Lurker > Toxtricity

78st
Game: Mega Man X6
Title: Metal Shark
Composer: Akemi Kimura (Naoto Tanaka)
Nominator: @Haunter12O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Gz9-RKjiI

Metal shark!!! I love sharks!!!

Another haunter12o nom, and even tho it's in megaman x6 it legit sounds like Hitoshi Sakimoto!!! If I hadn't heard this before and had to guesswhat it's from i would probably name things I know to have basiscape osts before anything else

What sets that mood the most is those crunchy brass clusters again. They're 'dissonant' intervals but they do not sound wrong at all.Instead the sound like a NEWS STATION theme and anyone who knows me knows how much I love those

Actually the song to awaken me to the fact that a lot of my favorite stuff is non-news station music that sounds like news stations music...is by hitoshi sakimoto!

Hitoshi Sakimoto - chlorella production manager
https://youtu.be/f6kxidM7pb0

chlorella production manager was nominated for a community i was in that did similar vgm contests and rankings and things . And someone kept making fun of it saying they couldn't take it seriously because it sounded too much like NEWS STATION THEME. And i pretty quickly realized that sound is exactly why I liked it

I've always been a fan of news station 80s-90s stock music and stuff. As a kid when I first used a computer I had a ton of fun poking around at the stock midis in business presentation software our computer had on it, plenty of which were clearly intended for a news station bgm context. And in university I majored in broadcasting for a bit and had access to their stock music libraries and fell in love with all the BREAKING NEWS tracks and stuff.

But until that sakimoto ten plants song, I hadn't comprehended i like equivalents to the style outside of stuff meant for that too. Based on the title its clearly more meant to represent like "factory", machines assembling parts, music that could be in "How It's Made"

Anyway back to METAL SHARK PLAYER. It definitely fits the context of the level. A recycling facility, crusher machines. Some guy makes a ton of profit from this recycling business...there's probably a "how its made" episode about stuff made from crushed recycled parts and you could just replace the song with this and it'd fit perfect

Oh and I LOVE THE metric modulation of course. Sudden tempo change, but its clearly rhythmically related to the first bit. You can tap a constant pulse at the same tempo the whole way through the song and you'd never go out of sync with the music. But the space within that time would shift from groups of 3 to groups of 4.

Another thing I love about this, both in terms of context fit and just it fitting with my taste in sounds: the mix of clearly synth brass brass and more real sounding brass. The more realistic brass layer lets it still have an almost like militaristic medieval castle sorta feel in terms of emotion exuded--regal, imposing, even just like "grandness of the scale of a giant building". But the clearly synth layers line the whole thing with the feeling of machines...I mean thats like something you'd want in almost any megaman song because of the settings conveyed, but this is straight up a recycling plant where you're inside machines. The combo is perfect for it

i usually associate "dorian mode" with like folky old fantasy setting, and it's interesting to hear the same types of melodies and progressions in something that evokes machine business world instead, both this and chlorella production manager are using that scale as their basis

i keep wanting to point out individual moments, but then i'd just list like the whole song at random but i will DO IT ANYwAY. the brass or strings having certain arps, cool weird parallel harmony in the synths at :41 that sounds VERY basiscape is one of my fav bits. The transition back to the loop i realize is one of my favorite parts here too, because you hear the straightforward constant 16ths 4/4 tempo veeeery subtly layerd on top of the other more triplety or 12/8 or [whatever you wanna call it] pulse. it's a very subtle sound, but it's there, and it just is such a cool perspective testing feeling.

another thing this evokes to me is like...machines turning on and off. in a mechanical facility it's not like every machine is always working all the time. when this speeds up it's like one new machine got activated and is doing its thing, but because the pulse is still mathematically related to the one from earlier, it doesn't change the feeling of everything constantly working. the same machines have been working the same way the whole time but now a new faster one has activated at the same time. it's just a perfect musical evocation of INDUSTRIAL PROCESSING

this might not show in the current rankings (though it might moreso in the re-rank perhaps) but i really can not understate how crazy it is to me that haunter12O nommed 3 songs in this /exact/ style that i've been looking for. very contrasting coming after the initial low placements. it's a style that grew on me even more recent than when i did this topic's ranking, particularly ever since i took my dives into other work by a lot of composers i like (sakimoto, kobayashi, etc) more seriously, but just these pounding, heavy and dense and busy and floaty orchestral arrangements is absolutely one of my favorite worlds. even more than it was at the time. so thanks so much for all these examples, seriously, i've thouroughly enjoyed bof4's ost so far and stuff like that song or this one, it's really gotten me enthusiastic in the mood for one of my favorite types of music.

79rd
Game: Fantavision
Title: MOONY
Composer: Soichi Terada
Nominator: @rwlh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-31ZXyUaGU

a lot of people i'm close to are big fans of Soichi Terada in general, and i don't really know much about him other than that he worked on ape escapes and is known as a dnb guy in general, but i do like what i've heard! at the time of making this topic i hadn't really become quite alerted to the name at all, so the composer listed didn't stand out to me as significant at the time, but now that I know what other music he has that i can draw comparisons to, that explains a lot!

i'm not entirely sure if this is the exact sound here, but one of my favorite synth presets on any synth you can find it on, is "fifths lead" or any variant of it, especially the roland incarnations of it, and i believe some version of that's exactly that cool high sound you're hearing at the very start here. it's not a very common sound to be used, even though it's part of the general midi standard so is on like a trillion different synths. this is probably mostly because it's hard to use in a way that most would say sounds good (an instrument that in itself is always more than one note, has limited uses by nature), so i'm very thankful whenever i'm able to notice it in something! the echo of that sound with those bouncy rhyhtmic delay timings is wonderfully fun too.

the other big sound i'm most fond of is all the synth pad chords in the background. they have evolving filters as their tones sustain, they morph between slightly different versions of themself organically, and really fill the space with a syrup of dreamy pleasure. i associate that sound (especially as it relates to dnb/jungle as a genre) heavily with super monkey ball, but also "light" from kirby air ride.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si0lThmO5To
(*frustration expletive* you CAN TELL that i made this writeup before the historical gilva account closure. Link attempt 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4CoHFembBk
)

and on the super monkey ball comparison topic: I can't remember the first exposure to dnb/jungle i had, but I do know that despite being obsessed with electronic dance music in the 90s/early00s as a kid, this style felt fairly foreign to me.

Around the same time as each other (~2003) I picked up "super monkey ball" and a Christmas cd called "the reindeer room: a Christmas chillout". They both had a fair amount of dnb and the style...blew my mind!? I had never heard music with these futuristic thick harmonies that make me FLOAT IN THE AIR (where there are beautiful fireworks in the air at night and you can see the moon) before. And the rapid drums atop something so chill somehow paradoxically made it even more chill...and energizing! At once! (this also really does remind me quite a bit of specific super monkey ball songs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmVkI5PS78
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkZ45dnnQRI

at the time I was really into Orbital which had some stuff kinda in the zone but not exactly i guess, but I was very late to this true incarnation of dnb/jungle as a genre for real compared to other electronic dance subcategories. orbital was more like a dark industrial future usually. i did like a lot of trance music that was more uplifting and optimistic melodically, but it didn't have these giant expansive harmonies that took me to a jetsons-style future city above the clouds in this way. but super monkey ball and that christmas album put me in THE SKY or SPACE, into a very optimistic future in heaven above the clouds. The style evokes "sky", things that are high up, the ground being a distant concept, just as much. so i think it works really well for a game about fireworks for that reason

I used to regret being somehow so late to the genre since it's now one of my favorites. But...maybe I'm glad. It was late enough in my experience that this never felt like a boring and default experience. To the contrary it's pretty much hard embedded in my mind. now that this style represents Future. NEW. Even tho it's from the 90s

I'm glad that when I hear breakbeats and stuff on top of extended chords, that it takes me to the future. Instead of taking me to the 90s.

i actually apparently originally had the composer data saved as "Motoaki Furukawa, Tomoyuki Uchida" but it got erased in the particular place i was looking at the time i made the post so then i had to re-find it and went with the rhythm game artist naming scheme instead, which is funner anyways

80st
Game: DDRMAX2
Title: Burning Heat
Composer: Mr. T with Motoaki.F
Nominator: @jcgamer107
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTt8-z27Fd4

oh, knowing jcgamer's history with me, i can totally see why he chose this as a nom hahaha. A perfect example of a lot of stuff we talked about in the past in old topics about odd rhythm stuff these many years we've both been on the board. This blasts you with straight 16ths (with vaguely implied 4+4+4+4/etc) on that filtered synth bass, but the drums come in at a bouncy 3+3+3+3 12/8 on top of it instead, which is an awesome instant layering. This tune plays around plenty with that layered feeling of different pulse timings. never quite as lengthily or bluntly as the start, but it's there at plenty of moments, where the 3s get challenged by some layer doing some element in 4s (Especially 0:35 - 0:47). OR you just hear unearthly syncopation that makes it so you can't mistake the 12/8 feeling for "bouncy swing 4/4". The same sort of feeling one of my favorite PAt METHENY GROUP tunes known as "5-5-7" always gives me (Sorry; i just had to shoehorn this ridiculous comparison, but if you pay attention to the rhythms it should not be hard to understand what i am talking about hehehe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQv4JGnXei4

