My Connection with Final Fantasy and its Musical Magic

I started piano lessons when I was five years old at my local Fine Arts Center. A couple years into my musical journey, I upgraded to an advanced piano class, where the teacher, on top of making everyone learn and perform songs from the Suzuki Piano books and academic track, allowed students to choose their own songs to learn. I was a bit of an ambitious 8-year-old, bringing in works from the likes of the entire Piano-Conductor score of Les Misérables to classic songs by the Beatles, but I remember throughout the years of learning the Suzuki method, I consistently brought in music from the Final Fantasy series, specifically Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2, both games I owned on my XBOX 360 and was obsessed with at the time.

For sake of context, Final Fantasy is a role-playing video game series known for its incredible world-building, deep character development, and rich combat systems, all of which change for every single game in the main franchise (for example, if you play through Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake, you’ll quickly realize that the two are not the same in terms of combat and even plot). The Final Fantasy series is also known for its rich and sprawling musical catalog in the repertoire of video gaming. The music is one of the main contributing factors to how the player delves into whatever world they are given, whether it’s Spira from FFX, Valisthea from FFXVI, or Gran Pulse and Cocoon from FFXIII (two worlds 8-year old me was VERY familiar with). 

The style of music Final Fantasy involves can mostly be attributed to composer Nobeo Uematsu, a self-taught piano player who composed the scores to Final Fantasy games I-X. Uematsu listened to quite a bit of conceptual and progressive rock music, such as the Beatles, Elton John, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson, citing all those names as his biggest influences for the Final Fantasy series. On a first listen, it may be initially confusing on how these bands and musicians could have influenced these scores so much, but luckily there’s a connection: the leitmotif. A leitmotif is any recurring musical theme, usually representing a symbol or character(think of the Imperial March playing EVERYTIME Darth Vader shows up in Star Wars – just the existence of that piece adds so much to Vader’s characterization as a terrifying and dark figure). These leitmotivs appear individually in albums such as Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Dark Side of the Moon, and In the Court of the Crimson King, usually representing symbols of emotional value, changed by the context in which they are found. 

These leitmotivs are more than prevalent in Uematsu’s work. If you listen to Kefka’s Theme from FFVI (the theme for main villain from the game which plays every time he appears, a la Imperial March), you hear a clown-like (yet simple) theme, mockingly played out through chiptune. Later, when he (spoiler alert) comes back as the final boss after becoming the ruling deity of the game’s universe, the final boss theme, a prog-rock epic called Dancing Mad, recites this same melody surrounded by shifting basslines and sporadic time signatures. The progression of the musical theme allows the player to identify with this character and also the progression of their arc throughout the game. Originally, this melody is played through an accordion-esque instrument, perfectly fit for a clown. When this melody comes back in Dancing Mad, it’s played with a church organ patch, an instrument used typically in a religious context, musically illustrating the “GOD” status Kefka has reached at this point in the game(for reference, look at the sheet music snippets below, specifically Kefka’s Theme and the top line of Dancing Mad — same melody, different contexts). These kind of leitmotivs are used throughout every single Final Fantasy game, even games Uematsu didn’t compose, showing both his influence and Final Fantasy’s roots in music that tells a story.

Kefka’s Theme (FFVI) – Nobeo Uematsu

Dancing Mad(FFVI) – Nobeo Uematsu

Nowadays, Final Fantasy music is popular, well-known, and revered by most people. “One Winged Angel” (Sephiroth’s theme from Final Fantasy VII) is known as one of the most recognizable songs from gaming due to both the popularity of FFVII and its Remake, as well as the features of Cloud and Sephiroth in Super Smash Bros. Square Enix has released three separate Theatrhythm rhythm games, which feature Final Fantasy characters fending off against monsters while the player presses buttons in time (think Guitar Hero but an RPG). Distant Worlds is a touring orchestra that specifically plays orchestral arrangements of Final Fantasy music, and they were just at the Nashville Schermerhorn Symphony Center last year. Clearly, Final Fantasy music has resonated with countless other fans besides me. In my free time, I still pull up a FFXIII Piano Collections sheet music book now and then to work out the melodies I grew up with and track my own personal musical journey, and it’s a really special constant in my creative life. It makes me glad to know that music I feel so fondly about has affected so many others.

