When I first started making music, I had an Amiga 600, a copy of 
OctaMED, and a pile of samples. I didn't even have a real musical 
keyboard; I had to make do with the computer's QWERTY keyboard. And 
yeah, I produced quite a lot of music. Much of it isn't worth much, but 
there was quite a bit of it.

Today I have *thousands* of pounds worth of hardware and software for 
making music. And with it, I've produced a grand total of about 5 
minutes of music.

Now, partly that's because I'm no longer a bored teenager with a 6-week 
summer holiday where I can stay up until 2am every day making music 
around the clock. (Seriously, I used to forget to EAT!) I have a job 
now, and sometimes I come home and I just don't have the energy to do 
much other than sit and play Tetris.

But I think it's also partly the tools. I noticed the same thing when I 
went from building a website in HTML to using a blog. When I was writing 
HTML, I tried to make everything I wrote "perfect". When I switched to 
using Wordpress, it was so buggy and useless, and the output so ugly, 
that I spent less time trying to "perfect" my output, and more time on 
actually writing.

Paradoxically, using an inferior tool made me more productive.

I think that may be what happened with music. OctaMED was 
ground-breaking for it's day, but it's really quite limited in what you 
can actually do with it. Simplifying grossly, it basically plays 
samples. So you have, say, a sample of a note from a piano. You can play 
that back at different speeds to create grainy, distorted piano notes. 
(Just don't try to play chords! You've only got a handful of tracks to 
play with...)

Cubase is, in principle, far more sophisticated. You can set up effects 
processors and automate level changes. And of course, I'm using it to 
drive a bank of samplers and synthesizers. I've got a library of 120 GB 
of sample data covering drum kits, grand pianos, choir, pipe organs, 
just about every orchestral instrument you can think of a name for, all 
with multiple velocity layers, different articulations, and so on. I've 
got dozens of synthesizers, each with hundreds of presets, and a 
bazillion macro parameters to tweak on each one, not even mentioning the 
possibilities for editing the underlying data.

It's actually possible to just spend 2 hours trying to find / construct 
the right sound, and ever actually record anything!

But more than that, it's possible to be too much of a perfectionist. To 
spend so much time tweaking that you don't produce very much. My latest 
piece, Distant Lands (which, I notice, is now well over a year old) saw 
me spending about 2 days tweaking the volume controls trying to get the 
level as near to maximum as possible without clipping, and trying to get 
the sound balance right.

It's a fact of sound editing that after a while you've listened to the 
thing so many times over that you're not really "hearing" it any more. 
Coming back to it over a year later, the mix still doesn't sound very 
good. What can I say? I am not a professional sound engineer!

But maybe that's it. With OctaMED, there is no *possibility* of being a 
sound engineer. No matter what you do, it's never going to sound as good 
as a studio-cut track, so there's no point trying. Better to just focus 
on throwing some fun sounds together. Perhaps Cubase is making me take 
things too seriously.



But then, overall there seems to be some weird inverse correlation 
between the quality of the tools and the quality of the end result. The 
original Doctor Who theme tune was built using nothing more than tape 
loops and test oscillators, yet it sounds organic and alive. The latest 
incarnation was produced by a team with access to 40+ years of 
synthesizer design, not to mention an entire symphony orchestra. The 
result sounds... dull. It's completely unmemorable.

Similar comments could be made about the title sequence. The originals 
used weird tricks with camera feedback and colour-masking. Today we have 
the latest in computer graphics, and we get... dull. (Or maybe that's 
just me taste in graphics.) Perhaps it's just a reflection of the budget 
allocation though.

I can site numerous other examples. The original Star Wars trilogy had 
comparatively little budget thrown at it, but remains wildly popular. 
The new ones have sensational graphics (Episode I is literally the first 
time I saw CGI characters who look "real"), yet the story is almost 
non-existent. (This one isn't entirely technology-related.)

Portal was a fabulous game, even though it had few resources. Portal 2 
was just boring, despite massively more effort being applied. It all 
seems to have been applied in the wrong places.

In the early days of home computing, we had games with ground-breaking 
graphical richness; games like Xenon 2, Disposable Hero, Flashback, 
Shadow of the Beast, Abe's Odyssey, and so on. Today it would be "easy" 
to make games like these; we've all got high-colour, high-resolution 
displays and terabyte harddisks. And yet... nobody makes games like 
these any more. They only make brown FPS games. (Again, maybe this one 
is about fashion rather than technology.)

I really enjoyed HalfLife. But when HalfLife 2 came out, my eyes nearly 
popped out of my head at the graphics, but the gameplay was pretty dull.

Having just said that, advances in technology don't always equal dull 
mediocrity. Black Mesa, the Source remake of HalfLife, is graphically 
far superior, yet still manages to retail all of the best parts of the 
original. (Although I still don't think the aliens look quite "alien" 
enough. Maybe it's just that bad graphics look weirder?)



