Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And I just made the person sitting across from me
Speaker 1: crack up his name entitled our senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: But reverse that. Yes, I love the band, we all do,
Speaker 1: but there's other things in life, you know that's more important.
Speaker 1: M hm uh yeah. Actually we're not gonna be talking
Speaker 1: a lot about bands per se, no, but we are
Speaker 1: talking about music, definitely the history of music and video games.
Speaker 1: And I have an interest in this because, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm a gamer. I enjoyed playing video games,
Speaker 1: but I really had early on a very deep fascination
Speaker 1: and admiration for some of the greats in video game music.
Speaker 1: And you have to remember, Chris and I both come
Speaker 1: from an era in which home video games either had
Speaker 1: no music at all when they first came out, or
Speaker 1: or no sounds at all when they first came out,
Speaker 1: or the sounds were let's call them primitive. Well, I, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that's uh, that may be
Speaker 1: an oversimplification because we had well, you know, the early
Speaker 1: palm games Boop. You're right, that's incredibly sophisticated. I retract
Speaker 1: my statement. Beat Boop is an amazing, amazing soundtrack. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just point that out now. We We've talked about
Speaker 1: the history of video games in different contexts in many
Speaker 1: in many podcasts, um. And not to get back into that,
Speaker 1: but you know, video games are are several decades old, now, Okay.
Speaker 1: The first one that I found, according to my research,
Speaker 1: was Pong Nolan Bushnell's amazing video game Pong with Magnificent Octopus,
Speaker 1: his Magnificent Octopus. I actually, actually I I still enjoy
Speaker 1: Pong to something degree. It's very simple, but sometimes the
Speaker 1: simple games are are fun. I was just played exclusively.
Speaker 1: If there's no paint for me to watch dry, I
Speaker 1: love a Pong alright, well, alright, but yes, I actually
Speaker 1: do like playing Pong too. I'm just I'm grouchy because
Speaker 1: my medication is wearing of note to self, don't record
Speaker 1: more podcasts with with Jonathan when he's sick. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Pong Okay, we're not talking a lot of soundtrack here,
Speaker 1: but it did have at least have noise. It had
Speaker 1: sound sound effects that went along with the ball hitting
Speaker 1: the paddle and then of course the ball missing the paddle,
Speaker 1: also hitting the walls and hitting the walls yes, boop whoop.
Speaker 1: And to elaborate on that, before Palm came out, there
Speaker 1: were a few home game systems, but none of them
Speaker 1: incorporate sound. They were absolutely silent. Yep, yep. Now, UM
Speaker 1: one of the games that I had sort of forgotten about,
Speaker 1: and basically I went to UH in search of video
Speaker 1: game music history and I found it a really awesome
Speaker 1: timeline by Glenn McDonald out there. If you can find
Speaker 1: it should be pretty easy to find. UM. But he
Speaker 1: brought up one that I had completely forgotten and didn't
Speaker 1: think of as a video game, but and it's really
Speaker 1: I guess technically not but as an electronic game, Simon,
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize it was that old. UM. But yeah, Simon.
Speaker 1: It revolves around sound because you're trying to match the
Speaker 1: colors and and lights and sounds UM in a pattern.
Speaker 1: And it's a very very simple game. You just try
Speaker 1: to repeat it goes you know, from the first note
Speaker 1: to the second note of the third and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to repeat back the atter in it plays for you
Speaker 1: and until you finally miss one and it buzzes. It
Speaker 1: gets too complex for you to be able to follow.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's it's funny because I had I
Speaker 1: had completely not thought about that as an electronic uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a step in the history of electronic gaming
Speaker 1: and the sound UM. But the next one he mentioned
Speaker 1: was another favorite of mine back from my days hanging
Speaker 1: out at the skating rink, UM Tito's Gunfight UM, which
Speaker 1: was the first to use rather than using hardwired circuits,
Speaker 1: it used the actual microprocessor to make the sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should point out that these early game systems, everything
Speaker 1: was hardwired into the console. Like the Pong game. You
Speaker 1: couldn't play other games on that system. That's all it did.
Speaker 1: Let's play the variations of Pong, and so all the
Speaker 1: sounds that the console could make were hardwired into the circuitry. Um.
Speaker 1: There was nothing beyond that. And a lot of these
Speaker 1: early games like Simon, same thing. If you had assignment,
Speaker 1: It's not like you could suddenly play music. I mean,
Speaker 1: apart from music that would have four notes to it
Speaker 1: and a little noise if you got anything wrong wrong.
