The first time I turned on Mario Kart 8 and the music started, I didn't push a single button until the song had finished its loop. I was absolutely blown away.
That is my first thing to do whenever I play a game. I'm a trumpet player game nerd who now is a physician. Mario Kart was the first SNES game I played -- it's such a vivid Christmas memory -- and when I heard that part of the MK8 theme come out, listening to it after a long call night when I was in residency, in a full jazz band arrangement, I CHEERED out loud in my living room.
You brought up how the music changes when you go underwater, and I wanted to point out that this kind of blink-and-you'll-miss-it diagetic mix change to the non-diagetic soundtrack is absolutely one of Nintendo's favorite mood tricks. My favorite example is the interior and exterior of Hyrule Castle from Breath of the Wild, but they've been pulling it as early as the first Luigi's Mansion.
BOTW Hyrule Castle has another even more subtle diagetic change! When you're near enemies, snare drums will fade in, like a drummer on a battlefield, and they'll fade out again when you're away from enemies.
Between Casiopea and T-Square, there is some really phenomenal music going on there. Dream Hill and Circuit Wanderer are probably my two favorite tracks from each group respectively
The progression of game sound tracks through the years from "2 square waves and a dream" to big band & symphony orchestra really is amazing to look at.
Until you develop an RSI from the weird fingering lol. (I'm joking but only partially, I'm self taught on piano and have pretty bad wrist issues now, I suspect that my weird fingering probably didn't help with that)
I love when RU-vidrs actually invite viewers to think and answer pretty good questions, like when you asked if "live music is always better than synthesized music" or not? That opens the debate, and in that way you have more contact with your viewers than when you just show off how good you are and how much knowledge you have about a subject. Good job!
I bring another question, have you thought how difficult or more exhausting must be to mix or create music for for games? I mean, think about how many outcomes may be in a single moment in the game. If the player in Mario Kart stays still or goes very slow, then the orchestra will play a theme and the mix perhaps includes a big brass section. But what about when the player goes super fast or falls under water or in a pond or the mud, then the track perhaps no longer would have the brass section there, but instead a flute playing as protagonist bc Mario is now running under water! So the outcomes are infinite, so can be the mixing.
In my opinion, I love combining electronic music with live instruments. I love synths and drum tracks and 808s but I also love Fender Rhodes, Hammond Organ, or even an upright bass. Combining Live and Electronic music is the way.
I just love all Nintendo music from every era. They do such a good job making timeless music that is as enjoyable the first hour you play as it is the thousandth hour you play. I also enjoy synthesized music as much as real instruments so I guess I don't really put them in different categories in my brain. It's all just good music. People like Mezerg go in their own epic catagory though!
Looking at the merits of "live" vs "synthesized" music is the audio version of "photo-realism" vs "art direction." In a sense, live vs synthetic music may make more sense if the choice supports aesthetic goal. But neither answer is better or worse. The Tron Legacy soundtrack leaned very heavily on elements of electronic music and artificial sounds, which helped to shape the futuristic and digital aesthetic of the movie. If John Williams had scored it, it may have been beautiful, but in order to enhance the futuristic vision, you would have had to compensate compositionally by using futuristic sounding chord progressions or rythms. Neither is wrong, neither is right, each affords its own creative strengths and limitations and choosing to work around these is more specifically what may contribute to their merit.
It would be awesome if you did a breakdown of the music of Casiopea, a very prolific 80s jazz fusion band from Japan. I just recently discovered them. They were very famous back then in Japan. They have recorded 40 albums or so. Their music is something else, incredible musicianship! Minoru Mukaiya is an amazing keyboardist and wrote some tasty solos with unreal chord progressions. They've influenced various videogame musicians also. Check out tracks like Galactic Funk, Looking up/Dr. Solo/Bass, Swear, Take me, Dazzling, Eyes of the Mind, Ardent, Right on the Orbit, etc. Theyre all so good. I'm only scratching at the surface I think, they have so much good music.
