In-Game music - do you like it??

[Ceridwenae]

Not sure it helps entirely, but I graduated from the !!highly respected and awesome!! University of Salford (*laff*) with a degree of some nature in Popular Music & Recording. The University is also in Europe (even post-Brexit one cannot deny geography), so I think that has me best placed to confer with the OP, as a peer.

I'm also a classical musician, from the age of five, when I started on a kazoo and the most baroque of instruments, the descant recorder. Get thee behind me, Fool on a Hill! Got a Yamaha keyboard at the age of 7, and parents used to delight in such classics as the theme from "Take the High Road", played entirely by ear on an instrument that didn't allow for more than one note a time. Good times! (Technically, I'm a classically trained flautist, I have a grade 8 certificate somewhere in the back of the wardrobe, and I also come with extra pointless training in piano, keyboard, organ, those damned recorders both descant and treble, a penny whistle (but only in D), and varied percussion (someone mentioned maracas upthread? Yeah, that was me the tutor picked from our group to play those, owing to my glorious Bez impression, because that's what you need to play maracas professionally, this is TRUTH), morphed into something of jazz musician because it's harder than classical so if you want to be proper, you have to jazz). I have also duelled banjos on a guitar and had a bass once, and an autoharp. Got the autoharp from a car boot sale. yay! I'm a terrible musician by the way, so I don't do it anymore and no one should ever hear me sing. But I tell you, I knows me a thing or two. Yes, yes.

So, now we've established my credentials, we'll talk shop.

Music in game's alright. It's got something for everyone. Can't please all the people all the time, and orchestras are expensive and don't come with a moog. I have to think synth tracks compress better or something, they're space savers. I don't know, I didn't record people, I was recorded by people. No one in their right minds would let me near the board with the pushy buttons and funny lights.

I mostly listen to podcasts when I play anyway.

Yes, yes.

I don't know what I'm doing here, I banned myself from the Lore section of the forums.

-fin-

[sidurgu-12]

Not sure it helps entirely, but I graduated from the !!highly respected and awesome!! University of Salford (*laff*) with a degree of some nature in Popular Music & Recording. The University is also in Europe (even post-Brexit one cannot deny geography), so I think that has me best placed to confer with the OP, as a peer.

I'm also a classical musician, from the age of five, when I started on a kazoo and the most baroque of instruments, the descant recorder. Get thee behind me, Fool on a Hill! Got a Yamaha keyboard at the age of 7, and parents used to delight in such classics as the theme from "Take the High Road", played entirely by ear on an instrument that didn't allow for more than one note a time. Good times! (Technically, I'm a classically trained flautist, I have a grade 8 certificate somewhere in the back of the wardrobe, and I also come with extra pointless training in piano, keyboard, organ, those damned recorders both descant and treble, a penny whistle (but only in D), and varied percussion (someone mentioned maracas upthread? Yeah, that was me the tutor picked from our group to play those, owing to my glorious Bez impression, because that's what you need to play maracas professionally, this is TRUTH), morphed into something of jazz musician because it's harder than classical so if you want to be proper, you have to jazz). I have also duelled banjos on a guitar and had a bass once, and an autoharp. Got the autoharp from a car boot sale. yay! I'm a terrible musician by the way, so I don't do it anymore and no one should ever hear me sing. But I tell you, I knows me a thing or two. Yes, yes.

So, now we've established my credentials, we'll talk shop.

Music in game's alright. It's got something for everyone. Can't please all the people all the time, and orchestras are expensive and don't come with a moog. I have to think synth tracks compress better or something, they're space savers. I don't know, I didn't record people, I was recorded by people. No one in their right minds would let me near the board with the pushy buttons and funny lights.

I mostly listen to podcasts when I play anyway.

Yes, yes.

I don't know what I'm doing here, I banned myself from the Lore section of the forums.

-fin-

looks at sig ok i believe you.

[ReynTime]

Soken is very very good, but he's no Uematsu. He relies way too much on Leitmotif. When you realise that a majority of an expansions songs are just a slightly altered version of the Main Expansion theme, it kind of takes the shine off a little. Anybody can slow something down, change the VST instrument and loop it. I'd like to see him be more creative with Zone Night themes specifically in this regard as 90% of them are exactly that. Swap the main instrument for a piano, slow it down by 50%. Sure it works, but it feels like creating music to meet deadline rather than anything showcasing ingenuity, something I am guilty of myself so I know it when I hear it.