Burning Heat is SO gradius-y in sound pretty instantly. I'd know it's from that whether or not i heard it before, and i talked about in the recent gradius writeup how positively i feel about that series' contribution to the history of vgm as a whole. It's very much so and the original of this is an iconic track from the series i've always loved since i knew it.

i LOVE that subtle additional harmony on those chord hits :34 and :35 so much, stacking additional information to a chord essentially just for textural variety is one of my favorite feelings. a lot of time when composing or improvising these days i'll do that sorta thing, as a method of highlight just like duplicating a chord or elements of one a 4th or 5th up and suddenly it sounds like COMPUTER REALM and that's good in my books (See: previous writeup). it's nice that this tune's centered around one of my more favorite stereotypical chord progressions, so i can enjoy both sides of the very conventional and more unusual contrasts in harmony when each happen

those cool harmonies like instantly being followed by the big 4/4 against 12/8 layering comparison section thing makes :34 pretty much the climax of the tune to me. winds up being a really powerful barrage of so many of my favorite possible musical elements in my face in a row

hahaha i'm loving all the comments on the video that are like "this song sounds like it would be in a past video game before being in ddr" who have not learned the TRUTH yet

my original shorthand notes say that i'd probably rank this higher if this were one of the FM versions from like arcade, but i have no idea why i said that because those versions don't go nearly as all out as this one does with all the rhythm stuff that i spent half this writeup talking about!

i neglected to say so far, i've always loved how jumpy it sounds when the start of this main melody happens after anything else. it's so abrupt and somehow perfect. i find often with 3/4-6/8-12/8 type zone of things, that it's very common for melodies to do things that'd feel awkward in any other context, but because that category of bouncy timesig is so naturally smooth (arguably even more easily smooth than 4/4), that you can do pretty much any randomized rhythm on a melody and it'd feel cool. idk if anyone perceives what i'm talking about, i mean the bit of the melody line you hear at :12/:35/:58. it's mathematically simple (literally just the first 6 beats of a 12 beat bar all taken up), but something about the timing, notes used, context of everything surrounding, makes it always feel like it's pushing the tune forward in this unbalanced jagged way...while still feeling natural and smooth at the same time just because it's a 12/8 song, and i REALLY like that. the original is like this even more often, like every time the track loops, and although i'd say that's one way i like the original more...my favorite portion of this song is the exact thing that subverts that all, the whole transition to the more layered pace changeup at :35

i never really thought much about this particular ddr song even though i believe i've been aware of it since forever, so thanks for like "pointing it out" to me in this topic!

Toxtricity posted...

81th
Game: Breath of Fire IV
Title: Bastard Sword
Composer: Yoshino Aoki
Nominator: @Haunter12O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS-NPweV0YA

fuck i was just barely too slow to edit the post in time with the CHANNEL VISUALIZER (i did not realize this track was sequenced/'sample-based chiptune' music until like right after i posted this on the board; which in hindsight should've been obvious but it sounded nice enough for me to believe it'd be cd audio or whatever). anyway i've been trying to post visualizers for any sequenced/chiptune adjacent thing where the data is extractable in a way where i can visualize it like this so here it is!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=328P4E0cPvw

honestly this hammers how much is going on at once in some parts of this tune, there's some layers i didn't even notice until making this because i usually filter them out. but the visual makes it clear how crazy this track really is! love being able to clearly see the particular way the dense harmonies are voiced between the different instrument layers too

81th
Game: Breath of Fire IV
Title: Bastard Sword
Composer: Yoshino Aoki
Nominator: @Haunter12O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS-NPweV0YA

another Haunter12O's Top Half pick that is in the style of exactly everything i love about "this style"

in this topic and recent vgmcs, i've repeatedly said something along the lines of:

as a kid, my personal aesthetic was "inside a computer", but these days it's more commonly nature/fantasy that tickles my fancy. but what I got into as a result of that younger identity was "inside a computer" composition (MegaMan Battle Network being my most common example to cite of such a thing, and what heavily defined my concepts of musical identity that could evoke 'inside the computer'). i never grew out of the sound of that style of composition. HOWEVER since these days I'm more inclined to more like world/orchestral stuff than before, would rather have the natural world evoked: SO one of the best ways to maximize the appeal to me is if you had like MegaMan Battle Network style composition on orchestral instrumentation.

like i probably said some variant of this exact thing in 10 separate writeups this topic!

WELL, this song is what happens when LITERALLY the MMBN2/3/6 composer makes an orchestral fantasy song......! !!!!!!!!!

When this was first nommed for me i was startled when i saw the composer, but it made so much sense with what i'd just heard once i comprehended it. All those rapid mathematical arpeggios, dense chords, even has like certain fragments of Epic MegaMan Melodic Style. like imagine if this exact song was played back in grainy beeps with maybe chord samples on a gba. it would just be an mmbn3 song. i'm not even sure which sound i'd like more, but i just beat mmbn3 and have been playing starforce (which is also Yoshino Aoki), so i'm certainly pretty attuned to this composition style and quite in the mood for it!

This song punches me pretty hard with everything i want to hear out of a composition. especially that first dissonant brass swell at :04, it's implying part of a larger chill harmony but choosing some 'nasty' tense clusters to represent that thru and i LOVE that. it makes my heart glow and body float. my real favorite part is those rapid flute flutters tho, like at :09, they feel...SO so fucking MMBN it's almost hilarious, yet it successfully evokes a song that would be titled "bastard sword" in a game that has an album cover that shows a forest even with this exact said composition style. all that needed to change was the instrumentation and PRESTo we have gone from "PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 Original Sound Tracks Vol.6" to "PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 Original Sound Tracks Vol.7". congratulations!

(i still dont know which pso2 volume i like the most but btw haunter12o based on the songs u have nominated for me i think you might enjoy "vol.7 and 8" of pso2 specifically.

(example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jwE1s_yqSg
)
)

anyway i just picked a random megaman starforce song to click on to try making this comparison and the first one that popped up was this one that has like that exact same synth arpeggio sound from :30 of bastard sword, repeating over and over immediately haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyXb3_9xTA

i should probably listen to this soundtrack as well, i think this is the only song i've heard but i know/love breath of fire 3's music extremely well, and most of 5's pretty well too. but 4 slipped me by despite being a composer i love everything else i've heard by, and being within a series with a number of entries i'm super into musically. so many signs pointing to that i'd like it. This track is as good an introduction as any! adding to my list of soundtracks to listen to this year at this very moment.

(update: since last typing any part of this writeup, i have started listening to this ost and i'm about halfway through at the moment. what the FUCK is this soundtrack it's like 20x better than i even expected holy wow. i thought i'd like it but it's like way above the megaman material i already loved from aoki somehow. it also gives me a neat context for the sound sakimoto went for in breath of fire 5, if this was sorta clearly a reference point, definitely feels like a precursor to the musical worlds explored in that as a whole)

82th
Game: Scrabble 2.0
Title: Moonglow
Composer: Jim Crew, Francis Dyer
Nominator: @Place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POGD9Pal654

oh yeah!!! more recently than the making of this topic i actually found out exactly what that plucked synth at the start of this tune is. it's from the Kurzweil K2000r with the orchestral ROM which is also used extensively in the album "Dream Trance" by Tom Hambleton and extensively by Mannheim Steamroller which are both very important sets of music to my upbringing, beyond just nostalgia, they very heavily shaped what my taste in music would eventually become! So this tune has pretty special meaning in that way, recognizing these presets that were part of formative early sounds in what became my current music taste
https://youtu.be/Ws2eRrdQTY4?t=779

the beginning of this tune is easily the strongest part to me, but i still love the rest. it's very reminiscent of tetris cd-i to my brain, but a bit further in the future and higher quality

this tune is not particularly memorable, but it doesn't need to be. it's just a nice, comforting set of sounds and that fake brass melody just makes me feel so calm and pleasant. nice chord clusters in the piano...i dunno. i could just list elements in the song, but really to me this song is appealing for much more intangible reasons. typically i'm an excessively detail-centric person in how i react, and often lose sight of the bigger picture, to the extent i feel sometimes that i'm not capable of perceiving a bigger picture and am missing something everyone else can see. but in this song, I ONLY see a bigger picture. there's not many details i can point to, instead i see tetris cdi except that it is scrabble cdi

