So anyway, the task at hand; discussing the music in video games. Without this important cog in the computer game machine, the game wouldn't work as effectively as it does. It'd be like a car with only 2 gears; it would work, but not to it's potential.
To translate this into sound within games, think about the Resident Evil series, without sound this series would not fill it's own boots at all. In fact, it's socks might not fit anymore either.
Survival horrors are top of my list in this blog, so forgive me if I go on a bit. Although I actually haven't played a survival horror through before (I know, shoot me now), I do know that they require a good use of sound, or lack of, in everything they do.
When silently peering down a dark passage, armed with nothing but a slowly dying torch and a pistol with no more than 3 bullets you do not want the soundtrack to be blaring out some jazzy little number. No, something chilling...perhaps no music at all, maybe just the sound of a cold, blustery wind battering the windows somewhere or the faint sound of footsteps in a distant part of the house. These games are all about suspense so it's particularly difficult to get the atmosphere across.
Imagine this lot doing the music for Resident Evil =/
Other games such as the Final Fantasy series or Halo work in a different way to survival horrors. These sorts of games tend to have powerful orchestral scores to back them up, giving the games a more epic feel to them. Many games based off movie counter-parts are also known to have strong orchestral soundtracks, generally taken directly from the film itself.
A lot of today's great video game music is composed by orchestras made from many people and i think it's this that has helped many realise that music in games is now a serious business. Some of the big composers in the industry include such people as Nobuo Uematsu, the guy behind the Final Fantasy music and Jasper Kyd, the mind behind the music in Splinter Cell and Hitman games.
Still on the topic of great musicians (I guess...), the next part of this week's task regarding Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards and a single of theirs, "Good Times". According to Wikipedia, "Good Times", one of the most important and influential songs of the era. The track formed the backbone of Grandmaster Flash's "Adventures on the Wheels of Steel" and the Sugarhill Gang's breakthrough hip-hop single, "Rapper's Delight", and has been endlessly sampled since by many dance and hip hop acts."
Before this I had never heard of them...and the pictures of them are frankly embarrassing and SO 80's, but I guess this song was quite the influential tune if it has been constantly sampled into a variety of songs.
To finish off this blog, I thought I'd mention a few of my all-time favorite musical moments within games. First off the title screen in Halo 2 sounds simply...well, beautiful I guess. I have it on my laptop and put it on loop when I want to relax. It's that sort of tune.
Another one of my faves is the theme from MGS2. It gives a great sense of the type of action-packed game that it's representing and even has those little noises that make you think of the military, patriotism and espionage. This a brilliant track to have playing in the background as you go in to fight with your army in a RTS or go to fight the final boss of a dungeon on WoW.
The final fave bit of game music isn't Zelda or even Sonic, it's back to my old childhood favorite, Little Big Adventure again. Probably the only reason that I love it's title music so much is because it takes me back to good memories from my childhood, it's not exactly spectacular to listen to but it still remains high in my charts.
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