Board 8 > Mycro ranks the 278 VGM tracks nominated by BOARD EIGHT [rankings] 3 -(TOP_100)-

(+) Yeah! (+)

this means we are at the TOP TEN by the way; here are the remaining songs

C-Wars Belly Crawl
Fighting Layer Capriccio
Final Fantasy VI *Remix Dancing Mad (PAL)
Galactic Pinball MOONMAN's Fandango
Lightfield Shadoubt Shaps
Mary Skelter 2 Shissou
Phantasy Star Online 2 Yggdrasil
Secret of Mana (2018) Steel and Snare
Splatoon 2 Frantic Aspic
Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru ridicule

kaonashi1 has 3 noms left
Glacier has 2
Place / hotdogturtle / NFUN / azuarc / rwlh all hanging on with 1!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

imagery
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/0/4/AAefu7AADJ4Y.jpg

Toxtricity posted...

WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

i will get top three or die trying

Toxtricity posted...

you suspected this would be low because i "dislike happy music" and its very simple "kindergarten music class" start.

i actually predicted that this would be #1 of my noms. normally, i would predict that it would end up pretty low because of the reasons you described, but i already knew about your affection for klonoa music so i had an advantage there. still, i didn't expect it (or any of my noms) to end up THIS high, #11 is pretty crazy!

i got into the klonoa 2 soundtrack because super, super early in my board 8 days, inviso e-mailed me MP3s of the entire soundtrack. at the start of the "lasa ranks 100 songs nominated by nfun" topic, i talked about how i didn't become a "serious music fan" (lol that didn't sound pretentious...) until 2005 but this happened even earlier than that, somewhere in 2004. of course, i've liked music for as long as i can remember but when i was a kid, it was always "i like this song that plays on the radio" or "i like the song that plays in the background in this video game." the klonoa 2 soundtrack was actually one of my earliest "i'm going out of my way to specifically listen to this" experiences. so for that reason, moonlight museum was probably my most "personal" nom. fitting that it was the last one to go!

anyway, it's been fun following how my noms did! i'm glad my taste in music was obvious in these songs haha.

Mr Lasastryke posted...

i actually predicted that this would be #1 of my noms.

i don't remember where or why, but i am near certain you did a prediction at one point with this in last place >_>. i wouldn't have put words in your mouth saying you suspected this low otherwise. but maybe i'm remembering wrong

although maybe you'd meant something more like "i can't decide if klonoa will be at the top because i know you like klonoa, or if you'll hate it for how happy it is" or something like that. pretty certain that at some point you definitely pointed out how it was at odds with my usual interests at least.

also that's an extremely cool personal story with klonoa 2! I didn't know that about you, but honestly, what a fitting soundtrack to be one of your earliest experiences with vgm-out-of-context, or even active attentiveness to music in that exact way! the idea of submissions to this sort of thing being "personal" is really cool. and it can create some neat intersections with ones relationship with another person when you start to take a look at things like this. I'd have never known that an ost so important to me was also deeply important to you, but in a completely different way!

Toxtricity posted...

although maybe you'd meant something more like "i can't decide if klonoa will be at the top because i know you like klonoa, or if you'll hate it for how happy it is" or something like that. pretty certain that at some point you definitely pointed out how it was at odds with my usual interests at least.

oh yeah, this is certainly possible. i remember i absolutely put snowball scuffle in that "???" category because with that song, i was like "well i know you love kirby music but this song is also very happy so maybe you think this sucks because of that reason??" could very well be that i initially said similar things about moonlight museum.

also that's an extremely cool personal story with klonoa 2! I didn't know that about you, but honestly, what a fitting soundtrack to be one of your earliest experiences with vgm-out-of-context, or even active attentiveness to music in that exact way! the idea of submissions to this sort of thing being "personal" is really cool. and it can create some neat intersections with ones relationship with another person when you start to take a look at things like this. I'd have never known that an ost so important to me was also deeply important to you, but in a completely different way!

yeah that's very cool.

another one of my "early music experiences" was the album speaking of now by pat metheny group - my dad owned that CD and i played it over and over again. (to go on a tangent, i think you've been here long enough to remember the user amazing telephone? i want to say he was a music critic for a living. anyway, back in 2004 he posted his top 10 bands and artists in a "post your top 10 bands" topic and i recognized absolutely nobody he listed EXCEPT for "pat metheny," i think he was #6 or something. that was another cool very early board 8 memory for me.) anyway, i said to my brother (who also loved speaking of now): "wow this klonoa 2 music kind of sounds like pat metheny group doesn't it?" and he was like "huh no it doesn't." funny how i was being the "mycro" in this case ([insert music thing] sounds like PAT METHENY") and he was being the skeptical "lasa" ("i'm not really hearing it") haha.

also interesting how your comparison point for moonlight museum was actually allan holdsworth rather than metheny. i guess i associate the calmness and soothing sound with PMG but yeah, the holdsworth comparison also makes a lot of sense.

Mr Lasastryke posted...

also interesting how your comparison point for moonlight museum was actually allan holdsworth rather than metheny. i guess i associate the calmness and soothing sound with PMG but yeah, the holdsworth comparison also makes a lot of sense.

i ALMOST SAID pmg honestly; the comparison is obvious since it has that bendy airy sine wave synth that sounds like that sound lyle mays always uses. I think I mostly said allan holdsworth here because the harmonies remind me of those big open guitar chords he'll have, and the high degree of electronic-ness as well

Toxtricity posted...

this means we are at the TOP TEN by the way; here are the remaining songs

C-Wars Belly Crawl
Fighting Layer Capriccio
Final Fantasy VI *Remix Dancing Mad (PAL)
Galactic Pinball MOONMAN's Fandango
Lightfield Shadoubt Shaps
Mary Skelter 2 Shissou
Phantasy Star Online 2 Yggdrasil
Secret of Mana (2018) Steel and Snare
Splatoon 2 Frantic Aspic
Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru ridicule

kaonashi1 has 3 noms left
Glacier has 2
Place / hotdogturtle / NFUN / azuarc / rwlh all hanging on with 1!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

having a hard time believing i have 2 songs in your top 10, im really surprised! i was honestly expecting the highest id get to be in the -teens or 20s, so this exceeds my expectations by like. so much. like the only other person who has more than one song left is kao and with how you've said you have extremely similar tastes in the past its not a surprise to me that kao has 3 songs in the top 10.

im saying this now and im expecting one of my songs to be #9 or something bc its been a while since one of my nominations has gone out... but at the same time a bunch of other people are in that same boat, and kao's been having noms go pretty frequently now; so it all feels like kind of a gamble to me how high my songs get at this point. i dont know how high but however high they get im going to be happy.

this has been such a cool topic so far, your opinions on the songs that have been nominated have been like MEGA INTERESTING to hear [especially as you go into the history of the songs and similarities between prog artists], and im glad that the songs i nominated can help ride out the end of the rankings.

the experience of this all has just been so great and utterly unforgettable. thank u

10st
Game: Galactic Pinball
Title: MOONMAN's Fandango
Composer: Kenji Yamamoto, Masaru Tajima, Minako Hamano
Nominator: @Flamander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5_ab7dX7_s

note: apparently it's been recently learned that Minako Hamano secretly wrote music for this game but... as always ...nintendo credits are weird. no indication on exactly what she did, but I've added her into the composer list as a result. I think this song is likely Masaru Tajima's work specifically, of these 3 (See: Trajectile/Reflect Missile); however Minako Hamano has some comparable sounding stuff as well (See: Brain Age). I highly doubt this is yamamoto given how much it sounds like stuff by the other two while he has nothing like it---tajima especially seems the most likely. [[also technically this game randomly has the same music team as metroid prime 3 which is funny to think about. in 2007 they'd be a trio again]]

[Trajectile/Reflect Missile OST]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC68gCks50I

ANYWAYS I'm a long time fan of this one. i remember getting so mad at people who thought that this song was only in vgmc as "a joke" just because they didn't understand why someone c ould be so obsessed with it...all the people pushing it were people like me/nee/jona, people really into THAT fusiony INSIDE A COMPUTER mood. but that style was not big here yet in those days

The start of this song is quite trippy and even creepy; but it's a really great gradual increase in intensity before the reward of COOL COMPUTER CHORDS come in around :19. but that intro...the morse code beeps, and i love that weird layered 5/8 sequence from :08-:12 or so, the sounds produced there are incredibly cool too. the song is just normal 4/4 but you get polymeter with layered 4/4-5/8 which is something i always like, but it's subtle about that.

oh right here is the VISUALIZER (note: i couldn't find any version that was exactly like what was nominated, as the gamerips have moonman's fandango split up between different tracks, with slight differences and it not entirely clear exactly where to splice them together to re-create moonman's fandango. so this visualizer doesn't have the cool intro/etc. what you're seeing in the video below here is "Credits" which is the bulk of it anyways):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFaIPSffqJQ

i never actually remembered how many channels the virtual boy had; but it's only 6?! I can't believe this, this song sounds so much fuller than that. I would've sworn you're hearing like 16 notes playing at once. These chords sound like they have more than 6 notes in them on their own...not even considering that there's drums/bass/melody line and other accompaniement all on !top!

in this case, I think the reason the chords sound like they have more notes in them than they do is some cleverness like...how if you look at the 3rd channel or 5th channel, they're both alternating between two notes rapidly; not in a chiptune arpeggio way, but in a way timed with the music. You do concretely hear that, but I don't really think about it when listening, it feels almost more like the equivalent of a warbling effect in a synth pad, if it were to imagine this as full production instead of chiptune. The other factor is the most commonly talked about thing---"implied harmonies", there's notes that aren't ever played, but you "imagine" them being there. This track is just very precisely composed in a way to make itself feel a lot fuller than it is, it's not even doing that much technically impressive chip usage or anything, just very carefully harmonized, very careful about which exact notes are being played and when, to ensure it always feels expansive and BIG and INSIDE A COMPUTEr. ON TOP OF THAT you have arpeggios of course, but i'm hearing those more like sprinkles on top of the thick chocolate fudge i'm already hearing beneath

that brings me to the next topic...........!