i guess one thing i'm realizing. at the beginning: the desynchronized nature of these sorta separate mechanical layers that are all just sliiightly off from each other; that's the same feeling of the War of the Human Tanks song and [entire norio hanzawa discography] thhat i really love that i talked about a lot in the war of the human tanks writeup. It's probably a bit of why i was referring to a lot of this song as "i like the FEEL of it", in an abstract way, rather than my usual being able to point to details, because the thing that drives my enthusiasm up is something that permeates long sections, all the layers interacting with each other in a subtle, non-perceptible way. that imperfection. the tune starts in honestly kinda chaos when i think about it, but it gradually morphs into vaporwave fodder (which in my book, is one of the highest compliments you can possibly give btw)

about the vaporwave point actually, i appreciate that this completely evokes that vibe, but doesn't actually do anything i would consider cliche. It just feels like it'd be on the weather channel in 1999, but it's almost like an unexplored example of that category. if this was a somehow viral song, i do not think i would see thousands of comments saying "A E S T H E T I C" obnoxiously, but it fits right into everything i like about the category that makes people say that! down to the presence of early 90s synth presets, but presets on them that aren't even commonly cited examples of the era's sound, but /i/ know it when i hear it, and i love it.

also by the way i LOVE scrabble it is my favorite board game if anyone ever wants to play scrabble with me let me know but i prefer very slow-paced sessions witghout a timer where it's normal to take like 10 minutes for a single turn so you might get bored if that's not your speed

83th
Game: Deemo
Title: Koqurow
Composer: Feryquitous
Nominator: @DireKrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlp45Ka5bvI

this song title feels like it is a corruption of the word "crow" which makes it fitting with the animal that is the species that you are in real life (crow)

this nom may have been how i got introduced to Feryquitous? who's now one of the rhythm game artists i jump to listening to random stuff by whenever i get in a rhythm game mood? thank you!

i suppose this is of the genre "artcore" which is that genre that's like dnb where all of the piano sounds really fake and it's really complex or something. well i like every aspect of that description i just made so clearly its a genre i love~! i still barely understand anything about the origins of this very specific subgenre of music, but learning that it was the name people gave to one of my favorite categories of music that kept popping up in rhythm games was pretty game-changing. wound up finding a lot to love and i am so happy

i think when i say that i like "rhythm game music" an imaginary song that sounds exactly like this one starts playing in my head. it's just all my favorite tropes that've become distinct to the style.

i love how relentless the production just slams you with things that feel like /the production/ rather than the composition, the artifice in the piano that gets cut off instantly. Glitchy and harsh sound design moments abound that spark the piece to life. but the composition doesn't hold back either! i feel like anything i have to say about that will feel pretty redundant but yeah it's got thick chords and jumpy jazzy syncopation that feels cool and funky. this song feels like it'd be incredibly hard to memorize for a scenario like playing in a rhythm game, but it doesn't feel in-your-face about that, it just /is/, and that's a pretty successful and maybe even difficult balance and task to attain. this tune is super complex but it never really feels like it, it just evokes imagery of an imaginary stained glass cathedral with triangular polygonal textures that for some reason pops into my head whenever i hear it (what i mean by this is imagine if everything in the game "the witness" was made out of stained glass)

having just listened to a bunch of Pokemon Legends - Arceus at the time of this writeup, i also have to say this track feels like a more conventionally well-produced version of Hitomi Sato's style, maybe a bit more moody and emotionally dark than her stuff leans, but it's that style. It's like Edgy Ten Carat Hill (i think i said something similar to this about hayato asano in an earlier write-up, but i mean it in this case for an entirely different reason. this song isn't edgy just because it has a guitar in it (it doesn't have a guitar in it) it's edgy because the song feels like it is a dark color, it feels like it could be in something cyberpunnk or something)

my favorite bit of this tune has to be the piano, i keep coming back to fixating on that element no matter what i do really. there's just so much to that layer, it'll feel punchy in the bass when it's playing lower notes, and fill the empty space with exactly the touches i need in the higher frequencies exactly when I need it. it feels like the most ]essential[ component of this tune to me. the other layers enhance it beautifully, i mean i know this game is DEEMO literally, but not every deemo song feels like the entire song could just be the piano layer and still feel just as impactful. it's pretty powerfully utilized here! that said my favorite indiv moments in this tune are when specific piercing synths come in for the first time (That COOL spicy lead at 1:34, and stuff like that). any time the synths are prominent it feels like glowing lights lit up between the cracks of this imaginary stained glass version of "the witness" (except dark and at night and more cyberpunk in mood) that i have in my head

i want to know what this "Morden music not a video games!" comment on the video means LOL wtf

84st
Game: Valkyria Chronicles 4
Title: Squad E Fights On
Composer: Hitoshi Sakimoto
Nominator: @Haunter12O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMdbIeLQ84E

and THEReS Haunter12O again FINALLY. You having this massive gap halfway through your noms is pretty hilarious. As pointed out earlier in the topic, your bottom 4 all went out in the 200s, and your top four are all at least in this top 84! there's some other hilariously huge gaps in this topic but this one sticks out to me most because it's like so even split between your top 4 and bottom 4. some entire people have had all or almost all 8 of their noms go out between the time your previous nom went out and now! crazy weird how this worked out

I'd say it seems like you tend to like two very different "types" of songs, at least from my perspective of how i perceive music. one of those types of songs does very little for me (the more straightforward catchy melodic type that your bottom four noms were more like); but the other type is basically my favorite type of music! This being an example of such (uhh i'll explain it below but i suppose the consistent factor with your high-ranking noms for me is extended harmony and generally really full and intricate feeling arrangements with lots of stuff going on at once). I suppose there's a consistent set of threads between all 8, epic orchestra and stuff like that.

anyway BASISCAPE is BASICally my favorite type of music. I've always loved specific basiscape songs but more recent than the making of this topic i've gotten so deep into the output of the sound team as a whole. Hitoshi Sakimoto is probably like only my 5th favoite basiscape composer and he's still somewhere in my top 30 favorite musicians of all time, that's how stupid nailed perfect down this sound team is to my taste! I can barely think of any basiscape music i even slightly dislike. i might even like Hitoshi Sakimoto just as much as my long-time favorite Hayato Matsuo these days (*mysterious information*) ((i used to consistently prefer matsuo's stuff in osts they were both on, now i really can't decide!!! they're both so good!!!))

what i notice about basiscape (and the portion of your noms that happened to make my top 4, in general) is very lush harmonies, chords (especially orchestra chords) that are very dense and feel "full" and thick and EPIC and like an imaginary futuristic military with magic powers going on an adventure inside of the big fantasy grass field to beat up some guy named "lord c: of 5990 third" and also they are inside a computer at the same time. these songs are basically absolutely never harmonically simple. even when something seems very conventional on a passive listen, there's so many details of intricacy when i attune my ears closer. whether just in arrangement, number of things going on, rhythms, really dense chords, or unusual movements between chords or unusual melody-chord interactions. my ears always catch something new every time i listen to these songs. that's what i like about the top half of your noms, and also (as relevant to this song) basiscape/sakimoto in general

that style can apply to a variety of aesthetics, and it does both within the sound team and within the portion of your noms in general that made it this high. This is an example of it applying to something more natural rather than artificial

anyway enough talk about "in general" WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT [this song]

answer: i like it.

oh hey it goes into 5/4 at :13! i feel like in 2018 i would've considered that the most significant moment to me, but what i get most out of these days is all those string chord clusters jumping around from :29-:41. there's so much going on once there but it never feels cluttered, by contrast it actually feels floaty, like i'm in the clouds...

