2332: A Musical Journey

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Let’s try a little experiment, shall we? I’m going to start with a YouTube video of a piece of music I really like. Given that I’ve just come off a session of Ys Origin, let’s make it a piece from Ys Origin. After that I’m going to see where the Related Videos take us, and we’ll go on a little journey. I’ll try and give a bit of useless trivia for each track.

To give things a bit of variety (though I’m not promising quite how much!) I’ll pick the first Related video that isn’t 1) a Recommendation for me based on past viewing and 2) from the same game, movie, whatever as the previous one.

Ready? Here we go.

This is the theme that plays in the final area of Ys Origin, and I particularly like it because it uses one of my favourite soundtrack techniques: making use of the main theme in a different way to how it sounded originally. When used in a finale sequence, as it is here, it gives the whole thing a nice feeling of “closure” — or at least of approaching the end, anyway.

To put it more simply, effective use of this technique can get you seriously pumped for the final battle. And Ys Origin certainly does it well.

Onward!

I haven’t played Ys: The Oath in Felghana yet, but it’s probably next up after I finish with Ys Origin. As such, this is the first time I’ve heard this piece, and I’m pleased to hear that it has Falcom’s distinctive prog rock-inspired sound about it. While I don’t really know a lot about prog rock itself, I do like the sound of music inspired by it, and it seems there are a number of Japanese groups that do it very well — Falcom’s sound team being one. (Nobuo Uematsu’s bands The Black Mages and The Earthbound Papas are some others, though they do arrangements of game music rather than directly soundtracking games for the most part.)

Unsurprisingly, YouTube is taking us on a distinctly Ys-ian journey. Again, I haven’t played this game, so it’s my first time hearing this track, and initial impressions are good. Again, it has the melodic rock sound to it, but it also makes use of some violin melodies, which I often find sound really nice in the context of instruments you might not typically associate violin with. Other examples of this being done well include its combination with electronic instruments in Final Fantasy XIII’s main battle theme, and as part of a distinctly modern-sounding pop ensemble in Omega Quintet’s two battle themes.

Yet another Ys I’m yet to get to, and I know I have at least a couple of friends who count this soundtrack among their favourites. The timbre of this one’s soundtrack is a little “cleaner” and perhaps more artificial-sounding; there’s certainly some synthesised brass going on, but the guitars and solo violins sound fairly convincing.

The slightly more artificial sound of the music is presumably down to Ys VI being an earlier release than Oath in Felghana and Origin, and Falcom’s sound team still refining and developing their sound with new tech and capabilities.

We’ve escaped the Ys series! And we find ourselves involved with another Japanese video game company’s internal sound team that is world-renowned as being Rather Good. In this case, we’re with Gust, developers of the Atelier and Ar Tonelico series, both of which have simply lovely soundtracks.

This particular piece is from one of their slightly lesser known games, Mana Khemia, which is often regarded as part of the Atelier series due to its thematic and mechanical similarities.

And speaking of Atelier, here’s a track from one of the more recent ones. It very much sounds like the distinctive sound Gust has put together for the Atelier series over the last few installments, featuring prominent use of traditional “folk-style” instruments such as harmonica and penny whistle.

I’m also a big fan of this track’s title.

Staying with Atelier and moving forwards in time, this is from Escha and Logy, a game I don’t know a lot about but know is reasonably well regarded in the Atelier canon. There’s a pretty cool guitar solo in the middle of this track, too.

And we’re up to the most recent Atelier game, Atelier Sophie, and a track with a pretty magnificent rhythm guitar part. There’s also a hint of Nights of Azure in there with the prominent use of harpsichord/clavichord. In fact, this whole track wouldn’t be out of place in Nights of Azure.

YouTube agrees. Nights of Azure was a really great game that I enjoyed a lot, and a big part of that was due to its wonderful soundtrack, also the product of Gust’s sound team, but clearly heavily inspired by Michiru Yamane’s work on the older Castlevania games. This sort of Gothic rock is perfectly fitting with the game’s fast action and overall tone, and contrasts nicely with the more gentle music used in its story sequences.

Let’s do two more, or we’ll be here all night. This one’s from Megadimension Neptunia V-II, a game which I’m sure you already know I liked a whole lot. This particular track was one of my favourites due to its heavy use of some distinctly retro-sounding synthesisers, which brought to mind a few things: the synthesised music of Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games, and the once-fashionable .MOD format of digital music, which effectively used short, digitised samples as “notes” on a virtual synthesiser-sequencer and allowed those who knew what they were doing to put together multi-track compositions.

Last one!

Eternal Sonata was an extremely peculiar concept for a game in that it’s an RPG based around the noted Romantic composer Frederic Chopin. In keeping with that, the soundtrack has a distinctly Romantic feel to it, with authentic orchestral instruments used to give the music a very different feel to more obviously “gamey” pieces. The game also used some of Chopin’s work directly in its soundtrack.

1962: Great Title Sequences (From My Living Memory)

Re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine recently has made me more conscious of something that had been on my mind for a while: the fact that TV doesn’t really seem to do lengthy credits sequences any more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as in the case of Star Trek you’re sitting there for a good few minutes watching swirly space and Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko (still in season one at the moment) and, consequently, without a credits sequence the show itself has a few more minutes to play with. But does that few minutes really make a difference? Perhaps when the show is a short 20-minute affair, but when it’s 45 minutes or more there’s a strong argument for saying the writers should maybe look at where a few bits can be snipped.

