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Game Music, Miscellaneous

Community Question: What Are Your Burnout Songs?

December 6, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Community Question: What Are Your Burnout Songs? Share this

My day job has exploded into a whirlwind of spreadsheets and Word docs as everyone scrambles to do everything before the holidays. On the bright side, that means I’ve got more time than I’ve ever had at a job to listen to music. Not in the analytical, write-a-review way, more in the “know what I haven’t heard in a long time” way. I copied my entire game music collection onto a flash drive and while it is in no way complete, it’s full of soundtracks I love. Or as I would quickly come to realize: used to love.

For this installment of the Community Question we want to hear about your burnout songs. Those soundtracks you used to love listening to that aren’t in heavy rotation nowadays. The ones that send your finger flying for the Skip button that you used to insist on repeating at least two times in a row.

My go-to answer for this question is maybe a little controversial: it’s Super Mario Bros. There was a time in the early 2000’s when I loved hearing every marching band and high school choir turn in their rendition of the original game’s legendary themes. I grabbed remixes and arrangements, orchestrations and crappy band covers. But after thirty years with these songs there aren’t many treatments left that I don’t outright skip these days. It’s classic, iconic music without a doubt, I just don’t need to hear it very frequently anymore.

Less blasphemous are a lot of guitar rock and techno soundtracks from the mid-to-late 90’s. The early Need for Speed entries, Guilty Gear, GoldenEye, MDK2, Destruction Derby and many others were the soundtrack to my daily life back then. Today they typically generate only a nostalgic smirk before I proclaim “Next!” and hit the button.

Your turn! Let us know some of your old favorite songs or soundtracks you just aren’t that into in the comments.
Game Music

Building a New Soundtrack with Rebel Galaxy

November 9, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Building a New Soundtrack with Rebel Galaxy Share this

When the original Xbox launched with its 10 gigabyte hard drive, one of the uses Microsoft touted was custom soundtracks. I was immediately enamored with the idea after having shoved my own music into several PC games in the past. But what I imagined for the console was more daydream-y than the reality that the Xbox, and even the Xbox 360, delivered.

All I really wanted was options: the ability to tell a game, “these are the songs I want to hear during a fight and these are the songs I want to hear when I’m at a shop”. Sadly, this kind of musical customization is so rare that I completely forgot how much I wanted it until I picked up Double Damage’s Rebel Galaxy. It’s an extra surprising feature to find in a game whose most striking stylistic design is its soundtrack. The typical trappings of interstellar, sci-fi ship combat are set to a melange of grungy rock and blues tunes and peppered with gruff vocals and plenty of slide guitar. It adds a rough ‘n tumble, space cowboy feel to the game which has earned it loads of praise as “Firefly: The Game”.

As good as that music is, when I load the game up and see the option for “Custom Music” I simply can’t proceed until I try out something new. It’s not as boring as “here’s my music library, play something”, that’s the stuff Xbox consoles have been able to do for years. Instead, you can define the music used during combat, when docked at stations and when idly flying around the universe; you can even set the title screen music.

Appropriately, the first thing I did was set the Firefly theme for the title screen. Fitting. Mark Mancina’s score to SPEED worked well for combat and Ghost Monkey’s soundtrack to Zen Bound perfectly set the ambiance of space cruising. Simply slotting in albums doesn’t always make for a smooth fit as I’m sure you can imagine. So now I’ve moved on to compiling a collection of songs fit for Space Business and I’m getting close to spending more time curating than playing.

It’s a fun obsession, though, and one I’ve been waiting a long time to indulge in. Ironically, I may have curated a soundtrack that’s more typical of the genre but it’s only my first attempt. It’s full of bombastic orchestral battle themes and twinkly strings and percussion. You can check it out in action above. Like the urge to create that Super Mario Maker inspires, the ability to bring my own creative touches to this game has sent my imagination running. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for new soundtracks to play around with now. Even if it only amounts to a handful of unfinished playlists it’s been fun playing a sound designer of sorts for the last few weeks.