I keep going on about how much i love "quartal/quintal harmony" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartal_and_quintal_harmony) throughout this topic, but neglecting to explain what that means with clarity. So I'm going to do so now as clear as I possibly can, because this song illustrates the things I love about it well:

Quartals are a sequence/stack of notes that are evenly spaced apart, with exactly 5 pitches from one to the next (so C->F->Bb->Eb->etc). They sound like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eqIbQCs6A

Quintals are a sequence/stack of notes that are evenly spaced apart, with exactly 7 pitches from one to the next (C to G to D to A to E, etc). They sound like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhvH5A57jRE

quintals and quartals are 100% related to each other. since...a quartal backwards, is like...the same pitch classes as a quintal. the same notes but in different octaves. going up a quartal chord you get C F Bb Eb Ab; and going DOWN a quintal chord, you get the same notes, just...the F BELOW the C (instead of the F above the C that you get with a quartal, etc). For this reason the two types of chords/etc are very entangled and interchangable in meaning.

the videos I just linked though don't do justice to the variety of ways these sequences of notes can sound. especially once you consider all the variety of ways you can alter or layer them to be not /exactly/ all event spaced, or other ways of implying these notes are "the notes" in a section through different cool synth sounds or implied harmony or whatever

They can sound AGGRESSIVE (emerson lake and palmer - tarkus / pokemon mystery dungeon 2 - monster house):
https://youtu.be/WKNOlDtZluU?t=32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nn8bU7CWJc

they can sound ETHEREAL (tokyo xanadu - eclipse / metroid prime 3 - gfs olympus [a really quartal-centric song in prime 3, the one metroid game with masaru tajima on it...when little else in the series sounds like that...is another thing that makes me think MOONMAN'S FANDANGO is masaru tajima])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq-_OHhi0bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTOx4E4dpZ8

they can sound INSIDE A COMPUTER (megaman battle network 2 - castlecomp / super mario odyssey - ice)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aKPd5AHjM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42v5g_9L1Oc

one thing that's important to me about MOONMAN'S FANDANGO though---this track is a completely opposite approach to this sort of thing from other examples I've given for loving the sound earlier in this topic. Not always, but largely i was bringing up my enthusiasm when i was excited about the more in-your-face dissonant examples. but ironically this exact interval moonman's fandango contains so much of (perfect fifth; C to G to D etc. quintals), it's like. the most harmonious sound POSSIBLE. technically. and that's part of why it's so versatile. you can do anything with it while being able to sound as chill, or as tense as you'd like... rapid sliding the chord up and down or arpeggiations too fast to process could be computery or aggressive; but filling the space with these harmonies instead makes it become THE BEAUTIFUL INFINITE PLANE OF INFORMATION CYBERSPACE

[continued...]

[...continued]

really this way of understanding scales/notes/chords, it's all about the FREEDOM of possibilities. And what that means is you can have any emotion catalyzed from the restructuring of these same sequences of notes. quintals become major (CGDAE = loosely a major scale when reorganized), quartals can be come minor (C/F/Bb/Eb/Ab/etc will become loosely a minor scale when reorganized). Somehow I'm still always attracted to these categories of note sequences whether it's in a consonant context (moonman's fandango) or super dissonant context (tarkus/etc). I'm not sure how much of that is like some abstract "attraction to a particular freedom to jump angularly between wildly different spots across a grid, or how much of it is just coincidence, but i like these notes. they can be used i nso many ways and they're the ones i like. I associate them with INSIDE A COMPUTER settings like Tron 1982 and MegaMan Battle Network series (both things that feature these note sequences or chord types in their composition). Maybe it's fitting that the game system this game came out on is the VIRTUAL boy; a very VIRTUAL sound. and it honestly fits the setting and look of the game better than anything could've.

I always liked these types of chords, types of note sequences, before i really knew anything about the theory behind them or payed attention to what notes they were. when i first heard this song i think i was like ITS THE MEGAMAN BATTLE NETWORK NOTES. but now i know, i like notes that are "stacks of 7 keys away from each other on the piano" or "stacks of 5 keys away from each other on the piano" and the various ways those stacks (or arpeggiations of) will sound. they can fit anywhere, and will usually be my favorite part. a song like THIS, is entirely BUILT around them, and it creates the best virtual reality of wireframe geometric shapes and flickering static i could imagine myself immersed in

9st
Game: C-Wars
Title: Belly Crawl
Composer: tenfour
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-0PcU19UL0

i guess this is another instance of me being more tolerant of blues scale stuff than i would usually be because it's presented as "edgy" enough. the injection of subtly overstimulating complex harmonic stuff throughout the rest of the track only helps! ESPECIALLY those sharp synth stabs, they're so funky in presentation and so piercing in their punch (i love when they transpose around...or when those stabs PITCH BEND. and stuff like that). Those sorts of chord stabs are one of my favorite things to hear in this type of music.

Similarly (as in, another "anomaly" on how well this appeals to my taste despite my typical response to something), i usually have mixed reaction to when chords change up and down by an entire tritone (the "banjo kazooie chord progression") but...I LOVE it here, even though it's done in an almost cheesy cartoon ghost way, I think the edge and seriousness of everything else around makes me able to take it seriously (and general...well produced and compositionally all around explorative. IT's not the condescending manner other things i've heard have taken it.)

I find myself regularly inclined to noodle around improvisations over this (or even when this isn't playing; based around this) on keyboard a lot. It's just the sorta thing that's fun to extrapolate from. The number of ideas in the track isn't actually all that high, but it gives a lot of room for stuff to play with from them. This exact track is just one recording of its couple of ideas, but I can play around with the bassline, play around with those stabby synths, figuring out what other possible things work with some of these strange passages of weird chord changes with spooky diminished chords and all that.

Really though, the reason I come back to this one so much is something I often have a hard time admitting I can enjoy (because I often don't), but I find this super catchy! Its exact brand of funk, these infectious bass bits, funky syncopations, they "feel like a cool thing". It gets in my head and it's the sort of song that is FUN to get in my head, and it inspires me a lot and makes me feel like playing it a lot.

If i remember correctly (dont quote me on this), this soundtrack admits that it's inspired by Vince DiCola, and it's not hard to see how. a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq4YkFn4ego
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c4WdzztiFY

Vince DiCola's someone where he's openly said that specifically the reason he is so "quartal focused" IS because of Keith Emerson, and not just me assuming that for everything. but this is sorta funny, because while I can immediately point to Vince DiCola with this C-Wars track, it's actually not very quartal harmony-ish at all. Instead it's achieving a lot of the same feelings dicola/emerson/etc do through sus chords (which i guess, contain the same notes), but also just, the raw ENERGY and FURY that "prog battle themes" often have. Great Job At Ensnaring My EARS

maybe i'm wrong on the dicola inspiration descriptio nbecause elsewhere it's describing itself like "inspired by gritty 90s game osts like starcraft; and classic prog" which is like; on targeT? anyways WHO CARES it sounds COOL

I'm not sure if this is actually my favorite song in the game, but this is literally /9th/ in this topic; how much better would other tracks do? I'm not sure, honestly a huge number of them would wind up around this range, but I'd have to relisten to decide my favorite. the two I listen to most are High Tech Facilities and Belly Crawl which is...funny given that you nommed high tech facilities for rwlh. that might be part of why i kept coming to that one as well as this one? I can't really remember, they both get in my head all the time tho so then i listen to them and go YEAH

i know this is kind of an arbitrary thing that a lot of people think is toxic tribalism to fixate on; but it makes me feel very happy and validated that this was made with Renoise. At the time I discovered this soundtrack (when it came out) that wasn't even the main daw i used; but i thought it was cool that it was made with a "sorta uncommon daw". but not too long after, I had a CRISIS and realized that my workflow was not suited for the type of stuff I did anymore; so i went on a QUEST to find the PERFECT DAW FOR ME (i tried demos of like every single daw). I wanted to find what would work best, just for me, what did exactly the things I wanted most? It turned out to be Renoise, esoteric tracker-interface oddball. anyway, when I listen to this ost these days, and realize it was made probably quite similarly to how I work (simply on the basis that it's using an obscure-ish daw that works in an idiosyncratic way), it feels cool. This guy's experience making this ost is probably quite similar to my own experience when I make music and that's pretty neat to think about.

8rd
Game: Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru
Title: ridicule
Composer: zts
Nominator: @rwlh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi3eAjB_LcA

here we go into the depths of some of the most extreme horrific hellscape _houndoom atmosphere of this topic! but it has the bonus of being incredibly rhythmically fascinating as well. This isn't a common combination to find, one of the only things I can compare it to is maybe ilkae/bunbleman
https://inpuj.bandcamp.com/track/spider

but ridicule gets a lot darker than that.

I guess there's a bit of autechre that gets this dark while simultaneously being this level of rhythmically strange; but for the most part---despite IDM being associated with rhythmic complexity in a lot of people's minds, it's actually quite difficult to find things in the genre at this level of outright rhythmic strangeness, especially this specific type of it. Usually rhythmic strangeness is more about erratic jumpy rhythms, rather than this more multilayered "sounds totally different from different vantage point" perception-testing vantage point shifting stuff i love SO much. I guess there is one other idm song i can think of like that....it's called-----[THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN REMOVED TO PREVENT TEMPORAL ANOMALIES. PLEASE BE PATIENT]

I guess part of what happens is that this initializes itself as empty enough to where the only thing to latch onto is these repeating echoes...those echoes become THE rhythm, THE pulse that you hear, even as they fade out. It initializes one tempo........but is it the "real" tempo?!?!? Later different elements come in with their own tempos, their own rates of echoing out, and you get these wonderfully funky comparisons between the two layered. It doesn't feel overstimulating, it feels deliberate and funky and cool~!