But anyway. Whether or not credits sequences are a good thing isn’t really what I want to talk about today, since that would be a short discussion — yes, they are — but what I did want to talk about is the ones that have stuck in my head over the years. A good credits sequence is strongly iconic and does a good job of summing up what the show’s all about — either literally, by introducing characters, or sometimes in a more abstract sense by using representative imagery.

These are in no particular order. Given how I’m attempting to call them up from my living memory, they’ll probably in roughly chronological order, but I am making no promises. I’m simply going to provide them for your delectation, with a few words about why I like them, why they’re important to me or why I simply find them memorable.

Henry’s Cat

I hadn’t thought about Henry’s Cat for the longest time, but a brief Twitter discussion with the fine Mr Alex Connolly the other day reminded me of both its existence and its terrible but strongly iconic credits sequence.

I honestly don’t remember much about Henry’s Cat beyond the title sequence and the little bit of an episode I watched out of curiosity on YouTube the other day. But I do suspect it’s rather a product of its time, and not the sort of thing that kids are watching on TV these days.

Count Duckula

Whoever uploaded this gets bonus points for including the “Thames” logo at the beginning. Ahem. Anyway. Count Duckula was brilliant. And I’ve watched a few episodes recently and it’s still genuinely quite amusing thanks to some wonderful voice work and characterisation… not to mention its baffling premise of a vegetarian vampire duck voiced by David Jason.

Unlike Henry’s Cat, the Count Duckula theme and intro has stuck with me all these years. However, I did not know until two minutes ago when I looked at Wikipedia (to make sure it really was David Jason who voiced Duckula) that Count Duckula was actually a Danger Mouse spinoff series. TIL, and all that.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

You can’t really get more iconic that Star Trek when it comes to title sequences, and there’s really not much more that needs to be said about The Next Generation — aside, perhaps, from the fact that when you look at it, it’s actually rather basic. Once the credits themselves start rolling, it’s little more than text and the Enterprise occasionally hurling itself at the screen.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I didn’t like Deep Space Nine all that much when I was younger; its relatively “static” nature of being set on a space station rather than on an exploratory starship made it feel a bit more “boring” to the young me. Revisiting it recently has made me realise (or remember?) that it’s actually really rather good — and certainly a lot more consistent than The Next Generation was in its early seasons.

I like the theme very much. It’s one of those pieces of music that just sounds satisfying. What I did find interesting, though, was when they changed it very subtly starting in the fourth season:

It becomes faster, I think it’s in a different key, the orchestration is different and the accompaniment is less “bare”. It accurately reflects the show’s noticeable change in direction from the fourth season onwards, not to mention the changes in the cast: Commander Sisko becomes Captain Sisko, The Next Generation’s Worf joins the crew and Shit officially Starts Getting Real with regard to interstellar conflicts.

Friends

Friends was everywhere when I was a teenager, and I didn’t mind because I enjoyed it a whole lot. The credits sequence was simple and straightforward, accurately summing up each character with a selection of season-unique snippets of their most iconic moments. It was fun to try and identify which episode each of the snippets had come from… you know, if there wasn’t anything better to do.

Angel

Ah, Angel. Probably one of my favourite TV shows of all time, next to its companion piece Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is also one of my favourite TV shows of all time, but whose credits sequence I never really rated all that much). Angel’s intro was great in that it reflected the dark, brooding nature of its title character, but it also allowed the show to pull off one of its best features: the unexpected and surprising fact that while it wasn’t afraid to deal with some seriously dark themes, it was very happy to poke fun at itself and show the silly side of the supernatural as well as the scary. The intro helped with this in that it set the expectation for a very “serious” and dark story, then in true Whedon fashion, it often subverted these expectations with the actual content of the episode.

Yuru Yuri

(This was the best video of the intro I could find that hadn’t been snagged by YouTube’s copyright laws. You’ll just have to deal with the Spanish subtitles.)

I love Yuru Yuri. It’s such a delightfully mundane and silly anime; very little actually happens in it, but by the end you have such a wonderful understanding of these loveable characters that it doesn’t matter that they haven’t done anything of note. The opening titles complement it perfectly, introducing the characters visually and setting the energetic, joyful tone for the rest of the show.

Love Live!

You’d hope a show about music would have a catchy theme tune, and Love Live! doesn’t disappoint. This video (which repeats several times; you’re not going mad) is from the first season and, like any good opening sequence, neatly summarises the show and its characters without them actually “saying” anything (although one could argue the lyrics of the song have a certain degree of meaning). Also it’s just plain catchy.

Akiba’s Trip

One thing I really like about Japanese games is that they treat them the same as anime — and that means that a big deal is made out of the opening credits, with music that is often released as a single in its own right. Akiba’s Trip had a particularly strong opening with a catchy theme song, a good introduction of all the characters and, again, a summary of what to expect from the next few hours of your life.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory

The Neptunia series has some excellent songs throughout, but the opening theme for third game Victory is one of the stronger ones. It does a great job of capturing the games’ energetic, joyful spirit and acknowledges their origins as a parody of the video games industry at large through heavy use of electronic effects and synthesised sounds. It also makes a point of demonstrating the extremely strong friendship between the core cast members — they may not see eye-to-eye about everything (or anything) but they stick together and help one another out.

Omega Quintet

Last one for now, otherwise I’ll be here all night and I quite want to go to bed. I wrote a few days ago about how I like the fact Omega Quintet treats its episodic story just like an anime series, complete with opening and ending credits sequences. Here’s the opening sequence, which you see not just at the beginning of the game, but at the start of every chapter. It’s as delightful as the game itself.

1553: Fight On: A Music Post

I wanted an excuse to share this excellent piece of battle music from Demon Gaze, which I’m still playing through for review, so I figured, what the hey, why not just do a battle music post?

