Video game music culture

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Computer and video game music, with the help of the internet, has developed into its own culture with many extensions beyond existence as a video game soundtrack.

Fans have aggregated together in person and on the net for various purposes revolving around video game music. Many inspired communities have flourished as a result, despite not being directly involved with video games or game production. Fans have produced recorded live performances of their own, as well as studio remixes. Some have also taken a much more technical approach, such as the chiptune and mod communities who emulate the actual chips from older computers and consoles. Other more technical focused cultures develop or use emulators to playback soundfiles from the original game images, or archive them for others to use.

Contents

[edit] Remixing

Though the term is very broad, remixing is still the most commonly used to identify a piece of music that is re-sequenced, performed live by a different artist, or generally inspired by an original piece from a video game. Presentations vary from simple orchestral interpretations of old chip tunes, to vastly differently themed departures into rock, jazz, metal, or any other of a number of genres.

A fan culture developed in the 1990s of transcribing video game music into a MIDI standard of some kind. This allowed fans, lacking any immediate musical performance ability but possessed some computer skill, to take early sound chip based music and re-imagine it with the variety of sampled instruments afforded by the General MIDI standard. More than a few archives of such works can still be found today and have even extended into other MIDI standards.

Fan performances have also gained wide notoriety, ranging from concerts to remixing the original music themes. A rock group called Minibosses was one of the earliest to gain traction online with their downloadable mp3s of performances, as well as offer CDs. An a capella music group from the University of Wisconsin known as Redefined, who performed (and acted) an a capella medley of songs from popular Nintendo games including Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Mortal Kombat, and The Legend of Zelda. A video clip of the entire performance was widely circulated on the Internet in 2005. [1] Other examples are listed below.

Among the most visible to fans of game music are remix communities where recreational musicians, DJs, and other music talent produce re-arranged or remixed versions of tunes, and then share them for download in some compressed format. Production values vary from artist to artist, from single instrument solo, to massive multi-controller device soundbanks. Some of these artists have even gone on to received licensed support from the game publisher to publish their own work. Others may simply provide a CD of their work to those who ask.

[edit] Performers

  • 8 Bit Weapon - Los Angeles-based NES/Commodore 64 video game cover band, that has an equally powerful following for their original tunes as well.
  • The Advantage - California-based NES cover band.
  • Armcannon - Progressive metal-styled video game cover band from Western New York.
  • CarboHydroM - Punk rock versions of some classic video game music.
  • Chromelodeon AKA Sprite Slowdown - Philadelphia based progressive rock band covering a series of platform games, including most of Ninja Gaiden 2. They are now on an 'indefinite hiatus."
  • Crow's Claw - Japanese hard rock band that makes original music in addition to remixes of music from Final Fantasy games.
  • David Hasselhoff Big Band - A Finnish demoscene band covering various video game songs.
  • Duracell - French one-man band led by Andrew Diamant. Combines percussion with 8-bit processors. "Covers" include Space Harrier, Turrican, and Ninja Spirit.
  • Game Music Themes - Videos of performances and sheet music of video game music played on piano.
  • Jazz Cannibals - A jazz trio covering music exclusively from the NES in St. Louis, MO
  • Machinae Supremacy A Swedish band covering Commodore 64 game songs.
  • Megadriver - Brazilian Heavy Metal band performing mainly Mega Drive/Genesis and other Videogame music.
  • Minibosses - NES progressive/rock cover band based in Phoenix, Arizona
  • NESkimos - A hard rock band from Florida that remixes video game music
  • The OneUps - A band that does remixes to all sorts of video game music. Remixes include hard rock, jazz, piano, Christmas tunes, easy-listening, and everything in between
  • Press Play On Tape - A Danish band covering Commodore 64 game songs
  • Powerglove - A Video Game Metal band from Boston.
  • Random Encounter - Florida based band that puts the songs they cover together via original story during concerts.
  • S.S.H. - Japanese one man hard rock band that remixes video game music.
  • Stage3-1 A Canadian band that does guitar, bass and keyboard covers of NES songs.
  • Stemage - Rock remixes of nearly all the Metroid songs.
  • Temp Sound Solutions - one man band from Baltimore, Maryland that has made 7 cover CDs.
  • VGPiano - A group of individuals who perform video game music on the piano.
  • The Video Game Cover Band - Versatile American group that covers all the classics and today's game music.
  • The Video Game Pianist - Classical piano treatment of several classics.
  • Yakuza Heart Attack - Ohio band that creates original music that is inspired by original Nintendo music.

[edit] Remix Hosts

  • OverClocked ReMix - Hosts any original game remixes that pass its panel of judges. Submissions are restricted to a maximum file size of 6 MB.
  • OverLooked ReMiX - Originally created as a friendly parody of OverClocked ReMix, it has since developed into its own community.
  • ReMix:ThaSauce - Hosts any original game remixes or arrangements approved by administrators or a panel of "arbiters."
  • Remix.Kwed.Org - Rearrangements of Commodore 64 tunes with songs ranked by user votes.
  • AmigaRemix - Similar to Remix.Kwed.Org, but for Amiga music instead.
  • Dwelling of Duels - a monthly (sometimes bi-monthly) competition for VG cover artists who play live instruments.

[edit] Streaming Remixes

[edit] Chip Tune

Even more interesting to some are the fan communities that base themselves around writing remixed or even new music using the very same sound chips from the classic systems themselves. Though this, too, can be considered remixing, it is of such a specific medium that it bears separate distinction. Sometimes an emulator is used to generate the chip's sounds when the actual chip is not present. This is widely known as Chip Tune and is a very comparable to the use of an analog synthesizer in a music studio. Many times the composer choosing this format either has a specific familiarity with the technology being used, preference for the sound qualities of a particular chip, or is looking for a challenge in making an enjoyable music experience from a comparably simple musical tool.

Much of chiptune is actually not derived from any game music, and is original work, but because the hardware used it typically exclusive to video game equipment, it bears inclusion here.

[edit] Sound file & Emulation

Sound chip emulators, usually inspired by game system emulators, developed both as stand alone media players, and as plugins for popular media players like Winamp. Website communities have sprung up, and archives which contain partial ROM images of the sound information of a game allow fans to hear the game very similar to what it would have been like on the actual system. Each system emulated developed a specialised format such as NSF, GBS, SID, HES, VGM, SPC, PSF, PSF2, and others. This is the closest most people come to hearing the music as it was played as much as 20 years ago on its original game console if they do not/did not own the console.

Tracks from video games have also been among the most popular cellular phone ringtones

[edit] Popular sound formats by system

Note that these are named for file extensions given to music files extracted from games using either specialized software tools, or using emulators. An exception is MOD, which is a format used by various tracker programs on Amiga and PC (old Amiga MODs can be played with ordinary PC MOD-players). Sound emulation is seldom 100% accurate.

[edit] Emulator format music

[edit] Discussion

Even communities where discussion is primary have developed, though usually as extensions to sites offering other types of fandom.

[edit] Articles, essays and news about video game music

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