KVR Audio

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:34 am

So Mizuta's score to Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan was complete, utter garbage. That doesn't mean I stopped being a fan or I think he's any less brilliant.

I made this tonight out of boredom. This is different from my usual Mizutaism tracks. This one's very rock/metal-like. That's because before he did work for Square, he worked at Capcom, where he composed mostly rock, pop and jazz. I tried to capture his sound with this, but put my own stamp on it.

The track loops once, because I like my songs to have that "game music" feel.

Hope you like it.

mtilli · Post by **mtilli** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:39 pm

Quite nice track.

Reminded me all those 3D-shooters and their background musics from 90s. The tone/sound of guitar bothered little bit but that's because I'm guitarist myself

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:53 pm

Thanks. That's basically what I was going for.

I'm weird that way. I love Roland MIDI guitar for some reason. :p I wasn't going for anything realistic, though. I wanted it to have that fake MIDI sound, because I don't believe game music should use real instruments.

emdot_ambient · Post by **emdot_ambient** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:04 pm

You definitely caught that General MIDI game track sound. I don't think this would have been in any game I like to play, though, I go more for the Diablo/Guild Wars/Morrowind kinds of games...well, and BattleField 1942, X-Com UFO Defense and MechWarriors (II through Vengence Black Knight) also hooked me...

I didn't even notice the loop in the song

I think it's cool that game music is having enough of an impact that there are people doing "sounds like" songs. Immitation is the highest form of flattery.

Cool stuff.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:12 pm

haha!! Awesome! Reminds me of Wolfenstein 3d or Doom or something like that! Made me laugh, in a good way.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:15 pm

emdot_ambient wrote:You definitely caught that General MIDI game track sound.

Yes! Thanks.

I don't think this would have been in any game I like to play, though, I go more for the Diablo/Guild Wars/Morrowind kinds of games...well, and BattleField 1942, X-Com UFO Defense and MechWarriors (II through Vengence Black Knight) also hooked me...

Yeah. This is more along the lines of Contra, Hagane, Mega Man, Wolverine, etc. The really Japanese stuff. I don't like the music in those games you mentioned.

I didn't even notice the loop in the song

HAH. Good! That means my looping techniques work! Yes! That makes me really happy, because I've been working on looping my songs skillfully. *dance*

!

It's all in the instrumentation and the chord progressions.

I think it's cool that game music is having enough of an impact that there are people doing "sounds like" songs. Immitation is the highest form of flattery.

Cool stuff.

Mizuta's my hero, y'know. :p I love video game music... almost all kinds, but mostly the classic stuff. The reason I'm such a purist with GM and melody is really a reaction to the newer video game music. New game music is really bad in my opinion. Have you heard Suikoden V's soundtrack? I respect Norikazu Miura a great deal for writing upwards of 200 songs in like, 2 years, but Christ his stuff is boring.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:15 pm

Amberience wrote:haha!! Awesome! Reminds me of Wolfenstein 3d or Doom or something like that! Made me laugh, in a good way.

Thanks.

<3 you too.

For real.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:19 pm

I think my favourite game soundtracks are the Fallout series and the Silent Hill series.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:20 pm

Silent Hill has awesome music! Akira Yamaoka, the composer, doesn't know how to read or write music or anything, and he's awesome.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:22 pm

Yeah he is!! The Silent Hill 2 OST was one of those formative listens for me, it really did change me.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:23 pm

Me too. Laura's Theme is to DIE for. Out of them all, I think Silent Hill 2 was the best OST, with Silent Hill 1 coming in at a close second.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:24 pm

*agreed*

emdot_ambient · Post by **emdot_ambient** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:05 pm

Ildon wrote:
emdot_ambient wrote:I don't think this would have been in any game I like to play, though, I go more for the Diablo/Guild Wars/Morrowind kinds of games...well, and BattleField 1942, X-Com UFO Defense and MechWarriors (II through Vengence Black Knight) also hooked me...
Yeah. This is more along the lines of Contra, Hagane, Mega Man, Wolverine, etc. The really Japanese stuff. I don't like the music in those games you mentioned.

I don't mind the Diablo/GuildWars/Morrowind music. You dislike real instruments in game tracks, I don't. As long as it works with the game and enhances the gameplay without being obvious. To me, a game soundtrack, like a movie's, should be invisible. It should definitely effect the player's mood, but should do so without the palyer even realizing it. Diablo I used mostly samples and synths to do this and it really enhanced the mood of the game. Diablo II switched to a lot of real orchestral stuff and was a bit too proud of that fact. Guild Wars and Morrowind (and Oblivion) are, I think, by the same composer. I like them OK but they don't really enhance play that much. But the soundtrack in MechWarrior II (the first PC game in that series) was all synths and was incredible. I remember being on a mission once and I was heading across an alien moon trying like hell to get to the pick up point 'cause I'd finished all the objectives. I was feeling all spooked, tense and highly on my guard . . . then I realized it was the music doing that to me, all the bad guys were dead! Essentially nothing was happening at that moment in the game but me running to the final Nav point, and yet I was all intensely wrapped up in it ONLY because of the music. That was eye-opening.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:23 pm

That's what a lot of people think now, yeah. There's this divide now in the video game music genre. You have a lot of other types of composers coming in who have all sorts of different visions for how game music should be. You have a lot of composers now like Jeremy Soule (Icewindale) and Jack Wall (Myst IV) who write mostly ambient/orchestral scores and while the music does its job, it doesn't leave much for the listener. Those kinds of composers dominate western game music. Then you have composers like Norihiko Hibino (Metal Gear Solid) and Akari Kaida (Onimusha), who're very rare, and who have found this really neat way of making ambient music sound very melodic and just... really good. Then you have the composers who I identify with the most: Nobuo Uematsu, Kenji Ito, Naoshi Mizuta, Koichi Sugiyama and Koji Kondo. These are mostly pop musicians (orchestrated pop is still pop) and were pioneers (except Mizuta and Ito) in video game music in the eighties. For me these guys defined the genre, and I really respect and love them for it. I want to stick as close to my video game music roots as I can, 'cause I like the sound, and I think that game music should do more than just set the mood. It needs to be fun to listen to, too, I think! Everything kind of changed once it became common for other countries to make video games, though. The music is just evolving, I guess.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:37 pm

And also, the styles of games have changed so much. Different genres of games need different kinds of music. You wouldn't really hear catchy melodies in Counterstrike, you know? The music's just adapting to the way games are evolving, I should say. I'm just old school I guess, and it does kind of make me depressed to see all these MMO games come out and hardly any worthwhile traditional games, like RPGs, adventure games, etc. Mostly RPGs. Man what I would do for a good RPG...

Ildon - Mizutaism #3