All right. Without further ado, first up, and in no particular order after that:

Demon Gaze (PS Vita) – Blue Eyes Hunter

This track from the dungeon crawler is the battle theme that plays when you fight against the enemies that pop out when you toss a gem into one of the many Demon Circles that adorn each of the game’s levels. This is a core game mechanic that allows you to acquire new equipment without having to pay for it; you can subsequently either equip it if it’s better than what you’ve got, break it down for Ether to use in upgrading existing equipment, or sell it for profit.

Demon Gaze’s soundtrack is consistently excellent and unusual. The fact there’s a heavy Vocaloid component to most of the tracks gives them a very distinctive feel, and this track is a good example. There’s a pretty wide selection of music throughout the game, and partway through your adventure the default battle theme changes — something that I always like to hear happen in an RPG, as it’s an obvious signal that you’ve made significant progress.

Final Fantasy XIV (PC, PS3, PS4) – Fallen Angel

This track from one of the toughest battles in Final Fantasy XIV’s main story (but one of the more straightforward battles from the endgame) is one of the best pieces of music in the whole game. It accompanies the battle against Garuda, one of the gigantic Primals who are threatening the land of Eorzea after being summoned by the beastmen tribes who worship them.

Garuda, or the Lady of the Vortex as she’s also known, is a nasty piece of work, and her fight really gives a strong feeling of clinging on for dear life against powerful winds lashing against your face. The music’s frantic energy helps complement that, too, making this an incredibly exciting confrontation.

Menace (Atari ST, Amiga) – Boss Fight Theme

This isn’t an RPG battle theme; instead it’s a boss battle theme from the Psygnosis side-scrolling shooter Menace — a surprisingly competent game that stood up reasonably well to its console equivalents of the same period.

This track by David Whittaker may be repetitive and simple, but it helped get the idea across that battling bosses was serious business. I vividly recall finding it almost impossible to beat the first boss on Menace when I was a kid. I wonder how difficult I’d find it now?

Time and Eternity (PS3) – Towa Battle Theme

Time and Eternity was critically panned when it was released by pretty much everyone except me — I rather liked it, and looking back on last year it’s actually one of the games I feel like I enjoyed most even though I will freely admit it was not, by any means, the best game I’ve ever played.

Two big contributing factors to my enjoyment of the game were its beautiful HD anime art style — the game used hand-drawn anime cels for sprites rather than the more common polygons seen in many of today’s games — and Yuzo Koshiro’s astonishing soundtrack. Koshiro, if you’re unfamiliar, is the guy behind one of the finest soundtracks of the 16-bit era, the Streets of Rage 2 score. This particular track is one of the normal battle themes for the game — there are two; one for each of the two main characters, Toki and Towa. This is Towa’s.

Baldur’s Gate (PC) – Attacked by Assassins

I’m generally not so much of a fan of Western-style RPG soundtracks because they tend to be more “cinematic” in nature; in other words, in contrast to the catchy, singable tunes of Eastern games, Western games tend to have music more as something going on in the background. This is fine, of course — it’s worked for a lot of movies and TV shows over the years — but I’ve never been a huge fan because it makes the soundtracks less memorable overall for me.

There are exceptions, though, and this track by Michael Hoenig for the original Baldur’s Gate is one of them. One of the first battle themes you hear in the game, this track just has a wonderfully aggressive, pounding energy to it that makes you want to keep on fighting. (Of course, at the time you first hear this track, all your characters are level 1 and consequently are very likely to get killed by a small rat breathing anywhere near them, but that shouldn’t stop you from feeling like a hero while you still have a few HP.)

TFX (PC) – Defence Suppression

Oh man, I’ve been wanting to hear this track again for years now, and good old YouTube delivered the goods. YAY. Ahem. Anyway.

This is from the distinctly “arcadey” (for want of a better word) flight sim TFX from 1993, a spectacular-for-the-time game that I always really wanted to play 1) to hear this music (which was included as Redbook CD audio, so you could listen to it on a CD player) during gameplay and 2) to switch between the internal and external views a few times just to see the G-LOC-style “zoom” animation where the camera zipped back and forth dynamically rather than just switching like other boring flight sims.

Unfortunately, I could never get the copy we owned running, and thus to this day I’ve still never played TFX. I somehow doubt it will stand up quite so well today, but this is still a cool (if distinctly ’90s cheesy) piece of music.

Ar Tonelico Qoga (PS3) – EXEC_COSMOFLIPS

Ar Tonelico Qoga was not the strongest installment in the Ar Tonelico series — that honour belongs to Ar Tonelico 2 — but it has one of the finest soundtracks. In fact, with the amazing music in all three Ar Tonelico games, it’s nigh-impossible to pick one favourite soundtrack.

It is less difficult, however, to pick a favourite individual song; this one, from Ar Tonelico Qoga, is simply wonderful. Just listening to it will hopefully give you an idea of its majesty to a certain extent, but taken in context of what is going on in the story at this point, it’s just magnificent.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1) – Trisection

Final Fantasy Tactics had a few good tunes, but on the whole I thought it was a relatively weak soundtrack, especially when compared to the rest of the Final Fantasy series which, at this point, was still dominated almost exclusively by Nobuo Uematsu. (Tactics, meanwhile, was composed by Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto.)

This track, though, is one that I’ll always remember. Accompanying the very first battle in the game, it was the absolute perfect way to stir up the emotions and encourage you to do your best — which is why I was disappointed it wasn’t used more often over the course of the rest of the game. I always wanted major battles to be accompanied by this tune, and every time the “story” music faded out in preparation for the battle to begin, I found myself hoping and hoping that I’d hear those distinctive opening rising passages again.