What about you? Have you ever injected your own music into a game? Built a custom soundtrack on a console or swapped out the music files in a PC game? Leave a comment and let us know.
Game Music, Miscellaneous

Community Question: What Game has the Most Music?

September 5, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | 3 Comments Share this

It just popped into my head the other day as I was (still, forever) cleaning up my music collection: what single game has the most music. The few that sprang to my mind were Final Fantasy games with their multi-disc soundtracks and Ocarina of Time that squeezes 82 songs onto a single disc. But that’s just in my own personal experience and I knew there had to be gargantuan soundtracks out there I was completely oblivious too. So I did what inquisitive minds have done for eons when a question exceeds their realm of understanding; I asked reddit. And, boy, did the r/gamemusic subreddit respond in kind. This is by no means comprehensive or scientific but here are some of the games that got thrown my way.

Runescape is a name I’ve heard for quite a while (14 years it turns out) but I’ve never known anyone into it or gone looking for myself. In the process of writing this post I finally did look it up and, oh, it’s an MMO. That explains why I’ve never gotten into it. Anyways, according to the Runescape Wikia there are 1,055 music tracks available in the game as of August 24th, 2015. Potentially more astounding, I’ve seen it mentioned that much of the music is presented in triplicate with new versions arranged for the Runescape 2 and 3 upgrades of the game.

Also out of my wheelhouse is Blizzard’s perpetual MMO, World of Warcraft. The closest thing I could find for confirmation is this YouTube playlist consisting of 547 tracks. As it was last updated in September 2014 it doesn’t include the 53 tracks from the Warlords of Draenor expansion which would bring it to an even 600. Blizzard also announced another expansion at GamesCom this year, Legion, which will surely add even more music.

Continuing the trend of games I’ve heard of but am mostly clueless about is EVE Online. It may not have the most individual tracks for a game but its base soundtrack of 74 songs is nearly seven hours long. Add in an extra 26 from the expansions and another 20+ tracks of mission-specific music and it’s another juggernaut of a soundtrack.

Finally, something I know. Well, I know most of the source material from Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, if not the spastic fighting game itself. You could argue against it as it’s basically a huge compilation of existing music but I’m throwing it in. Encompassing a huge swath of Nintendo’s history, and an increasing range of third-party properties, the current Smash’s soundtrack weighs in at over 450 tracks.

To round things up I also got mentions of this eight hour playlist from the original version of The Sims (with expansions), a link to Bayonetta’s ridiculous 5-disc, 150-song soundtrack and a great comment about the biggest soundtracks for the Commodore 64 and NES. Lastly, a few people pointed out that the most technically correct answer would be games with randomly or procedurally generated music. Proteus, Spore, Peggle 2, and Fez all use scripting to build a score based on what is happening to the player at the moment. These could result in thousands, maybe even millions, of different musical combinations that would never be repeated. It’s an accurate point but I don’t think it falls in line with the spirit of my original question. By the way, neither do games with licensed soundtracks like Rock Band which, at one point, was up to 1,692 tracks.

So, dear OSV readers, what do you think? Which individual game (expansions or not, it’s up to you) has the most music? Ring in with your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments and maybe we’ll get a little closer to a definitive answer.
Game Music, Miscellaneous

5-Beat Patterns in Video Game Music

August 27, 2015 | Sebastian Urrea | 2 Comments Share this 5-Beat Patterns in Video Game Music

Video game music lovers can probably recognize a video game track pretty quickly, even if it’s one they haven’t heard before. Even though video game music comes in a huge variety of styles and genres (which is part of why I love it), there are musical elements that tend to be very common in many tracks, common enough that many of them have become (well-loved) tropes. Today, I’ll be discussing rhythm, and specifically I’ll be taking a look at one of video game music’s favorite tropes: 5-beat patterns.

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Game Music, Miscellaneous

Community Question: How do You Listen to Game Music?

