Music Making in Video Games: Ganon Plays the Organ in Ocarina of Time.

Today in class, I asked the students about their favorite scenes that had music making as a part of them. One of the students mentioned the end of Ocarina of Time, where Ganon plays the organ.  You hear the organ play throughout the beginning of this video, but there's a big increase in dynamic once you enter the chamber where he and the cutscene ensues (5:20 in this video).

I'd totally forgotten about this scene.  I love moments in video games like this where music making is a part of the onscreen action!  What are your favorites?  Leave me a note/ link in the comments so I can check them out.

Music Making in Video Games: Syd/Razor's song in Maniac Mansion

Continuing another moment in my music making in video games series. Last night made me think back to Maniac Mansion where you can record a demo tape with either Syd or Razor, both of whom are musicians.  They both record the same song, and there's no visual animation to their playing. Either character just stands beside the piano while the music plays. I love the glissando at the end of this song!  And also appreciate that such a specific activity-- making a demo tape-- helps to advance the story!

Musings: Music Making in Video Games: Musicians in Video Games (Mainly Edward, FF4)

I just started reading Karen Collins new book today, Playing with Sound, which seems so interesting and right in line with many of the topics I was thinking about in my last Musing about listening to game audio. How cool!  I can tell it's going to be hard to put down despite my busy week.

And that, somehow, got me thinking back to the Music Making in Video Games series on the blog, which I haven't updated in a long time.  I'll definitely update it a few times this week. One of the most interesting playable game characters to me is the musician. Combining this idea a bit with My Gaming Audio History and the opening pages of Collins new book got me thinking about playing games as a musician.  While Manic Mansion probably had the first musician characters I could play as (and did play as) with Razor and Syd-- who, like me, had blond hair, I played FF 4 much more and always thought about Edward as the first game musician I identified with.

I disliked Edward strongly, and probably still do to some degree. Firstly, as a playable character.  His fighting is weak, as is his defense-- leaving him hiding or dead after he's been struck even once, and in the SNES version, his singing ability is severely neutered. Secondly I disliked him, as an emotional character.  He's wimpy in his decision making, wanting to stay and cry with Anna after her death contrasting with Tellah's strong desire for revenge.  I was never impressed with the Dark Elf harp scene as Edward drags himself from bed to play his harp to save the day.  Even the game description listed him as "of frail constitution."  Frankly, he was not an easy character for me to grapple with as I was playing this game around the same time I was really becoming aware of my own same sex attraction and growing up in a very conservative rural NC environment. Edward embodied a weak, unmasculine (effeminate?) energy.  Part of my rejection of him was certainly a mirror of my dislike and fear of similar traits in myself. Was this what it meant to be a musician?

Here's the initial Edward playing scene for SNES:

And here's the DS dark elf battle:

Beyond Manic Mansion and Final Fantasy 4, later I would loves Celes' opera scene in FF6.  In Final Fantasy 7, I played the pianos in Tifa's room and the Shinra Mansion for WAY too long.  Making up my own melody for the Scarecrow song in Zelda 64 almost transformed Link into a musician, though I often opted for the ultilitarian all right button tune so as not to get confused about which melody I'd settled on for it!  In The Sims, I always made my character a gay musician, practicing the piano for hours. Eternal Sonata is absolutely insane for me right now!  I'll keep thinking more about this, and I'm sure there are examples I've forgotten right now, and even more I don't know of, but game character as musician is a cool connection I've always enjoyed in my gaming experience.

Music Making in Video Games: Actraiser

I downloaded an old favorite on my Wii today, Actraiser, and have almost played through the whole game.  Super cool to refer to gameplay as research now!  This game is a combination of platform fighting and SimCity-esque civilization development.

Of course, I'm always interested in how music is used in games.  I'd forgotten that in the desert town of Kasandora, when one of the townsfolk dies, the leaders are inspired to create "music" in response to his passing.  This results in a new theme playing when you're in the SimCity portion of this town.  Also, you need to take the music to an adjacent town where the people have gotten frustrated.  The music soothes them, they continue to build their town, and then this same music plays in that town as well.  

Check out this video from 7:51-10:10.  You can hear a complete loop (plus a bit) of the normal town development music before the townsfolk create music and then the theme changes and you can hear through that theme as well.  The music does seem a bit more expressive than the normal Baroque music, at least in part because it slows down at the end of the loop, giving a sense of phrase structure and shape.  

