Poll: Video Game Music- Loud Racket or Beautiful Sounds?!
Question: What are your opinions on this music that older adults love yet musicians love playing. I want full detail.
Please check these links after answering:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Wyf081J...
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Answers: What are your opinions on this music that older adults love yet musicians love playing. I want full detail.
Please check these links after answering:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Wyf081J...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGmHlviVW...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eos3EtVC9...
I'd argue that game music isn't classical music...yet.
There have been many pieces of music within the classical music canon which originated as works written for theater, dance, film, and other genres. Mendelssohn's music to "A Midsummer's Night Dream" would be an obvious example, and so would such 20th century pieces like Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky" cantata (from a film score) and Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story" (from the Broadway musical.) An even more recent example would be Karl Jenkins's "Shadows" (for string ensemble; originally written for a TV commercial.)
What makes works like the above considered "classical music" and not "film music" or "Broadway" is their transformation into the classical symphonic medium.
If you played the entire score of West Side Story with the singers in a live setting, you would be doing a concert staging of a musical. But when Joshua Bell plays arrangements of those songs as a piece for violin and orchestra, changes are made to the content of the music which transform the work from a musical to a piece of classical instrumental music.
Similarly, the music for Final Fantasy IV, played in the context of a video game, is video game music. The same music adapted and developed (and structurally changed) to make it a classical instrumental piece turn the work into classical music.
However, there are three reasons why most musicians today don't consider the above paragraph to be true:
1.) Most classical musicians aren't gamers and hence don't have a frame of reference to consider the genre. As you can see by the above answers, this is mostly true, but slowly changing.
2.) A piece of classical music needs to have withstood the test of time for it to be considered as a legitimate expression in the art form. "Porgy and Bess" wasn't considered to be an opera by many classical musicians until fairly recently, and if there were a YA! board in 1960, and someone had asked about West Side Story being classical music, the answers would have overwhelmingly been that it is Broadway, not classical, and any question about the "Symphonic Dances" would have been greeted with thumbs down and prompts of "this is not classical music." (Plus ca change,...)
3.) Most symphonic arrangements of video game music aren't particularly well done or well conceived. Mendelssohn's "Midsummers..." music, played in its original form with no cuts or rearrangements, is not terribly exciting to listen to, but when developed into an orchestra suite, it becomes sublime and beautiful.
Compare that to the examples you posted above: the music is well orchestrated and exciting for the first minute or so to listen to, but then becomes repetitive (as is the nature of the music: you need to have long looped sections to fill up time while playing on a particular level.) The pieces do not contain enough internal variation to succeed as classical works (where you need to hold a listener's interest for long stretches of time, beyond a minute or two.)
Hence, we are listening to game music in its early stage of the art form. (Imagine having to evaluate the success of the opera genre in 1750 or the success of rap in 1982.) As composers become more sophisticated (and as game memory expands to the point where more and more music can be included in the final product), you will see and hear game music that will very much compare favorably with classical music currently being written.
And when those compositions are successfully developed into classical works of longer duration and complexity (like in the Mendelssohn and Bernstein compositions), you will see game music arrangements considered a legitimate part of the classical repertoire instead of a novelty item.
Beautiful sounds like in Buster's Hidden Treasure, Toejam and Earl, Sonic the hedgehog, and Spyro make the game.
It all depends on the game... I prefer loud racket due to the fact that most the games I like have loud racket. But most good games interchange the two
This is an interesting question. I enjoy most types of music, but particularly orchestral compositions.
One thing I find notable is that I've been trying for months to complete a Top 10 list of video game music for my youtube account, and a Top 10 list of musicals as well. They're both very, very hard. But for different reasons.
The reason the Musicals list is so hard is because there are so many good musicals out there: it's very difficult to find a top 10, let alone put anyone in front of another.
The reason the Video Game Scores list is difficult? There isn't enough to fill up the list. 99% of what's out there is drivel. I've scoured the internet and come up with Kingdom Hearts, Halo, World of Warcraft, and managed to *force myself* to add Final Fantasy to the list.
So, all in all, I'd say that modern Video Game Music is mostly bad for listening: but good composers can do a good job of complimenting the gameplay. Older video game music is more for entertainment: because they are not "bad", per se, but still simple enough that they are respected and arranged so frequently for their nostalgic properties.
I don't think this question has anything to do with classical music. I would dispute the notion that older adults love this music, certainly those who are classical music aficianados.
video game music is not really classical music. The only reason orchestras are playing them is to try to draw in the younger generations.
I honestly love a lot of game music. But here's the catch: it is NOT classical music. Just like film music isn't classical. Game music is in its own category. YES, it borrows from classical idioms and practice, but it isn't classical. I really love the orchestra Zelda theme and the live opera + symphony for the opening of FFVIII but again, not classical.
A lot of older classical music lovers don't like this kind of music I find. But I game occasionally and I've bought CDs based on my playtime.
Some of the music, however, is racket. Like those chocobo themes? ACK!
~Lisa