August 8, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | 11 Comments Share this

Based on our discussion about organizing video game music, it looks like a lot of us still keep folders and files meticulously arranged on our PCs. While that may seem like the obvious answer to this community question there are more services, software and sites to play music on than ever before. Some people want to take it all with them, some want to ditch the dedicated music player and stream solely from their phone. Some spend all day at a computer and stream from the web. So, how do you listen to your video game music? I’ll start.

Through the 90’s I used Winamp on PC almost exclusively. It provided a ton of customization and grew to support all kinds of file formats, visualizers and extensions. If I was driving I had an array of burnt CDs for every mood. In 2008 I got a Zune 120 because I wanted all my music with me at all times (and because I don’t love Apple). Commuting 30 minutes every day to and from a retail job, it became my daily driver for music and podcasts. The companion PC software is still one of the most beautiful music managers I’ve ever used but it was never as full-featured as I wanted. Soon I purchased MediaMonkey to rip, tag and organize my music and I have just recently started using MusicBee because — gosh — it’s pretty. I also use PowerAmp on my phone but I only keep a small contingent of new albums and 5-star favorites on there most of the time.

As the last decade has brought dozens of streaming sites and radio apps to every platform, I began dabbling here and there. Bandcamp has been a wonderful revelation for me, although I probably listen to full albums for too long before finally buying them. I’ve just recently begun using YouTube when I want to check out an unfamiliar game’s soundtrack and I even started using Spotify on the PlayStation 4, although that’s usually for non-video game music.

So that’s me, what about you? Fill us in on how you listen to game music and what you use to play it in the comments. I’m really looking forward to seeing how people do things completely differently than I.
Chip Music, Featured, Game Music, Music Production

NES Sounds as Instruments

July 29, 2015 | Sebastian Urrea | 5 Comments Share this NES Sounds as Instruments

The classic, simple sounds of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from the era of 8-bit video game music are for many, including myself, very nostalgic and heartwarming. This is where it all began! Video games have come so far from these original beeps and boops; now there are live orchestras performing this music, sometimes in the game itself, and they even tour around the world to perform. Many people love these sounds and music for the memories they hold, but even so, they may not want to listen to them regularly when they’re not playing these games. And if you play an original NES tune for anyone who doesn’t have similar cherished memories of sitting around playing video games while their mothers begged them to go outside, they’ll probably cringe at the cacophony of fake, electronic noise that you’re subjecting them to. Chances are they will be bewildered that anyone would enjoy such a thing or find value in it, even if they’re too polite to say so.

I am one of the folks who believes that there is a lot to be admired about the music from the 8-bit era of video games, and I believe that there is a lot that contemporary composers can learn from this body of work. If you listen closely, you can hear how composers writing for the NES learned to treat these sounds as instruments, not just sounds, and how they managed to create music, instead of just noise.

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Game Music, Miscellaneous

Community Question: How do You Organize Your Game Music?

July 12, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | 9 Comments Share this

This is a plea for help as much as it is a conversation starter. When MP2s (and soon after, MP3s) took off in the 90’s I started converting cassette tapes and CDs to digital files. For mainstream music it was simple enough: Aerosmith is rock, Ace of Base is pop, and Tchaikovsky is classical. There’s loads of sub genres you can debate over but I think most would agree on the basics. When it came to video game music, though, I wasn’t sure how to keep things straight.

Ultimately, I decided that whichever platform I played a game on was where its music would go. Want to listen to Aero the Acro-Bat? Navigate to ‘Music > Game > Sega > Genesis’ and there it is. Nevermind that it also came out on the SNES. This scheme has stuck with me for nearly twenty years but as game music evolves I think it may be time for a change. Remixes, covers and chiptune artists who are inspired by their favorite games make it harder to organize by console alone. My system gets even muddier when a console exclusive like Peggle 2 debuts on Xbox One — where I go crazy tracking down the music and cataloging it — and then jumps to Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and eventually PC.

I’ve never had many people to bounce this off of so now that I can address the OSV audience I’m curious: how do you organize your game music collection? Alphabetically? By style, composer, platform? Or does it even matter with software that searches through file tags by whatever criteria you throw at it? Let us know in the comments, I’m really interested in how everyone keeps it all straight.