Speaker 1: You couldn't play a song on it, no, because it
Speaker 1: only had those four tones that was capable of making. Yes,
Speaker 1: now that's you know, in in contrast to two other machines. UM. Actually,
Speaker 1: it reminds me a little bit of Loops, which just
Speaker 1: came out in the last year. I have one of those.
Speaker 1: You do have loops, so do I. That's funny. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that, but yeah, you can. You can actually
Speaker 1: play music on that to some degree. But the sounds,
Speaker 1: they're far more advanced sounds on that. UM. Another system actually,
Speaker 1: one that I owned, the Attar, also had hardwired sounds
Speaker 1: on it. UM you were you were limited the people
Speaker 1: who would program games that would come on the cartridges,
Speaker 1: which are using ROMs you snap into place in the
Speaker 1: cartridge slot read only memory. Yes. Uh, the people who
Speaker 1: programmed games had to take advantage of the sounds that
Speaker 1: are hardwired into the console itself. It's a very limited
Speaker 1: sound library and so you know what what you had
Speaker 1: to deal with was, you know, your standard and lots
Speaker 1: of little I still remember the McDonald brought it up,
Speaker 1: but I still remember the tank sound from combat that right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were there were various beeps and bloops that were
Speaker 1: at different pitches, so you could make some very very
Speaker 1: primitive music. Essentially would program it, hard program it onto
Speaker 1: the cartridge and that would tell the console, okay, make
Speaker 1: these noises. So this is still like besides the Gunfight game.
Speaker 1: These are more like Simon, and as far as music goes,
Speaker 1: they're more like Simon than they are a computer with
Speaker 1: a dedicated sound card or system for handling sound files. Yes,
Speaker 1: just just to to clarify, Gunfight was an our standalone
Speaker 1: arcade game, and so was the initial version of Pong.
Speaker 1: But there were Pong in its many many clones made
Speaker 1: it into the home and along with the UM But
Speaker 1: do you know what the the first UH system was
Speaker 1: that took advantage that didn't have to be hardwired on
Speaker 1: a home system. UH. If I had to guess, I'd
Speaker 1: say it was the NES UH. No, Actually it was
Speaker 1: another system that you probably did not have. I don't
Speaker 1: think you've ever mentioned having that. The Odyssey to UH
Speaker 1: had programmable stop laughing, had programmable cartridges and the programmers
Speaker 1: could encode sound a sound library on the cartridge itself.
Speaker 1: Um so, and it also had speech synthesis, which explained
Speaker 1: why it sold so well. Oh wait a minute, the
Speaker 1: Intellivision also had speech synthesis usually was pretty primitive. There
Speaker 1: were normally just a few words that each game would
Speaker 1: be able to do. I had B seventeen balm or
Speaker 1: that's exactly how it's on it too. I'm not if
Speaker 1: any of you guys had that game out there, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. Well, actually, uh, McDonald said
Speaker 1: that Major League Baseball was the first talking game. Did
Speaker 1: you have that one with Strike? Yeah? Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: that game as well. I'm not proud of this, it's okay. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what. At the time though, it was, it
Speaker 1: was a big deal and it's funny. Uh Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the things that he that McDonald pointed out in
Speaker 1: his timeline was, um, even though these systems were primitive
Speaker 1: in terms of sound design and soundscaping, uh, compared to now,
Speaker 1: I mean what we have now we've got actual songs
Speaker 1: from regular recording arts that are actually encoded into the game. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: even without that level of sophistication, they still provided um
Speaker 1: a lot of context and character and richness for the
Speaker 1: game player. Uh. He specifically mentioned Space Invaders because you
Speaker 1: hear the marching and and as they get closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the planet, it speeds up, and you hear
Speaker 1: the sound of it speed up, and then that you know, constant,
Speaker 1: you know, triggers your panic response. It does. And you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think, you know, yeah, that's that's kids stuff, that's
Speaker 1: no big deal. It really does have an effect, and
