I have a question for you as I was just told my musical style was "too Japanese."

[Fratto]

So, I looked around on youtube and in my personal music collection for music from western games, and to my surprise most of them have that Japanese sound too! The only soundtracks that stand out as being obviously North American are rock oriented ones (Command & Conquer for example, or liscensed soundtracks), NARPGs with atmospheric soundtracks (Diablo, Oblivion) and games with super cinematic music (Prey, Killzone, etc).

That's because this whole thing is silly. They're going to accuse him of having Japanese sounding music, but they Japanese music they're accusing him of sounding like uses synths and Western instruments based on a set of mostly Western of harmonics.

Yeah, Strike, it sounds like your music is ripped off of the Japanese music that was ripped off of Western music. The complaint is lame.

[Mustin]

I think it sounds Japanese because of the mallet sounds. The descending mallet sound in the first track, the rocking chair arpeggio in the second, the mallet melody at 2:32, the melody at 3:46 sounds especially Japanese to me (closer to the pentatonic scale), the tune at 4:54 just totally reminds me of Streets of Rage, which is very Japanese, and the last tune has the same pentatonic-sounding thing going on for me in the sax towards the end of the video (and sorta sounds like Contra III: The Alien Wars to me, which is also very Japanese).

So... yeah. I think it's those mallet sounds, coupled with your melodies seemingly never taking jumps of more than two or three steps. You kinda stay close to going up and down the scales, which sounds Asian to me (think of the melody to "Cherry Blossoms" and the Chinese tune - what's the name of that, anyway - it's China's Theme in Super Dodge Ball).

Not a bad thing. Some cool stuff in there. Glad I listened. Keep up the good work!

[Strike911]

Alright, well, thanks everyone. This thread has been enlightening as well as far too kind. I appreciate all the feedback, insight, and observations into everything.