Trauma Team (Wii) – Be the One

The Trauma Center series has consistently fantastic music throughout, thanks largely to the involvement of Persona composer Shoji Meguro for part of the run, but this track here is a particular highlight that I believe I’ve drawn attention to on this blog before.

This track is from the culmination of the entire game’s storyline; the final operation to stamp out the disease that has been running rampant throughout the population once and for all. (I won’t spoil any further circumstances, as additional narrative aspects make this an incredibly nerve-wracking scene overall.) It’s a track that says “don’t fuck this up; everything is depending on this”, and the track that comes immediately after it was enough to get me sitting forward in my seat pretty much holding my breath as I attempting to bring the game to its conclusion. Amazing stuff.

Well, at nearly 1,500 words that’s probably enough for a “throwaway” post on battle themes from video games. If you have any favourites of your own, feel free to share in the comments. Include a YouTube link if there is one!

1247: Easy Listening, Part 3

I’m feeling marginally lazy, so I thought I’d continue with a post style I last did some time ago. Yes, it’s time for a soundtrack post. And, if you know what I’ve been playing recently, you’ll probably know the subject of said soundtrack post. That’s right, it’s Ar Tonelico!

(Note to those who are sick of me rabbiting on about this series: I’m closing in on absolutely, positively and completely finishing the third and final game in the series, so short of deciding to run through the whole trilogy again — which I promise I won’t do for at least a year or two — you will be subjected to enthusing about something else from thereon. Indulge me a little while longer, however.)

The Ar Tonelico series has consistently fantastic soundtracks, but there’s a clear divide in them between the “game” music and the vocal, choral “Hymnos” pieces that mark special events in the story. Today I’m going to focus on the latter and share some of these astonishing pieces of music with you. I urge you, even if you normally skip past the promise of “video game music”, to listen to these in their entirety: they’re simply gorgeous pieces of music in their own right, and carry a significant amount of emotional weight to them when heard in context.

Let’s begin, then. I’ll try and refrain from spoilers while discussing these, but be aware that the lyrics shown in some of the videos may constitute mild spoilers.

This piece, known as EXEC_LINCA — pretty much all the Ar Tonelico Hymnos songs are named like computer processes or programs — marked the moment that made me sit up and pay attention to the music of this series. Up until this point, the music had been competent, even memorable and catchy, but it wasn’t until this piece that I had to just sit back for a moment and take in the majesty of what I was hearing. This led to some rather conflicting feelings, as the moment in the story where this song comes up is a very dramatic one that makes you want to keep pushing forward — but, of course, pushing forward runs the risk of causing the music to end sooner!

In stark contrast to EXEC_LINCA, EXEC_CHRONICLE_KEY is a much more restrained, majestic piece for the most part. To say too much more about it would constitute spoilers, but suffice to say the time when this piece plays is a moment of significant emotional significance in the story of the first Ar Tonelico game, Melody of Elemia.

A significant proportion of Ar Tonelico 2 is spent attempting to assemble the legendary Hymnos Metafalica, which supposedly has the power to magically create new land. This version is the first time we hear half of the Metafalica theme, known as EXEC_METAFALICA.

Here’s the second half, known as METHOD_METAFALICA.

And here’s what happens when you put the two pieces together: possibly one of the most spectacular, beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. Also noteworthy for the moment near the beginning where the two singers are singing in binary code.

Here’s a strongly-contrasting piece from elsewhere in Ar Tonelico 2. This one technically isn’t a Hymnos piece, being in Japanese, but it’s a lovely little song that accompanies a rare moment of calm in that game’s storyline. It’s called “Hartes ciel, melenas walasye”, which translates to “Beloved World, Beloved People.”

And on to Ar Tonelico Qoga, the third and final game in the series. Give this one a moment to get going; it starts slow and gentle, then builds to a furious climax that truly gets the blood pumping.

And I’ll leave you with this one, a grand, majestic piece that accompanies an important story moment in the latter third of Ar Tonelico Qoga. Again, to say too much more would be to spoil it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the regal nature of this piece.

I hope you enjoyed these pieces. If you’ve never played the Ar Tonelico series, rest assured that the music alone makes these three games more than worth playing — it helps enormously that they’re all excellent games in their own right, too.

1171: Easy Listening, Part 2

As promised, I’m continuing yesterday’s post with another game music fest to introduce you to the joys of some soundtracks you might not be familiar with.

Today, it’s Cavia/Square Enix’s strange, wonderful and rather depressing action-JRPG Nier.

Nier

Nier wasn’t particularly well-received by critics upon its release due to a variety of factors. Having played it (and adored it, I might add), I can see why it was criticised, but equally I feel it was treated a little too harshly. Not only was it doing some fascinating things with the way it told its story and what its story was about — I’ll leave the spoilers out of the discussion for now — but it was also doing some really interesting things with its gameplay, too. What initially appeared to be a relatively conventional third-person character action game/RPG subsequently revealed itself to have elements of visual novels, text adventures, farming sims, 2D platform games, isometric-perspective dungeon crawlers, bullet hell shooters and numerous other genres. It really was a massively interesting game in almost every way.

And then there was its soundtrack, which even if you don’t like the game is indisputably amazing. Let’s look at some standout tracks.