To illustrate exactly what I mean, I've rendered this song with a kick drum playing at a couple different tempos:

the first one; the tempo is at the rate of that first metallic hit you hear. (making the song at ~135bpm, in 6/4 [or i guess 6-bar-phrased 4/4 if you want...])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDBtPF_KM0A

this second one; the tempo is at the rate of like...everything else in the song...(making the song at 90bpm, and in normal 4 bar phrased 4/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtjwcJ-5S_8

I actually think that the SECOND video, is the "real tempo". this makes it so that the whole song is in 4/4, and if you kinda filter out that first echoy hit you hear in the song. the song actually becomes incredibly rhythmically normal!!!! the echoy hit the song starts with is echoing at a rate that's triplets...so when you hear its pulse as "the tempo", it's a FAKE TEMPO that only applies to that one layer really, and this is the most likely way someone would percieve the track, which is a really cool rhythmic trick that i adore...

this track is much like rhythm-changer, the name should be changed to ridi-cule, because it really reminds me of the sorts of things xaki does (though zts is no stranger to rhythmic oddities either...even in his super popular epic trance songs i have used the word "polymetric" in like every writeup. and stuff like deadangle also explores rhythms similar to this, albeit in a much less horrifying and abrasive way)

THIS SONG IS INSIDE OF A METALLIC PIPE (i have stolen these words from "place")

I know you were stressing about not being able to find a song for this category, since i had given you a prompt to try to find one track that'd fit into each of the 8 (at the time) pokemon playlists on my yt channel. and the one category you couldn't find a song for was _Mewtwo (described as like...looping sequences, especially layered intersecting 'mathematical' feeling ones...basically, songs with polymeter or polyrhythms in a repetitive way (steve reich but cyberpunk or something)) ---in the end this winds up being slightly more of a _Houndoom song because of just how furiously DARK it is. but honestly? the WAY that it's "mewtwo" was pretty profoundly unique, and it wonderfully slots itself into both those playlists. I couldn't be more thankful that after all your stressing on the hardest category to attain, it wound up being my favorite song out of your entire set! You really nailed what I was looking for here, and while I'm familiar with umineko music I've so far only listened to ep1-4; and so the chiru stuff i didn't know and this WAS new, genuinely. GREAT JOB. i will have to listen to all of chiru sometime soon.

this is genuinely one of the darkest, most evil, most horrifying pieces of music i can think of off the top of my head. very little else fills me with this much dread. but other songs i can think of with that effect aren't nearly this "interesting" to listen to at the same time. so this is a very welcome tune that i want to add to the experience of sounds in my ears! I wish i had more words to say about it, in terms of imagery, etc. I suppose i can mention that the uncertainty and difficulty to comprehend the rhythms only adds to how dark it feels...it's kinda what i said in snake's "The Evil Within" nom:

These hits and their pulsating reverb trail kinda create the illusion of various different rhythmic spaces (sometimes i hear closer to 7/8ish at one tempo, other times something totally different), but none of the things i hear will line up with those drums, which makes this 2nd half of the track put me in multiple temporal locations at once. It's the audio equivalent of the existential torture of the separation of instinct from thought, when you are in danger............! one interpretation is "reality", but you are not allowed to perceive that because you are going to be killed so you have to interpret "approximation of reality", instead. this doesn't change what reality is, but you're feeling both at once all the same with different parts of your mind...at least, i am

now...honestly, if you just stretch a 4/4 click to line up with the space each of those hits starting at 1:49 is (bumping it up to ~130bpm), it lines up nicely, including those weird drum bits each just being normal 16th notes, but i find it almost impossible to naturally hear it that way! the change in tempo is so sudden it's impossible to escape the ~108bpm feeling from earlier, so into this rhythmically ambiguous hellscape of uncertain anxiety we go. and honestly, that's the perfect zone for a piece of music like this

i don't just like that sorta mathy thing because i like numbers, even if i self-reductively act like i do, and speak from the vantage point as if timesig stuff or whatever is all i care about a lot. but in the context of horror game, those sorta effects are the exact things that generate even the exact instinctual forms of uncertainty that you absolutely need to convey the scenario. not knowing exactly what the tempo or bar length is, even if there is clearly some sort of pulse, and multiple things pulling me in different directions---that's harder to process, in the same way being chased down corridors of an unfamiliar abandoned building you dont know how to navigate is harder to process. i like that!

this track is just like THAT, and I LOVE that!!!!!!! THANK YOU

ELIMINATION THIRTY-THREE

?) rwlh (Average placement: 118)

i'm very thankful for your presence in this/these communities...you clearly explore a lot of stuff that isn't easy to find people willing to touch.

your taste is fairly difficult for others to grasp exactly what constitutes it, but i think it's largely that you just value the ability for music to make you feel very powerful emotions (any type of emotion) above all else. and since emotions are such a subjective quality compared to things like composition/instrumentation preferences, it can be difficult for a lot of people to understand. Personally I do think I "get" it, and even relate to it quite a bit! You hit EXTREMES and you certainly shared a number of those with me.

ridicule was the most extreme extreme, and the one that aligned with my preference best. but I got to hear x-TREME CHILLNESS with stuff like nidhogg and fantavision. I got to hear EXTREME PAIN with parallax (and ridicule). I got to hear EXTREME CONFUSION with ridicule and the gradius one. you did a great job and really every track offered something different and unique to me---i guess that was kind of the goal with the prompt i gave you in the first place. I'd say you succeeded in fulfilling that given prompt.

thank you for sharing with me so many cool songs! thank you for being so nice to me...

ridicule! Among my favorite Umineko songs, and my favorite of my nominations. It seemed like the perfect song to give you, and it, along with Parallax, was the song I was most interested to hear your thoughts on. I'm glad it resonated with you so much. I will say that, if you think it's that powerful a song on its own...you should hear it in context. It plays in the (IMO) best part of the game.

This topic has been loads of fun (though I am a little disappointed ridicule didn't have an ALERT I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC lol). Thanks for taking the time to break down the little things in music, like the tempo in ridicule, which I had never really paid attention to.

Looking back over my own noms, I honestly don't think I would nominate most of them again if you magically undid this topic and made a new one today. I can't remember if you gave me the idea to give one song per playlist or if that was my idea, but while that was an interesting challenge, in some ways it also stymied me and led to me nominating some things I didn't really care about. I think, for a hypothetical future topic, I'll go more freeform. Also, I know significantly more music than I did three years ago.

Thanks also for your kind words. I'm happy to be a part of this community, even if most people don't really understand my musical taste - myself included sometimes :)

Eager to hear the top 7!

rwlh posted...

(though I am a little disappointed ridicule didn't have an ALERT I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC lol)

oh, to be clear anything that hasn't been in before in the top 12-20 or so (or even further tbh) would almost definitely a high, high consideration. it just wasn't on my initial planned noms list but if you go for this, i will support if i have room (actually the main problem was that i wanted to try psy-chorus this year >_>)

Those drum mixes are fascinating. It's like we get to go inside your mind and hear the way that you perceive music all the time.

7nd
Game: Phantasy Star Online 2
Title: Yggdrasil
Composer: Mitsuharu Fukuyama
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN7fMkbsjEg

here it is; finally.

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

so. ok. this is severely underranked as far as my 2018 ranking topic goes. Yes. "7th place", is underranked. it should be 1st place, no, not even that, like -34985734897th place with how powerful it is on me and how often I reference it... i swore i wouldn't change the ranking from what it was in 2018 no matter what though so keeping this at 7th until i do the rerank

I already loved it to begin with, but at this point i'd say it's not only my favorite PSO2 song, not only my favorite song nominated for this topic, but among my top 5 or so favorite songs of all time!!! One of the main incentives for doing a 2022-self rerank of this topic, is because this is undeniably my 1st place at this point!

it's not too hard to see why; i've shown this to people who don';t even know i have basically an in-joke of comparing everything i like to Pat Metheny Group. and they're like WHOA THIS IS PATH METHENY GROUP; so it's definitely not even nearly a shallow comparison here. this is VERY pat metheny/lyle mays chord progression style. complete with dreamy acoustic guitar melodies, ethereal layers of worldly elements that are "not jazz things", constantly changing the tonal center to a degree that makes id~purpose look simple...

iirc, one time after a vgmgg, shortly after I had made this ranking topic, you and i were like the only people left in the voice call. so I just started playing keyboard over random songs, and eventually went through all the songs you nommed for me for this topic (no indication of "how much I liked them" as a spoiler; since it was like. you were there. so you could've assumed i was just playing them because it was you on the other end). Anyways when I got to YGGDRASIL i was amazed at how hard it was to play along to!! It sounds so beautiful and potentially even simple and normal at a distance, but when you're actually trying to follow these chord changes, oh my goodness. It's near impossible to keep track---it NEVER sounds "wrong", but it's always an adventure. It's perhaps the epitome of those lines I always say "it makes me FLOAT IN THE AIR". "IT MAKES ME FALL OUT OF MY CHAIR", like when i say that stuff about id~purpose or random actual pat metheny group songs for having lots of unanticipated modulations or whatever, this song blows all of those out of the water. This song makes me FLOAT IN THE AIR, and FALL OUT OF MY CHAIR. more than any other song I have ever heard in my life. Period. the only songs ranked higher than this (in both "2018 taste of ranking topic" and "top 50 songs ever" lists) are higher up because they maximize other categories of balance elements out in other categories.

