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  #1  
Old Dec 15, 2014, 10:52 AM
orion-mk3 orion-mk3 is offline
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Two interesting things about this new album:

1. It uses Montezuma instead of Ixa'taka, despite having the Western versions of all other names elsewhere.

2. If iTunes is to be believed, it's 10 minutes longer than the original disc. It might just be extra silence or longer fadeouts; they of course missed a golden opportunity to loop the gorram tracks properly.
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  #2  
Old Dec 15, 2014, 11:18 AM
Lashiec Lashiec is offline
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Whoa. I already lost all hope to see this reissued in *any* form.
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  #3  
Old Dec 15, 2014, 01:19 PM
orion-mk3 orion-mk3 is offline
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Would you believe that I had just written about its lack of availability in a review before double-checking this afternoon?
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  #4  
Old Dec 16, 2014, 05:50 AM
Ramza Ramza is offline
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This is a really surprising digital release. And frankly I'm damned happy about it because I cannot afford the old CD print these days.
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  #5  
Old Dec 16, 2014, 10:11 AM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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I would get excited about these digital re-releases if I weren't paying for MP3s. I just can't pay for MP3s. I know it's cool to support the artist, but if I'm going to pay money for something, it needs to be quality. MP3s are not quality. I don't suppose either of these retailers have started selling FLAC?
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  #6  
Old Dec 16, 2014, 10:29 AM
GoldfishX GoldfishX is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellacia View Post
I would get excited about these digital re-releases if I weren't paying for MP3s. I just can't pay for MP3s. I know it's cool to support the artist, but if I'm going to pay money for something, it needs to be quality. MP3s are not quality. I don't suppose either of these retailers have started selling FLAC?
Nope. Forget em. Buying an mp3 is an absolute last resort for me.

Edit: That said, I AM happy to see more classic VGM available, lossless or lossy. 15 years ago, if you would have told me Falcom or Zuntata music could be bought on iTunes, I would have said you were crazy.

My money is on the extra length coming from extended track lengths. IIRC, the original print did not loop.

Last edited by GoldfishX; Dec 16, 2014 at 10:32 AM.
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  #7  
Old Dec 16, 2014, 10:36 AM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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See, if this loops every song, then I'm definitely not getting it. That's like them putting my entire playlist on repeat for me. Loops are retarded. If I want to listen to a song again, I'll just hit back when it's done. Otherwise, one time through is enough, anything else just gets repetitive.
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  #8  
Old Dec 16, 2014, 09:59 PM
orion-mk3 orion-mk3 is offline
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Definitely not all looped, since then you'd be seeing a lot more 3-5 minute track lengths. But there are also places where the new tracks are over a minute longer than the old ones. Maybe a track or two looped or extended and the rest just silence padding?
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  #9  
Old Dec 17, 2014, 06:24 AM
GoldfishX GoldfishX is offline
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I'm thinking maybe some of the more major tracks are looped, like battle themes. Or maybe even just slightly extended (loop and a half, then a fade-out).

I used to be a real stickler for track loops, now they're pretty optional. I'm always happy when a favorite gets looped, since it saves me the trouble of restarting it. Funny thing is, looping VGM tracks aren't much different than a lot of mainstream tracks that repeat a chorus with verses inbetween (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus).
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  #10  
Old Dec 17, 2014, 10:27 AM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldfishX View Post
Funny thing is, looping VGM tracks aren't much different than a lot of mainstream tracks that repeat a chorus with verses inbetween (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus).
This is not really that true. What you described in parentheses is a pretty nice formula in which the entire thing doesn't actually repeat from the beginning to end - you have verse~chorus which repeats once (although with some very minor differences) and then goes to solo~chorus. This means the two instances of verse~chorus sort of build up to something new - the solo - and then rather than going back to verse, goes straight to chorus (of course not all songs are like this, but this is one example). That entire whole is the song. When you repeat a VGM song, you literally repeat the entire whole of it. You just slap it onto the end of the track and say "listen to the ENTIRE SONG over again" minus maybe 10 seconds of intro at the beginning. It's not a sensible formula like mainstream tracks have in that there's some kind of progression to any intended repetition - the people producing the CD are just simply having the entire track play a second time.

Anyway, it doesn't look like this whole soundtrack is looped again, because like orion said, the songs would have increased in time way more than this. Also kind of a question for vol.2 but does anyone know if the original "Emotional Theme" or whatever it's called plays out fully in the new release? I never played the game, and can't track down any audio files, but it seems like the song fades out right when it gets to a new piano part. EDIT: Actually, dumb, it's only 12 seconds longer so I'm going to assume no. It doesn't sound like the original track plays out though.