This track, known as Hills of Radiant Wind, is one of the tracks you’ll hear most frequently in the game, since it typically accompanies your jaunts across the countryside surrounding the small settlement where the title character Nier and his daughter Yonah live. This track is hugely memorable both for having a catchy melody and capturing the atmosphere of the game world beautifully. The pounding drums at the bottom of the mix give a sense of adventure and driving forwards, while the vocal line atop the relatively simple accompaniment gives a suitable air of melancholy to the experience. Nier is not a happy game, and this track, while one of the more “upbeat” ones from the soundtrack, reflects that nicely.

This song, simply called Grandma, is beautiful, and is, to me, probably the most representative piece of music that illustrates what the Nier experience is all about. A simple accompaniment accompanied by a mournful voice provides a massively atmospheric backdrop to some of the most emotional story moments in the game.

And then we move on to a few tracks that use the “leitmotiv” technique I’m so fond of, where a number of different pieces make use of similar melodic or harmonic sequences to reflect various things happening to different characters and/or places.

Let’s start with Emil, who, without spoiling anything, gets fairly consistently screwed over throughout the course of the whole game, through no fault of his own. Poor kid.

Anyway, here’s Emil’s “Sacrifice” theme, which accompanies some heartbreaking, sad moments:

And by contrast, here’s his “Karma” theme, which comes shortly after a heartbreaking, sad moment when you’re venting some aggression on the perpetrators:

The addition of the pounding drums and the urgent piano line in this one always gives me shivers, particularly when I remember how it was used in context.

Then we have Popola and Devola, two characters who are extremely important to the overall narrative in ways I won’t spoil right now. When we encounter them, we hear various versions of the “Song of the Ancients” theme, beginning with this acoustic guitar-centric version:

…and moving on to this… I’m not sure how to describe this, really. Plinky-plonky version?

Well, if you’re going to do two different versions based on the two characters who sing it, you might as well do a third version where they sing it together, mightn’t you? Yes, obviously. This, along with Devola’s theme above, are some of the only examples of diegetic music in the game — the rest is there to evoke a mood rather than actually be “present” in the world.

And, hell, if you’re going to do that, you may as well go the whole hog and have a battle theme based on their (by now) iconic song, right? Of course.

The latter one, like Emil’s “Karma” theme, still gives me shivers because I can remember it in context. Gobsmacking.

Then we come to Kainé, possibly one of the most fascinating characters in any game ever for a whole host of reasons, many of which aren’t made entirely explicit in the game. Kainé has two main versions of her theme: a slow one, which goes like this…

…and a fast one, which goes like this.

Those who know their Nier lore will be familiar with the fact that Kainé is intersex. If you weren’t familiar with your Nier lore, now you know too — don’t worry, this isn’t technically a spoiler in terms of the game’s overall plot, and in fact knowing it beforehand brings a whole host of hidden meanings to a bunch of sequences in the game to the fore. I like to think that the markedly different character of these two pieces reflects Kainé’s “masculine” and “feminine” sides, because she is most definitely in possession of both. She is, it’s fair to say, a very angry person — and with good reason — but not afraid to express her feminine side in some rather… flamboyant ways.

One of the most interesting things about the vocal-heavy tracks in Nier are that they don’t use a language from this world. Instead, vocalist Emi Evans was encouraged to make up words in a “futuristic language” — Nier is set in the far, far future — and used elements of Scottish Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese to create something with a very distinctive sound, but which doesn’t “mean” anything in and of itself. Instead, the vocal sounds are simply intended, for the most part, to evoke the overall feeling of sadness that pervades the whole game without distracting the player with recognisable words.

So that’s Nier. Easily one of my favourite game soundtracks of all time, and a score which adds a huge amount of emotion to what is already a game rammed to the rafters with heartbreak.

1170: Easy Listening, Part 1

I am, as you probably know, a big fan of video game soundtracks. They’ve come on a very long way since the bleep-bleep-bloop of yore, and in many cases these days are eminently worth listening to in their own right.

Over the next few posts I’d like to take a mildly self-indulgent tour around some of my favourite tracks from some of my favourite soundtrack albums. YouTube-heavy post ahead… you have been warned.

Trauma Team

Let’s start with something that’s fresh in my memory. The Trauma Center series as a whole has pretty consistently great soundtracks, largely composed by Atlus mainstays Shoji Meguro and Atsushi Kitajoh. Both of them have a very distinctive (and quite similar) sound to their compositions, and this is very much in evidence throughout the Trauma Team soundtrack.

What’s most striking about the Trauma Team soundtrack, though, is how well the various pieces of music reflect the different characters. For example, for the cool “ice maiden” that is forensic investigator Dr Naomi Kimishima, we have this wonderfully chilled-out number called, appropriately enough, Cool Beauty:

Dr Naomi’s segments, as it happens, have some of the best music in the game. For the uninitiated (or those of you who haven’t read my enthusing at length about this wonderful game), Dr Naomi’s levels are adventure game-style puzzles in which you must unravel the mystery of what happened to one or more corpses using various forensic investigation techniques. As you progress through them, the truth gradually gets closer and closer until finally everything clicks into place and you understand exactly what happened to the poor person lying on the slab in your examination room.

That gradual uncovering of the truth is something beautifully captured by this piece, imaginatively titled Uncover the Truth, which starts out simple and gradually builds up in complexity as it progresses through. Accompanying this piece on screen is Dr Naomi piecing together all the case’s various pieces — with a little help from you, of course — and coming to a firm conclusion about what happened. It’s pretty great — and surprisingly powerful in context:

Dr Naomi is just one of six different doctors who star in Trauma Team, however, and each of them has their own distinctive “sound” throughout. For example, nameless surgeon “CR-S01″‘s pieces are all rather electronic-rock in nature and wouldn’t sound out of place in a Shin Megami Tensei game — unsurprising, considering the composers:

Meanwhile, Dr Hank Freebird’s pieces focus a lot more on gradually-building tension, such as this piece, which in-game builds itself up as your “combo” of moves made without mistakes (or taking a break) grows:

Dr Cunningham the diagnostician, meanwhile, is a much more laid-back sort of dude for the most part:

Except when things get serious, of course.