Yggdrasil is the MAXIMUM PERFECT "pat metheny group energy" song I have ever heard. and I clearly reference that group a lot...and I've been sitting on saying this for like 5 years; this isn't a hyperbole or shallow statement of blind praise for no reason. I can not think of a single piece of music that more powerfully represents exactly what this does to the area of my taste that makes me like pmg (and pmd).

The other reason it's perfect in this sense is all the electronic injections. A major factor in what I look for is a nice balance of electronic<->natural elements. This feels like a TREE SONG, it feels like a FUTURE SPACE song, at the same time. You have the synths and fancy electronic drums and futuristic electronic effects all over this production. You also have beautiful acoustic guitar and piano and orchestra backing it all. They're merged pretty seamless, in a way that's not commonly attained. When I hear this, I don't THINK "wow cool it is a perfect balance of electronic and acoustic", rather, when I'm looking for one or the other, I get what I'm looking for, and the other half that i wasn't looking for---it's a perfect supplement that everything feels absolutely perfected in representation of what i'm looking for.

right now i've been trying to form some groups to play live instruments in jazz fusion-y music with, for the first time in a while. One thing I've been noticing is how much of an interest I tend to have in constant 8th or 16th lines that are very COMPUTER when deciding what stuff I want to play (if there's multiple keyboardists, which layers are the ones that i'll tackle in the arrangement? I find I'll repeatedly go back to these electronic and rigid computer grid layers.). this song is drenched with these synthetic grids and i LOVE it so much, its not at the forefront, but it wouldn't have quite the same imagery or atmosphere if it weren't for these looping synth sequences.

It goes back to some of the stuff I was saying on the DBZ song uf8 nommed about why I loved Yack so much. The earliest two roots of my taste in music are "edm" and "jazz", broadly. They had taken a long time in their isolated pockets of my interest before I finally got to feel them converged seamlessly once I was exposed to yasuhisa watanabe. The funny thing is, Hideaki Kobayashi (i know this song isn't him but he obviously defined pso's sound)---well, there's a few funny things about him:

[1] hideaki kobayashi was rejeted from zuntata (during while yack was prominent there), before he got hired by sega......this means, he literally "wanted to be with yack", which is crazy to me///to realize the yack connection is more than just a personal comparison i've made in my head.

[2] he has stated that his goal with this sound was to take the compositional elements he liked about jazz, but put them in the instrumentation and production styles of electronic music. this is EXACTLY what i was saying i loved about yack! I'm really lead to believe he liked yack for very similar reasons to me, and once rejected from zuntata and eventually at sega, decided he'd be his own version of yack, on his own terms. I can't say I'm disappointed!

the others he brought onto the team (including Fukuyama) definitely have a visible sharing of the same mindset. I was on one of fukuyama's profiles and the whole thing was just linking a bunch of jazz musicians, including some of wild obscurity. but his music itself is always incredibly electronic, even outside of pso. It's inspiring to me because it was something I had been seeking deeply for such a long time in my youth. Once I finally found it with yack I was overjoyed. jazz+"synths" wasn't unheard of, but the sorts of stuff yack or the PSO2 team will do where they take clearly jazz fusion inspired progressions and harmonies, but place them in like "a dubstep song". or the most grating piercing sonic forces supersaws ever. That's where my desire was finally attained and I'm thankful to have discovered it. It's honestly not unreasonable to imagine that I could've never discovered pso2 or yack and would be wanting this style but never hearing it.

this is my favorite Pat Metheny Group song.

oh by the way at this point. everyone only has one song left. Who's going to go out first?! you'll never guess

6st
Game: Mary Skelter 2
Title: Shissou
Composer: Yoh Ohyama
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7nqAFwOVr4

so i actually originally had tried transcribing a great deal of this one out (like chords, every indiv instrument and note in the song, not just timesigs) but never quite finished. that was definitely a challenge, with how overwhelming the constant modulations are and simply how much is always going on in the song and all that! very much my kinda deal with loving unexpected chord changes but melody lines threading them together, Yoh Ohyama/Astruais is good at that. in my notes i have "sounds like yoh ohyama, one of the most bluntly mixed metere yoh ohyama songs i know, lot sof x/16", and, yeah, that's definitely a good way to put it. (although it's a lot less "mixed meter" than it "sounds"////////so actually it's not a good way to put it; but at the very least, even more than a lot of stuff by them, there's no shying away from angular rhythms in favor of smoothed out simpler ones)

As much as I love Asturias/Ohyama, i can't think of almost anything by them that THIS perfectly addresses what I want out of prog. I'm not sure it's specifically my favorite track by them, but if i described "what kind of song i want them to make" it would basically turn out to be exactly what this song is. it's packed to a point where every section has at least one thing i find "interesting": unusual sequence of chords during the normal 4/4 parts; and the overt odd time not shying away from segmenting itself into single bars of x/16 as a level of destruction of the grid. there's always something going on to catch my attention

(0:00 - 0:08) 4/4, 3/4, 4/4, 4/4
(0:08 - 0:49) 22 bars of 4/4
(0:49 - 1:10) [5/8, 5/8, 5/8, 7/16]x4, 2 bars of 4/4
(1:10 - 1:24) 8 bars of 4/4
(1:24 - 1:31) 4/4, 3/4, 4/4, 4/4
(1:31 - end) 6 bars of 4/4

there's a lot of presence of rhythms that "feel like odd time" or "feel like polymeter" that aren't exactly...essentially, they're assertions of "rhythm lengths" of 5 16th notes, which feels like "5/16", but it's really just an odd loop of a 5+5+6 rhythm that only lasts a single 4/4 bar each time it happens (some examples are :11-:15, 1:35 - end).

another significant deviation is those two bars right before 1:10, it adds up to 2-bars-of-4/4 but in reality it's felt almost more like "5/16 + 11/16" on that first one, which is pretty mindblowing a form of overstimulating, especially coming right after the /actual/ big mixed meter section. and even throughout the song, the same sequences of notes that are explicitly in odd time or fake odd time are still heard in various forms, really cementing this feeling of COMPLEX GEOMETRY or whatever. (this is one of my favorite moments in the song for sure)

even simple stuff like the fact that the beginning makes the subdivisions very clear---the 4th bar of the song is "4/4" but it's like it took that 3+3+3+3 3/4 bar from earlier and added a +4 chunk to segue into the next section. [3+3+3+3]+4 is a very common rhythm, but the exact way this lays that out to you, almost excited to show you that this song is going to feel 'mathy'...at least by my interpretation, that is /not/ common

The SOUND and FEEL of it is more important than the actual numbers tho; because to me, this is undeniably "mathematical feeling" which is what i'm here for, whether or not it's secretly simpler than it comes across.

the harmonies are a similar deal in a few ways; it sounds more complex than it is, mostly just because the fast-paced nature of the tune can make the ideas hard to follow; but that means the big hits of long held out chords are a really shocking and powerful punch of emotion when they do hit. I think one of my favorite bits is the sequence from :09-:12; the melody really enforces that you be aware that the harmonies beneath them totally change, inverting nearly. notes that worked before (particularly F#/G#) would be the most dissonant possible thing against the next chord (featuring G/A), and the violin line really hammers this thing in---and abruptly it totally changes again after that!

This track is just packed full with stuff like that. i wish i found it easier to illustrate or talk about in words, as i wanted to go into that more in Yggdrasil as well, but this exact style of chord-melody line interaction is just the single thing that hits me the hardest (and it's definitely one of the reasons your favorites tend to resonate with me so much; even things as 'normal' to be into as like morishita fire emblem, or like "heavyhanded key change in heaven's divide" hahaha. but stuff like this or yggdrasil is the more extreme example of that and i'm very happy you're able to share this very specific energy with me)

and oh yeah of course, i like 70s prog instrumentation, a very _Jolteon thing that this track exudes in spades. I was saying on the sakuraba writeup (and when talking about dream theater) that dt/sakuraba tend to be "MORE timesiggy than actual prog bands in the 70s". this particular asturias song is a good example of that zone as well, it's exactly the instrumentation that could be heard in a prog band from the 70s; but most actual 70s prog bands probably wouldn't wind up doing something like the :49-1:10 section here, or even the overall density of information in the track. so it makes me happy that this aesthetic<->composition style void can be merged seamlessly in a track like this.

I think there's reasons you're able to hear stuff like that more often in modern prog (access to recording equipment being easier---so not having to record things under limited time in only one session. easier ability to practice/record. stuff not always being as centric around having to be a thing played by a live band touring. ability to splice things more all throughout for studio versions. the list goes on. but all these things make it so there's a lot less hangups about forcing stuff like this into modern prog, even if you keep the aesethetic of the old)

whatever the reason, i'm thankful songs exactly like this are more able to exist now. i LOVE asturias/yoh ohyama, and you have introduced me to what is unquestionably one of my favorite songs by them. i can't believe it packs this much fascinating material into such a short runtime...

ELIMINATION THIRTY-FOUR

?) kaonashi1 (Average placement: 31.375)

your run was ABSURD; i mean i expected you to do well...and at this point our "compatibility" is quite the well known thing around here. but i really didn't expect anyone to get even close to this consistently nailing it as even people multiple ranks lower than you so, really was a welcome surprise to be bombarded with this much cool tightly curated music to my tastes!

