Professional Game Composers and Amateurism
 

Video Game Music is a domain in which amateurism has been taking a very important place along the years. Few are the VGM fans who don't listen to a fan remix everynow and then. Some even mostly listen to those.

The opinion of professional game composers towards fan arrangements tend to vary. It is a known fact that Nobuo Uematsu frowned upon the doujin music circles in a few occasions.

Others, though, have the opposite stance and actually participate in non official projects.

In the Japanese doujin circles again, a recent example is Hyakutaro Tsukumo, of Tecno Soft fame, who arranged Kenji Ito's music from the SaGa series on the latest Dangerous Mezashi Cat's doujin album. The result is quite awesome btw and I highly everyone to get it now.

Hiroshi Nishizawa, who composed part of the Selected Sorcerian music, released unofficial soundtracks of that work of his through the doujin market as well.

Ryu Umemoto, composer of many of C's Ware great (in Japan) successes such as Yu-No, composed (under an alias) original music for digital novels, also released through the doujin market.

That's only a few examples. Anything to contribute on the topic ? =p

If I were a professional game composer, I would definitely embrace fan arrangements and even contribute to a community with my own unofficial fan creations. It's homage. Arranging existing music is a great way for aspiring composers to get experience too.

I'm much more willing to embrace informed amateurism; that is, fans who are sensitive to the original's context and keep it in mind, and even possess a healthy amount of musical knowledge. I think there's a line that shouldn't be crossed, in the case of, say, trance remixes of Zelda music. Taking the music out of its original genre is something I'm not too fond of, especially if it were a piece of mine that were redone in such a way. But I know people like to do that, for whatever reason.

I particularly enjoyed Jeremy Soule's rearrangement of Terra's Theme from FFVI.

Who could forget Dark Chronicle and Rouge Galaxy Premium arrange albums ! We have a list of who's who composers, such as Motoi Sakuraba, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, Kenji Ito .... pay tribute to Tomohito Nishiura. Those are high quality arrangements and worth checking out. I really enjoy both of the them.

Heh, that reminded me of that ~20 minutes Bare Knuckle arrange Yuzo Koshiro released on some forum a couple years ago. =p

I see nothing wrong with fan arrangements. In fact, its a great way for music to be re-integrated into a more contemporary setting. There are so many amazing NES games with stellar soundtracks, but its difficult for people unfamiliar with the medium to listen to the nes and not see beyond the limitations.

Arrangements utilizing modern sound software really allows all kinds of different people to see the beauty of the music. Thats fair, as many NES soundtracks are doomed to be forgotten. That would be a crime considering the incredible breadth of insane musicality.

Then again, and as Cellius pointed out, sometimes its difficult to touch a piece of music without ruining it. I'd be lying if I said that 50 percent of amateur arrangements preserved the good standing of the original. However, its really fun that music can inspire others to give back in the same way that they initially received.

He made that before he get famous though.

Ugh.

No.

I'd like to appreciate arrangements done in ways I both expect and DON'T expect. Really hate people crapping on arrangements "that aren't repsectful to the spirit of the original" or whatever that's supposed to mean. There's not liking something for personal and subjective reasons, but it's annoying to read of people going "it's not allowed" to be approached a certain way as if it's an objective violation of some apparent rule of remixing.

I think most composers are quite supportive. Tommy Tallarico has mentioned OCR numerous times, and put togeter Earthworm Jim Anthology along with Mustin with arrangements from the OCR community.

Jeremy Soule is very supportive, even beyond his submission of the Terra remix. He says it's a composer's duty to help growing musicians that will some day take their spots.

Yuzo Koshiro also contributed to Merrignon, a score for an imaginary game that was composed mostly by demosceners in Europe.

Thank you for that polite response.

Don't play dumb. You know what it means. There's a reason appropriate music genres exist within different genres of games, why one style works where another doesn't, you should know that. I don't appreciate being completely dismissed just because you're so defensive. Pretty sure I don't want to listen to Saria's Song set to techno beats and warm pads. Don't worry, it's just my musical taste; it's not going to jeopardize yours. :)

And I'd argue against that. Total Annihilation was very popular, and really propelled his career forward. Even more, the remix was posted in 2004, and Morrowind came out in 2002. He was already quite popular. =)

That's all it deserved.

That's bullshit. That's what it means. Look where your argument is coming from. "There's a reason appropriate music genres exist within different genres of games..." At what point are we talking about within games? The genre of an arrangement isn't required to fit the mood of the game the original music is from.

In many cases, an arrangement is a standalone work, not "within a game" or requiring anything to do with "original context." In your close-minded way of thinking tied to the game, you just don't feel that certain genres are permissable. So when po! & The OneUps did a great jazz arrangement of Axelay, that wouldn't be "schmup-y" enough for you or some garbage. Of course I'm not gonna be polite about telling you how stupid that sounds.

