Music is a spectacle.
No one is shocked anymore by scenes of smashing guitars, dance numbers full of barely clothed women, makeup and costumes that outdo any Halloween celebration.
So when six rockers calling themselves The Black Mages file onto the stage and give an entire concert with music from video games to a screaming audience in Japan, or when acappella groups perform renditions of the “Super Mario Bros.” theme, or when people on the street randomly start humming “Legend of Zelda” music, I am not surprised in the slightest.
But when people say that video game music is stupid, I really want to scream.
If you, dear reader, believe this way about video game music, take this paper to the nearest computer, open your Web browser of choice and search for “One Winged Angel.” Listen to it, listen to it again and if you still believe video game music is stupid and simplistic, please visit the nearest otologist, because your ears must not be working properly.
As more and more people are exposed to the greats of video game music, to Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda, to Jack Wall and Jeremy Soule, the appreciation of this new art form flourishes. And for me, this is a plus for music of all kinds – a push toward understanding what music is and a tug away from the tired old verse-chorus-verse format that every pop song follows like a lemming.
Video game music follows a different set of rules than most pop music: Listen to the same song on the radio 10 times in a row and it will quickly get boring; yet video game music must be repeated for several loops while maintaining a certain level of interest. Different songs must still be somewhat related so that one can transition smoothly between them. There must be a cohesiveness to the soundtrack.
But beyond these rules, the sky is the limit. Video game music resembles movie music in that both are metagenres: Some games use ambient tunes (“Ico,” “Portal”), some games rely on quirky melodies (“Super Mario RPG”), some games on nostalgia (“Kingdom Hearts,” “Goldeneye”), some games on classical forms (“The Legend of Zelda,” “The Elder Scrolls”), some on a tribal sound (“Chrono Cross”), some on rock (“Halo”), some on a mish-mash of everything (“Final Fantasy X”).
Of course, bad video game music exists. I still want to take a newspaper upside the head of whoever was in charge of the music direction for “Xenosaga.” Every fight in the game had the exact same music, so the final battle had absolutely no feeling of climax. More pop-styled games try to emulate pop music, indiscriminately tossing out rock, rap or punk, and repeating all the same errors that the worst of those music types do – all show, no substance.
But while bad music can certainly detract from the gaming experience, good music can add to it. Music is, after all, an extremely emotional art form, so many composers use music to add to the emotion of a moment. Some of the greatest musical moments in video game history came when the composer implied an emotion contrary to expectation. I remember being blown away by the opening sequence of “Final Fantasy X” and “Myst III: Exile.” The former replaced a fantastical, orchestral number with a heavy metal song, and the latter gave the Myst series an epic flavor almost never found in video games. I knew right from the beginning that I was not going to receive a run-of-the-mill game.
Some games take music to yet another level: They make the music part of the game itself. Today, there is hardly an arcade around that does not have at least one “Dance Dance Revolution” system (more often two or three). “Guitar Hero” has been similarly popular on the consoles.
If there is a better sign of the popularity of video game music than this, I don’t know what it is; one of the most popular styles to import for “DDR” or “GH” is none other than video game music itself.
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