I tend to find the songs he creates that include vocals to be a bit corny/cheesy as well. Compare Soken's "Fiend" to Uematsu's "Otherworld" from FFX and you'll see what I mean. One's a badass metal song with screeching guitars, harmonic bends, rough vocals etc. The other sounds like an edgy Anime opening song. But on the whole, he's very good especially in comparison to a lot of other MMO soundtracks. I played WoW for years and I can't recall anything other than ambient noises.

I feel this became particularly bad in Endwalker. We have two cities, both use the same motif IN ITS ENTIRETY just with different instruments, briefly interrupted by a freestyle pause of some sort. Even Stormblood's Ala Mhigan Anthem theme's motif usage had less rigid arrangements, and even Stormblood had unique themes for the cities. Kugane used the Stormblood theme, Rhalgr's Reach used the anthem, hamlets used the saltery theme.
Sadness theme in Stormblood had the anthem's main motif, but almost half the notes are unique to it. Meanwhile Endwalker and ShB's literally just toss the exact expansion motifs, slow down the tempo and make it a sad piano version.

Soken is NOT a bad composer. He made and makes some fantastic game music that you don't hear anywhere else. But when it comes to lower energy, non-combat themes he relies way too much on the leitmotif. Also he literally rehashed the same "trick" from ShB's direction with boss themes. Which is why Endwalker boss theme sounds like a blatant poor attempt at being exactly like ShB's just replacing a motif for another.

[Fenral]

Stormblood's leitmotif is so pervasive so as to be actually confusing, because it's basically the only one that exists in-universe: it's the Ala Mhigan national anthem, but we first hear it in that context as the Garlean Ala Mhigan anthem, and either way it muddies things; if you read it as the Garlean anthem then it doesn't make sense why it plays in Rhalgr's Reach, and if you read it as the Ala Mhigan anthem it doesn't make sense why it plays... well, everywhere else in Stormblood.

Well, it plays in Rhalgr's Reach because of the sing-along and the end of 4.0, where the resistance sings a version with (improvised?) modified lyrics after liberating Ala Mhigo. Taking a sad song and making it better? (Incidentally, "The Star-Spangled Banner" has similar origins, but from a popular tavern song. Historical precedent!)

Soken is NOT a bad composer. He made and makes some fantastic game music that you don't hear anywhere else. But when it comes to lower energy, non-combat themes he relies way too much on the leitmotif.

Turning the main theme into a leitmotif and playing it everywhere is kind of one of Uematsu's things, though, and a Final Fantasy staple. "Melodies of Life" and "Distant Worlds" are the ones that hit hardest, for me. (So what if the latter was by Mizuta?) Alternatively, taking an Uematsu composition and making a vocal version. There are several albums worth, even. ("Pray" and "Love Will Grow," off the top of my head. Also, the B-side for "Suteki da ne" used a very famous melody.)


Yes, necro-ing an old argument will resummon the VGM nerd. You're welcome.

[Dikatis]

Well, it plays in Rhalgr's Reach because of the sing-along and the end of 4.0, where the resistance sings a version with (improvised?) modified lyrics after liberating Ala Mhigo. Taking a sad song and making it better? (Incidentally, "The Star-Spangled Banner" has similar origins, but from a popular tavern song. Historical precedent!)

They're the same song. "The Measure of His Reach" is the Ala Mhigan national anthem as it pertains to their faith in Rhalgr and Ala Mhigan cultural values (i.e. perserverance in the face of adversity, resourcefulness to survive in the rugged wilderness). When Ala Mhigo was conquered, the Garleans rewrote the lyrics to sing "The Measure of Our Reach", which instead extols Garlemald. This is a targeted use of cultural erasure meant to break the wills of the Ala Mhigan people while also indoctrinating Ala Mhigan youth by changing the meaning of the song.