-Spencer 🙂

Sources:

MuseScore – musescore.com (transcriptions by Torby Brand(Kefka’s Theme) and Umbral Goat(Dancing Mad))

The Power of Music in Gaming

I would like to begin with an admission: As I write this, I’m listening to the Undertale 5th Anniversary Concert, as I tend to do fairly frequently while doing work. My downloads on Spotify consist primarily of video game soundtracks, including (but not limited to) the entirety of the OMORI and Octopath Traveler OSTs, an album of lo-fi covers of music from the Legend of Zelda, and a playlist titled “game bops” that includes tracks from Hollow Knight, Celeste, Undertale, Deltarune, and others. I learned how to semi-illegally download music into iTunes specifically for the purpose of being able to listen to pieces from the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 soundtrack on repeat until I could notate them by ear.

That was actually several admissions, but in short, I really like video game music, okay?

I obviously enjoy it aesthetically – a lot of the soundtracks I’ve mentioned are simply good music – but there are several ways in which video game music is particularly powerful due to its relationship with gaming. Here are just a few:

Immersion

Several others have discussed immersion and its importance in gaming, so I’ll skip right to the bit about music. Obviously, sound design plays a large role in immersion, since replicating the “soundscape” of an environment is an important part of making a player feel transported into the game world. However, we don’t usually have music playing in the background of our lives, so how does the soundtrack contribute?

Video games, like film, take advantage of our enculturation to immerse us – by using motifs that have historically been used in media to depict certain environments, the composer cues the player to expect that type of environment. For example, jingle bells are well established as an auditory symbol of wintertime, so by incorporating them into a piece of video game soundtrack in a cold, wintery area, the player is further immersed in the winter “vibe”. Similarly, to depict a desert environment, composers will often use instruments such the sitar, guitar, and various percussion instruments. They might also feature pitch bending or non-Western scales. Often, this music doesn’t resemble that of any particular desert-based culture, but because of the film and games industry consistently employing this style for desert environments, it feels natural and immersive.

“Flamesgrace, Guiding Light” by Yasunori Nishiki – Can you tell what type of place this is just by the music?

Emotional Manipulation

Not the bad kind of manipulation! I mean the kind we want in our media, where we feel compelled to emotionally respond to the situations, events, and characters present in a game. It is well-established in the psychological literature that music is deeply intertwined with emotion, although we don’t quite understand how or why. It makes sense, then, that music is frequently utilized in media, particularly film, to provoke certain emotions and experiences. Consider the playful, peaceful character of Howard Shore’s “Concerning Hobbits”, the swashbuckling drama of Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer’s “He’s a Pirate”, or the awe evoked by John William’s theme for “Jurassic Park”. These same principles can be applied to the more cinematic elements of games. But what makes game music unique is its role in gameplay and how the player experiences the interactive elements of the game. One study demonstrated this importance by measuring cortisol, a stress hormone, while subjects played a shooter game. When there was music present, the players exhibited a greater stress response. This has implications for immersion – they are physiologically responding to the game events – as well as performance – a healthy amount of stress can be beneficial for attention to and execution of difficult tasks. Music can also augment the emotional payoff of completing a game – in the wake of a dramatic encounter, the ending themes of games in which I was invested frequently bring me to tears.

Narrative and Nostalgia

We don’t always notice it, but the soundtrack of a game can play a major role in the storytelling. Undertale is a classic example of storytelling via music, specifically through the usage of various leitmotifs which represent characters, relationships, and ideas. For example, Toriel and Asgore have similar motives in their battle themes, alluding to their past relationship. Similarly, the themes associated with Flowey and Asriel throughout the game share multiple motives. The events of the game are intertwined with the music, hinting at the underlying story and providing experienced players various “aha!” moments while replaying the game.