I actually do NOT think you will rise in the 2022 rerank, contrary to what i've pointed out to many others (but yggdrasil will definitely be the #1), so it'll be like...a tradeoff. not as consistently high, but suddenly also having the highest scoring pick we'll have to wait and see i guess!

thank you so much for introducing me to...so many songs, some of which basically turned my list of favorite artists/soundtracks/etc upside down single-handedly.

honestly it's been a deeply important thing to my life to have met you, because as i've made clear with how i talk, i'm used to feeling very alone, and am a lot more damaged by the alienation that i feel than i may even come across. so anything that can help me feel like i'm just a little bit less isolated for liking the things i do---or even genuinely is naturally quite into the stuff i am! that's important for my sanity really, and i'd gone a long time not feeling that at all (especially as in the past we weren't nearly as similar as now)

i've legit gotten through very difficult times where i felt i couldn't relate to anyone, too alone to feel i deserved friends, but then i thought about "i can't wait to show my friend kaonashi1 this cool song!" and stuff like that. it brightens up my day. you're probably a lot of why i've stuck around on board 8 long enough to see it get a bit better for me eventually

the same is true for others i've said similar things about like uf8 and friends.

but honestly like; any scenario in which we celebrate overlaps. even with the people i'm least similar to here, there's a fun celebration and excitement in situations where mutual enthusiasm will come up! i think that's the beauty of this community is like, even when you're shooting obscure darts at the screen and usually getting misses...there's totally obscure stuff i'd have never found without being here. we can talk about gust music here to a degree that's difficult to find anywhere else. even things like how everyone here knows what "GOSU" is

and stuff like that, it's an important part of my life

the songs we discover from the people here, those are the soundtracks to someone's LIFE. when you actually think about this impact, the music to someone's commute or study time was informed by others here. that's just...SO COOL! WOW! the power of FRIENDSHIP and THE INTERNET

i totally lost track of what i was trying to say...

these songs made me happy, thank you for being so nice to me! thank you for being here! thank you for not being afraid to talk about weird theory stuff to your ability, thank you for digging into the deep obscure. and even just reminding me to check out more from osts i already knew! my life is better for it

I'll have more to say after the list is done, but I'm thrilled you found worthwhile music-- to enjoy and even to be inspired by at times-- in both my own and everyone else's nominations, and that you could find musical rapport with so many other people in the community. It's really wonderful to read the joy and detail with which you describe music, and I (and everyone else following, based on the other comments here) love being along for the ride. Looking forward to this top 5!

@Mr_Lasastryke
hey check this out hahaha
https://twitter.com/AntonMCorazza/status/1518494766610235398

The great music keeps coming! I especially like ridicule. And my hunch was correct regarding Yggdrasil being your true favorite PSO2 track.

5rd
Game: Splatoon 2
Title: Frantic Aspic
Composer: Ryo Nagamatsu (-3)
Nominator: @-hotdogturtle--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xq1WQxcroY

for convenient use of this topic; here's someone playing through the rhythm game version of this song (you can see the barlines and rhythm placement of everything in general there, so it makes this very slightly easier to understand):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrqo0h2fNVM

[timestamps, and transcription based on the rhythm game video here]:
(0:01 - 0:04) 2 bars of 7/8
(0:04 - 0:13) 4 bars of 5/4, 1 bar of 5/8
(0:13 - 0:59) 21 bars of 5/4, 1 bar of 5/8
(0:59 - ) 10 bars of 5/4, 1 bar of 5/8

it's mostly numerically not super insane. just 5s and 7s. but those only have the purpose of being "containers", because the rhythms that exist within those containers...stretched tuplets, totally challenging-to-follow over-the-barline stuff all over the place. I think this takes the cake for the most Rhythmically Challenging song nominated for my topic! Given that this was a status it's obvious a lot of people were trying to hit, you should feel proud of that.

another one of my favorite things about this is how that 7/8 bit at the intro; it's repeated throughout the song, but in ways that are not 7/8 at all, totally deconstructing and reconstructing the rhythm layered atop everything else in precise and distorted fascinating ways. some of the coolest "polymeter" I've ever heard in a vgm track tbh

honestly those "containers" are fairly meaningless when it comes to a song this complex. the bars of "5/4" start off with a ton of stuff that feels more like half that length---5/8 inside of them. The REALLY weird rhythms like ~0:17ish are mostly the cause of immediate unwarned sporadic alternating between the triplet grid and the 16ths grid. This is honestly nearly impossible to follow and I can not imagine playing this in a rhythm game and i'm saying that as someone who was hired as an instrumentalist for oddball experimental performances specifically because i specialize in complex rhythms that no one but me could read that they knew... I mean I CAN read this if i tried probably, and it's one of my favorite types of music, but at this moment, even after having known this track since it came out, I still can't naturally parse it at a precise "knowing which exact 16th beat or triplet beat this note lands on" way. I only know it by "feel" which is /more/ useful in some ways?...but there's no way i'd succeed at playing this in the rhythm game hahaha, i wouldn't mind trying someday tho. or just trying to perform this live if i could find a group willing to tackle something like this...

I found this sheet music transcription which is pretty useful for reference, though I haven't carefully crosschecked it for accuracy. but i'm finding it really fun to follow the score here:
https://flat.io/score/5f3c5efb5bf9f4067f7254fe-frantic-aspic-salmon-run-w-3-unfinished

so yeah I know i kept talking about that rio/avant-prog subgenre of music...really it's incredibly diverse in terms of how it can sound but. THIS song is probably teh song out of my entire topic that feels the most similar to what i look for in that category. Here's some examples:

Yugen - Cinically Correct
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce-gWYI5NIQ

Yugen - Corale metallurgico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAvNXP61ylc

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - Petrophonics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e43KCiLAyk

- really i should be clear. the whole imaginary band omega-3...whether or not it was intentional, is /literally/ a rock-in-opposition /avant-prog band. it has like every trait. "totally absurd instrumentation" (typmani instead of 'drums'. cello. and some guy who does a bunch of random electronic effects [patricia dalilio?! is that you?].) this is literally like, three-person version of Art Zoyd or Birdsongs of the Mesozoic or whateve

their description of the electronics member:
"With a considerably rough temperament, he's an individual that seems to take an attitude in opposition to most else. ", even using that word OPPOSITION Hahahahaa/ iI DONT KNOW IF IT WAS INTENTIONALLY SUPPOSed to specifically be a reference to this very small subgenre of music that not even many prog fans care about that much. but i'm happy that it's at least taken a convergent evolution to being the same things I love about all these weirdass bands.

i thought it was possible that "Frantic Aspic" was a reference to "Larks Tongues in Aspic" by king crimson, but the japanese title was completely different, so if it was considered---it wasn't the original composer making that reference anyway. given that i have mentioned king crimson i might as well link a song that is loosely comparable(not really)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQDEm-iXlIo

anyways, thank you for this absolutely ridiculous trio of noms!

ELIMINATION THIRTY-FIVE

?) hotdogturtle (Average placement: 48)

i haven't known you for very long but my impression of you has always been that you really appreciate the very fringe and quirky side of the stuff i like, the most of all. That extreme zone of strange composition AND strange sounds. That can be the most difficult thing to find someone to share an enthusiasm for, so i'm thankful you nominated for this topic! (and similarly thankful you supported a lot of the more unusual picks in vgmc/etc that otherwise wouldn't have gotten any energy without your impetus)

again, my experience in this community really would cause me to feel a lot more alone and unwanted if it weren't for the brightness of absurdity you bring to the table. i know you curated your exact picks more precisely toward stuff you thought i'd like, but i mean you can't get much more on target than...any of these three!

All in different ways too! Frantic Aspic had the more aggressive rhythmic insanity and impossibly strange harsh sounds. Red Chasm was more about tonal weirdness, and just...really cool rubbery sounds and stuff, a more smooth incarnation of these things. and the other pikmin one was a cool exploration of minimalist layered rhythm stuff and a super unsettling clashing emotional tone.

All totally different ways of appealing to my tastes, but they all worked, and also all felt very "hotdogturtle", at the same time. and I'm glad i could see that. thanks for being here!

and thanks for introducing me to how amazingly perfect to my interests pikimin/hajime wakai/etc is because oh man that stuff is all taking over a huge chunk of my listening now!!!

The funny thing is, if DoctorJimmy didn't post that other Pikmin song that I was purposely trying to one-up, then this would have been my only nom and I would have crushed the rankings with an average placement of 5.

But then you wouldn't have gotten your (full) Pikmin exposure.

I'm pretty sure I nominated Frantic Aspic for last year's VGMC and it didn't get in :( Great song!

I don't remember that because I'm sure I would have doubled it if I saw it.

I have a personal trend of nominating a Splatoon 2 song on day 1 every year. Should I do this one now that we know a few opinions of it?

I LOVE FRANTlC ASPIC! !!!

I vow to support Frantic Aspic

rwlh posted...

I'm pretty sure I nominated Frantic Aspic for last year's VGMC and it didn't get in :( Great song!

Based on the VGMC 15 and VGMC Nom History sheets, it's never been nominated. Anyway, I would probably support FA if it needed the help!

4nd
Game: Fighting Layer
Title: Capriccio
Composer: Ayako Saso
Nominator: @Flamander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt1AYIRLFXQ

I don't remember when I first heard this, but I've been a long time fan of this track from day 1

You've often described your taste as "rough and bumpy" and i would say that this song exemplifies that idea pretty well! Bouncy swing/shuffle feel is part of that, even the fact that its largely in 7/8 makes it only more lopsided and like you're tumbling down a rough rocky mountain unpredictably. And of course the fake and sampled instrumentation of it all!

Maybe this comparison won't make sense to anyone but this track always reminds me of this track which I heard a lot as a kid because I really liked this "lost luggage" minigame
https://youtu.be/O1hve_tUFWs

I think its basically the "fake jazz/swing done in such a way that feels BROKEN" OR something. Especially those weird notes in the bass, the almost "wrong" feeling of a lot of the layers of cappricuo is one of my favorite parts of the whole design of the song. And that was always I think what I liked about that lost luggage tune too. i'm CERTAIN there's another song i like that is very similar but can't figure out what i'm thinking of, maybe it'll come to me.

oh, this isn't actually the song i was thinking of somehow but this track from Mystic Ark is VERY similar haha. love it just as well for similar reasons!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkFpxhzaCks

I'm amazed how weird so much Japanese arcade music winds up being allowed to be, even compared to other stuff these same composers and developers would put out on other platforms. I guess a lot of it is that by nature---you want music that really stands out and is audible in the environment of a potentially hectic arcade where the music has to compete with 50 other sounds playing simultaneously.