In summary, it appears that advances in technology have a *tendency* - 
it's not an unbreakable rule, just a tendency - to make people produce 
less impressive results. The shining star of an exception seems to be 
Pixar; they publish papers like my mum whines about her job, yet their 
films continue to be a study in excellence. At least, until Disney 
bought them; they seem to have gone sharply downhill since then...

Post a reply to this message

> Cubase is, in principle, far more sophisticated. You can set up effects
> processors and automate level changes. And of course, I'm using it to
> drive a bank of samplers and synthesizers. I've got a library of 120 GB
> of sample data covering drum kits, grand pianos, choir, pipe organs,
> just about every orchestral instrument you can think of a name for, all
> with multiple velocity layers, different articulations, and so on. I've
> got dozens of synthesizers, each with hundreds of presets, and a
> bazillion macro parameters to tweak on each one, not even mentioning the
> possibilities for editing the underlying data.
>
> It's actually possible to just spend 2 hours trying to find / construct
> the right sound, and ever actually record anything!
>
> But more than that, it's possible to be too much of a perfectionist. To
> spend so much time tweaking that you don't produce very much. My latest
> piece, Distant Lands (which, I notice, is now well over a year old) saw
> me spending about 2 days tweaking the volume controls trying to get the
> level as near to maximum as possible without clipping, and trying to get
> the sound balance right.
>

As a music-producing friend of mine once said "Be careful, if you 
twiddle your knob for too long, you'll go blind!"


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

On 26/08/2013 02:17 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> As a music-producing friend of mine once said "Be careful, if you
> twiddle your knob for too long, you'll go blind!"

Sounds about right...

Post a reply to this message

On 24/08/2013 09:46 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> In the early days of home computing, we had games with ground-breaking
> graphical richness; games like Xenon 2, Disposable Hero, Flashback,
> Shadow of the Beast, Abe's Odyssey, and so on. Today it would be "easy"
> to make games like these; we've all got high-colour, high-resolution
> displays and terabyte harddisks. And yet... nobody makes games like
> these any more. They only make brown FPS games. (Again, maybe this one
> is about fashion rather than technology.)

What about game music?

There was a time when cranking out something that was more memorable 
than just bleeps and gurgles was really hard. The C64 may be iconic, but 
almost everything ever produced with it sounds extremely samey. Even 
with an Amiga, you've got a piffling four tracks, which means that you 
can play a maximum of four notes at once. (A little more if you start 
sampling chords.) If you want to leave tracks free for the game sound 
effects (i.e., if this is the background music not the title music), 
things get harder still. And yet, we had such great music that I 
actually went to all the trouble of recording it for posterity.

Today, it's *easy*. You can record ANYTHING YOU LIKE, save it as a tiny 
MP3 file, and include it with your game. You have unlimited audio 
tracks, you'll never run out of space for in-game sounds. And yet... 
well, let me put it this way. What's the last game you played where the 
music was particularly note-worthy? (See what I did there?)

In my case, it was Far Cry 3. Mainly because, after several hours of 
completely generic suspense / battle scene music (broken dubstep), I 
suddenly found myself listening to Skrillex feat. Damien Marley. (??!) 
If I heard this on the radio I wouldn't even notice, but it's so 
jarringly out of place here... Later on, I find myself making my escape 
in a helicopter to the tune of... no, seriously... FLIGHT OF THE 
VALKYRIES?! How original. :-P

To some extent, game music is mostly incidental music now, and 
incidental isn't SUPPOSED to be noticed. (Can you remember the 
background music to that episode of Horizon you watched the other 
night?) But really, the art of great game music seems to be lost.



The other night, I had a look on Steam's Greenlight thing. (You know, 
where they let starving game developers put their stuff on Steam if 
enough people vote for it.) The staggering majority of these seem to be 
retro-style games with giant pixels. Because if you render giant pixels, 
you don't need to do as much drawing. That seems to be basically it. 
People seem to think that if you make it "look retro", that 
automatically makes it appealing.

What's especially galling is that many of these games have graphics that 
wouldn't have been possible back in the day (in terms of number of 
colours on screen at once, amount of animation per frame, etc.), yet 
look far less interesting than the games of old. I guess when everything 
is easy, you try less hard or something.

In fairness, there was also a game featuring "a new game engine built 
from the ground up", which honestly looked like it might even give 
CryEngine a run for its money. The actual *game* surrounding it looked 
astonishingly dull. Not to say it's unoriginal - it seemed to have some 
genuinely novel ideas - but the gameplay trailer was singularly 
unimpressive. Given how almost all the product description talks about 
the engine technology, you can see where the three developers' focus is.