Speaker 1: it has effect on how you feel when you're playing
Speaker 1: the game and increases your uh, your desire to kill
Speaker 1: off those little buggers so you can face another wave
Speaker 1: of those little buggers. And some of the early ar
Speaker 1: kid games like well, you know, things like pac Man
Speaker 1: and Donkey Kong had their little, little tiny elements of
Speaker 1: music to them. It was almost like a jingle for
Speaker 1: a commercial in the sense that it was not terribly sophisticated,
Speaker 1: not terribly lone, but very very catching. Right do do
Speaker 1: do do do do do? Yeah, you can do that
Speaker 1: if you if you try that to someone and they
Speaker 1: do that what Chris just did. That means that they
Speaker 1: were around in the early eighties and they played a
Speaker 1: lot of Donkey Kong yes um Unfo Sinately, as I
Speaker 1: was doing research for this podcast, I got sidelined by
Speaker 1: VG Music dot com is the video game Music Archive,
Speaker 1: and it has all those different files that you could
Speaker 1: listen to the music from those video games. There's a
Speaker 1: good hour of my life that just disappeared, and I
Speaker 1: don't know where it went. Well, let's do you mind
Speaker 1: if I if I skip ahead a bit. I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking about a lot of the Arcade games and
Speaker 1: a lot of the the like Atari bas games. But
Speaker 1: really the Atari system was pretty primitive. I was just
Speaker 1: gonna ask you a triviuta, a quick trivia question. Hit me,
Speaker 1: do you know? Really I'm grouchy. He never says that
Speaker 1: I will take it out on tyler Um. He had
Speaker 1: one thing to do today. Okay, So do you know
Speaker 1: who wrote the music for Donkey Kong? I do not.
Speaker 1: It was, in fact Miyamoto San himself, Miamoto, Yes, Shigeru
Speaker 1: Miyamoto who wrote the music for for Donkey Kong on
Speaker 1: a small electronic keyboard, according to UH. According to Glenn McDonald,
Speaker 1: so Miyamoto is a giant the game industry. But I
Speaker 1: had no idea. And it's it's funny to show you that.
Speaker 1: That again shows you what how ground level he was.
Speaker 1: And this whole thing, well, the reason why I was
Speaker 1: going to skip ahead, was that if if we want
Speaker 1: to talk about home consoles, which really, yeah, we eventually
Speaker 1: are going to be focusing mostly on the console system
Speaker 1: because you know, the arcades eventually faded from popularity, not
Speaker 1: that they don't exist anymore, but in the United States
Speaker 1: they're few and far between, and the development for games
Speaker 1: tends to be more focused on the home market than
Speaker 1: on the arcade market in the United States. There's still
Speaker 1: places like Japan arcades are huge, but um not in
Speaker 1: the United States so much. Well, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the original Nintendo system and how it was kind
Speaker 1: of a huge jump ahead of everything else. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why when I say huge jump ahead,
Speaker 1: I mean it's primitive compared to today's consoles, but at
Speaker 1: the time was a big deal. It had four whole
Speaker 1: channels for music. Well, when you think about it, was
Speaker 1: came out in the mid eighties and four channel stereo
Speaker 1: was kind of a big deal. Yeah, And you've got
Speaker 1: to remember that most of these game systems had one channel, like,
Speaker 1: so if there was a sound effect, it had to
Speaker 1: interrupt the music or so if there's so like when
Speaker 1: Mario would jump in Dulu, do the they'tle thing it
Speaker 1: would it would interrupt the music in the middle of it. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so having a system that would allow you to play
Speaker 1: four channels of sound was a big deal. Now, one
Speaker 1: of those channels was usually used for sound effects, and
Speaker 1: the other three would be used in various forms for music. UM.
Speaker 1: I read about game composers who would try and try
Speaker 1: figure out ways to make a a four note chord,
Speaker 1: which is hard to do if you've only got three channels.
Speaker 1: So what they would do is they would do a
Speaker 1: instead of doing a true chord, they would do essentially
Speaker 1: a broken chord. They would play the notes back to
Speaker 1: back so quickly that to us it sounds almost like
Speaker 1: they were played simultaneously. So so you would get the
Speaker 1: effect of the chord without actually truly playing a chord.