I remember some composers talking about making the punchiest fm synth bass sounds they could fathom and then writing tracks that were like 90% that sound so that it'd be impossible to ignore in the arcade. That's one approach, but another approach is tracks as weird as this fighting layer one. In a sea of 40 songs playing at once, if I was near enough to this one to make it out, I'd be like "wtf is this!?" and jump over to see what's going on. It is very DISTINCT and hard to ignore.

The sad reality is often at arcades you can't hear the music at all. One opened up locally here with a lot of games from this era i like the music to and I kept trying to play them to hear the music but you really had to force it to hear them half the time

I'm glad that nowadays, the gift of emulation, game preservation and more widespread enthusiasm for retro stuff has allowed this music to be heard with more spotlight. Getting the recognition that work this unique to the world deserves

Ayako Saso is a very fascinating composer to me. She tends to be treated like "less famous clone of shinji hosoe" and not as acknowledged. But now that I know more about the sound teams she's been on and what she did for them, I definitely think she brings a lot of very unique-to-her stuff to the table. I guess I'd just say she feels more "limitless". Not afraid to be dissonant or hard-to-follow? More than anyone else she tends to work with. an adequate example of that might be the pure chaos of this track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyjGMGOS0k

oh yeah; here's a CHANNEL VISUAL^443wt3aergs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vQuf8IkeR0

i really like making these things; i think they serve a pretty legit use in learning about these songs. For one, i always assumed that most/all the drums in this song were just like, drum loops sampled, but there's actually lots of individual hi-hat/etc all manually individually playing their own notes. the drums in this track are VERY DENSE and full, which is important for something with such a lopsided groove i guess.

23 channels (out of the 32 this arcade board's soundchip has) is...well it's a lot, and i didn't even realize this had that many. A lot of sounds i thought were one sample, are actually like 5 samples spread across 5 channels here, because this game could actually afford to do something like that! It's definitely better for it. the echoy and dense layered feeling adds well to the rough bumpy skin that defines this track

very _Zorua playlist music, thinking about it; 'bouncy' + 'weird notes' is a good summary of at least one style that fits into that, and that's what this is!

I'm motioned to think about how much i love that synth lead...how angry it gets when it morphs as its held out, it's so cool...

ELIMINATION THIRTY-SIX

?) Glacier (Average placement: 111.375)

when you first showed up in this community i was pretty struck by how much you latched on to the exact same very very obscure tracks that i had latched onto when i was younger; and had first got into genesis music and all that sorta stuff. like, that's NOT a likely thing to happen, these are very uncommonly praised tunes. we went for the same ones?! where did that come from?

We've both changed a lot, even in the past 5 years. you are CATHODE now , and stuff. and the period where i was fixating on battle mania daiganjou was like 14 years ago at this point. BUT i think the thread of why we had that mutual fixation remains. We would scour obscurities looking for what we'd see as gems for a reason. and choosing to look into old soundchips and the exact, rough and imperfect way that makes things sound, for a reason. we wanted to hear a distinct edge you can only get from stuff like that, and knew that somewhere deep in the unexplored, there'd be brilliant gems. and we found them. the same ones. and even if we may have moved onto searching for new gems of different types, in very different areas now, that thread of enthusiasm for these distinct sectors of work that can only exist if you dive into scouring obscurities remains with us to this day

that definitely showed in your noms of course; like....literally both of the songs that wound up in the top 10 were like...long-time favorites of mine, that are relatively obscure and in uncommon soundchip formats!

thanks for not shying away from the hidden gems, and giving me some cool stuff to listen to, or reminisce on!

Toxtricity posted...

ELIMINATION THIRTY-SIX

?) Glacier (Average placement: 111.375)

aw thanks. it's been a real pleasure doing this! i figured, when i nominated capriccio, it would have been the song that got the highest out of all the songs i nominated. glad to see that that prediction was correct. and you're definitely right about us still sharing that thread of mutual fixation.

actually - there's several songs on that fixation thread that i'm planning on nominating for vgmc this year, hahaha; and while i've been compiling a run of nominations for this year, all i can think of is "i'm turning into toxtricity. look at my taste. this is like time by pink floyd it feels like i am running towards where you have been tastewise". but i can still tell there's a lot of difference between us regardless.

it's kind of like we're driving down parallel roads or something, but my car is slightly slower than yours. vroom.

...by the way, i wasn't expecting moonman's fandango to get as high as it did - that was a real surprise! a pleasant one, though, because i always consider that a really personal piece of vgm.

i have reached the finish line of my participation in these rankings and i am happy. if there's another set of rankings like these at some point, i'm definitely going to nominate again. this was like... such a time capsule. really enjoyable, i've said this a few times before but thanks.

HasteDeux posted...

Based on the VGMC 15 and VGMC Nom History sheets, it's never been nominated.

(unless it went by a different name previously >_>)

3th
Game: Secret of Mana (2018)
Title: Steel and Snare
Composer: Hiroki Kikuta, Noriyuki Kamikura
Nominator: @azuarc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W33hy40gkWE

GOOD LUCK LINK; (ill advised trying to secretly upload a square song with no existent yt video up to my knowledge)

well i know that you knew this one was going to be high because i already nominated it for a past vgmc. but yeah, my feelings on this are as high as THIRD PLACe (at least in 2018 mood). anyway, it's probably not hard to understand why.

this honestly filled a void i'd always had, as the whole original som soundtrack is something i've always loved, and "steel and snare" always among my favorites---but as you know it's way too short. no one else could share the love with me! everyone would be like "well it's cool but why doesn't it have anything in it" , but what if this song kept going?! what if it added more stuff above?! i mean, well here it is!

the original had such a cool atmosphere as-is, that fit the context too. this distant windy echoy drone sound throughout the whole thing like you're on an airplane or something, that alone gave it a distinct open and expansive flavor. but once you add the funky bass, drilling double kicks in the drums (honestly one of my favorite examples of double kick drum pedal use in a song i can think of. even in the fakest incarnation of it), extremely engaging instrumental layers from everything (and of course, mixed meter of the original even further emphasized). well it's no surprise i was in love. but even someone like me---VERY willing to be obsessed with short loops, i wanted more.

this track broke beyond my wildest expectations. like the first thing i did when i found out about this remake ost was jump to see what this remix sounded like, but i /assumed/ i would be disappointed simply because it's easy to not live up to the things i'd like about the original of something. but no it's actually overwhelmingly perfect. clearly it's a jazz fusion approach which...of course makes sense, the original is like "jazz fusion funky bass solo" basically, but i wasn't /sure/, what if they decided to make it like "badly produced hip hop" or "60s hippie song idont care about" .but THEY GOT THE RIGHT nail that i always heard the original as anyways!! these exact electric piano sounds are super chick corea(hitomi sato); and i couldn't be happier with that constant 16ths synth layer permeating every corner of my vision with glowing tiny lights in the bakcground

honestly i'm super thankful i could love this so much---although i've gotten in arguments with you over me liking this remade ost way more than you; i honestly was disappointed with a lot of choices about the 2018 som remake ost in hindsight. This song is like, one of the few songs in the remade ost that i honestly can wholeheartedly say did exactly what i wanted with no reservations from me at all; very thankful it was this song of all songs that /got it right/ to me. to the point of being something i'd been WAITING FOR for to hear as a song since forever, finally fulfilled.

it's funny that prior to this topic---while i always loved basiscape, i didn't realize how obsessed with them i was as a while until this topic really (thanks kao with the caravan stories nom), before that i'd basically just known i like random kimihiro abe songs and of course manabu namiki shmup stuff, but really i otherwise barely payed attention to who did what there or who was even in the sound team. so i also hadn't totally comprehended until like maybe even a couple years after noms that Noriyuki Kamikura is someone i should've recognized as a name instantly: for even having done a lot of my long time favs from opoona/muramasa/etc and all that! well knowing that now, it all makes sense!

that PITCH BEND right before 1:51 is so good (i love...love slow background pitch bends, as i mentioned a lot in my top-50-songs guessing game)

ok yeah i should type the numbesr; they're actually not that "crazy" but this is probablyt the 'correct' way (or at least one of the correct ways), sounds more complex than it is:
(0:00 - 0:36) all 4/4
(0:36 - 1:07) [4/4, 5/4]x6, 1 bar of 3/4
(1:07 - 1:36) [4/4, 5/4]x6, 1 bar of 3/4
(1:36 - 1:51) 8 bars of 3/4,
(1:51 - 2:05) 5 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 5/4
(2:05 - 2:34) all 4/4

oh cool! someone already made an oscilloscope visual of the original so i don't have to!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGgz5R6PWS4

it's kinda fun to look at, to see that a lot of the channels are taken up by being duplicated to make a neat echo effect and stuff. and just watching the superfast drilling notes in some cases. but obviously this is a pretty short and plain song in the original compared to most; as much as i love it, i'm thankful this track was remade in a way that could extend it to something i enjoy even more

ELIMINATION THIRTY-SEVEN

?) azuarc (Average placement: 116.625)

after your very early drop, can you believe you had a nom get THIRD?! You had the biggest range of any participant. Simoun's spanned 261 but yours spanned 271

we're known to often disagree (to the point you hired me to help out with vgmc in the past over the fact that we have "opposite taste" hahaha); but we've known each other long enough that well...it's pretty clear you remembered and knew exactly where the overlaps were to conjure a set of vgm that i was pretty deeply in love with!!

the dissonant darkness of compression of time; imposing seriousness of braid; fairly interesting chiptunes with neat sounds like the project s11 and turrican one. a bastion song witH REALLY COOL sound design. and of course,like the outright prog of "secret of mana arranged by someone from basiscape" and "SAKURABA"

it was a great set, you had one outlier that didn't click (and honestly that fact gives you a "cool statistic" anyway) but everything else was a hit, so thank you! i'm glad you remember what i like well enough to assemble a set of music i find so cool, of a lot of our shared interests!