Speaking of which, one of the best subtle narrative tools in Stormblood pertains to these two songs. "The Measure of Our Reach" is sung in perfect tune by a Garlean choir to emphasize how regimented it is, as well as Garlemald's diminishing of the individual with its many faceless goons and desire to subjugate all other cultures. By contrast, "The Measure of His Reach", is sung by the Eorzean Alliance. Everyone singing is out of tune because these are all people from disparate walks of life united for a common purpose. Much like fans at a baseball stadium who stand for the national anthem, no one is singing perfectly because they're not all trained singers as part of a scripted performance. This in turn emphasizes the individuality of the Eorzean Alliance's members and makes it more "realistic" in that this is how an exhausted, but triumphant army would sing without proper acoustics or practice.

Zenos is introduced with "The Measure of Our Reach" as the Ala Mhigan Quarter is filled with Garlean soldiers and magitek with Garlean flags in full view. At the end of Stormblood, the Eorzean Alliance celebrates its victory over him and the liberation of Ala Mhigo by singing "The Measure of His Reach" for the first time in 20 years, all while Arenvald raises the Ala Mhigan banner in a recreation of shots like the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima. The story began with this song and it ended with this song, opening and closing the book on this chapter of the story. This is also why so many of Stormblood's MSQ titles are excerpts from "The Measure of His Reach".

[Cleretic]

They're the same song. "The Measure of His Reach" is the Ala Mhigan national anthem as it pertains to their faith in Rhalgr and Ala Mhigan cultural values (i.e. perserverance in the face of adversity, resourcefulness to survive in the rugged wilderness). When Ala Mhigo was conquered, the Garleans rewrote the lyrics to sing "The Measure of Our Reach", which instead extols Garlemald. This is a targeted use of cultural erasure meant to break the wills of the Ala Mhigan people while also indoctrinating Ala Mhigan youth by changing the meaning of the song.

And all of this squares for the Stormblood theme being Ala Mhigo's anthem... but then why the hell is it playing just as much in the Doman half? If you instead took The Measure of Our Reach as the Garlean anthem (which is technically a misreading, but it takes the entire expansion until someone tells you it is), then it being the whole expansion leitmotif makes sense since it's the common thread linking both halves of the story, but then you're just left asking 'but why is it playing in Rhalgr's Reach'--which again, there is an answer for but it's not given until the end of the expansion.

It's a minor bit of pedantry, I know, but it's the one time that a heavy reliance on leitmotifs actually hurt the story rather than helped it; making it an in-universe diegetic piece of music just rendered it very confusing when they kept using it as the general expansion theme. They've done including a song diegetically well in other places--the raw gut-punch of Home Beyond the Horizon wouldn't work nearly as well without it--but that time was a miss.

[Absimiliard]

This game has a lot of absolute bangers in it, but SE seems to have a habit of remixing said bangers a whole bunch of times into increasingly less pleasing forms. They even managed to beat Answers to death, and it was widely regarded as one of Uematsu's better works.

[RukoBoshi]

This game has a lot of absolute bangers in it, but SE seems to have a habit of remixing said bangers a whole bunch of times into increasingly less pleasing forms. They even managed to beat Answers to death, and it was widely regarded as one of Uematsu's better works.

I'm honestly fine with them reusing answers during Endwalker.
The only time it was inappropriate was the version used when Zenos died. It felt out of place enough for me to ask myself why they are using it.

I really like the battle version Your answer, and i think it was the perfect song remix for the Hydaelyn battle.

[Carin-Eri]

I'm honestly fine with them reusing answers during Endwalker.
The only time it was inappropriate was the version used when Zenos died. It felt out of place enough for me to ask myself why they are using it.

I really like the battle version Your answer, and i think it was the perfect song remix for the Hydaelyn battle.

Really? I thought 'Answers' was quite appropriate in context, when you consider some of the lyrics -
"Now open your eyes while our plight is repeated
Still deaf to our cries, lost in hope we lie defeated
Our souls have been torn, and our bodies forsaken
Bearing sins of the past, for our future is taken"

Seems kinda appropriate really.

[Dzian]

On the whole yes the music is one of the games biggest strengths. much of it is very thematic and fitting.

if i had one gripe it'd probably be they could normalise the volume a lot more.. you can be in limsa and the bgm can be at a decent volume. but then you can teleport to iddlyshire or even worse the gold saucer and KABOOOOOM your speakers explode. (exageration)