I'm In A Film Of Personal Soundtrack

A couple of days ago I ran through a few music-related ideas I was considering for posts. One of them involved songs based on video games or video game characters. I haven't done any prep work on that one yet but I'm willing to bet there are plenty to choose from.

What I didn't suggest was posting any music from the games themselves.

I find myself in a strange place when it comes to video game scores. Judging by countless comments I've read over the years, many players, quite possibly most, don't listen to in-game music at all. They prefer to have their own music or other audio running in the background. I always let the game music play.

These days the in-game music tends to be all I have playing. I don't often listen to anything other than the game and even if I do it won't be music. And if I have speech radio or a podcast on, I still don't turn the game music off. I just turn it down a little.

In that way, it does look as though I ought to count myself an admirer of video game music, but I'm not. Not at all. I barely listen to it. In fact, one of the reasons I always have it on is that half the time I don't even hear it.

I think music in games is important and necessary but I see music of this kind as almost purely functional. Like film music, it sets mood, creates atmosphere and directs emotion but if it's doing its job well, it does all that without you noticing. If you do find yourself paying attention to the music in a movie or a game then something's gone badly wrong.

Of course, games are different to movies and MMORPGs are very different. Movies are linear; MMORPGs are cyclical. In a movie, the score moves with the narrative. It can lead or it can follow but it always moves forwards. In an MMORPG it just has to hang there, biding its time while you kill your ten rats or wait for the rare spawn to appear. For as long as it takes. A minute, an hour, all day.

There's a whole art to composing music that loops infinitely without becoming annoying or even noticeable. I've heard a couple of composers talk about it in interviews. I imagine its a skill that most musicians would prefer not to have to acquire, although clearly it has any number of resonances with certain strands of compositional theory from the 20th century. Steve Reich and Philip Glass could probably have written some amazing video game scores. Or Brian Eno, come to that.

Those are all composers for whose work I have plenty of time so it's a little surprising, even to me, that I find listening to video game music outside of the games such an unappealing prospect. But I feel exactly the same about most film scores.

I know there are people who really enjoy film music for its own sake. I used to work with someone whose hobby was collecting film scores. He knew a huge amount about the composers and the musicians but he wasn't all that interested in the films. I never really got that. Without the images for which the music was specifically composed, what do you have? Something broken.

In this community we have Syp and Aywren (and Steff, who I don't actually "know" even in the context of knowing people via what they post online) whose long-running Battle Bards podcast "reviews and discusses the soundtrack of MMORPGs". And I confess I have never listened to a single episode.

I've thought about it, a few times, because I very much enjoy reading their written posts. If they were writing about video game music I'd definitely read whatever they had to say about game scores. I just don't want to listen to any.

Some of my lack of enthusiasm comes from the nature of the music itself. As well as having the aforementioned goal of being infinitely repeatable without becoming annoying, which, if achieved, is bound to tend towards unmemorability, if not outright blandness, the huge majority of all MMORPG music I've heard could be roughly be described as "orchestral".

I'm not a big fan of orchestral music, whether it's performed by an actual orchestra or emulated on a synthesizer. That thing where certain instruments and arrangements are said to evoke specific images and emotions? It never quite works for me. Occasionally I might just about be able to make out an allusion to a season or a color but anything much subtler misses my ears by a mile. I imagine it's like wine-tasting: you need to train your palette. Who has the time?

On the other hand, on the odd occasion I've happened across an MMORPG that employs a non-orchestral score, it's become apparent all too quickly why so few break with the tradition. Other forms and styles are a great deal more intrusive. It's pretty hard to come up with a two and a half minute heavy metal loop that doesn't grate on the ears after about, oh, two and a half seconds, in my case.

What started me thinking about all this was a post I saw over at The EverQuest Show this morning. Darkpaw Games have just re-issued the 20th Anniversary remaster of the EQ OST. It's been available digitally for a while but now you can buy it on vinyl.

I love EQ and I love the soundtrack. I should. I've been listening to it for the best part of twenty years. I've probably heard certain parts of it - some of the Karana or Commonlands themes, for example - more times than I've heard any single song in my entire music library. Still doesn't mean I'd want to play it over headphones on my commute, much less sit in a darkened room on a chair postioned just so to listen to it playing on a turntable!

The whole vinyl thing completely mystifies me. I have a thousand vinyl albums downstairs and almost as many vinyl singles. I haven't played any one of them in longer than I've been playing EQ. Vinyl's an awkward, annoying, archaic format that was rightly superceded not just once but several times by superior platforms and yet here it still is, clinging on like some kind of incurable fungal disease. Yecch!

Yeah, I have no nostalgia for vinyl. It amazes me anyone could, although I know people my age who do. I'd kind of give a reluctant pass to someone who was too young to have grown up with vinyl as the dominant music transmission system. I can see how there'd be a weird, retro "so bad it's good" thing going on there, but old people really should know better.

And who could be the target market for EverQuest collectable vinyl other than old people? I'd love to know what the average age of an EQ player is in 2020. I bet it's in the fifties. I guess if you still play EQ, the idea you might also own a hi-fi isn't that much of  stretch. I do.

And yet, I am not going to be buying an EverQuest OST album, for oh so many reasons. Not the “Mez Spell” edition with “pin wheel” blue and gold vinyl and a gatefold sleeve. No, not the “Field of Bone” edition in blood red and bone white vinyl, either. Not even for the Keith Parkinson artwork, which we've all seen a million times.

Which is just as well, because as I type this, three of the four editions are already  >>>

If I do want to hear the music I'll play the game and hear it the way it was intended to be heard, although the chance of my ever getting the notion that I want to hear EQ music when I'm not already playing EQ seems more than a little fanciful.

It might be different if EQ wasn't there to play. For all my ranting about never wanting to listen to video game music outside the games themselves, when Vanguard was about to sunset both I and Mrs Bhagpuss downloaded the entire soundtrack, which was on YouTube at the time. 

Mrs Bhagpuss plays it not infrequenly, sometimes while she's playing other video games, which is oddly meta. I don't think I've ever played the files I downloaded although they're all still on my hard drive, somewhere, But then I've never needed to, thanks to the magnificent Vanguard emulator. I just log in and run around the game when I need a nostalgia fix.

Vanguard is one of two MMORPG soundtracks I own. The other one I actually paid money for. In complete contradiction of almost everything I've said so far, I not only have the complete soundtrack to City of Steam on my iPod but I listen to it about as often as I listen to anything else I have on there.

The Vanguard and City of Steam soundtracks have one thing in common, which I suspect is the reason they're the exceptions. They have vocals. The music's still largely orchestral but occasionally there's a human voice. There aren't any words, or not words I can understand, but it makes all the difference.

Of course, if there was a City of Steam emulator, I wouldn't have to listen to the soundtrack. It's a very poor substitute for playing. In some ways, being able to hear the music makes the sense of loss more acute. I do miss that game.

In time, I suspect my feeling on this subject might alter. Even writing this post has made me evaluate some assumptions. Maybe I'll even give Battle Bards a try.

Meantime, it seems I did make a post featuring video game music, after all.