Last edited by Hellacia; Dec 17, 2014 at 10:57 AM.
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  #11  
Old Dec 17, 2014, 11:52 AM
orion-mk3 orion-mk3 is offline
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Nope, "Emotional Theme," like "Ramirez's Theme," was so truncated that it didn't finish a full loop, and both would have needed at least a minute beyond their new, slightly extended runtimes to finish that single loop. A pity, because even if you're temperamentally opposed to loopy things this was a chance to fix them both, and if you hit the DSF files you'll see that there's a very nice piano part missing from them both.
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  #12  
Old Dec 17, 2014, 12:42 PM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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I found the DSF files after posting that. Yeah, fixing truncated songs is obviously much different than looping and I wish they would have done that. Of course, listening to the game files, I also find (as is the case so many times) that they just sound very different, and I don't mean synthesizer quality. For example, in Deep Emotion, the strings in the background at around 30 seconds have very audible triplets in the game files, whereas in the soundtrack the strings are much less audible, I pretty much can't hear the triplets if they're even there at all (well, I don't know if I'm using the right word with "triplets" but I don't know how else to describe it). I never played the game and listened to the soundtrack first, but I still like the game's sound more and don't know why they felt they needed to "upgrade" it, because they end up losing nuances in the music as a result. It's just weird.
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  #13  
Old Dec 21, 2014, 12:28 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellacia View Post
This is not really that true. What you described in parentheses is a pretty nice formula in which the entire thing doesn't actually repeat from the beginning to end - you have verse~chorus which repeats once (although with some very minor differences) and then goes to solo~chorus. This means the two instances of verse~chorus sort of build up to something new - the solo - and then rather than going back to verse, goes straight to chorus (of course not all songs are like this, but this is one example). That entire whole is the song. When you repeat a VGM song, you literally repeat the entire whole of it.
I don't agree with this characterization because it's leaving out the variation within the loop of VGM. While they don't have lyrics to change the next time it comes around or a bridge or solo after the loop point, there's frequently more musical development within the loop than in popular music to mitigate that repetition or a shorter running time if not. The entire whole that makes up a mainstream song often has less music in it despite the extra solo or bridge. I prefer to listen to something good for longer provided it isn't too much, and looping once is not too much to me for probably greater than 90% of all the VGM I have, and of the VGM I have that doesn't loop I think for probably 90% it would have been better if it had.

In popular music I've observed a trend lately where the music will have very little development at all. Take Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" for example. It loops the same short A - B minor - E chord sequence throughout literally the entire thing. The melody changes between verses and choruses and instruments are added or taken away, but the chords all the music is built on remain the same. Same deal with Taylor Swift's "Take It Off" and other songs. Pop music has historically often been fairly simple, but usually not that simple! Incidentally, I like both songs I named surprisingly well for modern pop music, but I think they would have been better with more harmonic change in them. The issues of musical predictably and sameness are part of what attracted me to VGM in the first place, where things tend to be much more varied within the loop. I know it too has archetypes that persist, I just tend to have heard them a lot less than the ones in popular music.
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  #14  
Old Dec 21, 2014, 01:05 PM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by _if View Post
I don't agree with this characterization because it's leaving out the variation within the loop of VGM.
This sentence kind of negated most of your post because you're not understanding what I'm saying. If you have variation, it's not a loop. What you're describing is exactly what I described about a lot of mainstream music - small changes the second time around of what is mostly the same part of the music. A loop is when a song has gone through its entire unique composition and then restarts from where it loops in the game (because it's BGM so it has a loop point at the end) and then plays the entire unique composition, or what I described as the entire whole of the song, again. If you have a variation at some point, you have obviously not played the entire whole of it, and then it should continue on to that point because it's different somehow and adds a new experience. I'm talking about having the same experience - the same exact composition - all over again. As for pop music having "little variation" it's still variation, they're still not pasting the exact same material onto what you just heard. There is SOME minor difference. That's infinitely more than you can say about VGM loops which is the point I was bringing up about the mainstream music comparison.

As for wanting a song to be x length of time or else it's too short, okay, personal opinion and my argument was never that people who like loops are wrong, I was only sharing why I dislike them because I like to see my own opinions of things typed out on message boards.

Last edited by Hellacia; Dec 21, 2014 at 01:09 PM.
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  #15  
Old Dec 21, 2014, 05:35 PM
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By variation I was referring to the musical development of the piece through its duration before looping. VGM tends to be more developed and diverse overall than mainstream music despite the fact that half its runtime consists of a repeat of the entire first half, and so I can be more okay with it simply looping and adding nothing new. It most often doesn't become too much for me because of the higher degree of change.

I didn't think you were saying anyone who likes music to loop is wrong, just stating my opinion in response to your opinion as well. No hard feelings or anything.
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  #16  
Old Dec 21, 2014, 06:17 PM
Hellacia Hellacia is offline
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Yeah no hard feelings at all, I just included that to make sure you knew I wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes (I think I come off that way a lot). I think VGM was looped all the time in the beginning because songs were so short. NES-era songs were less than a minute for the full composition a lot of the time, so they needed a loop to make them feel like complete pieces somehow. I just sometimes wonder why it's still going. Looping Auto Modellista, which has songs up to 4 minutes long (8 with the loop!) was insane.

*shrug*
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  #17  
Old Sep 14, 2019, 05:11 AM
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The quality feels more sharper and cleaner than the 2000 or 2019 disc version. Too bad it's only MP3.
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