Needing the preservation of original context is fine for personal taste but is a shitty MO to apply broadly, not even to the fan arrangement community but to many professional arrange albums as well. You can dislike something, but that's not to say it's not even a viable arrangement idea in the first place. There are many who can walk away with both nostalgia and genuine appreciation at an arrangement that's conceptually outside the box. Or in your words "for whatever reason."

I kind of understand where Cellius is coming from. If I'm familiar with an original piece, I have at least an idea of what I want it to sound like. Going out of your way to make it sound radically different...No offense to anyone, but it seems rather ego-driven to me. Like, using the original track to promote yourself. I guess that's all well and good if you like the actual arranger's work from the start, but not so good for a listener looking for a satisfying arrangement. One of the reasons I loathe the Chrono Trigger: Brink of Time album (sorry, can't think of a fan arrangement I legitimately despise...Mmm, good thing?) is because it seems like an excuse to show how many funky effects and solos the arrangers can cram in, with the actual arranging of the original tunes more or less an afterthought. Gets old really fast, since I can care less about who GUIDO is and what kind of music they make for a living. The Rockman X arrange (why take a score knee-deep in heavy metal and do a full-on jazz-fusion arrange?), F-Zero (ditto) and some of the more junk techno arranges (think FF Mix and the Konami Remixes albums) stand out the same way, rather infamously.

For example (don't hate me, Dhsu!), I was never a fan of piano arrangements. To me, it's totally backwards to take a more complex piece and strip it down to a single instrument. Great for piano fans mostly, but I get bored of them really fast because I don't particularly care for much solo piano. I haven't heard a single arrangement that's changed my mind about that, despite many featuring some of my favorite pieces (and I don't just mean the dumbed-down FF or DQ ones).

But then again, it varies from listener to listener...What's acceptable to one might not be acceptable to another.

As for the topic on hand...I believe the Super Sweep members release albums at the comikeets as well. I'm pretty sure that's how Tobi Tsukihime and Mama-san's Volleyball were put out. And also, I believe Hiroki Kikuta put out Alphabet Planet at one of the doujin events (and maybe Lost Files). And then there's SSH and Mintjam, who made the jump to being "professional" by getting contracted for doing soundtracks (and in the case of SSH, professional arranges with the Atelier albums).

A quick question: Have you heard the piano arrangement of "The Trial" from CT? It's entitled "The Trial in Concert". Nothing less than a masterpiece, IMO.

Grow up.
Are you one of those people who are so 'open-minded' that no musical style is too inappropriate for you to consider and you end up going 'whoa this guy is pretty deep.'

Right, but why don't you consider where I'm coming from for once instead of being an immature ass about it? GoldfishX said it well. Create an outside-the-box remix for the sake of going outside the box? OOooooh let's all commend their bold vision because I'm open-minded. That's where I draw the line. I'm going to stick with my Zelda example here: you can't possibly tell me that BogusRed's heartbreaking piano rendition of Into the Golden Sunset is on the same level as some random upbeat hyper-techno remix of Saria's Song. Sorry, you can't endorse everything, as you claim to. Where are your standards? What makes one arrangement viable and another worthless, if you're so accepting?

Which is kind of my point when I mentioned the term informed amateurism. Don't you dare tell me that my opinion isn't meaningful just because it doesn't align with your standards of artistic vision or intent.

"Hey guys, I'm going to create an arrangement of Aeris's theme, but I don't want anyone for any reason to be reminded of Aeris or Final Fantasy VII EVER."

Agreed. It boils down to who you are serving in the end: yourself or the community.

I usually prefer a "radically different" arrangement. It doesn't take much skill to transcribe a song, note for note, and effectively "upgrade" the quality of the original piece. A real arranger should be able to interpret the music and take it somewhere different stylistically, and add their own voice to the piece. It's always fun to see where arrangers can go with a piece, and as a musician myself, I have to commend them for their vision, because I can't seem to arrange anything other than the way I first described.

Yes. My beef is with people who don't do this, but still change the style dramatically. Liontamer The Defender seems to think I would hate a worthy jazz arrangement on principle. Or the Final Fantasy Piano Collections. It's stuff like the Zelda main theme thrown into Fruity Loops and given a repetitive electronic bed that I can't abide.

Cellius and Liontamer, keep it civil please. The core of your mutual animosity is the most common one on the internet, AKA not saying in my opinion enough. That's an official warning ~

Never heard about that Yuzo Koshiro Merrignon thingie. I'll have to check it out.

You mean you can't abide bad quality.

Cause "inappropriate" arrangements are a myth. There's no such thing.

