Jump to content

Video Game Music


Quintus

Recommended Posts

20 minutes ago, Oomoog the Ecstatic said:

There's always lots of extra tracks that I just want to skip

 

With such a big game that would require tons of music to support it, that might by necessity be uninteresting, wouldn't it be part of the territory? I wouldn't see that as a blemish on the score as a whole. It'd be cool if more composers thought in album approach, like what McConnell did with Grim Fandango back in the day, or of course this forum's namesake. Video game soundtrack releases tend to be music dumps more often than not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

It'd be cool if more composers thought in album approach, like what McConnell did with Grim Fandango back in the day, or of course this forum's namesake. Video game soundtrack releases tend to be music dumps more often than not.

 

Although AFAIR the original Grim Fandango album didn't include some nice stuff from the score.

 

In any case, editing is much more of a hard requirement for video game score albums than for film score albums, and the more dynamic the score, the more editing is required to even produce a single linear cue from the numerous assets of a musical "piece" in the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Nick Parker said:

 

 It'd be cool if more composers thought in album approach, like ...this forum's namesake.

It wouldn't  be a problem if they did like Nick Suggested

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm thirty hours into Steins;Gate and love the music. A few years ago a special symphonic arrangement of several of the original tracks was produced:

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If there are any fans of Lena Raine's CELESTE score and also fans of owning video game scores on the CD format, I recently learned the score finally got a physical CD edition 7 months (!) ago and it's sold out, but you can find copies in some places.

 

Official site:

https://shiptoshoremedia.com/products/celeste-original-video-game-soundtrack-cd-collection

 

Places you can buy it as of this posting:

 

https://www.hhv.de/shop/en/item/lena-raine-ost-celeste-complete-cd-collection-718959

https://www.ebay.com/itm/392859542499

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184178071258

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
14 hours ago, Marc said:

My cover of the gorgeous Staff Roll track from (the original) Final Fantasy VII !

WIth the help of about 20 musicians and singers :)

 

 

That was awesome!! Great job to all involved!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
4 hours ago, Arpy said:

Soichi Terada

 

 

I thought that second one was a shoot-em-up game from the sound of it! Damn.

 

'Ve been on a Killer 7 kick lately, for some reason. Some favorites of mine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the best pre-boss music ever:

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I'm really trying hard to find the cut scenes music from Genshin Impact . A lot of them are unreleased on the OST's and I hope someone rips them

 

The final boss is one of the most epic sequences  in a videogame, and I want the music cue

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was the annoying part about the Final Fantasy VII Remake OST album. It was 8 discs long yet still didn't have all the cutscene music. Luckily they are releasing a 4CD Plus OST soon that hopefully has it all. 

 

Because even though there was a squid roms thread with tons of stuff not on the OST, there was no way to get all the cut scene music clean because it was stored in the game files with sound effects 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah, there's plenty of others

 

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/5875-video-game-music-poll-2-final-fantasy/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6904-medal-of-honor/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9095-zelda-theme-music-composition/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9597-great-article-on-zelda-composer/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9838-giacchinos-the-songless-nightingale-moh-frontline/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12586-john-debney-scores-lair/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/17024-medal-of-honor-underground-game/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18014-super-mario-galaxy-the-music/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18303-new-super-mario-bros-wii/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18884-super-mario-galaxy-2-mahito-yokota-and-koji-kondo/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/20043-medal-of-honor-boxset-9-scores-5-giacchino-3-lennertz-and-1-djawadi-on-8-discs/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/20733-the-legend-of-zelda-25th-anniversary-symphony-symphony-of-the-goddesses

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21683-the-official-legend-of-zelda-series-music-thread/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/22158-free-listening-of-final-fantasy-distant-worlds-albums/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/24300-john-debneys-lair-new-2cd-set-la-la-land-records/

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/32805-michael-giacchino-nami-melumads-medal-of-honor-above-and-beyond-2020/

 

etc

 

Feel free to start your own about any score or series you like!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/17/2020 at 9:21 PM, Jay said:

That was the annoying part about the Final Fantasy VII Remake OST album. It was 8 discs long yet still didn't have all the cutscene music. Luckily they are releasing a 4CD Plus OST soon that hopefully has it all. 

 

Because even though there was a squid roms thread with tons of stuff not on the OST, there was no way to get all the cut scene music clean because it was stored in the game files with sound effects 

  it's not the first time where there's a billion c.d. release but the one cue I want is still unreleased in a cut scene.

