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| Topic | [VGMC] Day 5! Nekozamurai / F.Shrine / Obstacle / R.Coast / J.Dragn / Imp.Worlds |
| Toxtricity 05/15/21 2:06:00 AM #30: | Level 6 - Face Shrine Obstacle Impossible Worlds -(i really expected to like this song based solely on composer and source, but this might be the only nekomata master song i have heard that i dont like. it just has nothing i look for in his stuff. i appreciate the oriental feel and instrumentation at least. his melodic style is still there but it's not quite as powerful as it would be to me in a situation where i could hear interesting harmonies on an "electronic piano" under it...I still appreciate the enthusiasm this drives home and world it takes me to at least. i can't complain about this being here though when my actual favorite nekomata master song was the first lock in the contest)- -[i said i like dungeon themes, face shrine isn't really what i meant when i said that, but it's still cool. it's hard to say much about it, it does some things i'd have derided as cliche and cheesy in the past but today i think they are cool dramatic tension. I really like minako hamano, but i actually have this exact reaction to her stuff A LOT: there will be a song by her that at first i find grating or even makes me wince because the forms of musical tension it leans on are so lingering, but as time goes on it grows to become one of my favorite songs. I have not listened to this track enough times for that to happen, but it happens with basically everything by (or suspected to be by) her from metroids, to where i would say she's my favorite metroid composer. given my fondness for her in everything else i've heard, it's a crime i have not really explored link's awakening's music (original or remake) much at all. this reminds me a lot of the super metroid songs i like that no one cares about, i wonder why? ? ? ? !!! HJMMM(minako hamano)M]- -{i don't feel very strongly about this match. but i am somewhat surprised to be on this side of it. initially i remember not clicking with this the first time i listened, definitely grew on me a lot.}- ----- -(oh man WHERE do i start. Ok. so between last contest and now, Kimihiro Abe has become my favorite video game music composer pretty comfortably. now that i've done a more thorough basiscape dive, learned which tracks he did on so many of my favorite soundtracks, almost always specifically my favorite ones are his. ~~~~~ This is very much a "deep cut" that i only learned about by chance. This game actually isn't super obscure as far as rpgmaker games go, but i don't think many people realize that the name he's credited as (Abecho) is the same person as Kimihiro Abe. His midi stuff was made noticeably before he joined Basiscape, going back to when he would've still been in college. I feel like a lot of things about Abe's style pre-basiscape are actually very different from once he joined, there's a lot more "POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON" energy to his sound in that old stuff. Chord changes that change the tonal center like every bar and require more unusual melodic weaving around, constantly changing between different scales, to accommodate. that being probably the main way i'd describe this period of his stuff (this is basically my favorite composition style). ~~~~~ Sadly, almost everything Abe wrote in this midi era is lost media, gone forever, he does not have them, lost them in a hard drive crash apparently, and who knows if anyone archived any of that stuff. Only 6 have survived to my awareness. The 3 songs of his that are in this game, and 3 others i got from the person who runs the OnlyMIDIs twitter account. Hopefully, someday, someone can unearth more ~~~~~ ok so to actually talk about this song as a song, well it'll be kinda redundant (especially with what i already described above as the main trait of his composition style in this era) because i will basically be saying "I LIKE THIS CHORD CHANGE" every single time there is a chord change in the song. It's like my favorite section of id~purpose but on steroids, constant modulation, going unexpected places that make me float in the air. but the melodic line keeps it cohesive. this song is exactly my favorite composition style AAAAAAAAAH. it sounds so much like "zenk" or "pmd" or yeah. those things. that i like. a lot. i will miss you. but i will keep MOVING FORWARD AND NOT BE LIKE ONE OF THOSE MIRA-MIRANS because the future is important. Part of what i like about that kalimba ostinato is how the delay echo feels like it's almost compositionally built into it, the rhythmic pattern requires the echo to feel complete. THIS SONG IS SO "catchy". To think this isn't even my favorite kimihiro abe song that is in seraphic blue ~~~~~ I REGRET nominating this on opl3 "thefatman 2op set" instrumentation, especially with this particular emulation where the synth bass is weirdly loud and the vibratos kinda exaggerated. but enough people liked it specifically this way, i felt i couldn't go back on it. Personally, as far as "retro" chip/etc formats go, my favorite sound is OPL3, and especially these presets. their plastic tones produce the most colorful and vivid imagery in my head of any sounds possible. This is heavily my upbringing being entirely pc/dos games in the 90s, and learning to count from screwing around with midi files; something very specific to my own experience, and had i grown up differently i would've probably preferred different sounds. but because it's so deeply embedded from age 3, it's one of the few constants about my musical preferences to last all the way from back then until now. Influenced even which realistic sounds i enjoy, things that feel more similar to FM, are simply more vivid sounds to me. Probably why I love Mallet Percussion like "marimba" and "vibraphone" (and "kalimba") so much ~~~~~ However, this song is obviously absolutely not meant for opl3; BUT i chose it as the way to render this midi almost entirely because that Kalimba loop sounds REALLY COOL on opl3. everything else i think sounds better on something else, but that kalimba loop is just so fun on this sound that i couldn't bear to nominate it on anything else. Honestly as much as i love opl3 on these presets, i have to be in a very specific mindset to appreciate them these days. BUT when i'm in that mode i'll go through tons of midis played back on it, and what midi do i come back to the most when listening to midis on those sounds? Somehow, it's this one. when i'm in an opl3 midi mode, i listen to this midi far more than any other. that very fact, is exactly why, in the end, i felt i had to nominate this, on this sound, no matter how much it would potentially damage its strength in a contest setting. over the hundreds of other "higher quality options", this just fits this song in such a fun way that i find addictive. ~~~~~ this track was ACTUALLY meant for Yamaha MU100. however probably only like 1% of people who played the version of this game that used midis actually had one of those, they weren't common or cheap to own. as a result, a later version of seraphic blue actually replaced the midi files, and baked some form of Yamaha MU recording of his tracks for it into mp3 files...unfortunately the rendering on those is actually not great imo. I also think with certain settings it becomes drenched in reverb in a way that can be unwieldy, but here's more similar to the intended sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwfnDMIyBkc maybe next year i will try that version or something more similar to it, if this year's version goes nowhere ~~~~~ While i'm at it, with all the PMD comparisons, here is some more music by Kimihiro Abe from this era that has super pmd energy, highly recommended listen for anyone who likes pmd series music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZVdjzD9YIk )- [continued...] --- time ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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