An Ode To Gaming Music

1up.com's never ending flow of excellent features has turned up a piece celebrating gaming music at its finest. The article delves into the past of gaming music and talks about the realities of today's soundscape. From the article: "Along with Space Channel 5's tracks, Katamari Damacy is one of the best examples of what musicians are doing with compressed audio today. Each song is lengthy enough so as not to repeat itself during the 5 to 6 minute stages in the game, and composer Yu Miyake let his imagination run riot, running the gamut of musical styles from introspective electronic music to big-band swing to power ballads to lounge singing. Just like its namesake, the disparate styles all clump together to form something awesome that's worth experiencing even outside the context of the game. "

As a snes gamer

[BlackCobra43]

I could listen to the OST to Final Fantasy 6 for hours. Same for Chrono Trigger. Those games had rich soundtracks. It's good to see some modern games still have "the touch" when ti comes to making great gaming music.

NWN

[ike6116]

IMO the best music I have ever heard in a game came from Jeremey Soule [jeremysoule.com] he did the music for Neverwinter Nights.

favorites

[owlman17]

Music from the 80s Bard's Tale trilogy were classics. And you could even choose. This was from a time when music was rare on PC games. (Before Adlib/soundblaster came out.)

On a more recent note, I enjoyed the industrial cuts from C&C, KKND2 and Quake. The terran themes from Starcraft are also cool. I sure wish AAA gaming companies regularly came out with soundtracks that accompanied their titles, like OSTs for movies, so I wouldn't have to go thru the extra step of painstakingly trying to extract them.

(Once in a while, I drive people crazy here at home by playing the background music of the Sims over and over. Makes the real thing seem like a game.)

band that specialises in gameing music

[ArsonSmith]

They are a very popular band at the clubs here in Phoenix:

http://minibosses.com/ [minibosses.com]

They even have some MP3s you can download.

What about no music at all?

[nherm]

Yes, vg music is very important to create the game atmosphere, but sometimes silence and some sound fx are enough...

I'm thinking on Half-Life I, sure it had an occasional music between stages, but for example the first monster scene (the tentacles), with the metalic sound of the beatings and the chewbacca-like roars were enough to keep the tension up.

Another example is duke3d. When I installed it I didn't set up the midi output, so I didn't know it had music during the game. It was not necessary at all.

Anyway, these two games are examples with good quality sound effects (echoes at closed rooms when shooting, ambient effects...). Maybe sound effects can replace music in FPS games, while in RPG games music can be more important.

Re:are you stating this from experience?

[lanswitch]

No, i read it in a magazine for pro- musicians. They gave this as an advice for aspiring pro's who are trying to get into the business because they love music. It's a (relatively) well-known fact in the business that (large) record companies are only interested in concepts, not bands or music. it's far more profitable for record companies to sell britney spears to children, than trying to discover the next beatles. If you want to sell your music without selling out, you have a far better chance in the game industry because the people over there actually listen to the music itself. you don't have to be a mtv-artist when you write game soundtracks, it's all about the music.