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#61
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I would say compositional substance and production/performance/arrangement/etc. substance can be two different things. I haven't heard even a snippet of this soundtrack so I have no opinion about it, but I've read it has a very distinctive sound or tone. Those things are not inherently tied into composition as they can be brought about through means like effects such as reverb, playing piano instead of forte, using a cello instead of a baritone saxophone or something, or choosing a singer with a smooth tone of voice rather than the guy from Pantera. My understanding of TerraEpon's statement is that it's got a nice mood and very pretty dressing on what are rather mundane tunes at the level of writing because they rely heavily on one not especially creative idea.
However, I wouldn't agree with his earlier statement that vocals are part of the composition as the melody sung could have been assigned to something else instead, therefore I'd call it arrangement, so my interpretation could be wrong. I still totally understand something having no compositional substance but still being good ear candy. Often that's where guilty pleasures come from. |
#62
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To put it a different way, it's reletively simple and lacks depth, but complexity and depth are not required for something to be enjoyable. What the music DOES have is color and a unique sound element that make up for it.
Various music is good for different reasons. A ragtime piece might have mostly simple accompaniment but wonderful melodies and delicious harmonies. A solo jazz percussion piece may have rhythmic complexity and color that makes up for the lack of any real pitch. Just a couple of examples. |
#63
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I know that we've got some official credits for who did what based on Automata's OST credits, and through the process of elimination on other NieR releases, but I take it we'll never get actual composer credits for the soundtrack, will we? I'd be really interested to see the credits, so I can't help but ask. I doubt tweeting at the composers will yield a response or anything of that sort either. Would anybody have a way of getting the composer credits for this album?
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#64
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#65
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If I had a twitter account I'd try it then, but I don't and something tells me if I tweet at them with a new account I won't get a response. Anyone else wanna try asking them through twitter?
edit: So I feel that there are some ways to narrow down the composers for who's done what, and we can do this through the information provided for other releases and comparing the tracks on those releases to the OST. Apart from that we can only assume for some tracks based off of some tracks from Nier Automata, like Wretched Automatons and Wretched Weaponry for example. Based on the two pre-order bonuses for the Gestalt and Replicant versions in Japan, we know that Keiichi Okabe and Kakeru Ishihama are responsible for the tracks on those releases. Based on the fact that Okabe is credited to Song of The Ancients (Fate) on Automata I don't think it's a stretch to think he alone composed it, and all versions of it, especially considering he remixed it in the 15 Nightmare's and Arrange Tracks album too. Likewise with the example given above, I feel we can also assume he composed Wretched Automatons. We also know thanks to Don that Keigo Hoashi composed Shadowlord, it's white-note mix, and some battle themes. Additionally, we also know that Okabe composed Grandma. It doesn't narrow down a lot, but the credits get a little more narrow based on this, as opposed to just crediting each track to the four composers. I remember someone posted a composer breakdown they got when they inserted their disc into iTunes, but that couldn't have been accurate, as it'd be available elsewhere and because iTunes just pulls from public databases and has nothing special, right? I don't see any CD text on the disc either, hell, I never see CD text on any OST. Last edited by IJustDontKnowAnymore; Jan 8, 2019 at 10:37 AM. |
#66
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From all those informations, can we make a sort of masterpost for every tracks?
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#67
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Last edited by IJustDontKnowAnymore; Sep 5, 2019 at 08:00 PM. |
#68
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I hope MONACA will do individual credits for vocals soon enough as well, though Emi Evan's voice is easily reckognizable. |
#69
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The credits are for composer only. You can already kinda see who was responsible for the vocals, and from the tracks themselves you listen to see which chorus it was, if it wasn't just Emi Evans in the track.
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#70
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#71
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Like I said in my previous post, I feel like we could also credit disc one track 9, City of Commerce, to the same composers as disc one track 2, Hills of Radiant Wind, since it's pretty much an arrangement of it, but I'd want input from others for that one. Apart from glaringly obvious composers credits, like Song of Ancients/Wretched Weaponry being done by Okabe, I've tried to keep the breakdown largely based on the facts based on releases that we've already gotten. Last edited by IJustDontKnowAnymore; Jul 11, 2020 at 07:49 PM. |
#72
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If we're looking only for composition credits, there's probably only one "main" composer for each theme that composed the "original" version, though other versions of the same song may have parts composed and arranged by others (as far as I know, the only true joint composition of a main theme in the entire Automata album, or for that matter even their other Yoko Taro games like Drakengard 3 and Sinoalice, is Alien Manifestation by Okabe and Hoashi).