Speaker 1: And then there were other game developers who would allow
Speaker 1: for music to take over and then when a sound
Speaker 1: effect comes in, it would drop one channel out of
Speaker 1: the four out so the sound effect could take place. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because typically, uh, you know, I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: our musician listeners are going to say, well, would you know,
Speaker 1: chord really only requires three notes, but you would want, um,
Speaker 1: the richness and depth of additional octaves in there too, right,
Speaker 1: And and I want to mention one guy in particular
Speaker 1: as really being instrumental, if you will, for you in
Speaker 1: the development of video game music as far as as
Speaker 1: its effect in the game industry. I'm interested to see
Speaker 1: who this is. Cochi Condo, the composer for both Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda. And that's the reason
Speaker 1: why I'm singling out Cochi Condo. And please people don't
Speaker 1: write into me and tell me that I should talk
Speaker 1: about some other composer, because we're gonna talk about a
Speaker 1: few others before the end of this. But the reason
Speaker 1: why I wanted to single him out and mentioned him
Speaker 1: is because, uh, he sort of created this this idea
Speaker 1: in the video games of different environments having different soundtracks, right,
Speaker 1: so when you moved from one environment into another, you
Speaker 1: would get a new uh tune playing in the background,
Speaker 1: and this would enhance your your video gaming experience. That
Speaker 1: was Super Mario Brothers. It was pretty simple. There was
Speaker 1: one tune for when you were above ground, and there
Speaker 1: was one tune when you were in the dungeon levels,
Speaker 1: and then I think there was a different one when
Speaker 1: you were underwater. So the interesting part there is that
Speaker 1: this this really gave composers for video games that really
Speaker 1: gave them a shot in the arms, saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: this can be more than just adding a little extra
Speaker 1: element into a video game. It's more than just the
Speaker 1: icing on the cake. There's there's an element here that
Speaker 1: can be intrinsic to the video game playing experience. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, most of the composers for video games
Speaker 1: were working exclusively with one developer, and in a way,
Speaker 1: actually some of the earliest video games, the composers were
Speaker 1: people who were just on staff who happened to also
Speaker 1: be musicians. So, you know, in the video game industry
Speaker 1: when it first started out, they didn't have the resources
Speaker 1: or the cloud really or the prestige to attract quote
Speaker 1: unquote real composers. Now, I say quote unquote because I
Speaker 1: consider the guys who came up with these video game
Speaker 1: tunes to be real composers, because I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of these tunes I'm still a big fan of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're speaking of people who are dedicated to composing.
Speaker 1: That what they do, that's that's their main And then
Speaker 1: eventually you got to a point where video game developers
Speaker 1: would be able to hire someone who specifically specialized in music,
Speaker 1: but even then they were another person in the company payroll.
Speaker 1: It's not like you commissioned someone to compose music for
Speaker 1: your video game. The thing that makes the video game
Speaker 1: music really interesting that I think uh kachy Condo uh
Speaker 1: kind of launched was this idea of the interactive experience,
Speaker 1: and that things that the player does changes the environment
Speaker 1: in some way, and in this case, it would change
Speaker 1: the music that's playing in the background depending on where
Speaker 1: the player was. And that's fundamentally a different experience than
Speaker 1: composing music for either a film or just composing music period,
Speaker 1: like creating a symphony, right because in those it's the
Speaker 1: audience is passive. There's nothing the audience can do that's
Speaker 1: going to alter the progressional music sort of causing a
Speaker 1: scene at a life symphony. Don't do that, by the way,
Speaker 1: I've done hundreds of years ago. I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that anymore. I'm tired of being thrown out of
Speaker 1: all the symphony halls in the United States though I
Speaker 1: couldn't you know what to him, but throughout the Opera
Speaker 1: House in Sydney. So anyway, the there's a goal the
Speaker 1: it's it's it seems like it would almost be closer
Speaker 1: to movie music and in a lot of ways than
Speaker 1: it would be to traditional symphonic music, because it's programmatic,
Speaker 1: it has a it has a theme to it, and
Speaker 1: it actually is helping tell the story. Right, It's meant
Speaker 1: to help elevate the experience. But even with movie music,
Speaker 1: you still have a set, uh set series of events. Right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly exactly. But but to just to elaborate on
Speaker 1: your point, the reason why it's even different from that
Speaker 1: is the second time you watch that movie, that movie,
Speaker 1: unless you're watching some really weird choose your own adventure
Speaker 1: thing is going to progress the exact same way, so
Speaker 1: that the first time clue any and the hundredth time, okay,
Speaker 1: sure clue the end of Clue for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know, Clue came out in four starring Tim
Speaker 1: Curry and it was phenomenal and had three different dings. Um.