Some of the greatest digital music I've heard is the soundtrack to The Adventure Zone by Griffin McElroy. He had very little musical experience beforehand. And he uses leitmotifs masterfully and it's wonderful.
Great video, really good food for thought too! Love you bringing up a discussion about the difference between digital and "real" physically played music disappearing
I love how the example he used for super realistic looking games, was assetto corsa, which the graphics have literally piece by piece been made by the community
I'd like to add that digital music/instruments allows those who do not have access to "real" instruments, private lessons, a studio, etc. a more even playing field and a bigger voice.
So part of the reason pipe organs exist is that it’s a way to get a full orchestral sound but only have to pay one musician. They have stops for flutes, and reeds, and trumpets, and strings, and they can make a huge, amazing sound with the skill and effort of a single musician. They’re kind of the first synthesized instrument. Adding to the similarities, electronic stops also exist now, and it’s VERY difficult to tell the difference between them and a real pipe. Orchestras didn’t go away with the invention of the pipe organ, they simple added more possibilities. Not everyone has access to a talent pool to form a full band. With synthesizers, however, they can get the sound the want with the resources available to them, they can explore different sounds more efficiently. They add more possibilities. I love a big band, I love an orchestra, I love a pipe organ, but sometimes a synthesizer is called for.
Music is always an interplay of many different things. The reliance on midi and digital orchestration has led to so much interesting ways to arrange and orchestrate, and created a really interesting and unique texture. Related to this video, I recommend Mario Kart Wiis soundtrack. The way it samples and the amount of charm in the digital instrumentation is so great. Performance is a huge part of music and will always be, but like, listening to a recorded soundtrack isn't the same as listening to a concert in person either. Anyways vgm is cool!
This reminded me of an old Extra Credits video that talked about how gaming music has been perceived as "less memorable" because game composers have a lot more tools to work with. In the old days, the NES could only churn out a couple of pitches at the same time and had a very limited variety of timbres to play with, so composers had to get creative as far as differentiating their music… and the only way to do this was using clever melodies. Yes, just because you have all these fancy tools at your disposal doesn't necessarily mean you're going to create good music. I'm more so fascinated by the newer compositions from the old 8-bit/16-bit veterans like Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu, because while their tools have changed over the decades, their music has pretty much remained the same. It's interesting to see what new ideas these people come up with, free from the restrictions of the old hardware.
I'm unbelievably glad you are not straight lying to my face I thought you were about to say raycon sponsored this episode when you talked about good sound quality and doing music Justice
For the question of live music vs synthesized/electronic music- it really depends on the writing, application, and execution. There are plenty of great examples of both and plenty of bad examples of both.
Hey man, have you ever connected with the 8-bit big band? Personally, Im loving what theyve been doing to video game music - saw them live before the pandemic and it was a ton of fun listening to a full big band play old school video game themes.
You should've checked out the one song in mario kart live home circuit, that is full on big band with electric guitar solos and stuff, goes way harder on the big band vibe
okay okay hear me out. Ridge Racer 4 | Exploring the Music. PLEASE! especially tracks 7 naked glow, 8 your vibe, and 9 lucid rhythms. I beg of thee, analyze this masterpiece soundtrack
I know I'm late in commenting, and this may have been said before, but on live vs synthesized, I'm reminded of painting vs photography. To me, it may lead to newer forms of live music, and either way they both are forms of art that can speak to the audience, so I'd say that in my opinion, they are different, but with neither necessarily being better inherently
I think the difference between live and synthesized music is as follows: It can not and will never be the same. That doesn't mean either are bad, they just are (in some aspects) incomparable. There is no inherent difference between creating music on a computer v.s. on physical instruments, but the music is not the same. There's a difference between forcing air through a brass instrument v.s. emulating an organ on a midi-keyboard.
Before games came on CD, it was just impossible to have live instruments or even anything that wasn't a very basic synth. So something as mundane as storage space definitely plays a huge role on top of obviously many other factors.
The magic of the Nintendo music, they keep your smile from one game to another. They evolved with their audience, not much game company can achieve this especially from game itself, art design to the music. It is just perfect.
