This is a rather long entry, but contains a lot of information. If you're new to the blog or a regular reader, I highly suggest taking your time and reading. There's a lot of insight and information below as I analyze the NES games in My Gaming Audio History, a journey I've come to the end of after over a year. Next up, SNES games... but for today, the last of my musings and analysis of the NES era audio.
I've been taking some time to think about what I learned by studying the music (and audio) to these NES games that I played growing up. Not only have I been wondering about results of my study and what I've learned so far, but I've been asking myself fundamental questions like: why is the NES era so fascinating to me, and why am I studying game music? It's this final question that I'm going to start with now...
For one, I've always played games. I've also played the piano as well as several other musical instruments. I've already written about the connections I see between playing games and playing musical instruments, particularly my life and career as a pianist. Yet, recently I've thought of another reason that games study is so appealing to me. My partner is a very successful opera singer and is traveling the world roughly half of the year. I'm at home... my connection with his work is in preparing him for those roles and performances. After that initial step, then he leaves and is gone for months working on the projects in fabulous places around the country (the last year took him to France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Holland, for instance). I've begun to realize that games are not just nostalgic, but also a way for me to go to exotic locations and hear amazing sounds right from my living room. I think this "away from where I am" aspect is a big part of the draw in studying game audio for me. It's a way to travel anywhere and hear new sounds from my life at home.
Continuing in reverse order, why is the NES era so fascinating to me? And, it's not just me! Many other folks love the 8-bit era above all other game audio times. One thing is that the NES was nearly universal-- it had such a huge market share in the 80s that nearly everyone who played games played the NES and could relate to it. Thus, it gives a universal language among people around my age.
Another reason I think the NES era is so fascinating is that with the development of the NES, the era of home gaming was born. One can definitely hear the influence of the arcades (the "ringing" up of your score at the end of Super Mario Bros, for instance, imitates pinball). However, music needed to fill out the audio experience of gaming because it was at home and not in a crowded arcade. Also, your NES was plugged into a TV, which didn't have great speakers, but probably better ones than your computer sound in the 80s! So, there's an influence of what came before (main the arcade/ pinball sound effects) but also better audio quality.
For me, undoubtedly one of the most amazing aspects of game music in the NES era was the lack of precedent. By the time of 16-bit consoles, there were years of game audio history to build on. But the developers of NES games and game audio were in uncharted territory. What should a game sound like? What should a power-up sound like? What should death sound like? What should running out of time sound like? What did music tell the player about the scene and moment in the game? These questions were decided in this era of home gaming in a way that still carries influence today-- and not just because some sounds are exactly the same (finding a treasure in Zelda, for instance), but even more basic parameters. Generally, power-ups rise, death music descends, running out of time speeds up....
By the time of the SNES, my parents had bought another TV and my brother and I were moved into a new room where we could game without using the "family TV." Thus, game audio no longer filled the house in the same way. Thus, games had lost their universality as my parents no longer watched and listened as we played along for hours.
Finally, what have I learned so far? I've already created a chart where I show how the amount of music in NES games increases over time. But what else? Well...
When I started this project, I expected to find a grand key scheme and design in these games. By this I mean: like a great Beethoven symphony, I hoped to find that a game was in a certain key with various tracks in related keys, which were connected by musical (mathematic) significance. I really didn't find much of this. Koji Kondo definitely has key relationships in the Mario Bros games (these games are overwhelmingly in C major), and David Wise has moments of it-- like the E centered RC Pro-Am. However, composers don't do this as much as one might expect.
I also expected to find lots of thematic relationships. By this I mean musical symbolism that occurs by the use of motives that describe feelings, people, places, things, etc... If you need more info, check out my video on Leitmotifs in Final Fantasy 7. I've only just started my SNES research, and am looking forward to writing about it soon, but I can already say that this is more common in SNES games than NES games. Koji Kondo is definitely a leader in this way.
Finally, I'd like to share one unexpected thing I've learned in my NES game study. Admittedly, I feel a little foolish to write that this is unexpected, because I should have realized it, but... Game composers have "sounds" that define them in the same way that Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, etc, have "sounds" that an experienced listener can identify. I definitely can recognize David Wise music, at least on the NES. He has compositional forms as well as sounds that he uses more regularly than another composer might, say Koji Kondo, for instance. And likewise with other composers. This isn't to say that all games by a composer sound exactly the same, but there are similarities that one can come to hear and understand as this music is studied so that even hearing a piece for the first time allows for educated guesses if you're familiar with more of the composer's work. Like I said, I don't know why I didn't expect to find this, but I hadn't thought of it until now and definitely hear it.
So there are my reflections on the last year and a half of game audio study I've been doing. Now, I'm off to the next era; I've already been studying Super Mario World with great delight. Looking forward to the next journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment