of the online attention that they've had. That's why I was saying that being vague is beneficial. It reaches all people who feel strongly about sexism in general, whether the argument itself is strong or not. It doesn't even matter if you're right or wrong, because people are much more emotional about an issue like sexism than about preserving artistic license in video games. It's certainly not intellectually honest, and I'm not even saying that Anita is doing this on purpose. But to me, it sure seems to be more effective than a reasonable, academic discussion. Also, remember that we're talking about internet forums, where smarmy, vague, accusatory one liners generally get a lot more attention than honest discussions.

I stand by what I said, but 'mind-bending' was probably a poor choice of words on my part. It's too subjective; now I could give you any example and you could answer that it doesn't correspond to your definition of the word. I personally consider any song that changes time signature every bar 'mind-bendingly complex'. Your statement is pretty condescending in that it seems you are assuming that I would need to learn a lot to understand what complexity is. The problem I have with trying to justify what you like is that there will always be exceptions to your arbitrarily self-imposed rules. Is Dance of Eternity a better song than Terra's theme? No? It's (a lot) more complex, sound quality is much better and more original, etc. There is no such thing as a good song or a bad song, no matter how many variables you try to quantify them with. Only things that you like and things that you dislike.

Does it matter at all anyways, business-wise? There are massive threads about how Call of Duty or Madden or mobile gaming sucks and yet the sales are always very high. I don't think there a sizable amount of people who would actually boycott a game because a developer/publisher agrees with Anita. On the other hand, I can see how people would buy a game to support a developer/publisher who speaks openly about being on Anita's side. It sucks how you can't disagree with her without being dismissed as sexist or that you can't agree with her without being labeled a white knight (or is it feminazi? I forget) but that's just how things work for now. In her defense, being polarizing is a very effective way to get your message across. If her argument was more reasonable, it probably wouldn't be nearly as talked about as it is now. Even though I don't really care about her position, if her objective was to draw attention to the trope and spark up discussions, it was very skillfully done. From a philosophical standpoint, her analysis is deeply flawed. From a communications/PR standpoint (which has, as of now, more pragmatic uses), it was well done. For example, I think your (djpretzel) argument is very well constructed, but even if I accept it, what am I going to do? Wait for more research? On the other hand, if I agree with Anita, I'm going to demand equality, be outraged, and act on it. I think in this case, being vague is actually beneficial. Since her analysis doesn't present research and is scoped pretty widely, people associate her message with sexism at large. You've seen it in this thread, and I am sure on several other forums. Disagreeing with her means you're denying that sexism exist (at large) or that you want to 'cling' to your patriarchal agenda!

Well I was trying to avoid the notion of artistic license, since I think we've covered the subject pretty thoroughly. I just meant if you consider a game as a product, something that you want to sell. In the case of Spelunky, I don't think sex, or 'male power fantasies' (whatever that means) was a main factor in the game's appeal. So regardless of social progress or ethical implications, siding with Anita just makes business sense. In this context, you get sympathy from a currently very vocal group, coverage from video game tabloids and forums, and the backlash seems very minimal; not every decision is driven by personal ethics. I'm not pretending to read Derek's mind. He might have genuinely been convinced by Anita's arguments, but I'm saying that in his situation, it would simply be a bad business idea to publicly disagree with her.

Doesn't it simply makes business sense to be on Anita's 'side'? I mean, I think most people who disagree strongly with Anita don't care as much, in the sense that they wouldn't base purchase of a game on political grounds. It would be pretty ridiculous anyways, to refuse to buy a game because it does NOT feature a damsel in distress. As you said, what he said was good PR.

The problem I have with this is how do you quantify how hard a song was to make? It's easy to write a song of mind-bending complexity, with time signatures changing every bar, modulations, tempo changes, etc. and it's much harder to write a simple song that works and that people will appreciate. I'm honestly surprised that this attitude seems to be so prevalent within people who like to listen to songs from video games. Most of the most appreciated video games song are pretty simple. Exactly. It's almost as if music was used as a fashion statement instead of appreciated for the art form itself.

Holy shit that was awesome, thank you! I've never understood why you would need to validate your tastes by trying to find objective metrics by which a song, or a genre, would be good. To me, it's as simple as: "do I like it?". Who cares whether a song was hard to make, whether it uses presets, whether it's complex, whether it's only popular because it's a fad?

No, it is only cross-save unfortunately

I was kinda expecting that by the end of the third video, she would have explored how the presence of the trope affects our psychology. Because when I hear: "it reinforces the idea that women need to be sheltered", I want to know how. How does exposure to a recurring trope in some form of media really influence the way we think? I know that violence in media has been subject to a lot of controversy (and for much longer) and, so far, I haven't found any conclusive research that demonstrates that exposure to violence in video games (which is much more prevalent than so-called "sexist" tropes) makes people more violent. Therefore, I'm wondering how toxic this damsel in distress trope really is. It seems that she is pulling stuff out of her ass and relies a whole lot about the fact that her arguments 'seem to make sense' instead of presenting valid scientific evidence. Some people are undeniably offended by this trope, but by not presenting it as a genuine issue and not explaining the ramifications she talks about, she fails to make me care.