Pretty much every moving line in this tune is accompanied by something else moving simultaneously along with it. There's like almost no "melody lines" (and when there are, they're quickly subverted or layered with something else), its ALL "chord lines". i LOVE that feeling. That means something though, i'm not just like analyzing musical content in some shallow non-emotional way here. When i hear this /constant/ density, i feel like i'm the hero in a situation where a lot of chaos is going around me. I'm powering through a fight, winning. I'm dodging dozens of explosions, focused on my goal of PASSION for doing WHAT I THINK IS RIGHT [ i dont k now the plot of this game at all] and that being the only thing keeping me alive in the minefield of perils.

being able to comprehend any individual element clearly in a landscape of composition that's relentlessly dense and chaotic, especially in a track as emotionally elevating as this one: it feels like you're succeeding at something challenging. I suppose, you legitimately are, and that may be why it works so powerful to me: when I listen to this song, i am feel accomplished that i'm able to comprehend any element of the overwhelming stimulation. The music doesn't /sound/ overstimulating, it forces me to have like..plenty of possible options to latch on to pretty easily! but in latching onto any one of them, i feel accomplished. It forces me to instinctually feel the emotional parallel between "successfully comprehending something simple out of a convoluted barrage of information" to "succeeding during a very difficult fight". that shit is POWERFUL % Man. i'm forced to on instinct /literally/ feel the emotion this track conveys, i'm not just giving it the heroic label by association, the dopamine rush is real and entirely overlapping with the scenario. I'm in love with that concept so much.

and that on top of the layers that actually /are/ tropes that evoke heroism. it's just really cool, for that to exist on top of the actual musical factors forcing my brain to function in a specific way where it's easy to latch on to any given element but impossible to latch onto the whole thing, so it's always in this precise state of "powering through the chaos", only amplified by heroic melodies and stuff

god since this topic i've also gotten way deeper into the real even more specific this song clearly evokes in general: final fantasy tactics music. I binged the whole ost and similar sakimoto soundtracks a bunch of times recently looking for a song i had in my head, that as far as i can tell at this point...does not exist? i was just imagining it and making it up? maybe i'll find it someday. this song reminds me of that imaginary song tho, to the point i actually though it might've been part of this song or something. Maybe that's the best way to divide the two sides of your taste as i see it: "Final Fantasy 7 vs Final Fantasy Tactics", i am 100% on the fft side of that question. i like that for pretty much the same reason as this.

in the past i had a conversation with kao about how a past way he and i used to disagree when our tastes weren't as similar is that i did not like "militaristic music" (largely referring to sakimoto specifically) and that is NOT TRUE anymore; i actively really love that sound NOW , and this exactly is that sound. militaristic sakimoto music is like, the best sakimoto music to me now

i have barely listened to valkyria chronicles music at all but i ASSUME I would enjoy it given who composed it and everything i've just said. this definitely makes me energized to want to check it all out!

85rd
Game: The Technomancer
Title: Canyon to Noctis
Composer: Olivier Deriviere
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw0FAn76yDo

kaonashi1 FINALLY has a nom drop. (interestingly, when i rerank everything; it's actually possible that zigzagoon would also remain with 0 songs to show up around this point, and i'm not even sure which of you two would have your first nom drop first, you're both the only two "all songs are 8.x" in my imagined re-ranking, and this portion of the 8s is pretty stacked tight of things i like near the exact same amount as each other so it's hard to tell who'd go first). but instead in my old 2018 taste all his stuff dropped before you even showed up @_@ | REALLY need to do a re-ranking at the end because it will have SHOCKING results. These two CANADIAN nominators are the only ones to NOT lose a SONG, Are They HOT????

anyway, kao actually told me that this nom was distinctly the one he rated lowest out of his nom set. the only one he only rated around 7.x himself rather than 8-10, and was simply suggesting to me out of thinking i'd like it. While that is true, i obviously like it if it's this high, i'm curious if he'd have performed even better if he limited himself only to noms he'd give an 8+ himself! Mutually, kaonashi1 and i agree this is our least favorite of kaonashi1's noms, apparently! (we agree on a lot of things about music...obviously...so this really should not be surprising)

the appeal to me here is pretty easy to spot for anyone who knows me of course. I love glitchy idm drums, and those are quite prominent in this track! that on top of more 'world' instruments is great for activating multiple Taste Sectors of mine all at the same time. Making this closer to a _Type:Null track than any other _Pokemon playlist it could belong in (closest is _Houndoom, but it'd fit right into _Electrike strangely too. ElectrikeXHoundoom is honestly a pretty rare combo to find! So I appreciate this). it reminds me a lot of "Phantasy Star Online 2 OST - Superior Probe ~ Underworks (Scenery)", which i mentioned a couple writeups ago...the comparisons should be pretty obvious. Similar instrumentation, featuring vaguely dramaticconstant 8th synth lines, looping acoustic loops beneath them, "cool idm production". Fascinating comparison to be able to make now because that pso2 song did not exist yet when i made this ranking topic

oh and of course this song has odd time. it took me a while to grasp (i only comprehened it when i played the song sped up), but i guess the whole thing really fits into a "9" container, a slow, long 9 container, that gets grouped in multiple different ways. Most often felt as 5/4 + 4/4 alternating, but if you focus on certain other things you can feel more like a bunch of 4/4s broken up with intermittent 2/4s. The thing asserting the 9 though is that high click sound...though where beat one is, i can never naturally ascertain, i have to actually go out of my way to find it! and sometimes i'm indecisive about where the best place to place the consistent beat 1 would even be! This is intriguing because on some listens, i'll hear certain layers as almost frustratingly mechanical in their assertion of the odd time. Very straight forward "this is the start of the 5/4 bar" "this is the start of the 4/4 bar" sorta plain-ness. but on other listens i can't follow it at all, and it's because this is so multilayered, every layer approaching this container different. giving different start/end positions within the 9, being grouped differently within the 9. it just makes for a very engaging listen when i choose to focus in on these things (very good "dungeon music" definition based on things i've said recently). it's all "9/4", sometimes quite straightforward and heavy-handed in its presentation of the rhythms even, but it's never clear /how/. It's incredibly rhythmically ambiguous at the same time as being rhythmically obvious, and that paradox is pretty fascinating

now that i think about it more, this feels like.....electronic steve reich. i just comprehended this as i was typing this writeup. this is like the Modern Electronic version of steve reich. There's layers that don't come in on the down beat, but instead lay out an unfollowable pattern atop simpler layers. it's just like, i'm listening to "2x5" by steve reich but the cyberpunk dystopia version of it. this comparison makes 0 sense in terms of the way the music sounds, but i mean this purely in the nature of the rhythms and layers. it's /exactly/ that and i would say it may even have been conscious in intent to use those sorts of techniques but applied to an entirely different aesthetic/instrumentation/tonality

and OMG i love those beautiful piano chords at 2:09, they're incredibly powerful after what's self-expressed as such a consistently tense song for such a long duration out of its runtime.

NFUN posted...

mycro you should listen to the orbit themes from star control 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgLTUsxSNC0&list=PLnQIgt9njOcPuOg2E_6QnnLdYbwviwsOy&index=6

this is so much more on target to what i love than what i expected holy crap, not at all like what i'm used to from this game. thank you for sharing these! it's extremely to my current mood especially

86nd
Game: War of the Human Tanks
Title: Deeper [H] samples
Composer: Sampling-Sound.com, DeZI:R
Nominator: @UF8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTMoEBMnYcQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSaSsx2b_zM

i have uploaded this video TWO TIMES for no reason

i remember uf8 commenting a few times about finding it really amusing that this particular nom hadn't dropped yet. but i mean...come on! i love atonal piano, and i'm one of the bigger fans of stereotypical orchestral cues in this community. but i'm gonna especially like it when it's like jankily synced over a drum loop in this particular way.

the amount i get excited over this vaguely loose desync is a pretty core aspect of my music taste but i often filter it out when thinking about talking about what i like, since it's easy to filter out, as it'll permeate entire tracks most of the time and not even be something i notice about it until long after having loved the feeling it gave me. I first noticed i was really into it with Norio Hanzawa stuff, every layer gradually going out of sync with each other was ingrained into every song, in pretty much his entire history, even in his chiptune days somehow.

like...just listen to this song i nommed for raetsel this year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rt0QQsN2Qo

but also like anything from stretch panic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVneE33MlMg

or bucky o'hare (arcade version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oos-rBD7xcs

and i didn't just like that because it was funny or anything, it just activated this instinctual feeling in me of engagement. i don't know exactly what "emotion" it represents, i guess it's largely because i associate that feeling with a lot of 90s dance music or stuff produced in an era where you'd get that by nature of limitations of the tools used. the looseness is also...technically...a form of "rhythmic complexity", at least in terms of what i get out of it, it makes what's going on harder-to-follow and that's why i get into complex stuff in the first place!