Speaker 1: But but apart from that, in most situations, the the
Speaker 1: eight hundredth time you watch the movie is going to
Speaker 1: be the same as the first as far as the
Speaker 1: progression of scenes go, barring director's cuts and all that mess.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the composer does not have to
Speaker 1: create musical segues or musical themes that will be incorporated
Speaker 1: or perhaps mixed in with other themes based upon what
Speaker 1: the characters going through. So this is also the era
Speaker 1: in which I think, possibly because a lot of us
Speaker 1: grew up with this type of music, but I think
Speaker 1: this era is also what inspired, um, what would later become. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know people who play these kinds of video game
Speaker 1: scores for others as you know, a symphonic piece and things,
Speaker 1: because some of this music is just so memorable for us. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to mention, um the work of no
Speaker 1: Boo Boo Yomatsu, is that the guy who did Final Fantasy,
Speaker 1: because that for so many people, is that's like a
Speaker 1: big deal, the definitive video game music for a large
Speaker 1: portion of the players out there. Not me because I
Speaker 1: like playing games, that makes sense. But you know, people
Speaker 1: who enjoy Final Fantasy. I don't know what's wrong with you,
Speaker 1: but they're all I'm on medication. Yeah, blame it on
Speaker 1: that direct your hate mail too, Um, but no, they
Speaker 1: but yeah they Final Fantasy has soundtracks available. Um, and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know that when all of this
Speaker 1: started when the video game craze started, people would have
Speaker 1: assumed that this's you buy a soundtrack for a video game.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, but it happens, and it's not unusual anymore. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, and and there are live performances video everything
Speaker 1: from I've seen some great a cappella renditions of classic
Speaker 1: video game music where they run through several like including
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zelda, and and
Speaker 1: and you know the classic games of the NES era
Speaker 1: all the way up. Yeah. See, that's that's all from
Speaker 1: this period. So I think that's this That period is
Speaker 1: really when it's taken off to the point where it's
Speaker 1: something that's noticeable, right and then so so the NES
Speaker 1: really helps set some standards. The next big leap was
Speaker 1: probably from in n with the introduction of the Sony PlayStation.
Speaker 1: So I mean this is a big leap, okay, there
Speaker 1: there there were, Yeah, there were incremental improvements with the
Speaker 1: systems between the NES and when the PlayStation came out.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, Um there were and there were
Speaker 1: some great video games songs that came out during that time.
Speaker 1: But when the Sony PlayStation came out, that allowed up
Speaker 1: to twenty four sampled voices. Yes to play um now
Speaker 1: again in the in the previous generation, and yes, you
Speaker 1: could only play discreet sounds capable that that that the
Speaker 1: machine was capable of sending to the TV. The PlayStation
Speaker 1: allows you to actually sample music yep, and even and
Speaker 1: even to let you use effects like looping in reverb
Speaker 1: what you you couldn't do before. And it and it
Speaker 1: also you know, had CD equality c D quality audio
Speaker 1: since rather than using cartridges as so many of these
Speaker 1: other games did in the past, we were actually dealing
Speaker 1: with an optical disc and it allowed for three different
Speaker 1: types of music within video games. The first one bad
Speaker 1: and carible. You could argue that the first one was
Speaker 1: musical instrument digital interface middi midi uh now miny is
Speaker 1: it's essentially like a language really uh and depending upon
Speaker 1: the synthesizer that's in your UM what I was just
Speaker 1: going to mention, you know, some of them are very
Speaker 1: tiny and give you the force, good lord, So not
Speaker 1: the many Glorians, um, I do hate them. Passion that
Speaker 1: birds brighter than the exploding suns, so so many, so many.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's a like any any device in
Speaker 1: a computer that has a synthesizer in it can play
Speaker 1: back the information stored in a MIDI file and um,
Speaker 1: depending upon the synthesizer, it all sound different in each machine, right,
Speaker 1: So it's so many is not like a standardized sound
Speaker 1: as a standardized way of recording, like of presenting music.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a piano role an old player piano.
Speaker 1: So you have two different player pianos, and one of
Speaker 1: them is in the style of grand piano, and one
Speaker 1: of them is in the style of a honky tonk piano,
Speaker 1: and you put the same role of piano player paper
Speaker 1: in them. One of them is gonna sound very different
Speaker 1: from the other, even though they're both playing the same notes. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the Sunny PlayStation was capable of playing mini music.
