How Video Games Changed Popular Music | Hacker News Reader

How Video Games Changed Popular Music

newyorker.com

58 pointssimulate26 comments

The article goes from adoration of few particular video game composers/engineers (not undeserved one, mind you), to presenting few tidbits that attempt to show very tentative link to pop music and blowing it up to "changed popular music" doesn't do justice to either creative genres.

One just needs to listen to few Japanese synthpop bands from the 70s like P-Model or Yellow Magic Orchestra to see which direction stream of influence was flowing back then. I'm pressed very hard to believe that bleeps and blops of the 70s arcade cabinets impressed any musician, when you had much more powerful tools to do synthesis far more advanced and relatively inexpensive. After its peak in the late 80s, as far as pop music was concerned, synth went in sort of hiatus, to come back slowly in last decade or less, and still, bleeps and blops are just a single drawer in an immense cabinet of instruments employed.

I admit not to play too many games recently, but from what I've seen in AAA titles, it's dominated with bland orchestral ambientals. There's still no adaptive phrasing, AI composition, and really no intelligence behind it all. The medium holds immense potential, but I'm still waiting for it to unlock itself. We had serialism (though I don't enjoy it myself) almost 100 years ago. What's the hold-up?

I hope this doesn't fall under gratuitous negativity. I just don't see it.

> I hope this doesn't fall under gratuitous negativity. I just don't see it.

I agree. I love chiptunes and the demoscene to death, but people (nostalgically) overstate their influence and underestimate the musical ability of early video game designers.

The simple fact is that the space of video games and pop music is too damn large to nail down any large veins in 11 paragraphs. Since about 1992, there has been so much activity in this space fueled by technological advances in audio hardware and software driving composition, publishing, synthesis, gameplay, etc. that a dissertation could be written about every five year period over the last 25 years.

The VGM world has taken at least three major shifts since SMB. 1. The shift to using whole mp3 tracks, a la PS1. 2. The shift to multi-track recorded audio, instead of chiptune/wave synthesis. 3. The shift to dynamically generated audio (see SSX for great examples). The first quite simply was pop music (with a techno edge). The second certainly lagged pop music. The third one has nothing to do with pop music.

> bleeps and blops of the 70s arcade cabinets impressed any musician,

agree.

> still no adaptive phrasing, AI composition,

It doesn't exactly exist, but there is at least adaption through bringing in layers, changing volumes, triggering phrases, scene synthesis through location/reverb, etc. Although this has even less to do with pop music which is still blocks of 3.5 minute audio, although there was a remix/mashup trend a few years ago, it's faded.

There is a podcasts dedicated to video game music, called sound of play.

you can find it here: http://caneandrinse.com/category/sound-of-play/

One of the guests they have had on is a composer who was influenced by his love of video game music, and listing to the podcast has made me appreciate how much amazing video game music is out there.

I felt the author was like:"ok, I know a bunch about videogames and their composers, let's write it down and try to get to some point" the problem is that I don't see the point.

Moreover there is no mention of Welle Erdball, I understand they are not "pop famous" but to my knowledge they are one of the pioneers experimenting with C64 & the like!

> I admit not to play too many games recently, but from what I've seen in AAA titles, it's dominated with bland orchestral ambientals.

Not all AAA titles are remarkable for their music, and there's a lot of good music to be found in more independent titles.

I'll admit to being a sucker for a good orchestra, though.

> There's still no adaptive phrasing

While far fewer games use it than ought to, that's been around for quite a long time. Take a look at Wind Waker, released in 2002/2003.

Or Wing Commander from 1990 or Ballblazer from 1984 ;)

Lucasarts's iMUSE system too: http://www.1up.com/features/imuse-secret-organic-music

Not gratuitous negativity, it's a very good point to bring up.

Game journalist Jeremy Parish focuses on the Japanese industry and retro games and has interviewed a great deal of Japanese game composers. According to him, amongst game composers, YMO is widely cited as a huge influence.

He made a micro podcast about this. http://www.retronauts.com/?p=966

"I've seen in AAA titles, it's dominated with bland orchestral ambientals. There's still no adaptive phrasing, AI composition, and really no intelligence behind it all."

AAA is in a sort of ironic position for this sort of thing, because on the one hand, they're the games dripping with money during development, and on the other hand, the games least able to innovate on things like music because if a manager has to choose between "3 more guns" or "adaptive music engine", the AAA manager will choose "3 more guns in DLC" every time.

I don't expect a full-industry crash like 1984 but I could see an AAA-crash sometime in the next few years. Their monomaniacal focus on such a narrow sliver of the possibility space for games while trying to bash each other over the head with MORE MORE MORE is still sustainable, but one does wonder how long they can keep it up.

If you go Indie, "music game" is it own subgenre and there are a variety of takes on the question of how to more richly incorporate music into the game. The entire "Bit.Trip" series is pretty good at incorporating music as a direct effect of the player's actions; it's not really "composing" anything but it's still quite viscerally pleasing. There's a lot of variants on musical shooters where the music somehow ties into gameplay.

Bit.Trip Beat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHbg-sNqe4w

Bit.Trip Runner 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXxqeEbcEM&index=61&list=PL...

Rhythm tag on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Rhythm/#&p=0&tab=NewRel...