Music making in Video Games: Final Fantasy 5 piano

Last year, I played through almost all of Final Fantasy 5 on my PS3.  It's not a game that I knew as a child, since it wasn't released then in the US, but I probably would have loved the piano progression that takes place in the game.  I bet I would've wanted to play all these pieces-- which, in fact, I did anyway, except for the Schubert.

For those who haven't played the game before, let me explain: there are keyboards (visual is organ, internet lingo calls them pianos and the pieces performed are for piano) in various towns across throughout the game that you can play.  The pianos are found in: Tule, Kerwin, Karnak, Crescent, Jachol, Lugar, Moor, and Mirage.  At first you start out with basic beginning scales and exercises and eventually progress to simple classical piano pieces.  It's pretty cool to experience this progression.  The first scale is hesitating and inaccurate, the hands not quite together in 2-3.  4: The start/stop/start, then double time of the Hanon feels like a sudden leap in skill.  From 5 on, there's no metronome anymore.  6: The Schubert is brilliant except for the last note.  7:Beautiful Dreamer has a more subtle mixture between two measures in four and two in three.  The Mozart and Debussy are both pristine and common pieces for those who progress to an intermediate level of piano study.

1: Single handed scale up
2: Two handed 9 note scale up and down
3: 5 note pattern of thirds, in octaves
4: Hanon The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises-- exercise 1
5: Franz Schubert March Militaire, Op 51-- intro
6: Stephen Foster: Beautiful Dreamer
7: W. A. Mozart: Turkish Rondo  K 331, Third Movement from Piano Sonata 11
8: Claude Debussy: Arabesque No. 1

I was surprised that there wasn't already a video of this progression of piano ability online, although there is a live version of these pieces played by VirtualHarmonies in this video.  For me, the coolest thing about this progression is this: it's Uematsu's idea of how to represent someone's achievements and skill building at the piano.  From the first couple of exercises that are really fumbled around, rhythmic inaccuracies emphasized by the metronome, assuring the listener hears a steady pulse so the playing sounds "right" or "wrong"-- all the way to the intermediate classical piano pieces.

From 1992, Final Fantasy 5 is the first game I can think of with a musical progression that your avatar makes as the game progresses and that which unlocks certain skills as you progress through it.  Do you know of an earlier example of musical skill building by an avatar in a game?  What other musical progressions do you enjoy watching your characters make in video games?  I also used to level up my piano skills in The Sims, but that title is from 8 years after FF 5.

Music Making in Video Games: Final Fantasy 6: opera scene

Today, in the hallway, I mentioned to a friend that I was wanting to create and teach a video game music course. He asked immediately if I knew Final Fantasy 6, the opera scene. Of course, how could a video game music nerd not know quite possibly the most famous game music scene of all time!?  The first time I played this part of the game, I was so excited that I didn't take time to study the score and didn't know the correct words for Celes or the staging.  The production ground to a halt and I had to do the whole scene again!  How was I supposed to know?  It's not like I'm working with opera singers for a living or anything...  Good thing my partner's the opera singer and not me.

Incredible scene.

Music Making in Video Games: Earthbound: The Runaway Five

This is the first entry in my blog series "Music Making in Video Games."  In this series, I'm going to highlight scenes in video games where there's diegetic music.  In other words, the performance of music is somehow represented onscreen.

In my earlier blog entry about Zach Wahlen's article, I mentioned the distinction between diegetic music and non-diegetic music.  This is a distinction between music/sounds that are heard by characters in the game as opposed to sounds that only the player hears, like the typical game soundtrack.  Of course, almost any sound your character hears is one you (as the player) would hear as well.  Many sounds though are just for the player to hear.  Do we really expect that Link is marching along to the LoZ Overworld theme?  But the line blurs also in some games... imagine Super Mario Bros Wii where the enemies move in time with the music-- are they hearing it?  A heady discussion for another day.

Wahlen's article got me thinking about some of my favorite moments of music performance in video games-- any of which are clear examples of diegetic music-- and one of the first examples to come to my mind is The Runaway Five from Earthbound.  Earthbound's music is by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka.

Ironically, as I see in the video still, there are six performers onstage during the concert!  Does the keyboard player show up other than the concerts?