Speaker 1: It was also capable of playing mods or digital modules. Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember that now. It's worth noting that some computers
Speaker 1: had been using these different types of formats for years,
Speaker 1: but they weren't really common in home video game consoles,
Speaker 1: probably because the hardware I'm guessing hardware needed uh to
Speaker 1: do that was probably going to be pretty expensive comparatively
Speaker 1: in computer games. This this ability had been there for
Speaker 1: years because this is the era when we've already got
Speaker 1: sound cards for computers like sound Blaster and Roland and
Speaker 1: all those devices that would come out, and you would
Speaker 1: you would actually install the sound card into your computer,
Speaker 1: which would give your computer the capability of playing back
Speaker 1: these kinds of sounds plug speakers and to them, and
Speaker 1: the need to have that music. This was before computers
Speaker 1: would come standard with sound cards. Now, most times if
Speaker 1: you go out and buy a computer, there's at least
Speaker 1: some sort of sound card pre installed where it will
Speaker 1: play back these these file formats. But back in the day,
Speaker 1: you had to do it yourself. Now, like I said,
Speaker 1: it took like Chris was saying, it took a while
Speaker 1: for the consoles to catch up, and Sony PlayStation was
Speaker 1: the first one. So so these digital modules. What was
Speaker 1: interesting to me about these is that it would allow
Speaker 1: you to record the sound of an individual note of
Speaker 1: of a particular instrument. So you would record every sound
Speaker 1: that a tenor saxophone can play individually, each note. You
Speaker 1: then record every single note that a that a a
Speaker 1: piccolo can play. You would record every single note that
Speaker 1: a violin can play, and so you would have a
Speaker 1: sample of each of those notes, and then you could
Speaker 1: build music based on that library of sounds and the
Speaker 1: various notes they are able to play, and you could
Speaker 1: um sort of synthesize the sound of actual music and
Speaker 1: it it was okay, I mean it wasn't you know.
Speaker 1: It was obviously synthesized stuff. But if you were really
Speaker 1: good at programming with mods, you could make some some
Speaker 1: decent music. Now, the problem is that mods are tend
Speaker 1: to be larger file sizes. MIDI is actually a very
Speaker 1: small file size, yes, and so that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why it was so popular in early games, because
Speaker 1: it didn't take up a lot of space and you
Speaker 1: could dedicate that space for things like gameplay. It's also
Speaker 1: why it was so popular and the mides on people's
Speaker 1: home pages, yes, because you could host a MIDI file
Speaker 1: on your homepage and you didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: going over your tiny little cap for your web page.
Speaker 1: So that's why if you visited a web page in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, early to mid nineties, you had that
Speaker 1: looping midi that played some irritating tune and it was terrible.
Speaker 1: And I had those for me. It was Rule Britannia
Speaker 1: was one of them, and Yoho a Pirate's Life for
Speaker 1: me another because I had a page on the British
Speaker 1: Navy and on a page on piracy, and you'll never
Speaker 1: find them people, so don't worry about it. I think
Speaker 1: even if you win the way Back Machine you would
Speaker 1: have trouble finding it. I can't even tell you what
Speaker 1: the address is now. It's too long. That's just funny.
Speaker 1: So we're releasing the Jonathan Strickland find his homepage from
Speaker 1: Don't Don't. I really don't want to see that again.
Speaker 1: But okay, So so it could play the MIDI files,
Speaker 1: you can play the mod files, I said, I could
Speaker 1: play three different times of music. The third was referred
Speaker 1: to at the time as red Book red Book, which
Speaker 1: is now red Book. Of course, you could make CD
Speaker 1: equality music, so you could create a song or or
Speaker 1: a score with a full orchestra if you wanted to
Speaker 1: record it to this format, and it would play it
Speaker 1: back like that. But the problem is that it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of processor power to do it. And the
Speaker 1: article I read, which let me let me pull out
Speaker 1: the title here, it was specific. The article is called
Speaker 1: do game music Not just kids Stuff? By Matthew blinky Um.
Speaker 1: He said that engineers at the time called it stealing
Speaker 1: time from the laser because the lasers meant to let
Speaker 1: you play the game. I was reading the data off
Speaker 1: of the CD, and if you were dedicating some of
Speaker 1: that to audio, it was stealing that time to play
Speaker 1: audio rather than to play the game. So um, that
Speaker 1: was But the PlayStation era really kind of push things
Speaker 1: to a new level. And uh and since then, we've
Speaker 1: got much more sophisticated consoles that are essentially just specialized
Speaker 1: computers that could do it essentially the same thing computers
Speaker 1: can do. So they can read all the different foul
Speaker 1: formats that computers can read. So depending upon what the person,
Speaker 1: what the video game developers preferences, that's what you're gonna get.
