Is Music in Games as Important and Great as in Films?

Jason Graves Conducting his Score of Until Dawn. Courtesy of Wikipedia

Video game composer tend to be put into an entirely different career type than film and TV composers. They're often paid much less, in many cases understandably, and receive very little credit for what they do. But should any of that actually happen? In my opinion, not at all. I understand that that statement might freak some people out, but I have my reasons why I would say that. These days, video games can tell a story just as well as a movie. Especially big budget games that are given hours of work that results in millions of followers tend to have really great stories, and sometimes really great music.

Difficulty of Game Scores vs Film Scores

It takes a lot of work to create any music, that's for sure. Writing it for film is definitely difficult, but can game scores be equally difficult to compose? My answer: yes and no. Often times, game composers are only writing a small amount of music that will be played for possible hours on end. It takes real skill and effort to make the loop of music flow and maintain the feel of music before it. I've seen games do this the easy way by their music fade out between tracks, but it just doesn't flow; making your music fade between tracks is a bandage, not a solution. Game composers that know what they're doing and want to take the time to do it will make their tracks flow into one another. It's difficult to explain, and even more difficult to do, but it's such a necessity. Making a game score truly flow is what makes game music as difficult as film music.

Are Games Scores Actually Important?

As usual: it depends. Mobile games that you only play for a few minutes without your sound on don't always need music. However, if a composer is good enough for you to want to wear your headphones so that you can listen to the music, that's a huge success, and the composer should keep doing things like that. On the other side of the argument, a game that you play for hours on end that actually has a story absolutely needs it's own music. I recently saw an article that talks about the important nostalgia that video game music provides us. In my opinion, that's a huge reason to have music in games. Anyone that's ever played a classic game like the Legend of Zelda or Super Mario understands just how great you can feel when you hear the game's music. In many cases, you might want to play the game again after you hear the music.

In general, video game music can and often is as important as a film score, and can be just as memorable as well. The day that composers stop writing music for video games is the day that, just like film, %50 of the story will vanish.

Why I Blog

I have, again, been tasked with writing about a certain subject. I won’t go into why I absolutely oppose the topic I will be covering in the next 472 words, but if you’re interested in a post like that, check out this post of a friend. Anywho, getting right into then…

Recently, I was tasked with writing a “reflection on this article.” The article is entitled “Why I Blog”, and I’m supposed to call this post the same thing… Ah. I said I wouldn’t delve into the rage I have for some of these assignments.

The article explains the deep history of the author’s blogging and journalism career and why he blogs (surprise right?). Now I have to write a reflection on this article… Fortunately, I don’t have to explain why I blog, I just have to reflect on the article. I find it rather interesting that the author decides to explain why he blogs, but just not on his blog. If I were trying to read the news on The Atlantic (Not that I would trust that kind of source), I would be a little shocked if the recommended article for me is called “Why I Blog”. I don’t really want to know why you blog, I’m not reading your blog am I?

Wow… about five-hundred words huh? It’s easy to rant about anything else but this is just… Okay. Only 260 words left. Back into it now.

The article is almost… poetic? I don’t know how to explain it, but the author felt that it was important to make blogging sound like a religion. I’m not saying that I hate this entire blogging thing, not at all. I’ve enjoyed expelling my thoughts onto a computer, but it’s not a life changing thing. I’m not any smarter or more successful. And I doubt that this author is as well. Afterall, if blogging was as life changing as the author made it sound, why would they be writing for The Atlantic?

I just read through a paragraph of the article, and I’m kind of shocked. I joked about the author making a blogging a religion, but this is different. The author says “To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne did, pivot you toward relative truth.” The whole ‘pivot you toward relative truth’ doesn’t sound like a religion at all… more like a cult in my opinion. Relative truth? Ah. Shivers.

The author also mentions that jazz and blogging have an intimate relationship… I don’t even want to talk about that.

In conclusion, I was bored, confused and terrified all at once by this article. It’s the strangest thing I’ve read in awhile. Maybe this is just the blind rage of a high school student not wanting to engage in anything academic, like reflecting on an article. But there, it’s done, I reflected on the article. And if there’s anything I did wrong, I didn’t see the rubric attached to the assignment, so that’s my defense. And this is 532 words.

Writer's Confusion (Not to be confused with Writer's Block)

Writer's Confusion.

Yes, I just made up a term. But hey, I think it's pretty clever. This is just a quick post talking about my goal of writing a certain amount of music before June... And why it's not coming along very well.

As an self taught amateur composer, writing music takes me a long time. However, it's not because I can't think of any notes to play. No, it's quite the opposite actually. As a violinist and high school student, I listen to a lot of music. I listen to the classical pieces that I'm playing, I listen to film scores, and I listen to other music as well. Unfortunately, this creates some problems. For starters, I have dozens, hundreds even, of songs stuck in my head. Because of this, when I sit down to write, I jot down some notes and say to myself "That's really good. I like that," after that, I'll just keep expanding on those notes, and eventually have a decent portion of a song.

Then, maybe a minute later, or an hour later, a day later, or even much longer than that, I'll realise it sounds familiar. From that point forward, I'll try to convince myself it's not from anything, it's just my music. But then, out of the blue, it hits me. It's from this movie... or it's from a T.V. show... or it's from that one song I play in symphony.

One day I wrote two minutes of music in a matter of hours for a full ensemble. Later that day, I was watching a show on Netflix and... what would you know. The music that I wrote.

In a sense, this "writer's confusion" thing must happen to all composers... right? Well, like I said, I listen to a lot of music and honestly, I almost never hear the same music in two movies by the same composer. There are a couple of odd cases here and there, but there's so much music in the world it might be a coincidence. However, film scores aren't the only modern compositions I listen to. I'm subscribed to over two dozen music channels on YouTube, and several of them are composers. Of those composers, I'd say three quarters are really repetitive. Is that a bad thing? Not always. It's good to have your own style, but it's different to have several variations of the same song. In my house, I'm infamous for being able to name almost any film score that I hear. And the ones that I don't, I can't generally identify the composer. If you listen to only music by one famous composer, none of it's the same, but it all has the same style. It takes skill to master your own style, and I congratulate the people who have done it. But again, plagiarism is different than style, no matter how accidental.

Up next... Pixar's "Big Hero 6"