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Some of the questions this guy got.
It's the guy who wrote the Sovngarde Song.
There's a few comments/questions that run to the tune that "electric guitars aren't suitable for the subject matter".
What the fuck, guys, never heard of heavy metal? It is the actual genre of mead and steel.
For some reason, this bugged me a lot. I know, music opinions and everything. But it seemed to me that the one thematic thing Skyrim was lacking was heavy metal. How can you have a game where you can fight dragons on mountaintops by screaming at them without heavy metal? C'mawn.
Comments
> electric guitars
> not suitable for a Norse based mythology
...Wait, what?
Well, I can see how electric guitars are unsuitable for the subject matter, to the same extent that computers and game systems are unsuitable for the subject matter.
I don't think I've ever even noticed that there was music in an Elder Scrolls game.
You seriously didn't notice how the main theme would kick in every time you started fighting a dragon in Skyrim?
Skyrim's music was pretty good (apart from the main theme, which is flat-out brilliant), but it still lacked electric guitars, which are notably absent from a lot of fantasy games.
I think what's interesting about game music is that before sound quality became sophisticated enough to use recordings or use reasonable emulations, a huge amount of it was composed like heavy metal. Today, if you look at modern covers and arrangements of classic video game music, orchestras and metal band structures tend to be the most effective at conveying them -- and that's no surprise at all, because heavy metal very effectively conveys the scope and width of music usually restricted to an orchestra.
Have some examples:
A cover of the main theme for Skyrim. Brilliant sense of space in this one.
Mortal Kombat. Why they don't just use this for the actual games at this stage is beyond me.
A post like this is utterly incomplete without Powerglove, and here they give us an awesome rendition of the Tetris song (which is itself a piece of classical Russian music).
The Legend of Zelda main theme, which has to be one of the best ever contenders for video game music that just begs for the metal treatment.
Oath to Order as a doom metal piece.
Is Castlevania the most metal game franchise ever? Almost definitely.
This pretty much takes us full circle, bringing us back thematically to Manowar (ergo, Vikings).
The end to the epic that is Dancing Mad, including its top-notch solo.
Also, Too hoos. ZUN is an interesting composer because he works under many of the principles of early game music -- that is, keep it simple, hummable and dynamic. This is a Demetori cover of Border Of Life, chosen mostly because its solo and how effectively it bursts into said solo.
I'm not saying that all fantasy games (or all games) should include heavy metal. But it's definitely an avenue that isn't often explored which is a shame given the subject matter of many games and how well the metal genre lends itself to the kinds of compositions that are ideal for the medium.
You know Alex, you are like an alternate universe me, with the same general interests but almost the inverted personality. To avoid vanity, though, I will refrain from naming this geeky obsession shamelessness of yours as one of the inversions.
... dude...
We're all nerds on a forum. We have people routinely chattering about people in silly costumes beating each other up, or moeshit anime or pokemon. Chances are we wouldn't give you shit for whatever you like.
I'd just like to say that I'm totally ok without electric guitars in my fantasy and that I always will prefer orchestral work when possible.
Carry on.
For some reason, symphonic music tends to go really well with fantasy.
Which is weird, considering that most fantasy is quasi-medieval, and 95% of orchestral instruments didn't even exist back then.
I think it's more to do with our level of comfort with the expectation than anything. If we wanted to be truly accurate, most fantasy music would be primitive folk and various kinds of chants. The only exception might be Celtic folk, which was unusually sophisticated for its time period.
I have no idea why you'd think putting in a heavy metal track in Skyrim would improve it. It would just be plain unsubtle and jarring in comparison to everything else.
If the entire score was metal, or even better, if it was some kind of metal/orchestral fusion, that could potentially be awesome.
dem covers, though
Honestly, I'm not so sure. Having a game about a demi-god in quasi-viking land fighting dragons with metal blaring in the background reeks of trying too hard.
so basically, what you're saying is, you wish that Trans-Siberian Orchestra had handled the Skyrim soundtrack.
> has a 40k avatar
>
I just don't get why, in a musical sense, some fantasy stuff can't just go "This is kind of silly. Have some epic metal." and be done with it. If you ask me, the tendency of the fantasy game genre to insist upon epic, sweeping orchestral scores is somewhere where it often gives itself too much credit. No matter how hard Bethesda tries, I cannot fight a dragon in complete "serious" mode -- there's always a level of adolescent joy that just screams "I am fighting a dragon!", but the orchestral score is going "But it's serious!".
But it ain't. I'm a Viking dude fighting a dragon by shouting at it in its own language, like a dog trying to cuss out its owner. "Serious" is when I realised that I had become where the monster meets the Knight Templar in Demon's Souls, or where I had realised I had fallen into brigand ways to fight for my own political survival in Mount and Blade. Or where I influenced genocides in Mass Effect. But if I'm just hitting things with nasty objects devoid of any context that makes me actually invested, it's not an experience I can delve into and take at face value.
Given, I might be biased in that I more easily see historical inaccuracies than most, so I'm taken out of the experience via my tendency to analyse something immediately.
>electric guitars out of my fantasy
I see you've never played Ys.
Baten Kaitos had a mixed soundtrack(orchestral and metal), which worked marvelously.
I'm of the opinion that instrumentation matters less than what emotions the composer uses that instrumentation to conjure, and how the track gets used.
I actually think that it had more of basic rock/metal, with some jazz and classical influences.
This is in part because of...
When you can't create interesting music using texture (i.e. how many instruments), timbre (i.e. tone sound/quality, or basically choice of instruments), or even dynamics (here I mean the musical term which means loud, quiet, getting louder/quieter), and all you have is a couple square waves, a saw wave, and a noise track...yeah, you kinda have to rely on strong melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic components, so the music was by necessity very...dare I say, musical.
I think that east-Asian games have generally kept up this musical tradition (of strong melodic/harmonic focus) better than North American games have.
Is there a difference between "basic" metal and heavy metal? 'Cause I'm pretty sure heavy metal is the most catch-all phrase for the genre possible. Although I agree with you that classical and jazz influences were also very common -- but all three of these genres have sheer diversity in common, and metal in particular faces the most similar kinds of restrictions.
Well, I'm not too familiar with music terms, but I was thinking basically, well, rock I guess. Not the earlier dance- and jazz-like rock-and-roll, nor the later "heavier" metal styles--like, less emphasis on textural thickness and riffing and more emphasis on action and slightly poppy melody.
Heavy metal was called heavy metal back when it was just guys like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple doing it.
Is there a style called pop-rock?
Yes, although it's a more contemporary style. It crosses over with pop-punk (think Green Day) a lot. I guess "pop metal" would be stuff like Avenged Sevenfold.
More acceptable forms of accessible metal within metal communities are power metal and often folk metal. These are your swords-and-sorcery genres, although the latter has a closer relationship with folklore than modern fantasy. New Wave of British Heavy Metal (which actually refers to late 70s/early 80s stuff) is also highly accessible, with bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest representing its forefront. Symphonic metal is also highly accessible, and tends to draw in a combined metal/goth crowd, although even with traditional instruments it still fails to be quite as epic and mighty as power metal.
Thrash metal can be anywhere from reasonably accessible to the deep end of "extreme" metal. Metallica is probably the go-to example of accessible thrash metal, with Megadeth a bit more extreme and Slayer erring towards the traditional extreme metal end of the spectrum. Death metal is probably the least accessible form of the music, given its combination of harsh vocals and brutal appropriation of classical harmonic choices and use of foreign-sounding scales. Black metal has even harsher vocals in many cases, but the underlying music is generally more accessible -- I've heard it described as "punk rock meets Wagner", which is pretty accurate.
Generally, metal bands vary in quality via genre and region. For instance, Japan and Europe make brilliant power metal, but the USA produces excellent thrash metal. South America is pretty awesome on the traditional/power metal front as evidenced by Angra. Metal is still a subject of social dispute in the Middle East, but when they make metal, it tends to be really interesting. As expected, there's a lot of phrygian-related stuff and it's a brilliant scale in general, but especially for metal.
That said, not all American power metal bands suck, for instance -- just most of them. Must be something in the water, or perhaps the variances in culture produce more effectiveness within a certain style of expression. It seems to be no mistake that the very specific circumstances of the USA produced thrash metal in the 80s.