As professional game composer I just can't imagine being in a position where I feel that someone's remix of my work is disrespectful or something like that. That's just arrogant, not to mention retarded. In fact, the day someone arranges a game song of mine will be a glorious day.

And as an VGmix dude I would never arrange a track that I didn't like. I mean if I arrange a track, it's always in some way because I want to pay my respects to it (and perhaps the game it came from). Sure, I may make it into a loud IDM breakbeat thing, or perhaps make an orchestral arrangement of something from the NES, and that's not appropriate, or what the composer intended. But that's the whole point of doing it.

Arrangements can (and should) be creative. They should discover things in a song that a composer never even thought of. Of course to what extend you want to hear stuff like that is up to everybody personally. My favourite thing is fan arrangements where you can barely tell that it's not an original song, such as the stuff on IOSYS's albums, some of virt's stuff, and so on.

Anyway, I love VG/doujin/fanmade stuff (and VGMix, really looking forward to its return... someday). I find it kinda shocking that some game composers would disagree with me on that, according to the OP. :(

I have to say that like Cellius and GoldfishX, I do believe the original intent of a track should be considered in an arrangement. I don't like it when I can hardly recognize the connection and when the structure or mood that made the song worthwhile in the first place is all but lost. That's not to say that the arrangement should be completely straightfoward and uncreative. Only that I like for the spirit of the original track to be retained in some fashion. Otherwise it might as well be an original track with no relation to the original.

Perhaps I look for a middle ground of sorts. When something is too faithful to the original, it might seem pointless. When something deviates too much, it might miss the point.

By "complexity," are you just talking about the number of instruments? Because I've heard piano arrangements that I would characterize as being more complex than the original pieces, like a remix of "Wind Scene" from CT recently posted on OCR.

I also think simplification is a valid arrangement technique. :|

So, are there any arrangement types besides crappy trance that you dislike? Because that's the only thing you've slung around so far, so it seems to me that you just can't stand the stuff period. Either that or you just hate bad quality arrangements that sound like they were whipped together in fifteen minutes, but I'm pretty sure that most people don't like to listen to bad songs as well.*

Pretty much, yeah.

I like arrangements that display some formidable musical knowledge on the arranger's part.

Pretty much.

Never said it wasn't. I just can't think of an example where drastically and intentionally simplifying a piece would result in something I'd want to listen to.

Haha, Gold, nice stab at my two favorite arrange albums of all time (BoT and Rockman X Alph Lyra). =P

Thanks very much to surasshu for breaking down the real deal. Nearly any arrangement done by a fan is meant to be a tribute, even the poorly-created ones. In my opinion, and I spend too much time doing this stuff, I appreciate more when the arrangement is interpretive, and I laugh hearing comments from people that go "I can't recognize the original," because on the fan arrangement side we get it all the time. Any arrangement that primarilly put the focus on interpreting the source material rather than inserting original ideas honors the VGM material that inspired it. Honestly, the people making those complaints about lack of recognition, those people don't have the ear for it and end up missing out on a lot because they can't figure out what's what and don't put forth the effort, but that's their prerogative. There's nothing wrong with badass covers, and I love hearing 'em, but those are generally easier to make because the framework is the same, and if I wanted little to no interpretation melodically, I can also grab the original and listen to that.

Cellius's complaints about techno/trance/etc are just genre hate, noted by his offense to me implying he wouldn't like a jazz arrangement of Axelay. Hey, I'm just reading right into what you were saying about requiring the "spirit of the original game," and your negative reaction to me choosing a different genre and game instead of trance & Zelda and saying you'd automatically hate it just shows how your limiting theory of VG arrangements was too broad and doesn't hold any real weight. You don't even agree with yourself. That's why I reacted so aversely to it, because it's just a nonsense, blanket statement. It's pretty funny reading that I'd welcome every crappily done arrangement regardless of genre and skill though. :-D

So how much is it not having the ear for it vs. not putting forth the effort? One suggests a natural talent and the other suggests focus.

I personally feel that stripping a piece of too much of it's original melody is a little pointless. This wouldn't automatically make a piece bad, it could still be pulled of as a worthwhile effort despite how closely connected to the base material it is. But if I go into something knowing that this is a remix of song X, I am looking to hear a different take on song X. Not a similar backbeat placed to unrecognizable development leading to a brief phrase of the original. I do go in with expectations, it's just the nature of the media.

So are the looser than loose arrangements intended to just be for the sort of crowd of the trained ear and gets these things and not for the general fan, or...

Not just your stance but your apparent disdain for the other side seems hella condescending. I am open minded, but if I don't want to be to the point where something in music goes purposely above my head, I'd like not to be blamed for saying I didn't enjoy it.