A motif can provoke memories from earlier within a game for narrative reasons, but in long-running series of games, motives can also be used to tie together separate games released years, or even decades apart. The Legend of Zelda series features many of the same motives and themes across its various installments, and with great success. For returning players, especially those who may have grown up playing earlier games, these references evoke a great sense of nostalgia and familiarity. Similar to how soundtracks can use enculturation to amplify immersion, they can use established associations between musical themes and characters, locations, or concepts within a game world to set expectations or imply events. For example, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess share the location of the Lost Woods. Twilight Princess also borrows the musical theme of the Lost Woods, inducing nostalgia and connecting the two settings. However, the Twilight Princess version is modified to be very different in character – this version is mysterious, and lacking the jaunty playfulness of the original theme. This mirrors the darker, creepier setting of Twilight Princess in general, as well as the fact that the location seems to be largely forgotten and desolate, while its predecessor in Ocarina of Time was populated by the childlike Kokiri. The musical reference therefore is a fun, nostalgic addition for long-time fans, but it also contributes to the overarching story and world in an impactful way.

Video Game Composers Deserve So Much Respect, Y’all

Part of the reason I rave about video game music isn’t just the aesthetics, nor their value to games – in addition to being beautiful and important, game soundtracks are incredibly impressive in scope. Scoring a movie is a lot of work, but it’s ultimately only a 1.5-2 hour runtime. Video games can take anywhere from a few hours to several full days worth of time to complete -many JRPGs have a main story that requires over 60 hours of playtime. OMORI, a relatively short JRPG, has an OST with nearly 180 tracks, totaling almost 4 hours of music. The Final Fantasy VII remake soundtrack is over 8 hours long!

Additionally, games are inherently interactive, so the music can’t be precisely scripted; it has to react to the player’s choices. Oftentimes, different pieces need to blend seamlessly into one another. Octopath Traveler is an excellent example of this, where each protagonist has a unique motif, which is incorporated into a “hype” theme before each boss battle, which then transitions into a unique “transition” clip, which leads into the boss theme itself. It’s incredibly complex on the composing end, but feels effortless for the player, and really adds to the drama of the story.

If you’re interested in music theory, here is an explanation of the soundtrack magic I described!

TL;DR: The soundtrack is an underappreciated aspect of video games that deserves more love! Video composers deserve so much respect and hype, and game studies can and should incorporate music into analyses of immersion, narrative, gameplay, and culture.

-Audrey Scudder

Mario Kart, Nickelback, and “Twilight”: A Theory of Art

Picture this.

It’s 3 AM. You’re tired. The last thing you want to be doing is arguing with your roommate, but you are anyway. This time, the central question: “What is art?”

You say Rembrandt. He says Mario Kart.

You say Beethoven. He says Nickelback.

You say Hamlet. He says Twilight.

“Dude what?”

“What.”

So you give up.

You go to bed. You get a bad night’s sleep. You wake up the next day. …And now you start thinking. What actually is art?

—–

That didn’t actually happen just for the record. (Well, that didn’t exactly happen I’ll say.) Nonetheless, that story does a pretty good job of illustrating the difficulty of defining the term art.

There are quite a few people today that have a very hard time calling modern art that which it is: art. And, to some extent, I understand the challenge. It can be strange to refer to The Night Watch and Rainbow Road in the same sentence. And even stranger to call Für Elise and a guy whose voice is gravellier than a Vanderbilt construction site crying into a microphone the same word (though I don’t think anyone could, would, or should debate the transcendent beauty of the Mii song). But that doesn’t mean something is not art.

Please treat yourself to this incredible masterpiece. The last ~5 minutes are my favorite so make sure to listen to the whole thing!

You might have heard someone at some point say, “History repeats itself.” If you haven’t, now you have. And if you have, know that person was right. Never has this cliché revealed its banal brilliance more clearly than in the history of art.