anyway this war of the human tanks is THAT, except with dissonance in spades. it honestly really feels like norio hanzawa to me more than most things i've ever even heard, and since i crave that well, this song is like finding out some rare tasty meal i was only able to get at some local restaraunt in michigan has opened up in new mexico and i can get my favorite very specific pizza i haven't been able to get any of for 5 years again. a song feeling like norio hanzawa, as a compliment, it's not just being reminded of something i like, it's being reminded of something RARE and SPECIFIC that is HARD TO FIND that i LOVE. since his list of work isn't particularly massive or anything

theres some other parallels to other stuff i like too. like the fact that you hear a full orchestra repeate Exactly the same sample totally unnaturally? that's drakengard 1 mood right there. i doubt it's exactly intended to sound like that, but it enhances the ominousness greatly to me. Dark Broken Reality vibe for sure whether it wants to be that or not

i just realized something pretty funny tho; this isn't just any drum loop, it's literally one of the most commonly used default fl studio ones hahaha, the first one alphabetically in some versions even? that's so funny. sometimes something feeling too "indie" can really make me turned off, more than you'd expect from someone like me (i think it's mostly because i can't stand things that evoke "2010s" too much, and too much amateur indie stuff feels like "amateur 2012" which i dont like, instead of "amateur 1998", which i would instead love wholehearetedly). and whether i like it or not, it's very hard to detatch recognizing-specific-fl-studio-presets from INDIE GAME from eras that are newer than my taste in such a thing. some of it is more than just association too, fl's stock presets not used in the right way so often turn out as a specific form of muddy that focuses on frequencies i do not like, in the wrong way. maybe i'll be nostalgaic for that in the future but currently i'm not, though certain instances are growin on me

but this is a case where, despite that it very directly comes across as "amateur 2012", i love it to bits. this is stuff where; the amateur-ness is exactly what makes it shine to me

DISCLAIMER: i do NOT want to be someone seen as fueling the (extremely incorrect) perception that fl studio is "the amateur daw" because at this point in history, it's absolutely not. and even when it had its reputation that way, it was just as capable as everything else. personally it's fairly low ranked in my ranking of daws i've used, but that's just because of my admittedly esoteric workflow preferences. the correlation of "what daw someone uses" is honestly very low with what a given musician sounds like. i also dislike the company image-line for personal reasons, but it would be stupid of me to judge what someoine else chooses to use for their work if they happen to make things that i think sound good. this song sounds good! ...at least to me. i doubt that's a common sentiment.

ANYWAYS you picked the right song from this. i'm skimming other songs in the game, and although i get a laugh out of some of them, they're NOT the type of indie-feeling vgm that i like, but this one nails what i want to hear so thank you haha

dowolf posted...

become as bobs~

anywho, the aesthetic of the game is very much 21st-century ruins overrun by nature, so >_>

i guess given the drakengard ending thread leading into it, that makes a ton of sense! and it does lineup with what i've seen in screenshots/etc (as is obvious from the video i uploaded...) and certainly fits the zone of music i was describing

(on a related note: i just realized the regirock/regice/registeel battle in pokemon rse is 3/4-6/8 JUST like the guardian battles in botw. i mean "2nd most common timesig" isn't that significant, but i think there's a similar mood between the two, with a mechanical feeling looping ostinato that sounds like an ancient machine spinning...to me. that'd be a cool thing to mashup for both musical alignment and thematic relevance to each other) ((this is irrelevant rambling they're really not that similar to each other...but they are in my HEART))

HasteDeux posted...

I couldn't find that specific version of Birth of a Wish ANYWHERE; the ones on the all the music sites were all missing the tripletized "Be-come-as-----GODS" at the start, which was one of my favorite parts of it. Thanks for being Darkwing Duck. (but if you take it down, that's fine, too)

you're welcome!!! it's a shame that the 6hr EXTENDED video got taken down like a day before i posted this post too, because i thought randomly having that link was funny because i can get sucked into listening to this particular song on repeat so easily too. but hopefully i don't have my channel compromised for a private upload like this

87rd
Game: NieR: Automata
Title: Birth of a Wish (Become as Gods)
Composer: Keiichi Okabe
Nominator: @tazzyboyishere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqo4BhGVJR0

this one is a pain to find a version of it that is not deleted by the big company on youtube (i also can't upload videos to yt at the time of typing this, so i'm stuck with this 6 HOUR EXTENDED version it looks like. well, i certainly would be willing to listen to this on loop for 6 hours. great song)

((UPDATE: while i can upload videos now since first writing this post. given that the link i had at the time of first typing this post is now taken down......i do not feel safe uploading my own video of this song hahaha))

(((((UPDATE 2: Actually i have just said Screw It and uploaded a video. i hope i do not get in a dangerous outcome from this plan!)))))

. . . . anyways i think it's already known that i like this one because i ranked it highly in vgmc and stuff and talked about liking it there. I used to not like the nier osts, but it turns out that i had just been exposed to all the wrong songs from them. if this was my first exposure to nier, even as far back as probably when this game came out, i'd have instantly been like OMG what is this i WANT TO HEAR MORE. instead i got turned away because my early exposures to the the word "nier" were songs i didn't care about at all or were even actively against what i wanted to hear (somehow it took me a long time to learn it was the same series as Drakengard, and when i did, i was even more disappointed since i liked drakengard 1's insanity so much). but i now realize that nier has stuff that IS to my tastes, stuff that was _always_ to my tastes. even back when they were more narrow back then, and this stuff has always been there. still need to go thru the full set of soundtracks through the series but i have a pretty sizable list of of songs i love from them now. this one is near the top and is honestly fairly underranked within my ranking topic right here!

there's reasons that are pretty obviously things i'd like in here of course: ar tonelico-y robot vocals is 1000% my thing. the artifice of their voice, chanting in this repeating chord on such a strange manipulated sound is one of the coolest things i've ever heard. it makes me visualize imaginary ancient technology glowing circuit board runes layering themselves over robots made out of stone and oh my god i love breath of the wild you have no idea yeah. those vocals are one of my favorite things that one could compare to that ar tonelico-adjacent style

i could go on aboujt random tedious harmony topics, it's the type of chords i like, transposing suspended stuff and all that. but the more important thing is the /reason/ i like that sound, and i've always chalked it up to how it became ingrained in my brain that that type of harmony = "inside a computer"; which used to be my favorite aesthetic (microprocessor) but now is far from it BUT I NEVER grew out of the type of composition. i said in a 'recent' writeup in this topic that that's why i like vol7-8 of pso2 so much and stuff. it's this composition that evokes futuristic, synthetic computer world that i've always loved, but applied to my more recent love of nature and ancient ruins. and that mixture works PERFECT for "ancient technology"---i actually know literally 0 about nier but i assume if there's robot voices chanting "become as gods" in a song that sounds like this there's something of that nature going on, or at least a mixture of eras of technology or contrast of nature/tech merged or something like that. even if that is not the context, it makes me think of that sort of thing and i like that sort of thing, so the song makes me : ) very happy

other odds and ends i love about this, that looping low plucked string sound, makes me think of some of my favorite panzer dragoon songs! been really into like "simple loops on traditional {ethnic} instruments" (whatever that means) lately, as a backing for stuff much more involved rests atop. one of my more recent favorite songs with that mood is "Phantasy Star Online 2 OST - Superior Probe ~ Underworks (Scenery)", especially the bit at 1:47. it even has that really monotone primal feeling become as gods fills me with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IriCUtntiII

yeah i want to be taken into the big overgrown jungle that overtook the ruins of the city. or to the big grass field that has a lot of ancient machines made out of stone with glowing runes. idk i like that vibe A LOT and this song is one of the best ones for that; good job. being pursued by ancient robots like "Regirock" and "registeel" and stuff

88st
Game: beatmania IIDX 26 Rootage
Title: Ryuuou no reibyou(Mausoleum Of The Primal Dragon)
Composer: TOMOSUKE
Nominator: @Prody_Parrot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1aOntwlEk

EPIC PROG (quantum sea lindwurm) by tomosuke started auto-playing after this video ended, and suddenly i comprehended the connection the two tracks have! it's a parallel i never thought about before, but you can tell they're the same artist. they're both filled with a wonderful contrast of more traditional classical-aligned harmony and wacky modern prog/fusion harmony, alternating between the extremes for purpose of enhancing how powerful either extreme is able to feel when they each get their spotlight at alternating portions. and honestly given how bands like Emerson Lake & Palmer have a bunch of covers of classical music, this just makes it feel even more aligned with actual 70s progressive rock bands that i have fondness for. but the rhythm game vgm version!! (actually because of the pace of this, what it winds up sounding more like is prog metal. especially because all the recent dream theater albums have every single song be a castlevania pastiche for some reason (well actually it's probably the other way around...michiru yamane considers dream theater one of her favorite bands lol))

i'm most attracted to the bits of this that have lots of rock organ, partially because of the timbres featured in the track rock organ is my favorite one that is in here. but also partially because they are the portions of the song that are the most rhythmically and tonally intricate and to no one's surprise that is a thing i like

rhythmically 1:53 is something I comprehend as not a shift to bouncy 6/8, but rather polymetric bouncy 6/8 style drums layered on top of what is still retaining that 4/4 pulse of the whole rest of the song. except...i think it's actually literally just a timesig change to 6/8 straight up. and now i'm curious why i have this completely strange perception of it. I suppose it's because you hear very standard kick-snare-kick-snare type drums for such a consistent and lengthy portion of the piece. so when something subverts that and is {technically} the same tempo with nothing to lead into the change, i'm still hearing the original tempo, and the original pulse. i'm not sure if this is meant to evoke this layered (but secretly not actually layered) feeling or not, or if i'm just CRAZY and have listened to too much Virgil Donati/Planet X, which causes me to imagine uncommon things being there that aren't actually there. but i like what i experience, so i am glad that i experience it.