Trauma Team’s story is split into two distinct segments. The first half sees the six doctors working largely independently from one another, following their own parallel storylines that do nonetheless make a coherent narrative if played in the correct order. However, the really interesting stuff starts happening in the second half, which is completely linear, and follows the entire team’s attempts to battle against a disease known as the Rosalia virus.

This part of the game makes use of one of my favourite compositional techniques for soundtracks, which is to take one theme and gradually evolve and adapt it over the course of the story. Rosalia’s theme goes through a number of changes throughout the second half of Trauma Team, culminating in something pretty spectacular.

Here we have Spread of Rosalia, a piece that plays during the endoscopy sequences of the game while battling against the Rosalia virus. The recognisable chord sequence and strings backing of the Rosalia theme is present and correct here, with a nervous, tense, slow-moving melody overlaid over the top of it. Treating Rosalia is something that requires care, precision and nerves of steel; this piece of music reflects that rather nicely.

Encounter Rosalia during Maria’s First Response missions, meanwhile, and you get treated to this wonderfully intense number that really gets the pulse pounding. Just the thing you need while you’re running back and forth between five different patients trying not to let any of them die, huh?

This piece of music, meanwhile, plays during Dr Hank Freebird’s orthopaedic surgery missions where he comes across Rosalia. Hank’s missions aren’t as time-sensitive as many of the other operations throughout Trauma Team, but the high level of accuracy required in them makes them some of the most tense, most physically-exhausting levels you’ll be challenged with:

This track, on the other hand, plays while discussing Rosalia and how best to treat it. It’s less intense than the other Rosalia pieces, but has a certain air of desperation about it, while at the same time offering a sense of hope… before exploding in intensity towards the end.

Finally, spoilers I guess, our final showdown with Rosalia comes pre-packed with this rockin’ piece of music — beautifully fitting for an intense surgical battle against a thoroughly unpleasant illness. Will our heroes make it through…? Well, that’s up to you, really…

More tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 874: 21 Hours Left to Get Indie Game Music Bundle 3

As I type this, Indie Game Music Bundle 3 has just 21 hours left on the clock. The package aims to give your ears a good rogering with the soundtracks to Terraria, Plants vs. Zombies, Dustforce, Ilomilo and Frozen Synapse, and is a cheap date, too — it’s available under the fashionable “pay what you want” scheme.

There’s a caveat, though — break the $10 barrier and you get a bunch of extra soundtracks, too. Specifically, you get the following additional albums on top of the already-awesome package detailed above:

Offspring Fling Original Soundtrack — Alec Holowka
Mubla Evol Ution: NoituLove 1&2 and More — Joakim Sandberg
Cardinal Quest Original Soundtrack — Whitaker Blackall
InMomentum Original Soundtrack — Gareth Coker
Impeccable Micro — _ensnare_
Bluescreen Chiptune/Jazz — Protodome
Beautiful Lifestyle — George & Jonathan
Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar — Disasterpeace
Deorbit — Disasterpeace
Gungirl 2 Original Soundtrack — Josh Whelchel
Astroman Original Soundtrack — Jeff Ball
The Blocks Cometh Original Soundtrack — Hyperduck Soundworks
Fittest Original Soundtrack — Zircon
Songs for the Cure ’11 — Various Artists
Songs for the Cure ’10 — Various Artists

You may not be familiar with any or all of the above artists, but rest assured that this is a fantastic bundle to pleasure your lugholes with for 19 and a half hours, covering a wide range of different musical styles. To be honest, it’s worth your money for the fantastic Frozen Synapse soundtrack alone, which is aural sex.

Game music is traditionally a “love it or hate it” sort of thing, though in recent years we’ve started to see a huge shift in attitudes towards it. Whereas game soundtracks were once bleepy-bloopy loops made to fit into the amount of memory it takes to write a single sentence in a Microsoft Word document these days, today they’re impressive affairs that are frequently on par with movies.

In fact, big-budget triple-A video games (particularly those from the West) try a little too hard to be movies, with sweeping orchestral scores composed by the likes of Hans Zimmer. In some respects, these modern soundtracks, while impressive, have lost a lot of the character that game music used to have — by working around the technological limitations of the era, old-school game musicians came up with catchy earworms that you’d remember for years afterwards. This happens much less these days because composers can pretty much run free with whatever they want to do. As an exercise, hum the Super Mario Bros. theme to yourself now. Then hum the Modern Warfare 3 theme. You probably can’t do the latter. (Though you probably can hum the Halo theme, showing that some composers still “get it”.)

Anyway, my point is that soundtrack composers for independently-developed titles such as these tend to “get” what made game soundtracks of the past so memorable much better than those composing for big-budget titles, and these indie composers are then able to apply this knowledge to modern compositional techniques and technology in order to create some truly excellent pieces of music. Some deliberately make use of chiptune sounds; others have their own distinctive aural aesthetic. All are unique. All are most definitely worth your $10.

Grab a copy of the Bundle here.

#oneaday, Day 312: Quest Complete: C25K

I’ve been somewhat short of what one might call “victories” recently. In fact, most of my endeavours for the last I-don’t-know-how-long-now have ended in what could politely be called failure. As such, I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently, getting very tired of… well, everything, really.

So when an actual, genuine, bona fide victory-slash-achievement rears its head, by golly I’m going to celebrate it.