I also saw one game where you start off playing on a simulated green LCD 
screen (which honestly LOOKS like a GameBoy or something), and it goes 
through the "evolution" of gaming history. Which sounds utterly lame, 
until you see that the final, fully 3D levels are... actually quite 
polished. It looks like they actually did the whole concept quite well, 
rather than using it as a cheap prop to hide the fact they had no ideas.

Finally, I managed to find one game which, while it has a suspiciously 
low graphical resolution and the animation looks a bit suspect, does at 
least ATTEMPT to be a graphically rich extravaganza in the style of 
Flashback or Abe's Odyssey. It looks fairly good, actually.

And, of course, because these are all starving game devs, this stuff is 
cheap.

Then again... DLC Quest? A game where you have to collect enough coins 
to "buy" new "DLC" that actives game features like "being able to walk 
in both directions"? Seriously, this is more of a sarcastic joke than a 
game I'd actually want to play. :-P

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Today, it's *easy*. You can record ANYTHING YOU LIKE, save it as a tiny 
> MP3 file, and include it with your game. You have unlimited audio 
> tracks, you'll never run out of space for in-game sounds. And yet... 
> well, let me put it this way. What's the last game you played where the 
> music was particularly note-worthy? (See what I did there?)

I think this is just another case of heavy nostalgia filtering and
false memories.

Many modern games have really good and inspiring music. The kind of
music that's very recognizable and spawns tons and tons of covers by
people.

Just as an example, take Skyrim. There are lots of excellent covers
made from its soundtrack, such as:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5K09mqwZc
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3MFs7NptE

Or how about Portal?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQB6szN72uo

A bit older, but hardly 8-bit music (listen at least a couple of minutes
of it):

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLI3fSgccZU

One of my favorites:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=135Gltfkxeo

Or take this one:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE9BE3H01-g

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 30/08/2013 08:55 PM, Warp wrote:
> Many modern games have really good and inspiring music. The kind of
> music that's very recognizable and spawns tons and tons of covers by
> people.

Perhaps I haven't played any of them then.

> Just as an example, take Skyrim. There are lots of excellent covers
> made from its soundtrack, such as:

You'll be unsurprised to hear that I haven't played Skyrim. I don't even 
know what it's about. I just know it's apparently wicked-popular.

>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5K09mqwZc

Dude's got game.

>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3MFs7NptE

Not really my style, but certainly a cut above merely "generic".

> Or how about Portal?
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQB6szN72uo

Portal I will give you. At least, the music from the end title is VERY 
iconic - and enjoyable simply as a piece of music. The music that 
actually features in the main game? Not so much.

> A bit older, but hardly 8-bit music (listen at least a couple of minutes
> of it):
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLI3fSgccZU

Now THIS is more like it.

> One of my favorites:
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=135Gltfkxeo

Again, not my style, but better than most.



Actually, thinking about it, I say they don't make graphically and 
sonically rich games any more. But now I remember:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HHqdLrTBwQ&list=PLE92A345D7C2A1B2D

Bastion. It's graphically rich (although a little bit samey after a 
while). And while not every single song is a killer, it has some VERY 
good stuff in there. And it's fairly varied. This one's my favourite 
though. (Plus, it has that mesmerising narration which seems 
inexplicably organic...)

So maybe it's not that they don't make 'em now, just that they don't 
make _many_ of them...

Post a reply to this message

On 30/08/2013 08:55 PM, Warp wrote:
> Just as an example, take Skyrim. There are lots of excellent covers
> made from its soundtrack, such as:
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5K09mqwZc
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3MFs7NptE
>
> Or how about Portal?
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQB6szN72uo
>
> A bit older, but hardly 8-bit music (listen at least a couple of minutes
> of it):
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLI3fSgccZU
>
> One of my favorites:
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=135Gltfkxeo
>
> Or take this one:
>
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE9BE3H01-g

Still trying to work out if the message is that only JRPGs have great 
music, or that Warp only plays JRPGs... ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Still trying to work out if the message is that only JRPGs have great 
> music, or that Warp only plays JRPGs... ;-)

You classify Skyrim and Portal as JRPGs?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 31/08/2013 07:32 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Still trying to work out if the message is that only JRPGs have great
>> music, or that Warp only plays JRPGs... ;-)
>
> You classify Skyrim and Portal as JRPGs?

Portal, no. Skyrim? All I know about it is that it's very popular. I 
have no idea what it even looks like.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 31/08/2013 07:32 PM, Warp wrote:
> > Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> >> Still trying to work out if the message is that only JRPGs have great
> >> music, or that Warp only plays JRPGs... ;-)
> >
> > You classify Skyrim and Portal as JRPGs?
>
> Portal, no. Skyrim? All I know about it is that it's very popular. I
> have no idea what it even looks like.

What do you mean with JRPG? Japanese Role Playing Game? If yes, Skyrim is not a
JRPG, the world of Skyrim is influenced by Dungeons & Dragons.

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