In my college days I went down the rabbit hole of listening to tracker based music. There are some fantastic musicians who work absolute magic within the constraints of few channels and instrumentation. And none of it is live.
Synthesizers are their own instrument. When they emulate acoustic instruments, it’s cool but there’s a nuance you can achieve with a physical instrument that would be very difficult to exactly copy electronically. Like if I’m playing a sax, I could adjust the breathiness of my tone quite easily, but programming that into a synth (especially live) would be more of a hassle. That said, I can’t make the sax sound like a trombone just by moving a couple of switches or knobs either
You could analyse the Halo Soundtrack which in my opinion is incredible in the way that it creates different moods from ominous to invigorating to melancholy. Just please, it’s too good.
I think there's so much room for interplay between live and synthesized music. Some of the most complex, emotive and incredibly dynamic music I've heard comes from artists like Venetian Snares, Flying Lotus and Aphex Twin; sometimes if you remove the limitations of what is humanly possible on a physical instrument you can try some really out there stuff. Conversely, I also really enjoy the authenticity and tactile realism that a band like Meute brings to traditionally synthesized music. I think the diversity and variety is what we want. Also worth noting that this is a very old discussion we've had a number of times, the saxophone was controversial when it was first invented for example.
The Donkey Kong Country games' soundtracks demonstrate that some digital music wouldn't be improved by translating it to a live performance. A live-instrument Bramble Blast, for instance, might sound excellent, but it can't capture the vibe that David Wise painstakingly brought via his mastery of the digital sound techniques of that era.
I think it depends on the instrument wanting to be recorded. In some way's it's very hard to get some techniques out of instruments like strings or woodwinds with software which is where you would use live musicians. otherwise, I agree it's very hard to tell the diffrence with things like drums and pianos these days and if you can to cut time and money use software instead of live musicians. also depends on the composer some religiously use live musicians
Hey, would you mind hitting the Civ6 soundtrack? The American theme make me break down and cry tears of beauty and joy, and I wondered if it was just me. Be sure to follow the evolution from primitive to space age. The restatement of the theme is just glorious. Excelsior!
All this machinery making modern music Can still be open-hearted Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty - Rush-spirit of the radio
Me and a friend just picked up MK8 again.. it's funny that it's by now like, old, at least as in video game age... it's 7 years old!! Longest so far between mario kart games. Can't wait to see what they cook up in MK9.. which I want NOW:( Anyway, sick video! The soundtrack really is great! Apart from the obv dolphin shoals, Grumble Volcano is my favorite
It's hard to make a distinction b/w live vs synth when its now possible to play synthetic music live. For example, one of my favorite artists is Bonobo who does a sort of jazz/hip-hop mix that they've performed live several times with both live and synthetic instruments.
Now that we’re on video game themes… how about god shattering Star? And how video games and movies are a grisly pioneering the evolution of classical music, classical sounds and being completely awesome?
It's not about is software or real better, its about the right application. They are and always will be different although there is a blurry crossover its choosing the right tool for the project.
I think depending on what the goal is, both synthesized music and acoustic/live music have a place. Computers are precise. So if you need precision go synthesized. But if you want groove, computers aren’t good at that, so go acoustic/live
There's no reason that synthesized music can't also be live music. And most of the live music we talk about isn't actually live--it's recorded separately and combined with other stuff. Most stuff is a combination of the two, really--including the examples you gave of really good synth players. They're still playing live on their instruments and recording it in that clip you gave, for example.
I played the main theme a couple times on my stream for "starting soon" background music. I felt a little bad after because nothing I actually played afterward could match that energy level...
I love the Dolphin Shoals music. It's probably my favorite. I also like Bowser Castle, Choco Mountain, and Big Blue. The music in general is outstanding.
It's not that synth vs live instruments is better or worse. What is better is expression. The easiest way to get that human like expression is usually to play live (with acoustic or synthesized instrument). Not to say you can't carefully program expression on a computer... it's just incredibly hard to do that in a convincing way and it might take longer than it's worth.