In almost every major artistic movement in history, the ‘modern’ art at the time was an object of collective, societal scorn. Take, for instance, the rise of the novel in the Romantic Period. Throughout its inception, the novel was mercilessly degraded by critics (especially novels written by women) for being less fine-tuned, less taut, and less ‘artistic’ than the poetry and other writings that dominated the mainstream. Now, though, we look at the novel as one of the most beautiful, artistically robust, and creative literary genres.

Similarly, the Impressionists of the late 18^th Century were ridiculed by their contemporaries for breaking from the classical painting tradition. Yet now, we consider some Impressionist paintings, like Monet’s Water Lilies series, to be some of the greatest works of art ever produced.

A gorgeous example of Monet’s Impressionism

In other words, it’s not uncommon to see ‘modern’ art demeaned or cast aside in favor of something better from the past. And now we are seeing countless critics viciously debate the ‘artiness’ of new art. But history repeats itself, right? Haven’t we learned? I guess not.

Historically speaking, though, we are a little but unique because we haven’t just broken from artistic tradition – we have created a brand-new form of art: the video game. The video game as form of media has been around for not even close to 100 years yet, but the artistry in video games is hard to dispute. Just watch the gorgeous graphics of literally any new console game. Just lose yourself in the lush symbolism of Braid. Heck, just listen to Delfino Square.

Video games aren’t not art because they are new. They aren’t not art because some critics say so. If fact, because some people say that, video games almost unequivocally are art, ironically. That is, if history has anything to say about it.

This isn’t to say that video games are in any way inherently better than Shakespeare or Da Vinci or Mozart. I wouldn’t want to make that argument at any rate. But we can’t dismiss them just because they’re new and just because some other people do.

Old art vs. new –
Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” and Nintendo’s “Mario Kart 8” (picture from Nintendo.com)

---

So, what is art? I really have no idea.

But is ‘modern’ art still art? Well, I’m assuming so. But I guess we’ll know for sure in about 100 years or so.

-Peter

Podcasting — The Future of News Media

With the increasingly shortening attention span of the average person, the printed newspaper has become the least popular medium for news. News is now transmitted through a variety of different formats — such as television, internet, and video — and you would be hard pressed to find anyone that still reads the morning paper. Hell, I cannot even remember a single time I have read a newspaper throughout the 19 years of my life. The limitations of the printed medium just can’t compare with the affordances of new visual and auditory media. As a result, news media outlets are adapting to the current social climate.

News media outlets such as Vox Media and Vice News have taken advantage of the growing popularity of YouTube by creating informative, infographic videos that incorporate animations, video clips, and graphics with the spoken word to capture the audience’s attention. On the other hand, broadcast companies such as Fox, NBC, and CNN have taken advantage of television broadcasting to disseminate the news and reach broader audiences. These visual mediums have infinitely more potential to capture one’s attention than the small black and white words that fill newspapers.

Just take a look at the video and newspaper below. Which one would you be more likely to read or watch?

The video, right? I agree. There is simply no comparison between the two mediums. With print newspaper, there is just not enough stimuli to compete with these other forms of news. Just like the common idiom states, a picture is worth a thousand words, and there is no way in hell I am going to read a thousand words; so, just show me the picture.

While these mediums do a great job of capturing your attention, they require your complete and undivided attention. People are busy. Most work 9 to 5 jobs, more people than ever commute to work, and a lot don’t have the time nor the energy to engage in these news mediums. So, how can the news be translated in another way to adapt to our busy lifestyles?

Podcasting has emerged as a new, great alternative for consuming the news. It allows for the average person to keep up to date with the news, while performing their routine day-to-day tasks. Depending on the type of job you have, you could be listening to podcasts the entire workday. News media outlets need to take advantage of this emerging medium. With podcasting, news media outlets have the opportunity to be in the ears of the masses for large portions of the day.