Speaker 1: And UM, did you want to add anything. I've got
Speaker 1: a list of some of some composers I wanted to
Speaker 1: go through, but um, and we've mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: them already. I wanted to, uh to mention another note. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is actually something that sort of came up
Speaker 1: in our Sega Saga podcast. Um. Do you remember Resident Evil. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was one of the very first games to start
Speaker 1: using realistic sound effects, which when you're playing a survival
Speaker 1: horror game that's important can be it's very important. Again,
Speaker 1: it adds a lot of depth and feeling to the
Speaker 1: game that you wouldn't have gotten with just music. But
Speaker 1: it's also uh taking us a little that that other
Speaker 1: step closer to being in sort of an interactive movie
Speaker 1: environment where things are you you do have some control
Speaker 1: over it, but it's much more realistic and cinematic than
Speaker 1: it would have been playing you know, berserk. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: also not zombies, but you know still yes, don't touch
Speaker 1: the walls. Um. Yeah. And you know we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: about live performances of these. One of the performance, as
Speaker 1: I should mention, is it's a touring show called Video
Speaker 1: Games Live. Ah, yes, I remember that. It's an orchestral
Speaker 1: performance of video game music. And they even do things
Speaker 1: like they'll they'll do. There's usually a section that walks
Speaker 1: you through the early early days of video gaming, where
Speaker 1: like I was saying, you know, the songs tend to
Speaker 1: be of jingle length. You know, it might be at
Speaker 1: most thirty seconds of music that would loop and so,
Speaker 1: but they'll they'll play that, and and it even begins
Speaker 1: usually humorously with pong, where the entire orchestra is going
Speaker 1: bing bong, bing bong. But works its way up to
Speaker 1: some of my favorites like Elevator Action and Gauntlet Tolude
Speaker 1: do anyway, So the those that's a fun way of
Speaker 1: going to to experience this video game music, and they
Speaker 1: do work their way up to more modern songs. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there have been some composers for television and
Speaker 1: movies who have composed music for video deo games. So, um,
Speaker 1: I have a quick list of some of the folks
Speaker 1: that I think would be interesting. Just to mention Clint
Speaker 1: Bahakian I hope I'm seeing his name correctly. B A
Speaker 1: J A K I A n. Is the fellow who
Speaker 1: wrote the music for Star Wars Knights of the Old
Speaker 1: Republic as well some other Star Wars. So here's here's
Speaker 1: a challenge is taking a franchise which already has a
Speaker 1: very established sound to it, right, so you have to
Speaker 1: essentially take the foundation that John Williams, the composer for
Speaker 1: the original movies, that the foundation he created, and then
Speaker 1: to build on that in a way that is respectful
Speaker 1: and yet is not just a carbon copy of what's
Speaker 1: already come before. Um here's uh Mark Barrel, who wrote
Speaker 1: the music for the Crash Bandicoot series, do a barrel roll,
Speaker 1: barrel roll. Uh. David burgoed Ratchet and Clank. Uh. Greg
Speaker 1: Edmondson who did the music for Uncharted in Firefly. There
Speaker 1: you go. See, there's that that crossover. Uh. There's Dan
Speaker 1: ford in he did Mortal Kombat. Get over here. Um.
Speaker 1: Jason Hayes did the music for World of Warcraft. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see Michael Michael Hinnig who wrote the music for
Speaker 1: Balder's Gate, one of the games I really enjoyed playing. Um.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Oh, Michael Hunter, who did the music for
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto four.
Speaker 1: The theme to Grand Theft Auto four is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite video game themes to come out over the
Speaker 1: last few years. It's um, it's the Soviet one and
Speaker 1: it has this sort of mix between uh, kind of
Speaker 1: a techno sound in the old Soviet sort of music
Speaker 1: that that kind of military style music from the Soviet era.
Speaker 1: And is I really enjoyed that one quite a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see, there's a well we mentioned cog On though,
Speaker 1: of course. Um. There is Michael Land who wrote one
Speaker 1: of my favorite, probably my favorite video game score of
Speaker 1: all time. Do you know what that is? It's the
Speaker 1: Monkey Island Games, The Monkey. I actually have the theme
Speaker 1: to the to the Monkey Island Games on my MP
Speaker 1: three player because that's how much. That's the only video
Speaker 1: game song. No wait, I'm sorry. I also grant the
Speaker 1: thought of four on there, but those are the only
Speaker 1: two video game songs I have on my MP three player. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's Robin Miller, who wrote the music for Missed and Riven.
