Ready Up

Sounds Like Yesterday

I’ve been a big fan of the band Editors for some time now. Despite their slightly depressing lyrics, I love almost all of their songs. I bought their last two albums and they provided me with one hell of a good night’s entertainment at the Alexandra Palace a while ago.

Recently they released a new album, In This Light And On This Evening, which takes the band off in a new direction, specifically into the wonderful world of synthesiser music. Being a fan, I rushed out and bought it as soon as it came out (read: didn’t go anywhere, bought it on iTunes) and was amazed at what kept popping into my mind as I listened. I’d never considered it before, but in my mind; synth music is games music. Every track reminded me in a vague way of an old Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 game, and it was marvellous.

I’d love to share the whole album with you, but apparently you need an official wooden leg, eyepatch and parrot for that, so I can’t. This link, however, will give you a 30 seconds iTunes preview of the song Bricks and Mortar. If you’re my age or older, I’m sure you’ll be swept away in a wave of gaming nostalgia when you hear the background music.

My starting point for a trip down memory lane
My starting point for a trip down memory lane

This  got me running off to YouTube to relive some great synthesiser tunes of times gone by. Games like Turrican, Blood Money, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and Lemmings (to mention but a few) all had fantastic in-game music. The synthesiser sound is so unique, and every time I hear any of these tunes it always manages to transport me back in time to when I was wearing short trousers.

It almost seems a shame that as consoles and PCs have become more powerful, they are now capable of producing full, fantastic surround sound. The days of squeezing every sound from a pathetic synthesiser are dead, replaced by full orchestral scores or EA Trax style pop soundtracks. Today, it would be easy to confuse music from big games with music from big films, and that, I think, shows the industry growing up.

Does this mean that gaming is losing its unique sound, though? Halo has some lovely orchestral music, and almost all the triple A titles have incredible soundtracks full of instruments and complex melodies these days – but do you really think your non-gaming Mum could pick out game music if it were mixed in with a handful of film scores?

I’m not in a million years saying that what gaming needs is to go back to this type of music, but it seems to me that although gaming now has never sounded better, it’ll never sound so unique again.

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7 responses to “Sounds Like Yesterday”

  1. MrCuddleswick avatar
    MrCuddleswick

    Interesting. I think as you mention, the old limitations are no longer there for sound production in games so we’re probably hearing greater variety, cultural diversity and technologically impressive music in games.

    Maybe it will sound unique again though. Maybe the interactivity of games will come into more decisive play and we’ll experience something from game scores that’s very far removed from movie scores. Or maybe we won’t.

    On the subject, have you heard that Kesha – Tic Tock song? There is a strong early-nineties game soundtrack vibe to that melody.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=910ZFGkhuQ0

  2. John Hall avatar
    John Hall

    My favourite game tune of all time was the polyphonic tones of MARBLE MADNESS. My cousin & I once took a pocket tape recorder (yes tape) into a Manchester arcade to capture it. (Some form of early piracy I guess).

  3. MrCuddleswick avatar
    MrCuddleswick

    Oh yes I remember that too. Magic.

  4. gumbie avatar
    gumbie

    every blog i read on here always starts with the statment i or i,ve if not the first word it”s always in the first sentance get over your self peps and write about games not your self.

  5. GraeXZ avatar
    GraeXZ

    Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool is one of the finest songs I’ve heard in the past few months, and i’ve heard little bits and bobs of the whole album and it feels like a radical new direction for the band, while they’ve never had a happy go lucky indie style this new fusion of indie/synthesizer music is giving them the potential to tap in to even darker moods, its added a whole new dimension to their sound.

    Also theres a nintendo synthesizer app out there for the iPhone, and a few bands out there using nintendo 8 bit samples, or other early video game sounds in music, particularly Horse The Band, or Ghengis Tran. Infact I bet there are a lot of artists out there, some signed some unsigned, that are using these sounds in their tracks, the electronic music scene has so much stuff hidden in it you might never see it unless you dig for it.

  6. Tony avatar
    Tony

    Hey, GraeXZ – did you know that The Smashing Pumpkin’s “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” album used the explosion sound effect from Doom?

    And Gumbie – the blogs on Ready Up are peoples personal experiences and thoughts on games and gaming, so they’re going to be written from the persons point of view and therefore will be about the person as well as the game.

    For example, I thought Bioshock was boring, but it would be a hard push for me to have written that without making it clear it was my personal opinion, and not the opinon of all of Ready Up.

  7. MarkuzR avatar
    MarkuzR

    Gawd Lotus Esprit!! That game got me started in digital music, believe it or not 🙂 I remember ripping the audio using Action Replay on my Amiga then taking it all into Protracker and messing around with everything to make my own music based on their techno drumbeat. They were all really stupid, with samples from Neighbours or Tom Baker reading bits and pieces from The Booktower but if I hadn’t started messing around with Protracker back then BECAUSE of Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, I’d probably not be recording all my own material digitally now.

    Great read 🙂

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