/salute

2th
Game: Final Fantasy VI *Remix
Title: Dancing Mad (PAL)
Composer: Nobou Uematsu, Shnabubula [SiIvaGunner Rip]
Nominator: @NFUN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZypvxG0vJiA

shnabubula is one of my VERY favorite musicians, and also a very important person to me in general. he is going through a very difficult time at the moment and i can only wish for the best outcome...there are a lot of bad possible outcomes at this time. he has been on my mind far more than any other person has, this past month, so it's kinda bizarre to just be like...talking about this song right now candidly like any other song in the topic. i thought about not mentioning anything, but it felt wrong to not. he's in the hospital due to a...variety of severe issues; and i've been crying a lot...this happens once every few years to him, but this might be the worst it's ever been. thank you for being alive. every word of this post has been made with the best wishes i could possibly give to a person through "text on a message board" SIGNALS to [HEALING HUMAN LIFE AND MINDS ACROSS THE EARTH]

i've always loved Dancing Mad, one of my favorite tracks by Uematsu---uematsu has always been hit-or-miss to me but this particular track is a HIT hit. it didn't seem like the sorta song that even "needed" to be improved, but this song somehow managed to make something I already love even better to me? I don't even know where to begin, but as someone who liked Dancing Mad enough to nom/support it or at least push for it numerous times in the past...this arrangement appeals SIGNIFICANTLY more. so you're pushing it up to the highest of the 9.9s here really.

i suppose, i should point out, that far-and-away my favorite part of dancing mad is part 4, which these days, is especially for the quartal lines in the organ (though i love all parts more than you might expect me to at this point), SO, for the gimmick of this re-arrangement to be like..."part 1 in the style of part 4" and "part 4 in the style of part 1", well. It means i get DOUBLE the elements about this piece of music that I already loved most! Stuff like 2:04 where it's merging my favorite part of the original song with a backing that i already love (i love the mood of that part of part 1 as well)...it's just perfect. Something you can only get in this version

I also think it's to its benefit as a suite in general...it feels far more cohesive and interconnected to have these part 4 referenced in part 1 / part 1 elements referenced in part 4. The feel very CLIMACTIC and stuff, because the ideas from each other are referencing each other at the endcap portions of the song, so it just makes the structure of "ideas" waaaay more powerful to me than the original version of the track where it's really 4 separate songs to me. this is ONE song to me.

not going to write out the whole thing, but here's two of the big mixed meter sections. The timesigs AND timestamps here are based on what I can make out from this particular YT upload that has a piano roll with barlines:
https://youtu.be/EunT1LHCEd8?t=481

(8:02 - 8:10) 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 5/8
(8:10 - 8:28) 4 bars of 15/8, 2 bars of 13/16
(8:28 - 8:37) 9/8, 2/4, 12/16, 12/16, 4/4, 4/4
(8:37 - 8:53) 9/4, 4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 9/8, 15/8, 4/4, 4/4
(8:53 - 9:21) 8 bars of 15/8
(9:21 - 9:47) 13/8, 9/8, 2/4, 6 bars of 13/8, 2 bars of 4/4
(9:47 - 10:12) 6/4, 19/16, 6/4, 5/8, 9/8, 6/4, 9/8, 4/4, 17/16, 12/16, 4/4, 4/4, 2/4
...
(11:37 - 12:28) 4 bars of 4/4, 18 bars of 11/8
(12:28 - 13:12) 7 bars of 6/8, 1 bar of 11/16, 24 bars of 6/8
(13:12 - 13:23) 4 bars of 4/4
(13:23 - 13:33) 6 bars of 6/8, 5/8, 5/8, 6/8
(13:33 - 13:42) 9/16, 5 bars of 6/8
(13:42 - 13:45) 4 bars of 10/16?*
(13:45 - 14:12) 20 bars of 4/4
(14:12 - end) 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 7/8, 10/8, all 4/4 to the end after that

*[this part is a polyrhythm that wouldn't translate to something easily understandable in midi/sonar/daw limitations without doing some sort of trick, which is probably why the tempo totally changes, so i'm not exactly sure what he wrote this bit like. I'm calling it 4 bars of 10/16. but it might be written in 4/4 with quintuplets or something bizarre like that...especially knowing that this is shnabubula of all people/based on what that sounds like. ]

those numbers don't...at all, indicate how rhythmically complex this is. and THIS ALREADY LOOKS intimidaing just from those numbers!!! The main thing that complexifies the stuff that already has a bunch of jumpy barline lengths is (of course) polymeter. Tons of layers don't line up with the barlines at all, and have their own barlines they're affixed to (or even an entire other grid/tempo in many cases, given all the polyrhythmic-y stuff in this)

there's so many good examples of this in the song like...oh my god when 12:34 hits and i'm hearing the chords from the original dancing mad's phase 1, but with these rapid proggy organ lines in the style of phase 4...I get some of the deepest chills i can think of ever having gotten while listening to music tbh. the simultaneous merging of "emotionally profound moment"(familiar dramatic theme reference) and "overstimulating numbers" it's like the biggest chemical rush you can get in a song like this.

even simply 8:10 is the same way, hearing a super proggy version of the phase 1 i'm very familiar with makes this feel very "YOURE AT THE END" in a way the original song never felt and it's SO Cool!!!!!

and then what the FUSE is this ending at like 13:58. It's like 3-4 different layers of different melodic threads you'd heard earlier AT THE SAME TIME but they're all on different grids from each other, yet they all intersect! Some stuff is being treated where each note is one "5/16th" beat length, while other stuff is more tethered to the 16th or 8th. Stuff that reaaally brings out "5 16ths" spaces is just...the most unashamedly "prog sounding" thing you can do really, but this does it in a way where each group of 5 is treated like a "1" since it's playing out a melody line from earlier and gaaah it is just so cOOL. What a finale.

a lot of predicted this to be #1, and honestly it is pretty close. i have no actual criticism of the track but my PURE OBSESSION is largely still around movement 1&4, so i think that's the only reason it didn't wind up there, this has the highest highs of nearly anything in the topic; but they're specific sections or moments of a VERY long track. basically everything shnabubula did to this was perfect and makes it significantly better to me, but no matter what, i'm going to have an unbalanced preference for certain bits of this over all else in it because of how the original was structured

this really needs to be the "2nd to last song" anyways, it fits that slot so perfectly in FINAL BOSS style. tho i wish first place felt more "credits-y" than the actual first place

(if you're smart, you might be able to figure out what the one remaining song left is!!!!)

((also yggdrasil is kinda heroic credits-y, but it being moved to first in the rerank wouldn't actually fix this 'problem' because #1 would just become #2 making this one become #3 probably))

(((though i guess it could almost be like.........dancing mad remix is "phases 1-4" of the final boss, and then [ranking topic spoilers] is an extremely trippy and surreal phase 5 of the final boss ala giygas. and then yggdrasil is the credits. that's my canon imagined way the rerank "video game track order" works out now)))

new zealand testers...i tell ya. they try so many crazy things. have so many crazy ideas. including things that no one would think make any sense to try........... and sometimes ....they are the best things you could possibly try. (shout out to sergio; because without him, this song would not actually exist)

ELIMINATION THIRTY-EIGHT

?) NFUN (Average placement: 110.75)

when i first met you and i was making vapid descriptors of everyone's taste i described yours as "funny jolke person" which.....that's not rwong (Especially with what some of your noms were). i mean evven the EPIC PROG of this shnabubula dancing mad arrange is literally a siiva rip that does goofy things sometimes inside of it

but when it comes to the actual like, serious deep core of what you like? that is actually not too far off from where i look these days, and i'm very thankful for it. i know you've changed a lot over the past many years but god. you uploaded PSO2 AND Caravan Stories osts?! like, the biggest convenience for my "1st favorite game ost" and "5th favorite (probably) game ost" listening. that is a MAJOR IMPACT on me in itself!

i'd say you made these noms before your current VERY aligned-with-me identity was quite solidified, but there's still some cool stuff here. prog with l ots of wacky rhythm stuff; and even things like "thousand year door" weird electronic song. Good stuff all around!