Tonight I completed the nine week Couch 2 5K running programme, introduced to me by one Mr Calin Grajko, who is a really cool guy and, I have it on good authority, doesn’t afraid of anything. I’ve mentioned this a few times previously, but for those of you who can’t be bothered to look back a few entries, have joined me recently or who are having trouble finding exactly what you want using the search box (which is fine by me), let me explain.

Over the course of nine weeks, you go from being someone who “can’t run” to someone who, well, can. The first week begins with you running for a minute at a time, then walking for 90 seconds, then repeating this process several times. Each week ups the ante somewhat until you reach the final week when, in theory, you should be able to run for 30 minutes at a time without stopping.

When I started the programme, I seriously doubted that I’d ever be able to do more than a couple of minutes at a time. I deliberately hadn’t looked at what horrors the end of the programme had to offer because I figured the system shock would just put me off and demotivate me. So it was a genuine surprise each week to find out what I’d be doing. It was a big surprise in the last few weeks when the jumps started getting bigger.

But I’m pleased to announce that I can now run for 30 minutes without stopping. It’s not easy, sure, and I’m not quite at that elusive 5K distance just yet (not far off, though—my best distance in 30 minutes is 2.99 miles, just under the 3.1 miles that roughly equates to a 5K) but I figure I can get there with a bit more training. Tonight, I felt a noticeable increase in my speed, for example, though that disappeared with the hilly bits towards the end of tonight’s run.

The important thing with any exercise regime is motivation, and making sure you keep this motivation flowing in both the short and long term. By “short term”, I mean “while you’re doing your exercise”, and by “long term” I mean “the duration of the programme and beyond”.

Through this programme, I think I’ve got both of those things pretty comfortably sorted. The long-term motivation is handled nicely by the programme itself—making constant, regular, measurable progress is motivation in and of itself. Plus telling friends that you’ve completed week whatever-it-is is something you can genuinely take pride in, particularly if your friends are appreciative of what you’ve been trying to do.

The short-term motivation—keeping going while in the middle of a session—can be harder. If you run out of energy, you run out of energy. Part of this is about pacing yourself, but it’s also about not getting too bored of what you’re doing as well.

As such, I have made sure to have some banging playlists on my iPhone while out on my running sessions, matched reasonably well-ish with the timings of each session. Me being me, these songs have mostly fallen into the video game soundtrack category. Conveniently, though, the generally regular tempo and “inspiring” nature of a lot of game music makes it entirely appropriate for use in exercising. So without further pontificating on the philosophy of exercise (there are plenty of people out there who can comment on it with much more authority than I) I will share with you my playlist for tonight’s run. iPhone users, tap the song titles to play the tunes. Everyone else, you should have a fancy-pants Flash player to play each song with.

Warm-Up: The Elite (from Split/Second)

The Split/Second soundtrack was a fixture on my playlists. For the first few weeks, my playlist consisted solely of the Split/Second soundtrack. Because it’s awesome. And free. But this song in particular was an excellent warm-up track because it builds up a bit at a time. There’s also a spooky bit in the middle with jangly guitars that is great when you’re going out at night-time. During this piece, I was doing my 5-minute walk as a warmup for the main event.

Get Ready: Operation Briefing (from Trauma Center: Second Opinion)

The sole reason this song is in there is so that the woman on the GetRunning app which gives verbal coaching for the C25K programme has something unnecessarily dramatic to talk over while she’s briefing you about how long you’ll be running for. Timing the start of playback perfectly will mean that you start running with the next piece, which is…

Go!: Friend (from Bayonetta)

If you’ve never played Bayonetta, know that it’s a study in glorious excess. SPOILER: There is a bit where you ride a motorbike up a rocket into space in order to go and rescue the titular Bayonetta, who has gotten herself trapped in the crystalline eye of God, who happens to be a large female statue that is more than a bit pissed off. This music is from that bit. And it’s awesome. It’s also perfect music to get you pumped up and moving. The tempo is a good pace for running to.

Jenova Returns (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

And so begins a set of Final Fantasy VII pieces, or more specifically some awesome remixes by the immensely talented community at OCRemix. When this piece gets all dramatic in the middle, I was just hitting my stride tonight. Which was good.

Beginning of the End (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is one of my favourite pieces from FFVII. The original version always used to get my pulse racing as the final battle with Sephiroth began. Used at this point in the playlist, I was just starting to feel the proverbial “burn” a bit, and the overdramatic nature of it helped push me through.

Black Wing Metamorphosis (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is a great, creative remix of the song that everyone knows from FFVII—the final boss theme, One Winged Angel. Bad-ass choirs and screaming guitars? That sounds like motivation to me.

Final Battle: Opportunity (from Skies of Arcadia)

You may be spotting something of a pattern with these pieces. Since it was my last run, I figured I’d make it something of an “occasion” with some ridiculously overdramatic music. The Skies of Arcadia final boss theme is neat because it starts ominous, threatening and dramatic and turns triumphant and victorious by the end. In-game, these changes happened according to how well the battle was going, so you could tell aurally when you were winning. Knowing this sent me subconscious signals that I was on the home straight.

Possibly.

Panic Attack (by Dream Theater)

I loved this song ever since I first encountered it in Rock Band 2, where it gave my fingers something of a workout. And cramp. It’s also, like, deep and stuff, cause I can, like, totally relate to the lyrics and whatnot, yeah?

In an exercise sense, it’s fast, gets the adrenaline flowing and has the line “rapid heartbeat pounding in my chest” in the middle of it. So it’s, like, appropriate.

