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The Video Game Pianist
Neil Halelamien writes "Many enjoy listening to video game music arrangements, like those offered by OCRemix, Project Majestic Mix, or the Minibosses NES-rock band. A newcomer on the scene is the Video Game Pianist, an accomplished performer studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music. His skills garnered the attention of some in the industry -- he performed at the 2005 Game Developers Conference and will also be playing live at E3 this year. His web site offers some amazing performance videos (many with him playing blindfolded), downloadable albums, live internet concerts, sheet music, and other goodies, all for free. His albums and videos include several selections from the Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Final Fantasy series. Fans of his work can also donate to support his music."
His tempo sucks in the Mario song video. Quite cool though :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
He's distributing recordings of copyrighted video game tunes and asking for donations. Isn't that an infringement? Or is he paying 8 cents per downloaded song to the copyright owners?
The Amiga was the first place I heard decent quality music (I missed out on c64...).
The quality of some tunes easily outstripped modern "pop" groups.
Heres a nice rundown of the main history of game music.
I just had to go hunt down the Project-X mod files.
liqbase
I thought this one was rather well done (it's a .WMV).
By the way, I'm using a mysql database for this. The table looks like so:
Oh yeah, there's a query class that I regularly use for something like this. But then again, if you can't figure out at least the SQL query code to see what it's doing, you suck, and shouldn't be using this period.
Consider it an Exercise for the Reader to rewrite this using Pear:DB
Finally, I recommend inserting a row into the table, representing the highest file ID of what you have, so that you don't end up going and redownloading all their music, one by one.
Thanks OCremix guys for making your pages into RSS feeds! It makes stuff like this a lot easier to do!
http://seventhcycle.net/ocremix/download.phps
I would have posted it here, but Slashdot's junk filter sucks. CENSORSHIP! :D
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Not excessively creative. On the FF front, his Kefka is almost identical to the Piano Collections version, and for Balamb Garden and To Zanarkand, I might as well just put on the games themselves; I'll hear the exact same thing, only with much better recording quality. The Mario-related work is of a similar quality level, only the track labeled as SMB3 "Overworld Theme" isn't. On the other hand, "Calm [er, Silence, whatever ] Before the Storm" has some promise. It's one of my favorite tracks from the rather mediocre FF X soundtrack, and it translates rather nicely to a real piano. Even here, though, the interpretation is entirely literal. If this guy had submitted to VGMix I think he'd be told to go back to WIP :)
People who haven't listened to a lot of video game music might not understand what's so compelling about it. Several things are unique about video game music, especially from 1990 and earlier:
(1) It's designed to be repeated, since in most games you'll hear a 3-minute song over and over during your whole 15- or 25-minute level. Today's pop music is designed to be as memorable as possible, whereas video game music is designed to play *in the background* and not annoy you too much. Modern video game music is a lot longer, of course.
(2) It's often composed from a very restricted set of sounds, many of which (used to) sound distinctly artificial. This gives it a unique texture in the same way that metal is distinguishable from rock or pop. Modern video game music has a wider selection of sounds to choose from, of course.
(3) Anyone who played these games as a child has already heard these pieces so many times, that a remix or rendition in other instruments just sounds really cool. You recognize it instantly, yet its fresh and new to your brain.
Call me compulsive, but I regularly listen to old SNES music (Chrono Trigger, Castlevania 4, Seiken Densetsu 3, Secret of Mana and Mystic Ark). I also listen to music from all entries in the Metroid series, from M2 on the gameboy all the way up to Metroid Prime on the gamecube (and for some really cool remixes, google "metroid metal"!) I listen to more traditional music too, but somehow video game music is more interesting to listen to, and evokes more interesting sensations in my brain.
Mediocrity should not be celebrated but stuffed away in a closet.