the beginning reminds me a lot of PREDATOR'S CRYPTO which is one of the rhythm game songs in this style i always mentally rank pretty high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DO7cmzYncA

given that tomosuke has a track genre named EPIC PROG, it make me have to wonder what prog he even listens to. the influence from the genre couldn't be more obvious, across plenty of his tracks, but which specific artists is he pulling from?! i sadly can't figure this out and i wish i knew. i wasted my time fumbling around his social media for like an hour, which i could've spent catching up on writeups, didn't find any mentions of any musicians that aren't already vgm artists at all!

like i said on the last writeup, the very popular style of epic fast paced battle themes i probably come across as not-a-fan of. but i don't think i dislike the category, it's just that the popular examples don't line up with what i want from them, but this one DOES and it has the funny genre name of "RETROSPECTIVE EPIC MUSIC", it is very epic. i like it a lot : )

89nd
Game: Atelier Shallie Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Seas
Title: Sleeping Meteor
Composer: Hayato Asano
Nominator: @banshiryuu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-DFE7mNQM

i did not guess this was hayato asano when i first heard it, was surprised after listening when i saw the composer name. but in hindsight, there's a couple moments where suddenly it turns into blue reflection for like 10 seconds like 1:03 (which made me start laughing out loud when i comprehended this) and suddenly it all makes sense haha.

but really this does a great job at sounding like "gust" as in like, traditional gust, ar tonelico ii, rather than "hayato asano". you can tell it's him when you know (it has his wonderfully creative sense of harmony at a number of points! the flurry of thick chords around like ~:10 or ~:22 or ~:57-1:00 is an insanely cool feeling). but man that FLUTE is so "ken nakagawa" and i'm glad this calls back so faithfully to that sound despite asano's self-tropes. even the mix of electronic "blue reflection moments" and this more natural atelier feeling, is in itself, a mixture i associate more with what i love about older gust.

~1:47-1:58 makes me laugh because it is so much like uhhh this one song by one of my favorite prog bands (echolyn)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IoGCY90-2Q

i'm glad that part sounds like that echolyn song because i like that echolyn song...

[NOTE:REMEMBER TO MENTION THE OVER THE BARLINE STUFF OR WHATEVER AT THEBEGINNING] oh right so one of the other immediate things that makes me excited about this one is the way it starts. it feels like it's in 3/4 or 6/8 in that starting section if you follow the strings. but the drums are doing a constant 4/4 pulse atop them, and the reset of the phrase happens after 4 4/4 bars, making the grouping more like 3+3+3+3+3+1 (i guess more 'logically', a more normal 6+6+4, but the feeling to me comes across like a bunch of 3s that randomly get cut off after the first beat the last time. which feels a lot more COMPLEX than a thing you'd write as unchanging 4/4 would imply! even if groups of 3s that get cut off is honestly pretty normal, the layered and long-winded over-the-barline way this song handles it feels incredibly cool to me basically.)

it's kinda weird to realize how much hayato asano is like "edgy hitomi sato", on paper you'd think i like him more than her (they're probably like...tied...in my fav vgm composers ranking honestly), these weird major scale melodies a lot of people would decry as meandering and uncomfortably happy; endless thick jazz fusion chords; lots of epianos. this actually wouldn't feel out of place in pokemon arceus legends (GOOD SOUNDTRACK). but what makes asano the edgy version is that he adds punk-ish guitar energy into it randomly he should make the battle theme for [vs. Toxtricity User]. and it doesn't come across like my Least Favorite Thing (edgy guitar version of happy christmas song), instead it turns out to land more in the _Umbreon jazz-metal progfusion zone. of guitarists that have black hair that is Too Long that listen to allan holdsworth or pat metheny group but are still also in a metal band so then they put chords in it

whoa i never realized how cool and tense the harmonies at like 3:25 are until this stream of consciousness writeup just now

this is the kind of EPIC battle theme that actually does it for me. it can be hard to sell me on the style, but i like this one. i suppose i like a lot of incarnations of the style, and am maybe even specifically attracted to the feeling of Epic Battle. but it just has to be doing something i find special, and too often the category avoids anything i care about musically. but this song is loaded with things i care about musically! thank you!

i really need to brush up on my ateiler ost indulgence. for someone who acts like they like gust music, i'm really far behind. I've barely listened to anything newer than sophie or older than totori (tho i think atelier iris 3 is a contender for my favorite atelier ost, but that's the only one that old i know...). I know my exa_pico quite well! but atelier specifically, really need to catch up (and look to the past for stuff from before i got into it too). if anyone who knows my taste well has recs for what atelier osts to jump into next let me know!

HasteDeux posted...

One thing I like about its composition regards 0:52, where you would expect completely new material. It sounds like it's doing just that if you aren't paying attention, but it's exactly the same melody as the beginning; it just fits within the meter differently. Clever. And then the "oohs" near the end of the loop make me float away every time I hear them! *_*

oh this actually reminds me. something i actually forgot to mention despite how long i spent on that writeup haha: i love how at the :52 it's really the same melody line twice, but it sounds so much different the 2nd time because the harmonies around it change it into something else (especially that chromatically ascending bass layer). it shows how powerful tiny details that aren't the melody itself can be. but also yes what you said, the same sequence of notes is shown at the beginning in isolation too, really makes the whole piece way more cohesive than these disparately styled sections would lead you to believe if you're not paying attention

90nd
Game: Gokenjo Boukentai
Title: Boss Battle 2
Composer: Akihiko Mori
Nominator: @dowolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD5e8f1gbGE

Originally I remember saying something like "this is basically up here because of the odd time section". But honestly I'm not even sure that's anywhere near my favorite element of this at this point

A lot of what I like about this these days is simply...nostalgia, and even though I hadn't heard this song before this topic. it reminds me of the sorts of songs I liked in 2011, even though I don't consider my 2011 music taste to represent my current taste at all, things that evoke it to me still give me that warm fluffy feeling of when I was a jolteon named "mycro" instead of a sneasel named "toxtricity". I was more naive, had less exposure to the variety of music I do now, was more wowed by a stereotypical jrpg battle theme like this, but you know what? That familiarity feels good.

It reminds me of a lot of the less strange sector of prog I was getting into at the time too, when the idea of the style was more new to me. Back when a song going into 5/4 for 5 seconds felt so Wild and Crazy. (OK I know that "6 bars of 4/4, 2 bars of 6/4, 4 bars of 4/4, 4 bars of 3/4, 8 bars of 5/4, 8 bars of 4/4, [5/4 + 4/4]x3, 5/4, 2 bars of 4/4, 4 bars of 5/4, 4 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 2/4" is a lot more than that. But its still that linear <type> of prog that was easier to wow me with in 2011)

Now this sorta odd meter thing is relatively simple compared to what I currently surround myself with, but I still retain the feeling of cool mood it gives me. This reminds me of when Motoi Sakuraba was my very favorite vgm composer and Rush was my favorite prog band. And I miss something about that time. This song takes me back there, even if in only a small way

This is actually a lot like nobou uematsu (I think if this came up in a vgm guessing game my impulse would be to say "ff6!!!") except mitigating a lot of the problems I usually have with him---this is arranged quite well! I've praised that aspect of akihiko mori music before. It always sounds fuller than it "is" and translations of content into snes (or whatever format) feel so carefully done to make sure it comes out strong. (i could go on about akihiko mori in general (rip) like...i feel like he's done at least one song that touches entirely different side of my music taste. we have a staunchly _Jolteon battle style song here, a ton of _Electrike jrpg sounding songs spread across various jrpgs because they are jrpgs, _Quilava/_Zorua zzzv-style dark quirky prog funk with like "techno house". a pretty diverse composer, but a consistent tendency to do the things that i like! )

The uematsu comparison feels most apt to me at :42, like really emotional dramatic moment sandwiched between more dissonant proggy hits of tension. Its just...very 'final fantasy' in structure and sound haha. too often in the past long while i've really underplayed how much i can get out of the punch of emotion something very conventional can create if it comes at the right time. that's what that moment at :42 does for me here, it's almost my favorite part of the song even if i wouldn't care for it at all in isolation. it's the contrast of the harder-to-follow stuff surrounding it that makes it so powerful and HEROIC and DESTINY and that's great.

