Assignment 15 - Play That Funky Music
There's a reason why the Super Smash Bros Brawl official website contains information regarding the musicians whom will be providing music in this next instalment of Nintendo's wacky fighter...and that reason is because all of the names mentioned are highly renowned composers; Kenji Kondo, Kenji Yamamoto, Akihiro Honda and Yuzo Koshiro just to name a few.(click ME). Quothe the site "Seriously?! To have so many of these individuals providing music for a single work may very well be an historic event in the history of video-game music!It's almost unthinkable!" and I'd have to agree.
Music is a powerful device in video games much like in films. It can set the tone, evoke certain emotions or be used to simply subtly paint a landscape for the world in which you're presented (silence can be powerful...but just imagine watching a film with the mute button on).
For me Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. were all given that extra credit where due because of such catchy theme music - though all of it at the time was basic synths due to the constraints of cartridge technology and 16-bit chips. Nowadays video game music can be a fully composed orchestra because of the invention of CD, DVD and now Blu-ray and HD meaning digital music can be encoded and compressed to a small portion of that disc. Even Hollywood producers are jumping on the video-game bandwagon with Hideo Kojima asking for The Rock/Shrek/Armageddon's composer Harry Gregson-Williams to compose for MGS2; given that their budget was fairly substantial they could afford his services and he helped set the tone perfectly for the stealth/action smash hit - infact I can't help but feel how similar MGS2 and The Rock's soundtracks at are key points; the heavy use of brass instruments and catchy loops.
It's not enough to just have catchy music; it has to be ambiet and fitting to the situation; Starsailors 'Way To Fall' I feel was a perfect choice of track for the ending theme of MGS3 where the game is more reflective and mellow and the protagonist is emotionally fragile. The slow guitar pluckings and very powerful vocals can be reflective of how the protagonist must be feeling - to sing one's heart out.
It was said that the PS3 would utilise sound 'on the fly' and the engine would generate appropriate sounds to given situations and that individual objects would sound more realistic. What I mean by this is for example if you were to shoot a glass bottle you would hear the sound of a bottle smash...but if you were to knock a bottle over you would have a completely different sound - and a sound for a bottle rolling along concreate...or a different sound if the bottle was rolling along a wooden surface - I look forward to this but I don't feel that games will have this much complexity yet.
Music is a powerful device in video games much like in films. It can set the tone, evoke certain emotions or be used to simply subtly paint a landscape for the world in which you're presented (silence can be powerful...but just imagine watching a film with the mute button on).
For me Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. were all given that extra credit where due because of such catchy theme music - though all of it at the time was basic synths due to the constraints of cartridge technology and 16-bit chips. Nowadays video game music can be a fully composed orchestra because of the invention of CD, DVD and now Blu-ray and HD meaning digital music can be encoded and compressed to a small portion of that disc. Even Hollywood producers are jumping on the video-game bandwagon with Hideo Kojima asking for The Rock/Shrek/Armageddon's composer Harry Gregson-Williams to compose for MGS2; given that their budget was fairly substantial they could afford his services and he helped set the tone perfectly for the stealth/action smash hit - infact I can't help but feel how similar MGS2 and The Rock's soundtracks at are key points; the heavy use of brass instruments and catchy loops.
It's not enough to just have catchy music; it has to be ambiet and fitting to the situation; Starsailors 'Way To Fall' I feel was a perfect choice of track for the ending theme of MGS3 where the game is more reflective and mellow and the protagonist is emotionally fragile. The slow guitar pluckings and very powerful vocals can be reflective of how the protagonist must be feeling - to sing one's heart out.
It was said that the PS3 would utilise sound 'on the fly' and the engine would generate appropriate sounds to given situations and that individual objects would sound more realistic. What I mean by this is for example if you were to shoot a glass bottle you would hear the sound of a bottle smash...but if you were to knock a bottle over you would have a completely different sound - and a sound for a bottle rolling along concreate...or a different sound if the bottle was rolling along a wooden surface - I look forward to this but I don't feel that games will have this much complexity yet.
posted by The Horror @ 2:58 pm
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