Newspaper The New York Times has taken advantage of this opportunity with its podcast The Daily. They take the most significant current news stories and thoroughly examine them in a condensed 20-40 minutes. This audio format affords them a lot more freedom than print newspapers. For the Blasey-Kavanaugh hearing, they took actual recordings from the hearing, brought in guest speakers who have personal connections with Kavanaugh, and commented on specific key incidents that occurred during the hearing. There is a lot more nuance that can be conveyed in this format.

By listening to the actual hearing itself, a lot more is conveyed than words on a page. You can hear the intonations of their voice and emotions in their speech, and you can form your own opinions based off them. It makes it much more difficult to take out of context, and it holds a much more significant impact when you actually hear the words coming from their source. Podcasting also gives the audience a much more human take on the news. Hearing the reporter’s analysis through his or her voice helps the audience identify the difference between analytical opinions and objective facts.

With that said, podcasting offers an exciting, new alternative to traditional forms of newscasting, yet few news broadcasting companies have begun to utilize it. Podcasting is slowly growing in popularity, while these other forms are quickly declining. These companies need to advance into the future and pick up this growing medium. It is only a matter of time before podcasting becomes a significant component of news media.

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-33yyz-4bc4d9f

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/n7abi-4b59fac-dir?from=share&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&download=0&vjs=1&skin=1

*Sorry, I know it’s annoying to click a link, but WordPress is being a butthole and I have been trying to fix it for hours.

Ethan Nguyen

Is borrowing content necessary for artistic innovation?

In class this past Thursday, we had a very interesting discussion on copyright laws and how they frequently limit creativity rather than encourage it. In our reading of T.L. Taylor’s Whose Game Is This Anyway? we looked at how the community of people who participate in a video game often play just as big of a role in the creation of the game’s culture and identity as the game designers themselves. Through the players’ and fans’ reapproriation of the game’s artifacts into things like fanfiction, they are building this culture. I even have a friend who got fairly well-known by recording vocal covers of popular video game songs.

While the idea of content ownership in gaming is really fascinating, I find myself more interested in how incredibly intrinsic the idea of borrowing and building upon others’ work has been in shaping the course of music history, as this is an area about which I know much more. We talked about music and sampling a bit in class, but I think it’s important to look at again, especially a few of the most seminal examples, as this is generally how entire new genres begin to form.

One of the first and best examples of how this borrowing of previous work has allowed creativity is in the 1979 song “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang.

The song began when someone was playing another 1979 song by the funk & disco band Chic called “Good Times”. One of the members of the Gang began rapping over this bass line, and a hit was born. Not long after, rap and hip hop began to emerge as a dominant force in music, with a huge amount of the beats from this era produced via old vinyl records of funk artists.

Later, in the mid-90s, a lesser-known but similarly seminal work was spawned by producer DJ Shadow that went on to influence the creation new genres and styles. His album, Endtroducing…, is an instrumental hip-hop album created entirely by samples.

This album not only borrowed from its predecessors’ works, but was entirely composed of them. It managed to create something new and inspire more to produce their own sample-based music. Another similarly influential and innovative sample-based work was The Avalanches’ Since I Left You, released in 2000.

Said to contain over 3,500 samples, drawing from 1960s and 70s disco and pop music to just about any other genre, the album built its own narrative while also pushing the limits of what sample-based music can accomplish. They were able to take the works of their predecessors and take sampling in an entirely new direction outside of hip-hop, paving the way for later pop music to dig into its musical ancestry for inspiration. In the past few years especially, we’ve seen a huge number of artists become popular through remixes and mashups who later go on to make their own original pieces. Electronic producer Shlohmo is a good example of this.

So while of course it’s necessary to allow an artist to retain the rights to their own music, it’s important to understand that innovation typically does not and arguably cannot come from nowhere. Artists necessarily do not and cannot work outside of historical context, so in many ways, this borrowing is incredibly important — if not necessary — to the evolution of an art form.

– Logan W