[♫ "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM]
What happened to music in video games?
Where did all those iconic tunes go?
That question gets asked pretty often, so I guess it's high time we talk about it.
So,
music and games.
Where did all those great theme songs go?
They were so memorable,
like this one:
[♫ "Overworld" by Koji Kondo]
Or this one:
[♫ "Title Theme" by Masato Nakamura]
Or this one:
[♫ "Dr. Wily Stage" by Ogeretsu Kun, Manami Matsumae, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi]
Or this one:
[♫ "Prelude" by Nobuo Uematsu]
We know them all by heart,
and for some reason, most of them come from games made in the 80s.
Why is that?
Perhaps music was just better in the 80s.
Well...
Hmm. Oh, okay. Perhaps not.
Well, there's got to be some explanation.
What changed?
Certainly, sound quality has gotten better
and music budgets are bigger.
We've got access to entire symphonies now.
[♫ "God of War Overture" by Gerard Marino]
We've got pop stars singing big theme songs.
[♫ "Simple and Clean" by Hikaru Utada]
And game musicians have got high-tech gear to work with now.
So how come game music got worse?
Trick question:
it didn't.
Like I said, sound quality is way better
and today's game composers have far more resources to work with,
but at the same time, modern game music has become a lot less memorable.
Why?
Well, because of all the big expensive toys they have access to now.
All the symphonies
and quality gear have moved us away from that powerful element
the old eighties chiptunes had to rely on:
simplicity.
[♫ "Stage 1" by Kinuyo Yamashita]
Back in the 8-bit era,
very few games could process more than three tones at once.
For those of you unfamiliar with music terminology,
three distinct tones are exactly enough to play a chord
and nothing else.
This means that the old-school game composers couldn't write a tune with
complex, multi-layered melodies
moving over big chord sections with a separate bassline.
They had to write entire soundtracks using single notes
or individual chords.
That was it.
[♫ "Brinstar" by Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka]
This was a severe limitation, but it also ended up being a strength:
those musicians were forced
to focus exclusively on the melody line.
A strong melody is what makes a song memorable.
It's what makes a song stick in your head
and keeps you humming that song years after you last heard it.
You know what makes John Williams such an incredible composer?
The man is a genius at creating strong, memorable melodies.
Like this one:
[♫ "Main Title" by John Williams]
And, of course, this one:
[♫ "The Raiders March" by John Williams]
And all of these:
[♫ "Journey to the Island" by John Williams]
[♫ "Home Alone Main Title" by John Williams]
[♫ "Lumos (Hedwig's Theme)" by John Williams]
You know every single one of those, don't you?
That's what a good melody can do.
Why do melodies stick in our mind this way?
In part, it's because the human voice can only produce one tone at a time.
Well, okay. Well, that's not strictly true, but it's functionally true for like, 99% of us.
So when a person tries to wrap their mind around a song, most of us think of it in terms of single tones.
This focus on single tones or single chords,
uncluttered by lots of competing tonal movement,
is at the root of most iconic music.
It's true from the "Imperial March"
to Pachelbel's "Canon in D."
From "Smells like Teen Spirit" to "Changes."
Tupac's "Changes," Not, not David Bowie's.
Well... No, you know what?
David Bowie's, too.
And this is also true of some of the most recognizable modern video game music.
Take the Halo theme:
[♫ "Halo" by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori]
I know you know that one.
Everybody does.
Listen to the male chorus here:
[♫ "Halo" by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori]
Strong, easily hummable melody, right?
Now listen to everything the strings are doing.
[♫ "Halo" by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori]
There's a lot of layers in there,
but they're all delivering strong, hummable melodies,
and that kick-ass percussion sure doesn't hurt anything.
[♫ "Halo" by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori]
Awesome thing.
Does this mean we should turn back to our old ways?
Should we do away with the new tech and the fancy symphonies?
Of course not. That would be utterly ridiculous.
After how far game music has come, are you kidding?
We've got a swarm of talented people working in game music now.
Most of the old 8-bit veterans are still working,
lots of new talent has come on board,
and we've even got high-profile composers like Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman
writing music for video games now.
That is awesome.
And today's technology allows music to be far more flexible than it used to be.
Back in the day, games like Mega Man would just have a single theme playing for the entire level.
And that was okay, because Mega Man was basically doing the same thing the whole time:
jumping, shooting, and running to the right.
But today?
Sound and music programmers can crossfade between tracks,
add and remove layers at will,
and have the music constantly change to match the dynamics of the action on screen.
[♫ "Tanker Incident" by Norihiko Hibino]
And the music from long-running franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Final Fantasy
have all benefited from leaving their 8-bit roots by adding extra layers
and depth to the arrangements,
while always staying true to the simple melodies at their core.
Sure, the original tunes are still great as ever, but
would you honestly rather go back to the era of this:
[♫ "Opening Theme" by Nobuo Uematsu]
When we've got this:
[♫ "Ending Theme" by Nobuo Uematsu]
I mean, think of Metal Gear.
We started with music like this:
[♫ "Jungle" by Iku Mizutani, Shigehiro Takenouchi, Motoaki Furukawa]
All well and good, and great for its time, but...
would you honestly rather cling to that when we've got friggin Harry Gregson-Williams writing gold like this:
[♫ "Metal Gear Solid Main Theme" by Harry Gregson-Williams]
Besides, we've come to realize that sometimes, the most effective music in a video game
are the tracks without the memorable melodies.
Sometimes the best game music
is the kind that functions only to reinforce the game itself.
Artists like Akira Yamaoka
have spent years studying the way that games and music interact,
writing music that might not be all that iconic or
even that good when listened to on its own.
But play that track in the game,
in the environment for which it was intended, and it takes the experience to a new heights.
It subtly brings the player's immersion to a whole new level.
This is an incredible thing.
This is exactly what a game musician should be capable of doing.
Okay, I'm seriously gonna wrap this up, or I'm going to have gone babbling about video game music all day.
In the end, there's a place for both iconic theme songs and immersion building mood music.
They're by no means exclusive.
But if you want to kick off a new franchise with a tune that'll keep players humming,
then be sure that music is grounded in the old-school simplicity of yesteryear,
and then build from there.
A memorable tune can build a strong impression.
A great game is a great game,
but a great game with an awesome theme song?
[♫ "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton]
That's going to stick with people.
[♫ "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton]
See you next week.
[♫ "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton]