My Three Favorite Video Game Composers.
</div>
I listen to a LOT of video game music. I have a huge collection of soundtracks, many of which I’ve had to convert to MP3 myself, and probably about 2/3, maybe even 3/4, of my iPod is filled with video game music. There are a lot of different reasons for this. I’ve mentioned before that nostalgia is a huge part of my personality, and as a result, listening to the music from games I always used to play brings me back to a happier time in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy right now, it’s just that my childhood fucking ruled. I always paid very close attention to the music in games. As I got older, I translated my love of this music into a fascination with understanding how to convey what I like about music as a whole to others. Despite this, I still can’t quite explain exactly what elements of the types of music I like make me like them. I can point to examples that demonstrate everything I like about game music, and music in general for that matter, but I can’t quite describe them. Partially as an attempt to explain that, and partially as an attempt to fill my article quota for today (I know, I’m cynical), I’m going to try to analyze my three favorite composers (in no particular order), who all happen to be video game composers: Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, and Yoshihiro Sakaguchi. This probably won’t be particularly funny, because I’m very bad at making jokes about my idols, but I hope at the very least it will be interesting. With that, let’s start with the most logical beginning:
Koji Kondo
Everybody knows Koji Kondo. Everybody. Even if they don’t know him by name. As the composer for the Super Mario Bros. series, Koji Kondo has composed some of the greatest and most memorable music of all time. Nobody who has ever heard the Super Mario Bros. theme forgets it. Hell, Nobuo Uematsu once said that it deserves to be the Japanese national anthem. Composing that one song is basis enough to be called a legendary composer. And yet, the Mario series is only a small part of his legacy. He’s composed many, many other songs for which he would deserve the title of legend.
For example, the main theme from The Legend of Zelda. This is perhaps the most epic song ever made. In just a few notes, you know how big the adventure is. You just know, no matter which version you’re playing, no matter how complex or simple the game. When you hear that music, your imagination takes over, and you’re no longer manipulating a small, blocky set of pixels poking a red bug with a triangle. You’re traversing the Hyrulian landscape, deftly avoiding the projectiles of an Octorok before plunging your sword into its back. I can’t name a single piece of music I’ve ever heard that can create such powerful, imaginative images. When Zelda games started looking better, I loved it, but I never got the feeling that I was seeing something I had never seen before, because that one, short, simple piece of music set the stage for my imagination to see everything Shigeru Miyamoto wanted me to see. The enhanced graphics had nothing new to offer me; I had seen the world they wanted to show me. This is the exact purpose a composer should fill, and in my opinion, very, very few people have filled it as well as Koji Kondo.
Yoshihiro Sakaguchi
This is probably the only name on this list that a lot of my readers won’t immediately recognize. It’s a shame, too, because every gamer knows his music. Yoshihiro Sakaguchi is the composer of the first two and last two Mega Man games, as well as Street Fighter I and II. He also composed the soundtrack for Capcom’s NES game Ducktales, which, while not quite as glamorous as Street Fighter or Mega Man, has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.
The music for the Moon level of Ducktales absolutely floors me. Any gamer of a certain age, whether they played this game or not, will instantly be transported back to the NES era when they hear this song. That’s because, more than any other video game composer I’ve ever heard, Sakaguchi really knew how program music for the NES. The other two composers on this list did great work in spite of their limitations; he succeeded because of them. The limited sound technology the NES had is usually considered a primitive hindrance, but to Sakaguchi it was a boon. He especially took full advantage of how great the swells and bends the synthesizers could make sounded. This is clearly demonstrated in most of his music from Mega Man, but is at its best in the track from Ducktales. This song also presents an example of the problem I mentioned in the intro. I can explain how much I love this song, but I can’t quite explain what it is about it I love so much. It’s at once heroic, spacey, and nostalgic (and not just because I grew up with it, because I actually only owned the sequel growing up). The main part of the song has the sound of the ending song of an NES game, that kind of triumphant but backward-looking sound. This is tied for my favorite track for the NES with another Sakaguchi composition, the Elec Man theme from the first Mega Man (more on that tomorrow).
Nobuo Uematsu
When I first started playing games in 1990, my favorite games music-wise were the first Mega Man, the Mario and Zelda games (obviously), and Blaster Master (I know that sounds weird, but the music from that game was incredible). Later on, I got into other, more complex stuff, especially Square’s RPG music. Square’s name is virtually synonymous with video game music, and for good reason. This brings us to my first favorite composer: Nobuo Uematsu. Uematsu is, speaking objectively, probably the finest digital composer of all time, and has gotten praise from all over the damn place, including an article in Time Magazine (who, despite obviously respecting his music, still treat him with the “DERP DERP DERP COMPUTAR GAAAAAMES! KIDS LOVE THEM! BOY GAMES HAVE COME A LONG WAY SINCE PAC-MAN SPACE INVADER! ALSO REMEMBER PONG?” novelty attitude they always treat anything related to games with) praising him as one of the top 100 innovators in music. It’s easy to see why. Nobuo is proficient in pretty much every conceivable kind of music, from opera to pop to metal to techno to choral to classical to fucking ragtime. He’s written a song in just about every style I can think of, in many cases several, and I can hum just about anyone of them from memory. He’s one of just a handful of composers who have written pieces that are not only good music but that can stand up to being looped infinitely. His music is incredibly mood-setting and never gets repetitive. Much of his music also exudes a strong element of mono no aware, a sense of awareness to the impermanence of all things and a feeling of bittersweet sadness at their passing, something like the feeling of coming to terms with losing a loved one. While Aeris’s Theme from Final Fantasy VII is the most often cited example, there are several tracks from Final Fantasy VI that capture the same feeling, perhaps even better.
To set the stage: one of the (many) brilliant things about Final Fantasy VI is the way the entire game is presented much in the way of an opera. I’ve never heard anyone else mention this, and I’m not sure why. There are several similarities between the presentation of an operatic story and the presentation of this game. There’s a large of archetypal characters (the brave protector, the tragic hero, the troubled loner, the brave knight) that show up in several operas, and the overall story and arcs are very similar as well. But in particular, the way the music is used is very similar to opera. Important characters and places have their own themes, Wagnerian leitmotifs that make it easy to tell what character is important in a scene or setting. These themes are often spun into different variations. These are the tracks I was speaking of before, which demonstrate such a palpable feeling of bittersweet sadness. Songs like Forever Rachel (a variation on Locke’s theme), Epitaph (Setzer’s theme) and Coin Song (Figaro/Edgar and Sabin’s theme) do a remarkable job of conveying the particular emotions expressed by those characters in the respective scenes they’re used in. That’s what is so striking about his work; it can be at times grandiose, funny, touching, and exciting, but no matter what, it always perfectly captures the mood of the scene.
Many people still consider video game music to be a novelty, and not just the people you would think. I know plenty of people that clearly enjoy the music but don’t listen to it because it’s “not real music,” something to be avoided because it doesn’t sound the same as what they usually listen to. For a while I thought the same thing, but once I really started listening to the music, the differentiation between game music and “real” music disappeared. I could no longer tell the difference. There was just music. Now, I pick my music to listen to by how much I enjoy it, and one only needs to look at my last.fm profile to see what kind of music really speaks to me.
Comments
Leave a Reply