 

I think general videogame music fans only want the ambient and battle cues and don't notice the best stuff missing from the cut scenes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Treating myself to a nice set of virtual jazz instruments (Swing! and Swing More! by ProjectSAM) as a late Christmas present, I simply had to do this track first. EDIT: Now with more tracks!
 

 

The plan being to give the whole soundtrack this treatment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Does anybody here listen to any video game music podcasts?  Or video game podcasts that occasionally or regularly do episodes about game scores?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh I've come across episodes about them

 

Here's what I do: use the search feature of my podcast app and type in a composers name, and then click Episodes instead of Podcasts so it shows me results from episode titles/descriptions. 

 

This interview with Christopher Larkin about Hollow Knight and some of his other work is great:

 

https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode/335347

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Jay said:

Does anybody here listen to any video game music podcasts?  Or video game podcasts that occasionally or regularly do episodes about game scores?

 

http://www.cinematicsound.net/category/1upbeat/

 

https://www.levelwithemily.com

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/music-respawn-with-kate-remington/id1148686069?mt=2

 

https://pixeltunesradio.com

 

https://www.classicalmpr.org/program/top-score (DEFUNCT BUT STILL AVAILABLE)

 

https://anchor.fm/vgmjourney

 

http://videogamegrooves.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/20/2021 at 10:48 AM, Spider-Fal said:

 

 

This music doesn't strike me, no pun intended, as anything particularly clever. A pretty traditional soundbase for arcade. For me it's about the bigger vision ie. what are we trying to emphasize beyond the obvious? often about the context of intricate, unfolding stories:

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I've just discovered this. It's quite interesting

 

 

On 9/7/2020 at 12:45 AM, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Although AFAIR the original Grim Fandango album didn't include some nice stuff from the score.

 

 

I agree with this, but I have the say the Remastered Sountrack album assembly was much much better.

 

A box set of these of Lucasarts adventure games soundtracks would pretty much be a dream release

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Spider-Fal said:

"Restored" Super Mario World OST using "uncompressed" samples.

 

Oof. I didn't look into their process, but that reverb with the higher quality samples kills it for me. It could just be replicated from the notorious SNES DSP. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, I'm a little slow on the uptake today.  What does "restored using the original samples" mean exactly for these SMW tracks?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

Sorry, I'm a little slow on the uptake today.  What does "restored using the original samples" mean exactly for these SMW tracks?

The idea is that they are rendered using the original samples/synth in a DAW instead of with the SNES soundchip.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But how do they know what "the original" samples are/where?  The music was written specifically for the SNES sound chip right?

Sorry, but I'm going need a better explanation to understand this

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Datamining. Filenames. Comparing with sample names.

 

2 hours ago, Nick Parker said:

 

Oof. I didn't look into their process, but that reverb with the higher quality samples kills it for me. It could just be replicated from the notorious SNES DSP. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Spider-Fal said:

The idea is that they are rendered using the original samples/synth in a DAW instead of with the SNES soundchip.

 

So basically just a software player?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is, I just wanted to make sure if that's what you meant. Interesting that this seems to be used as a mark of quality, when C64 music usually takes pride in recording off the original hardware when possible. (But then the SID was light years ahead of its competition, and many composers used hardware tricks that don't work well on emulators)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't feel bad Marian - Faleel does this frequently; Posting tiny piece of information instead of enough information for anyone to be able to understand what's going on, then when asked for more information by his friends here, just replies with more short answers that still don't explain things, then gets snarky when asked again.

 

I don't think he has any ill intentions, I think he knows all the information in his head, but doesn't care to type it all out for others to get on the same page with him, even when asked nicely.

 

I had to click through a bunch of tweets to finally understand things.

 

If I'm understanding everything properly - which I may not be, and am happy for corrections or addendums to be posted - when Koji Kondo was composing the music on his computer, it was all performed there by various samples that existed at the time.  Due to the technological limitations, the samples all had to be compressed when saved into the SMW cartridge, which altered their sound.

 

As part of the gigaleak, all the source code for Super Mario Advance got out, and inside it they found the names of the samples used for the original Super Mario World.  So now fans are apparently finding those original samples, and re-playing all the cues using those original samples, and the results are being posted to this youtube playlist.

 

This tweet has a WAV file you can download showing how a single note sounds through the SNES sound chip compared to the original sound file it originated as.