oh yeah the spooky classical music intro gets deconstructed immediately once the song kicks in with drums which is a pretty cool thing also, the transition from that to the crazier stuff is just a great song structure

anyway here's the channel visualizer of course i would be doing that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4aHiudcZqs

this highlights all the same arrangement details i was talking about; you can only play 8 notes at once but it never sounds that empty; every channel is constantly switching between two different things, taking advantage of gaps in the rhythms and stuff to alternate between elements in a way that sounds more like a size equivalent to something with 16+ channels instead. it's not just the technical details i'm impressed with in that regard. it's a cool sound! because you can like, hear it! you hear this alternation with punchy notes getting cut off so other things can quickly take their place, and it sounds cool, it sounds full, but it sounds distinct to this format too. it's not just that it's an 'impressive use of the soundchip' that i like it, it's a MOde_of_Music_existence that sounds Cool ok

i'd probably rank this wai wai world version 7th. as in: above the msx version, below the pc98 version. it doesn't have some of the weird computery harmonic stuff i like about the versions above it, but the bouncy fast pace is very fun and brings out the energy of the odd rhythms and stuff

91th
Game: Gradius (Arcade)
Title: Stage 3
Composer: Miki Higashino
Nominator: @rwlh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZuh9KQiviE

i was going to make a visualizer for this one like i have many of the other chiptune entries where something like that was possible. but i've just realized I can't figure out what version of the song actually sounds like this? going through every version I can, the "arcade" versions i can find sound totally different from this recording, still FM, but very different, less strange/harsh timbres. So it feels like it'd defeat the purpose to make something like that, even if it'd be easy and quick for this one since it is so short. (*edit: I've just realized that the version rwlh nommed is actually probably more likely not even fm, and some weird wavetable or psg thing similar to msx/tg16's stuff. almost just said fm habitually to mean "sounds a bit more full than plain beeps")

instead i am going to go thru a personal ranking of all the versions of this i can quickly find!!!!

1) this one that you nominated for me
2) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/nemesis-msx-scc
3) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/gradius-tg-16
4) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/gradius-nec-pc-8801
5) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/gradius-sharp-x68000
6) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/garudius-95-nec-pc-9801
7) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/nemesis-msx-psg
8) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/gradius-sharp-x1
9) this one: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/gradius-nes

i'd expect to rate the x68000 one higher because of being fm but the fm sounds it uses are a lot more clunky and flat to me, not nearly as cool as the gritty one you nominated that feels like i have burnt my food and now parts of the edges are serrated black singed edges that could be used as a grunge album cover if you squint your eyes

basicallyou picked the right version GOOD JOB. my order of the lower ones could change with mood, but the one you nominated for me would always be my favorite version,so you nailed it here

anyway the composition is maybe the more obvious reason i'd like this rather than the sounds so lets get to that.

Miki Higashino has a funny bit in an interview where they questioned why she went for the style she went for in shmup music (that later became influential on the sound of shmups as a whole). her work often sounds not at all like what a normal person would think "spaceship in space blowing things up" would sound like, why is this how it turned out to be? Her reasoning was apparently something along the lines of "when I think of space, I think of computers, and when I think of computers, I think of odd time signatures, and angular atonal elements like quartals and stuff" or something like that. So basically what she's saying is that she thinks of the 1982 version of the Tron OST by Wendy Carlos when she thinks "space" beccause computers take you to space and computers would be most associated with making weird sounds like crazy bus and stuff like that because it's the 80s when you make this song still....although it's a connection multiple chains of iterations away from the source idea, i do think it works. You know that high-technology is what got you to where you are, so to represent that, your sonic world becomes machines, circuit board music. when you approach this track from that angle it exemplifies it WELL. If i didn't know the context of this song, i'd probably say "inside a computer", and at some level, i wouldn't be wrong...

when i was doing the ranking of versions above, the thing that'd make me rank a version way lower was if the sound at the beginning was just one note, rather than these layered parallel chords. what i mean when i say that: evenly stacked layers of notes on top of each other---THAT is "inside a computer" music imo, they're not just chords, they're computery chords! without those chords,. i mean i just hear those sounds and i see a wireframe grid in my head, and wireframe grids can be on futuristic computer screen in fancy spaceship, and you see where this is going. this type of music is actually perfect for the scenario! it might not be the first thought many people have when they think of space, but it actually nails imagery compatible with the concept perfectly to me

oh yeah and it's odd time of course. it starts as weird 4/4 that rhythmically almost feels randomly generated by a computer (this is probably on purpose what it's supposed to feel like), then oddly when it goes into odd time, it's a lot more followable imo. The pattern gives itself a clear start and end for like "this is a 7/8 bar, it starts here and ends here", which is a welcome contrast for variety in the tune. I think it's because once those sections show up, rather than being like a looping pattern where you're not sure where the start or end is, instead you know /exactly/ where the start and end are. They're not initially predictable, but you're hearing chunks of the song repeated, but not always repeated at the same length. It's like a computer is DEFRAGMENTING and reorganizing those cubes (full transcription:
(0:00 - 0:08) 4 bars of 4/4
(0:08 - 0:14) 7/8, 6/8, 7/8, 6/8
(0:14 - 0:22) 3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 3/4 (but the last bar of 3/4 is weird and all in triplets, 9 evenly spaced apart notes in the space of that 3/4 bar)
[loop]
)

i think most people probably wouldn't care about this song that much, it's short, "weird", "dated", empty, doesn't have much in it, but probably not to your surprise at all, i love it quite a bit! I'm glad you shared it with me. It's technically not new to me i think, but it might as well have been because i didn't remember it prior to your nom for this topic, so great job in this choice! it is a very COMPUTER song and that works pretty well with what you were going for with the pick i think

I'm very thankful for this music, if it weren't for it, shmup music may not have had the same influence origins as it wound up having, and would've been way less angular and strange in the later iterations probably without this as an early foundation. thank you miki higashino for your profound influence on the sound of this genre of video game

I'm so glad you like it! : )

Zigzagoon posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/1/AAblU3AAC0EZ.jpg

gulusgammamon is so good!

azuarc posted...

omg that video. You made that yourself?

yep! there's a reason i took so long to finish this last writeup...

that was our SIXTH ELIMINATION

Ranking by average placement:
1) ???
...
17) Zigazagoon (Average placement: 135.25)
...
35) SuperNiceDog (Average placement: 211.125th)
36) handsomeboy2012 (Average placement: 221st)
37) DragonImps (Average placement: 232.5th)
38) Se7enthrust (Average placement: 252.625th)
39) lordjers (Average placement: 266th)

being eliminated 6th is very misleading tho, since you also were one of the only people holding on to all 8 of your noms for quite a while, and you can see above in the average placement ranking how you're the first one who's earliness at going out doesn't correlate at all with how you ranked once you rank by average placement instead.

your run was fairly unusual. you were one of the last people to have a song show up, but also one of the first to lose all of yours. Your "range" is smaller than almost everyone else because of this, only 5 people had their songs show up in a smaller span of ranking positions than you (which mostly don't count because they're mostly people who didn't nom 8 songs). You doing this relatively high up certainly makes that even more interesting.

I consistently liked your songs absolutely, but nothing wound up higher than this pmd song obviously----at least, in my initial ranking----

LITERALLY EVERYTHING you submitted grew on me over the course of the time i've been slowly doing this topic! If I were to re-rank, not only would your lowest be at least 50 slots higher, but probably actually everything would be in the top 100! Your stats when I do like a re-ranking at the end will absolutely skyrocket. Everything grew on me to the point everything you nommed is NOW in my regular listening rotation. "would put on a cd mix or playlist" level, which is literally the definition of the 8.x cutoff for me, so, thank you for introducing me to so much amazing stuff! it might not show in the initial ranking but it truly all sat well with me more and more every time I listened. (and your avg ranking is still top-half anyway as-is).

i actually think a lot of it was literally just the mood i was in when i made this topic, was definitely leaning away from things you like at the time. but another much bigger part of it is the ways our tastes overlap when they do are usually about subtleties in a track, which aren't always immediately noticable, especially in a big 278 song ranking topic like this, it took me a bit of time to realize "wtf everything this song is dooing is so cool" so yeah

(in general i feel it's mandatory at this point that I do a re-ranking of this topic at the end, because what'd be my #1 favorite if i ranked this in 2021 is something I placed lower in 2018, and stuff like that)

i want to thank you for having such an interestingly distinct music taste. even if we often disagree in a broader context like VGMC, i feel like your noms for this topic are actually a pretty good showcase on our quite significant overlap! Most things that you actually really care about /do/ appeal to me, when others might not actually see much in them. you had /nothing/ with a truly low placement (and that's not even considering that they're all probably top 100 here now). and I mean there's so many examples of us sharing big favorites: Titanic Monarch, mmbn3 navi customizer, route 209, route 120, aquatic ruin, digimon ghost game's op (i've been watching this!!! it's really good so far!!), ffcc in general, a ton of motoi sakuraba stuff, the list goes on (and of course everything you nommed for this topic at this point). i feel like i can't even think of many other people on here who share that many favorites with you, and often when you describe your favorite parts and elements they're pretty much the same as my own