Of course, it also has the line “I am terrified, so afraid to die” in it. Which, depending on your fitness level, may also be appropriate.

Navras (from The Matrix Revolutions)

Ever since I first heard this piece, I thought it would be an awesome accompaniment to some sort of final battle. In fact, a variation on this piece called Neodämmerung is used in the final battle with Mr Smith in The Matrix Revolutions. This piece, to my mind, though, is superior and is only used in the end credits.

So why not have this piece as the grand finale to the nine-week push? Why not indeed. Conveniently, my 30 minutes were up just as it got to the slow bit in the middle, so I got to cool down to some trippy floaty ethnic-sounding warbling. Which was nice.

So, in summary, then? Keep your motivation up (possibly through the use of some banging tunes) and you can achieve whatever goal you want. I’ve achieved one, which is something of a relief after so many things that have gone wrong over the last couple of years.

Now, just another 50-something posts to go to achieve another goal…

#oneaday, Day 263: Original Sound Track

Music provides an emotional connection to memories. It can trigger memories, feelings and responses. Many people associate certain pieces of music with particular times in their lives. And, depending on your interests, these pieces of music can be from a variety of sources. They could be movie soundtracks. Pieces of music you’ve played yourself. The music that was playing when something awesome or terrible happened.

Or they might be video game soundtracks. Game soundtracks are quite unique in a way in that their technology has evolved very quickly. So rather than evolving over the course of hundreds of years like classical music, they evolved very distinct identities with each new generation of hardware, roughly a decade at a time. Today, we’re in a peculiar situation where we have game soundtracks that are, at times, indistinguishable from movie soundtracks. But at the same time, we also are getting game soundtracks that deliberately hearken back to the distinctive sounds of the past. Which is confusing. But awesome.

So I thought I’d share a few pieces of music that I’ve enjoyed over the years. And, where applicable, if I can remember (and if they’re not too embarrassing) the memory that’s attached to them.

The Atari ST had a deeply, deeply terrible soundchip, especially when compared to its technically superior rival, the Commodore Amiga. That didn’t stop a variety of composers such as Alistair Brimble trying their best to compose catchy tunes. I don’t have a particular memory associated with this piece of music (besides playing Fantasy World Dizzy, that is) but this piece of music was oddly memorable. I’m not sure why, because it’s not a spectacularly good piece of music. But it had that “hook”.

Starfox/Starwing had a very distinctive soundtrack. The synth sounds used throughout coupled with the reasonably-convincing electric guitar sounds were actually far better than most of the stuff that the N64’s execrable sound chip belched out. This piece of music in particular stuck with me. I remember playing Starfox/wing with headphones on in the lounge and getting told to be quiet because I was finding it all a bit exciting and going “Whooa!” a lot. C’mon. The first time you do that corkscrew descent to the surface of Venom? That was awesome.

I’m not afraid to admit I cried like a girl when (OMG SPOILER) Aeris/th died. I bought Final Fantasy VII specifically because my brother had said it was the first time a lot of people had felt genuine emotion from a video game. I wasn’t disappointed. Aeris/th’s death may be something of a cliché now. But at the time, what happened to her was shocking.

Silent Hill 2 is a game that’s stuck with me for many years. Its powerful imagery, heartbreaking story and excellent theme song are partly to blame for this. The fact that I was so captivated by the story that I played through about 95% of it in one night is probably more to blame for this. I associate this piece of music with staying up that night, and also feel an emotional connection to it which I’m buggered if I can actually describe.

Not a game soundtrack, but Speed’s score became my job interview soundtrack for a while. It was good driving music, so I’d listen to it on the way there and, assuming it hadn’t all gone horribly wrong, on the way back too. Added a bit of drama to the commute if nothing else.

You might have forgotten about the 2204355 Dancing Chicken Man by now, but I certainly haven’t. Why? Because the music on that video is now inextricably tied to my last weeks in Southampton. I was sitting up late one night contemplating the futility of existence (as you do) when SnakeLinkSonic posted a tweet which simply read “I CAN’T STOP WATCHING” and included a link to the original Flash animation that started all this nonsense off. The animation and the music made me laugh so much at I time when I was feeling so utterly terrible that I can’t help but have it stuck in my mind. It reminds me of the days counting down until I’d have to leave and make a fresh start… a fresh start which I’m not sure has quite happened yet.

Basically, if there’s ever a game featuring me, and I have to face a boss at the end of Disc 1, I want this music to be playing.

Again, not a specific memory attached to this one, but the Split/Second score is awesome and oddly inspirational. As such, I’ve adopted it as my official Going For A Run soundtrack. And it really works.

Last of all, this piece also doesn’t have a specific memory attached to it (because I’m creating said memory right now), but it was introduced to me while I was writing this. (Thanks, Donna!) It’s a pair of Dulcimers, an instrument I knew of but don’t think I’d ever seen before. This piece is gorgeous; the sound of the instruments is full, resonant and has a sense of “purity” about it. I like it very much.

So there’s some music for you. Hmm. That post took rather longer to put together than I thought it would. Oh well! Good night. Tune in tomorrow for the next episode in the thrilling series of events that has been taking place at the top of each post. Have I really just killed myself off?

#oneaday, Day 146: Overly Ambitious Interactive Post

This post is interactive. And long. As such, I am using a More tag for the first time ever. To take part in all the fun, read the full post. It’s about Persona 4‘s music, and how I think it can be made relevant to pretty much any situation you might find yourself in in everyday life. I commented on this on Twitter the other day. I thought it might be fun to prove it. Turns out it is fun. And rather time-consuming to prepare. But here it is anyway.

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