There's also new official playlists for each Monaca composer that includes selected tracks from the original NieR (http://www.monaca.jp/member/). Okabe confirms he was involved in several tracks: Snow in Summer, Blu-bird, Grandma, Wretched Automatons, Gods Bound By Rules, Dark Colossus, Shadowlord's Castle, Song of the Ancients, and Ashes of Dreams. This probably means he was the main composer for these tracks. Some of these were already discussed in this thread, but Snow in Summer, Blu-bird , Gods Bound By Rules and Shadowlord's Castle seem to be new confirmations. Given that Okabe composed Gods Bound By Rules, that also probably means he composed the theme in Temple of Drifting Sands, which is like the companion 'stage' track that shares the opening high-pitched vocal theme. Also Dispossession is the basis for Faltering Prayer in Automata, which is officially credited to Okabe and Hoashi. I'm assuming Hoashi did the Automata arrangements and Okabe composed the primary theme, but this is just a guess. Ishihama's playlist does not list any NieR tracks, but he has officially been credited with Emil's theme on the Automata soundtrack. While not directly confirmed on any official album, it looks like he composed Kaine's theme in general, and the Kaine / Salvation version in particular, based on his twitter posts (https://twitter.com/MONACA_ishihama/...55277827715073, https://twitter.com/MONACA_ishihama/...62266196631552). Hoashi's playlist includes only Shadowlord from the original NieR, so does not add new info. But the Orchestral Arrengement Addendum lists Okabe, Ishihama, Hoashi as composers for the 5 NieR songs, of which 4 can already be credited to Okabe and Ishihama, leaving Deep Crimson Foe as likely composed by Hoashi, though probably as a boss-theme counterpart to The Ultimate Weapon. I also have some additional guesses without official confirmations, but not with very solid reasons. The Ultimate Weapon vaguely sounds like Okabe if you compare it to something like Grandma or Automata's City Ruins (Rays of Light) . Repose has a lot of repeated '4 note sequences', which seems to be a recurring idea in the background arrangement of a lot of known Okabe compositions (from Automata - Alien Manifestation, Peaceful Sleep, Voice of no Return, Fortress of Lies and Weight of the World, as well as the background in This Silence is Mine from Drakengard 3; while it's not confirmed to be Okabe, the theme music in the trailer for NieR:Reincarnation also has this pattern). For Hills of Radiant Winds and its arrangements (which seem to be City of Commerce and The Lost Forest), I'm guessing the composer is Ishihama, based on what I think are vague similarities in sound to Kaine / Escape and Strumble from Drakengard 3 (I'm not able to narrow down what the similarity is, but they all sound - well - different, compared to typical tracks, probably in the percussion). Also, Emil and Hills of Radiant Winds are in the key of E minor, Kaine switches to E minor halfway through for the second part, and Strumble seems to start off in E minor. The other two versions of Hills are in different keys, so I don't know how much one should read into this. I would also put The Prestigious Mask in the same category of sounding similar to Hills, though it's not the same theme. For compositions of Nishimura, based on being able to attribute most of the other tracks to other primary composers in the NieR vinyl even with the official evidence already available, if he was the primary composer for any theme in the vinyl album it's most likely Cold Steel Coffin, or maybe Temple of Drifting Sands if it wasn't Okabe. Curiously, both of these tracks seem to have very similar repeating chorus sequences in the background. It also seems possible for some official album credits to be incorrect. While Ishihama's twitter page does confirm he composed Kaine - which seems to be in the context of its inclusion in the Memories of Puppets concert, at least the VGMdb page for its Blu-ray, which includes Kaine, does not list him as a composer. |
#73
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Just for the sake of completeness, that leaves two remaining themes without official information about credits or guesses. I think This/His Dream sounds like Ishihama compositions (if the basis of the above guess about Hills and its arrangements isn't completely wrong). For The Incomplete Stone, if we know it's by one of the Monaca composers, I think Okabe's more likely because of the heavy use of the choir. But these guesses are again starting to feel like reading too much into superficial similarities between songs. Guesses aside, based on IJustDontKnowAnymore's list, the orchestral addendum (and other official credits) and Monaca's playlists, it looks like it's safe to conclude that Nishimura was either the main composer for Cold Steel Coffin or This/His Dream (I hadn't noticed earlier that Temple of Drifting Sands could also be ruled out), or there's the more unusual possibility of only being a co-composer for some track. I couldn't find any other known composition of Nishimura to try to find parallels in how the tracks sound. It's possible that the v1.22... album will finally come with the full credits as many of the original songs are being rerecorded and rearranged. But it also seems like Square Enix or someone else involved in publishing has the full composer breakdown for each track already, which they've been using in the different album releases over the years, and they don't publish it for other reasons. This might mean that the new album would also have the same type of overall-album-only credits as we've been getting so far, which is hopefully not the case. |
#74
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The (official) English tracklist was pulled from p. 01-02 of the booklet, where it is printed alongside the official Japanese tracklist, which can also be found on the back. To achieve full compliance with the English track names, I changed "remix" to an uppercase "Remix" on M2-20, which was rejected.
I get that titles or parts of titles written in latin letters (at least as long as they aren't just romanizations) are kept as they are in unofficial and literal English tracklist translations. However, this EN tracklist is an official one, that also features changes on title names that already were in English entirely in the JP tracklist, namely M2-16~19. Therefore either M2-16~19 have got to be changed to get a tracklist that complies to a set of rules consistently or M2-20 has be changed back to get a proper reflection of the official EN tracklist, which was what I was going for and would prefer, but one may disagree. |
#75
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You didn't explain your edit. I'm sure it would've been accepted if you did.
Last edited by Efendija; Jun 19, 2021 at 01:39 AM. |
#76
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Yeah, I normally do that, but here I thought it was just a simple fix to bring the tracklist closer to the source (scan). Turned out I was wrong for the reasons described.
I'll try to be even more careful regarding this matter from now on. |
#77
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It's kind of a limitation on our end too, for not requiring a comment for tracklist submissions.
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#78
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So many remixes. There are even a few 8-bit chiptunes on a CD that was included with the Japanese Drakengard 3 Special Limited Edition (which I also own, but you can get the CD only from suruga-ya). |
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