I think there's something to that though. Although at a base level we might seem like opposites because I like weird and you dislike weird, among plenty of other opposing factors---we percieve music the same way, i realize. We both fixate on tiny details of songs (and you know this). For us it's always specific moments, and often a focus on the interactions melodies/chord changes/harmonies/etc all have with each other. and so this means when a song does something that stands out regarding those elements, we will /react/. Whether our reactions are mutually positive about such a thing is a diceroll. and you're a lot more picky than me of course, but chances are if you like something, I at the very least think it is "interesting", which I can't actually say about most people's music taste that I know! I think such a detail-centric response to music isn't actually very common, but when we hear [cool intricate traditional classical music chord changes on harpsichord and church organ and umineko song], or [amazing flowing motoi sakuraba melody lines] we /react/, very distinctly. most other people would hear those same things and pass it over like it's nothing. So thank you for sharing these very specific responses to these songs we mutually enjoy. We definitely don't agree on everything---and disagree a lot. but I consider you to have absolutely one of the most interesting tastes in music of anyone in this community, and really want to make it clear I'm not just saying that for no reason. the stuff you like stands out to me, and quite often it's exactly what i'm looking for too! It's to the point that whenever I learn you're really into a song: i want to at least check it out because there's a good chance it becomes a favorite of mine too.

i like the songs you like, for the same reason i like puzzles in a game like myst. every element interacts with each other and has to be carefully balanced to melodically/harmonically/chord-wise flow all together smoothly. and it can't just cheat and be something so simple that it'd uninteresting. you want emotions you can only get when you explore stuff that needs that goes just a slight bit outside of the boundaries, to be impactful, while still feeling comprehensible, and giving you the satisfaction of having solved the puzzle. one layer will go up chromatically and another will go down, but every chord will be harmonious in a row, somehow. they had to figure out how to make that work, it can be a painstaking puzzle to get that to work, and i'm just as impressed as when i realize an intricate multilayered security code in a myst game had to be planned out in that same way. it's very delicate, and even the experience of listening, trying to comprehend every layer of like, that shovel knight song or whatever. it feels like i've solved a puzzle once i get it. it's impossible to perceive every layer on just one listen, but it always fits together smoothly no matter which layer gets your focus, and on enough listens i feel a deep satisfaction when i've successfully predicted and comprehended its behavior.

i have to say, the fact that your initial<->final ranking will shoot up this high after all these years, it's a feat that could only happen with a taste desiring cool amazing subtleties i respect as much as yours. thank you for giving me songs that grew on me so much on EVERY listen that something this ridiculous could happen.

stay tuned for when your average ranking shoots to soaring heights when I do my re-ranking of everything...!

-

Current status of average rankings and # of songs remaining everyone has:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/0/1/AAefu7AAC3bF.jpg

92th
Game: Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon
Title: A Warning to All Pokemon!
Composer: Keisuke It, Yasuhiro Kawagoe, Noriko Murakami
Nominator: @Zigzagoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H310BCVZhQ

so i'm a ridiculously huge fan of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series' music, it's unsurprising this is in the 8/10 tier, and zig's highest ranked song, basically everything from this series would be. i imagine a lot of people probably don't see very much in this particular track but i can tell exactly why zigzagoon likes this haha. it's exactly those wonderfully dark spooky progressions with careful and tight chromatic movements that sound like "classical music" that show up around like :52, which are pretty great and come in at just the right time.

interestingly, a few days ago my brother was going through the whole psmd ost, he's infamously not as fond of it as other pmd osts, but he said he's changed his mind and this song was one of the NEW standouts for him upon a relisten. i would rank this track much higher than i did when i started this topic at this point (this is a recurring theme with zig's noms; your avg ranking will seriously skyrocket if i do a reranking at the end, and it's already pretty high despite this being your highest in the current 2018 version of the ranking incarnation actually). i dunno if i'd say this song is among my favorite in the game but it's like...top half or top quarter probably for me at this point of the ost?

honestly i love every section of this track for basically...every reason about it i could. cool sound design / cool composition / just, structurally put together in a way that peaks this haunting dark emotion in me in a way that's very difficult to attain too. it's pretty perfect. the intimidating bendy choir, the dark synth arpeggios, all the background tense atmospheric sounds that almost feel like 999 somehow (this actually reminds me a lot of your vlr nom haha, which is the last thing I'd expect to say about pmd)

a recurring topic between dire and i is how much we like animal-centric fictional worlds that feel "serious" and especially musically. i think that's a big factor of my fondness for pokemon mystery dungeon both as a game series and ost. it has the right balance of:
1) playfulness (in this case most of the violin stuff) [[so that it can still exist in the environment of a kinda cartoony thing featuriung cute animal characters]] and
2) seriousness (basically everything else) [[so that it doesn't just get reduced to "animals = for children" and all the reduction of care and minimization of seriousness or complexity or whatever that comes with that typically]]

this whole ost could've had been really shallow and not taken itself seriously, but it decided to take itself seriously and i adore it for that

the irony is i've actually only beaten pmd2; and i have more spoilers for 1/gti/psmd than i'd like, including about the context of this track but i am TRYING to not look at the comments haha (please no spoilers). i'll get to finishing those games eventually but my backlog of games to play is giant anyw-*explosion of time and space %^$YW*TFJGB)Sby6}}|_)__*

*wakes up on a rocky beach, with a very large head ache and is very dizzy* huh? where am i? i dont remember anything...i think i was...talking about...video game music? what's a video game? uhhhh. hmm.

*tries to stand up but then falls over * waaaah! what's going on? *tries to stand up again, trips and falls face first into the ocean. after a moment, opens eyes and is startled by wavy reflection in the water*

gaaah!!! what?! i'm a ...ZIGZAGOON??? but...zigzagoons aren't real? what's happening...this must be a dream...this can't be real *Tries to bonk self awake by hitting head against the rocks but then BREAKS them and realizes the instinctual awareness of how to use the move "headbutt"*

whoa...i can do that? that's pretty cool. uhh...i guess i really am a pokemon. i'm hungry, i guess i better get looking for food *realizes pretty quickly how much more natural it is to move about when running on four legs and in zigzag patterns*

*notices a strange LARGE CUBE with indents scratched in, and a bunch of buttons arranged like keys on a musical keyboard* what's THAT!? this reminds me of Myst...wait...what is Myst? is that like...a video game? what's a video game? well never mind that i wanna figure out what this thing does!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/6/AAefu7AAC3bA.png

*presses every button at the same time and a loud ugly burst of sound gets played out* ....ow. ok maybe i should just press one button at a time.

this seems to be a puzzle? *pokes around with the buttons a bit more*

hmmm. I think I've figured it out. these buttons control which notes get played. and there seems to be a representation of a song up there. I think I've finally figured out every note of the song too. Here we go!

((Pokemon Myst Dungeon 8))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuAq_PkyZ0

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/7/AAefu7AAC3bB.png

I did it! i wonder where this leads?!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/8/AAefu7AAC3bC.png

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/9/AAefu7AAC3bD.jpg

((one thing i really wanted to illustrate with that video above, is how one of my favorite things i consistently notice in songs both ermine and i like, are when every pitch class ('pitch class', meaning, all 12 letter names, c, c#, d, etc) gets represented rapidly, but in like a very smooth way. You can see at :42-:55, a glowing blue key means a pitch class has been played already. every note in this short section of a warning to all pokemon (just between that bass/melody layer, not even counting the AMAZING harp part in the background), uses every note (except for E) at least once.

this sorta thing often evokes spooky stuff very well, but also just things like playfulness or even like Fancy 1800s Architecture. and it's all just enough emotional thrust out of convention to be memorable and have an impact. I think we mutually find things a lot more boring if they're just using one scale the whole time with only like 5-8 notes, most of the stuff you get excited about goes outside of that, but it has to do it in the right way for you. stuff like this i think is also why you (and i) get really excited about stuff even as simple as going into minor when the early part of the song is major, it's just that tiny bit of deviation from pure plain diatonic major scale that can make all the difference and open up a world of varied emotional options. this song is a pretty great representation of that feeling, all while being sandwhiched between some pretty oppressively dark sounds of other types i really love too

sorry i've taken so long, but i feel the need to do justice to how underranked this (and ermine's other noms) wound up being. I hope you can enjoy the video and stuff! I had fun making this goofy thing up, and hope others can find it fun and hopefully find it worth the wait too!))

I PRESENT: Pokemon Myst Dungeon 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuAq_PkyZ0

coming back to this for real very soon (was hoping today but more likely sometime in the next couple days)