 

The part I don't get is if these fan recreations are literally exactly what Koji Kondo wanted things to sound like but the tech at the time altered it after the fact, or if he paid attention to how the altered sounds were happening and adjusted his compositions accordingly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In one of his tweets I found this google doc where they are trying to identify everything for a variety of games, so I guess it isn't just SMW they can do this for

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JJBlHHDc65fhZmKUGLrDTLCm6rfUU83-kbuD8Y0zU0o/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I don't get.... if he paid attention to how the altered sounds were happening and adjusted his compositions accordingly.

I assume that is the the case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Jay said:

The part I don't get is if these fan recreations are literally exactly what Koji Kondo wanted things to sound like but the tech at the time altered it after the fact, or if he paid attention to how the altered sounds were happening and adjusted his compositions accordingly.

 

This seems like a weird distinction to make.  The way I feel is that he wrote the music for the SNES soundchip so of course if there is a such a thing as an "intended score" for a 16-bit videogame like there might be for a film, it would be the music as he realized it for the game.  What makes the original samples interesting isn't that it's how the music is "supposed" to sound, but that we get a glimpse under the hood into Kondo's work process.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Jay said:

In one of his tweets I found this google doc where they are trying to identify everything for a variety of games, so I guess it isn't just SMW they can do this for

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JJBlHHDc65fhZmKUGLrDTLCm6rfUU83-kbuD8Y0zU0o/

Yeah there are similar projects for Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country trilogy

3 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

This seems like a weird distinction to make.  The way I feel is that he wrote the music for the SNES soundchip so of course if there is a such a thing as an "intended score" for a 16-bit videogame like there might be for a film, it would be the music as he realized it for the game.  What makes the original samples interesting isn't that it's how the music is "supposed" to sound, but that we get a glimpse under the hood into Kondo's work process.

Its also nice to hear the music a little less muffled too, while still sounding somewhat like the original, even if there are some offputting elements due to it not really being intended to be heard that way

 

Sort of like playing an older game on an emulator in 4K with updated textures etc. I suppose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Spider-Fal said:

I assume that is the the case.

 

4 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

This seems like a weird distinction to make.  The way I feel is that he wrote the music for the SNES soundchip so of course if there is a such a thing as an "intended score" for a 16-bit videogame like there might be for a film, it would be the music as he realized it for the game.  What makes the original samples interesting isn't that it's how the music is "supposed" to sound, but that we get a glimpse under the hood into Kondo's work process.

 

That's what I though too, but they way these guys talk about it in the tweets and the way the youtube videos are labeled ("restored") makes me think that they think that they are creating how it was "supposed" to sound but just couldn't be realized this way at the time.


But I think like you, that Koji Kondo paid attention to how it sounded after compression and made everything exactly how he wanted for that version of the sound.

 

But I guess we have no way of definitively knowing?

 

 

3 minutes ago, Spider-Fal said:

Its also nice to hear the music a little less muffled too, while still sounding somewhat like the original

 

Sort of like playing an older game on an emulator in 4K with updated textures etc. I guess.

 

Yea, I guess it is somewhat like that, though a bit more drastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK I listened to the entire youtube playlist

 

Well, I found it to be an inferior listen to the original version!

 

It sounds "fake", like it's just a quickie DAW output without any mastering or anything, and like it was performed somewhat rote-ly instead of naturally.  I have no idea if this actually is the original files just played with different samples or if they had to re-perform everything, but that's how it sounded to me.

 

I think the best way to describe it is it lacks the "charm" of the original score.  It's just, missing *something*.

 

Granted, my nostalgia for knowing how the originals sound for the past 30 years could be playing a role here, and I fully admit that.

 

Oh, and listening on youtube, I realized that what we're really doing is trading in SNES compression for youtube compression, which makes the whole excercise a little silly.  But then after reading more tweets I realized that there's a download link to a lossless FLAC in the comment of each upload.

 

Overall, it is a pretty neat curiosity, though.  Maybe with more care and mastering they could result in high quality versions of the original score that doesn't sound "different", just "clearer"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its also possible that they will be updated, quite a few tracks fron Jammin Sam Millers Donkey Kong Country trilogy project went through several releases:

 

Early:

Updated:

Early:

Updated:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lol, Google just recommended this article to me and it perfectly explains the project, none of us would have been confused if it was posted at the start of all this! 

 

https://www.polygon.com/2021/2/5/22268601/super-mario-world-soundtrack-restored-remaster-gigaleak

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.