1th
Game: Lightfield
Title: Shadoubt Shaps
Composer: Zanshin
Nominator: @Place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFypko3_tS8

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

{{{{ALERT: I AM NOMINATING THIS SONG FOR VGMC16.}}}}

the piercing lazer beams of this one are a real pleasure to start out with. THIS was the "[THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN REMOVED TO PREVENT TEMPORAL ANOMALIES. PLEASE BE PATIENT]" track I was referring to on ridicule. It's some of the closest I've ever heard anything get to the stuff I like about ilkae or bunbleman that isn't ilkae or bunbleman. The best part about it to me is the fact that it's a kinda swingy-shuffle feel, but it's a totally deconstructed and forcibly computerized way of that. what could be a bouncy funky groove gets surgically spliced apart by other layers enforcing this as even-spaced-triplets rather than the bouncy swingy/shuffly feel it'd have otherwise

i thought i would have to make some sort of visual to describe this, but i think it's not too hard to tell what I mean?

anyways at the time i made this topic, this was so perfect to what i was looking for at that exact time it was nearly overwhelming; no question that this would wind up at the #1 slot (and even now; when i've admitted the real #1 by my 2022 taste is yggdrasil...this is still like, not that far behind it. it didn't make my top50 vgmgg list but i would consider it to be an unsaid honourable mention there, it's likely my favorite thing in the "music that sounds like ilkae" zone [nothing by ilkae made that list either, despite considering him one of my favorite artists. the cluster where that style starts is like "55th place" or something so it just barely didn't make the cut. and i didn't want to spoil that this was my #1 of this topic by placing it into the honorable mentions list of that vgmgg])

but really i was overwhelmed how perfect this was because i was DESPERATE for more "rhythmically complex idm" (why this and ridicule particularly nailed so high placements). was /desparate/ for more _Houndoom stuff. but i also maybe even moreso was desperate for _Zorua stuff, which is harder to find because it's largely about...very precise forms of dissonance, managing to be funky and complex at once without cancelling itself out. there's not even many artists who can consistently be that other than zzzv. but this track is like, honestly EXTREMELY zzzv; just the more idm/ilkae leaning manner of such. it was the perfect merge of the two types of music i was most lacking awareness of at the time and i'm so thankful to have now been exposed to it

I posted spider by bunbleman earlier which is the most similar track i can think of to this;
https://inpuj.bandcamp.com/track/spider

i guess maybe something like this is comparable?
https://inpuj.bandcamp.com/track/colt-cabana

there's some autechre stuff kiiinda in the zone too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBkP9OfQLhE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOrxEByTUE&t=193s

oh wait i guess BISK has some equivalent stuff too (this is actually probably the most similar exact track to shadoubt shaps i can think of):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zYrhAnf9Wo

anyway i t's honestly extremely hard to be "funky" and "mathematical" at the same time and not really cancel each others' energy out in this way. when i first heard it, i was really,...really not expecting it to be this impossibly attained balance! I was just expecting it to either become entirely one or the other quickly; but it wasn't even just alternating. it was /simultaneously/ funky groovy cool guy music and precisely mathematically erraticly gridded.

this is something that has definitely become a core facet of what i look for---i LOVE "progressive rock" and so naturally can understand the appeal of long suites with lots of varied styles and sections wildly different from each other. and often combining contrasting styles in rapid alternation (people like jordan rudess and shnabubula are very good at this; see "the song i ranked #2 in this topic"). BUT what's even more impressive is when the complexity and simplicity---the funk and the anti-funk---the weird and the normal---. When these are simultaneous, it doesn't even become monotonous, because the track will have to be so precisely balanced with so much going on that there's no way i can feel it as anything other than stimulating. every listen i can decide to fixate on a different element or style

Shadoubt Shaps is really one tempo all the way through, but it feels organic and moving, and all it takes is one layer showing up, or disappearing, to change the context of everything around. like going thru it, it starts off very "bouncy", but around :25 some layers question that, and turn it more gridded. and by :43 that synth bass has taken over and made this into a COMPUTER WORLD instead of a funky alleyway. by 1:09 it's a bit more organic again, but then 1:29 brings back the synth bass and it's suddenly far more discombobulated a groove. which gets even more extreme when that higher layer's removed by 1:49...This isn't even exactly "obvious" though, like when i'm listening i'm hearing this all as SEAMLESS. I'm hearing totally different ways of interpreting the same note/rhythm sequences at different timestamps in the song, but it's not even obvious where the divisions are when it starts to feel different, because all it really takes is the presence/absence of certain layers (though there are some obvious more striking moments of change here).

~4:20 is a pretty fascinating departure from the rest because it's probably the most tonally conventional the track gets (it's dissonant, but in a way more adjacent to traditional classical ways of that sorta thing), and i guess it works very well as a climax and finale for that reason

i've barely even talked about the sound design here, it's INSANE. ridiculously metallic and electronic. and DENSE. there's always so so sooo much going on at once. there's like, a wall of noise behind whatever the actual focus of the track is, and it really pays off to sell this specific artificial and dark atmosphere. feels like you're in the DARK MACHINE

ELIMINATION THIRTY-NINE

Ranking by average placement:
1) kaonashi1 (Average placement: 31.375)
2) hotdogturtle(Average placement: 48)
3) Place (Average placement: 59)
4) UF8 (Average placement: 60.625)
5) DoctorJimmy133 (Average placement: 92.75)
6) Haste_2 (Average placement: 95.33333333)
7) DireKrow (Average placement: 99.625)
8) GameBopAdv (Average placement: 107.2)
9) Zyxyz0 (Average placement: 109.75)
10) Mr Lasastryke (Average placement: 110.5)
11) NFUN (Average placement: 110.75)
12) Glacier (Average placement: 111.375)
13) azuarc (Average placement: 116.625)
14) rwlh (Average placement: 118)
15) JONALEON1 (Average placement: 122.5)
16) deogenerate (Average placement: 123.5)
17) Zigzagoon (Average placement: 135.25)
18) xp1337 (Average placement: 139.3333333)
19) Janus5k (Average placement: 139.5)
20) hombad46 (Average placement: 141.75)
21) Shonen_Bat (Average placement: 143.875)
22) Prody Parrot (Average placement: 144.875)
23) FL81 (Average placement: 145.625)
24) Simoun (Average placement: 149.375)
25) AndywoodCubeGmr (Average placement: 156.8333333)
26) NowItsAngeTime (Average placement: 157.4
27) jcgamer107 (Average placement: 159.125)
28) Haunter12O (Average placement: 161.375)
29) Raetsel_Lapin (Average placement: 164.3333333)
30) Snake5555555555 (Average placement: 167)
31) tazzyboyishere (Average placement: 182.875)
32) pyresword (Average placement: 187.75)
33) OrangeCrush980 (Average placement: 190.5)
34) dowolf (Average placement:190.875)
35) SuperNiceDog (Average placement: 211.125)
36) handsomeboy2012 (Average placement: 221)
37) DragonImps (Average placement: 232.5)
38) Se7enthrust (Average placement: 252.625)
39) lordjers (Average placement: 266)

PLace has won Third PLACE';HAHA "place". but succeeded at being the last to lose all their tracks!

well place. you have managed to introduce me to a song that was my favorite song out of 278 songs at the time i'd made this topic.

even if i admitted that something else is higher if i were to do a rerank to my current tastes (which i will), that doesn't de-value your achievement. You sent me exactly what I was looking for at the time i'd made this topic!

and of course feelings are going to change after 5 years (but in reality...even after 5 years. it's still roughly a top 50-100ish favorite song ever to me, it's actually GROWN on me probably, the same way yggdrasil has)

i don't want to make this post feel too preferential toward people i'm closer to but like.....you're a close enough friend that you literally moved to live in my house for a period of time. Obviously you're an incredibly important person to me, but one thing i find sorta interesting is that i think exactly what i like about your personality shows in the music you share too??

you have a VERY open mind, and are all about elevating what you feel may be underappreciated, and trying to see the good in things others might dismiss for whatever reason (obscurity, weirdness, etc). you try to find the good in music just like you try to find the good in...everything!

and you like to learn. you like to dig as deep as you possibly can for the unfamiliar, and try to test norms---something off-limits by many standards isn't off-limits to you (a good example of these sorts of things was your desire to try to learn as much as you could for the museum list, and explored consoles and eras most people just skip over)

i think those sorts of values are something i hold at my own core, and i interpret them pretty similarly too---this is definitely a big reason i click with you both in music taste and more broadly as a friend. I never really fear you won't at least try to understand and explore everything that you can.

my life has been deeply enriched by knowing you, and you've helped me get through a lot. (and also i've listened to shadoubt shaps hundreds of times.....!)

thank you for being one of the most important people to my life i have ever met.

THE END

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/3/6/AAefu7AADL9s.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/3/7/AAefu7AADL9t.png

I CANT BELIEVE I AM DONE WITH THIS THING

well

i'm not, because i definitely want to do the rerank.

and i also would like to do like "various stats" (i'd started on a lot of those)

and i did toy with the idea of making like mini remixes or at least like "improvising on piano over" a number of the songs i felt really passionate about

i also said i might do a thing that's like "if you had nomianted this song you were thinking about instead but scrapped, here's where it would fit in the ranking(23.5th place) " or whatever

so i might do all that if/when i can, but i'm quite busy right now. and am also about to start co-running vgmc in less than 24 hours so...well. we'll see when i have time to get to all these things! but this topic is not QUITE done but the core thing i made an obligation to have done before this vgmc is anyways!!!

FINALLY I CAN NOMINATE THESE songs i have wanted to nominate for vgmc since 2018...

i'm excited to compare how 2022 self compares to 2018 and all the other stuff i said, but i also have a lot on my plate right now so i might be slow again

i have no idea if i'll do another topic like this any time soon (after vgmc ends, i'll be mostly offline for quite a while, so 2023 at the earliest). and if i do do something like this again, i will not be able to put even close to this much effort again---i'm refusing to let myself take this long again hahahaha (even if this did have the cool appeal of being like a "time capsule" or something, which i do think was a neat artifact of how long i took!)

thank you for sticking with me on this thing since 2018 for anyone who's been paying attention this whole time

thank you to EVERYONE for SHARING MUSIC TOGETHer; because doing that. that's the important part. that's the thing that makes b8's vgm circle one of the most important communities to me. even the stuff i didn't rank high, i still willingly listened to it regularly. This was a wonderful set of 278 songs i almost treated like an lengthy game ost that i could go back to at any time...deeper analyze how these songs relate to each other, why i liked what i liked, never really got tired of listening to this full set!

if you nominated something for this, you helped build part of one of the soundtracks that's been a soundtrack to my life for the past 5 years. and it was a hugely beneficial experience.

thank you EVERYONE!

Thank you!!!

https://youtu.be/HlB6_ZxCG1k

blessed topics

thank you for your efforts !!

Wow you done did it

impeccable timing

Thanks for this project!!

Congrats on finishing, it's been fun keeping up with this!

6th place out of 39? Not bad considering I never explored much music!

I enjoyed this! Seeing this finished is significant to me, as this topic started about the time I started getting into vgm!