Another great "music game": The Sword & Sorcery EP

http://www.swordandsworcery.com/

I don't call any of this bland (just some small selection from my most favorite tracks):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiiFO1cB1Y - Adam Skorupa, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz and Michał Cieleck.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimDJUcL0_I - Adam Skorupa, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz and Michał Cieleck.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qnhn1mCL18 - Charles Callet.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzaDb5wFLH8 - Adam Skorupa and Paweł Błaszczak.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BArA23NqVI - Adam Skorupa and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz.

And term AAA is misleading. I evaluate each game on its merits, not on whether it's produced by big publishers or not.

Please don't understand this as insult to your esthetics, but yeah, that's exactly what I'd call bland. Layering string section and exposing folk-inspired motif is what composers do when they're uninspired and on deadline.

Here's just a random sample of what I've enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4WnHlsbvM Neverhood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV6ZjYYCavg Clock Tower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnMR6SOBa9k Diablo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lQTbRY2xWY HoMM3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5g-QHq925o Streets of Rage 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftvpi-6Z6qw Arcanum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp7PYi5b8jg Chrono Trigger

Tristram song still sends chills down my spine and full moon over me right now isn't helping.

I should have mentioned Neverhood of course. Its OST is always in my playlist :) Terry Scott Taylor is great. Armikrog is coming out next month by the way.

Anyway, I find Witcher soundtrack to be pretty good. Sure, it's not extra unusual if you compare it to good folk music. But I don't see why one has to make a point of making the music extra unusual for the sake of it. The music should set the mood, and it does it perfectly in the Witcher games.

From more musical games, inXile's satirical The Bard's Tale has fun songs:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHF5uoonR-c

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrEFWv8aSQ8

Another good soundtrack I recently remembered:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfsxsAfope0 - "Haven" (VtM Redemption).

To stress the point - that music set the mood so perfectly (it should be combined with ambient whispers to get the same effect as in the game). That's the main purpose, and whether on its own it's super innovative or not is really pretty secondary to me.

The influence on UK urban music particularly cannot be doubted. Check out this mix: https://soundcloud.com/kodenine/kode9-sinogrime-minimix-2005

Especially the tune that comes in just after 6 minutes, and the one which follows it at around 8:30. They could be straight out of a (S)NES game, as could much of grime records from those days. While its now coveted by hipsters/nerds, at the time it was ghetto music. There's still nothing like it out there which has the same effect.

EDIT: heres another couple. these could be straight from the secret of mana soundtrack or something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU2dLHrpOlY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vehT9HG6gbo

as a bonus heres that first one in its natural habitat, with vocals :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQra9nENdzA

One of the MCs in that clip is now a chart-topping pop star.

This one actually reached number 31 in the charts itself, and I'm pretty sure some of the percussion is actually sampled from a gameboy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8PeDsO0vGo

While the article focuses on older videogame music, I think more recent examples show the complex relationship between mainstream popular music and videogames. Artists like Austin Wintory (composer for TGC's Journey and Monaco), Darren Korb (Bastion, Transistor), and Michael McCann (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) have created music that would not be out of place on the radio, but create a distinct ambience and mood intended to enhance a setting rather than make the music itself the primary focus.

Because it can be so entertaining without being too distracting, videogame soundtracks are primarily what I listen to while I'm writing code.

I love Deus Ex: Human Revolution theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns7fNPiNiNc

I'm looking forward to more from the new Mankind Divided game!

My 19 year old daughter has a big collection of video game music she uses to stay in flow while she is studying, also. She is rather fond of the stuff.

I don't, but I do appreciate that sometimes a long instrumental piece is better background for working than a "sing along anthem" type of music.

Bastion and Transistor have amazing atmosphere for being such simple games. The music and narration adds so much.

Modern Western games tend to be closer to movie soundtracks in that regard. Personally, some of my recent favorites for just that thing are the work of Skyrim (Jeremy Soule), Darksiders II (Jesper Kyd) and Dishonored (Daniel Licht, Jon Licht, Voodoo Highway, and Copilot Strategic Sound).

Strange to write an article like this without mentioning the SID chip (though I suppose SID chip-inspired music is more of an underground phenomenon, with less influence on popular culture.)

C-64, right? I loved playing with the 64's sound back in the college lab.

Especially to omit things like the several appropriations of SID tunes by popular musicians; Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation might be the most successful example, but there were a few scandals around pop artists sampling tunes from the demo scene, too, as I recall.

>SID chip-inspired [...] with less influence on popular culture.

If you count straight up plagiarism as less influence, certainly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland_plagiarism_controver...

There's a pretty awesome documentary series 'Diggin' in the Carts' done by Red Bull that traces the impact of 8 and 16 bit era music.

From the youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtbJmr1WtatcUO5smuoPD... "Diggin' in the Carts" is the untold story of the men and women behind the most globally influential music to come out of Japan. This six-part documentary series will delve into the history of 8-bit and 16-bit music, and the impact it has left in the world of video games and music."

Not a whole lot of supporting evidence for how it "changed popular music", rather it just becoming more sophisticated as time went on by the technology allowing for more complex structures and bringing in well-known artists. Video game music is still very much a niche genre, regardless of how complex it is. Surprised Michael Jackson wasn't mentioned for his helping out with the Sonic 3 soundtrack, probably one of the greatest from the 16 bit era.

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