I don’t know how you are, but my New Year is associated with many wonderful music. This is “Happy New Year” from Abba and “Jingle Bells”, and “We Wish You a Merry Chrystmas”, and, even, sorry, the song from the advertisement of the same soda. And now, once again thinking about this, I realized that once, even before I became a lover and connoisseur of the video game, many of them clung me to music. And therefore, I decided to examine in detail (and tell what I know) about how the music in games developed and how it influenced them and affects them.
I will illustrate what I mean. At one time, I directly liked to confirm the phrase of Samuella Backet from the novel to the “worst”: “I tried all the time. He fell all the time. It doesn’t matter. Try again. Fall again. Fall better "well, because the truth is which of us does not know" Game Over "in Mario? Or the music with which you lose the battle in The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild? Well, or the death of the characters in Final Fantasy? Now tell me, which of you did not like these musical topics? This is how I started the world of acquaintance with music in video games, because at first only topics from the "lethal" moments were postponed in my head, since it was not possible to appreciate the music during Gampli. But, over time, of course, as a person who studied in a musician, I began to pay attention to the main musical topics, inspire them and understand how they inspire players.
How it all began in the industry
Sounds and scores in games over the past 40 years tell the story of the new and developing, in fact, a separate genre of music – namely game music ..
Its development, as, of course, is generally the development of games, is partly the history of changing technologies. And here, of course, pioneers, there were also the Japanese. Perhaps the most famous “composers” (I will tell you a little later why I took this word in quotation marks) of the era of the early video games were manes of Matsumae and Yoko Simamur both women (forward, feminism!) Determined the sound of video games due to their work in Capcom in the 1980s and 1990s.
Manami and Yoko began with writing extremely painful algorithms for systems such as Nintendo Famicom (known in the West and we have NES) is that due to limited technologies, each note had to patiently program on only three channels available at that time. So, the work by the composer of the video game was then in many ways more difficult than today.
Nevertheless, despite their technological promotional shirts, they created the saunes, which at that time became the standards of sound. For example, separate musical themes for Manami from Mega Man and Yoko from Street Fighter II.
Both Japanese women write in their biography that they were largely inspired to create three -channel works, playing and analyzing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Having recalling my musical education, I agree that most of Bach counterpoint is music in three sounds, that is, often for three instruments, well, or … in the same three channels. Bach, however, had endless potential, the number of strings, keys and notes was endless, and he never had to program a primitive sound card with limited memory.
In general, who is interested, find the Yoko book, in which she talks about the difficulties then.
But in general, by the beginning of the 1980s, most computers and game consoles had special sound chips to remove the load from the processor. Each system at that time had a very characteristic sound, as well as a unique style and graphics that helped each system get individuality. But naturally this has led to the fact that different systems have different numbers of votes or channels. That is, in fact, the composers then were highly specialized and dependent on the systems. We examined the system with three channels, and, for example, there were systems with 4 and 5 channels. And even with two.
I will note that times have changed. https://slotluxcasino.co.uk/bonus/ In the 1990s, the consoles increased power and capacity, so much so that they could already accommodate large-scale synthesized scores with symphonic power transferred to a polyphonic sound. Like, for example, the epic soundtracks of Noboo Umatsu for the Final Fantasy series.
Well, at the beginning of the 21st century, the consoles and the PC could already cope with the samples and notes of orchestral instruments, as well as electronics, so that the video games could write music on the same ambitious scale as for any Hollywood film. From epic and Assassin’s Creed to magnificent jazz cuphead. (here the music also perfectly emphasized the visual style of the game.
What is happening now? Music from games penetrates the pop culture
In our time, playing music with you has probably become a separate genre, which allows many tracies to get a second life. Well, in general, in the current state, the composition of music for computer games is a separate type of art.
There are two chairs. One is when a game to which the song does not initially belong, helps it become more popular. So, the song “Eminema 2002 Till I Collapse again entered the charts of Great Britain in 2009 after it was used in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
The second is when music from video games penetrates the mass culture by means of the third source. So, the soundtrack from the SIMS series has become megapopul is in the world thanks to the reality of the Rich House, Poor House show, which is in many countries. (its meaning is that two families change houses for a week).
In general, music in video games becomes a cultural phenomenon. For example – at the beginning of 2018, the creator of the Black Mirror Charlie Brooker was a guest on the BBC radio, and asked Jonann Danna from RoboCop for Gamboy to set the theme. The Sundtrek to the 1988 game went so to the audience that the next month was the most popular in the internal chart of the station, and many mixes came out in the country.
In May 2019, the PlayStation In Concert concert was held in the Royal Albert Holl, at which the royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed music from games created for the PlayStation consoles from the original of the 1990s to the current generation. The organizer of the event was Jessica Curry, a composer and an innovator in the field of games, since she, in her games, allows the player to create a soundtrack for dramatic moments.
In 2017, 4 of the 20 most popular soundtracks, on Spotify, represented video games: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt; Horizon: Zero Dawn; The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; and Assassin’s Creed Revelations. By the way, Horizon Zero Dawn was nominated for the BAFTA Award for the best soundtrack in 2018, but lost. Another game is Cuphead, 2D-game in the genre of action, inspired by cartoons of the 1930s with sound support compiled by Christopher Maddigan.
Game music even gained recognition of the Grammy Awards. In 2010, the award for the best instrumental arrangement accompanying the vocalists was awarded the composition of Baba Yetu, Christopher Tina, who appeared in his 2009 Call Dawns album, but was originally written for the 2005 strategy of Civilization IV.
At the 2013 Grammy, Journey – an interactive playing trip – was nominated for the Best Scientific Research Institute in the Soundtrack for Visual Media Media “For its score, compiled by Austin Wintori.
People who create music in video games claim that the industry itself is on the threshold of something new. Winifred Phillips, a composer known for his work on games, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation and the LittlebigPlanet franchise, which received several awards for their labors, believes that these nominations of awards are important “so that composers through games can declare themselves interactive media, cinema and TV”.
“In fact, computer music is a modern form of classical music, but it is associated with a more relevant modern culture, so it is more recognizable, accessible to a wider audience”.
Ken Wong, leading designer “Mountains Games”, on his Twitter, announces on their own example why people listen to music from games without even starting them:
“I listen to it for the same reasons as the music for the film: it tells a story, and I often feel transferred to another place. And her dumbness means that I can still write or engage in programming ".
Well, returning to Phillips, in one of her interviews she noted that music in games is a significant tool for maintaining interest:
“When you compose for movies and television, you are in a slightly different situation. The fact is that on the screen there are almost constantly there are dialogs that will like the viewer’s attention. The games are built so that there are long spaces where there is no dialogue. And in the music that you create for these episodes, you have the opportunity to really develop your own and only your ideas without looking back at the heroes. ".
It is difficult to disagree with all these statements. After all, when you, for example, hear music from Skairim, you probably remember the most memorable moments of this game. I have at least. So I will add from myself that music in games is almost always an additional imprint in memory from the game. I hardly remember the plot of the game “Duck Stories”, but her eight -bit soundtrack will definitely resurrect the main menu of the game in front of me.
This is how the text turned out today. I tried in the most detail. Well, ahead, after a couple of days the top of the best soundtracks (subjectively and on the basis of awards) in the history of Gamera. So before the connection, I expect feedback from you.