Speaker 1: Now you could argue that the music in those games
Speaker 1: was very much important to the role of the game,
Speaker 1: to to really get that feeling across. And then I
Speaker 1: have Martin O'Donnell, who wrote the music to the Halo series,
Speaker 1: which is very distinctive with the the Men's chorus, and
Speaker 1: then later on there's a full chorus. Uh. It's actually
Speaker 1: really some cool stuff. And what's funny is that, as
Speaker 1: I recall the original recording of the Men's Chorus were
Speaker 1: that was actually guys who are working for Bungee who
Speaker 1: got together in a recording studio and oh, they just
Speaker 1: they all just sang into the microphones. And I apologize people,
Speaker 1: I'm sick. I don't know what I'm doing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my my list. Now. I know there's a
Speaker 1: Bowels and other video game composers out there. But that's
Speaker 1: that's just a quick list that I grab together, you know.
Speaker 1: You know one, I'm surprised you didn't mention who's that
Speaker 1: Michael Giaquino. Oh, yes, Yes, Michael Giaquino, who who went
Speaker 1: on to write the music for television like Lost, Yes,
Speaker 1: and The Incredibles, which is I'm actually more of a
Speaker 1: fan of his, his his movie music. He wrote for
Speaker 1: music for Medal of Honor. Right, Yes he did, see
Speaker 1: it's all up there somewhere there, you go. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have that written down. And that's the funny thing too,
Speaker 1: when you now that now that we have this kind
Speaker 1: of level of crossover that we we really didn't have
Speaker 1: before between move movies, TV and video games. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all franchising one another. Once you come up with
Speaker 1: a good title, you try to hit as many variations
Speaker 1: of media as he possibly can, so their crossovers too.
Speaker 1: He also, you know, he also did the music for
Speaker 1: Alias Um. But did the video games too, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the the incredible game up Rattui. I'm just looking
Speaker 1: at some of the video game titles. You can see
Speaker 1: him on his sight. But yes, he did the whole
Speaker 1: the U the Medal of Honor series, and also did
Speaker 1: a Call of Duty Finest Hour UM and some of
Speaker 1: the other Call of Duty games. So um, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just amazing too that it has come this far.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't have been able to do that without the
Speaker 1: hardware necessary to to make that happen, and you know,
Speaker 1: the programming ability to add that in. And there's some
Speaker 1: games out there that do this, do this ability of
Speaker 1: this interactive experience of really meshing all the music together
Speaker 1: in ways that are truly phenomenal. For example, the Red
Speaker 1: Dead Redemption game. As you know, it's a Western. It's
Speaker 1: setting it's set in the West, just as the Old
Speaker 1: West is dying. It's the turn of the century, so
Speaker 1: it's the early and it has a music that changes
Speaker 1: based upon the environment you're in. So when you are
Speaker 1: in the the Old West, it's kind of that Old
Speaker 1: West sort of music. When you move into Mexico, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of like horns and mariachi style music. But
Speaker 1: it also uses music to songs to a really really
Speaker 1: good effect. There's a spoiler alert. Spoiler alert for people
Speaker 1: who have not played Red Dead Redemption yet. When you
Speaker 1: first managed to make your way to Mexico. UM as
Speaker 1: soon as you land, once you get past the big
Speaker 1: mission that lets you get there, there's a song that
Speaker 1: plays and it it is shocking when you first hear it,
Speaker 1: not for the content of the song, but because you
Speaker 1: had only been listening to environmental music and uh instrumentation
Speaker 1: up to that point. But then you get into Mexico
Speaker 1: and an actual song with lyrics and vocals, you know,
Speaker 1: it starts up and that's it's it's so powerful a
Speaker 1: moment that it surprises you. And by the way, don't
Speaker 1: get off your horse if you want to listen to
Speaker 1: the song, because I found out the hard way when
Speaker 1: I saw something like, oh, there's a plant I need
Speaker 1: to pick up, and I got off the horse and
Speaker 1: started picking up. The song faded away, and then I
Speaker 1: got on the horse, thinking well, and maybe it'll come back.
Speaker 1: New had to reload. But it was really I mean
Speaker 1: that that those kind of moments are You can see
Speaker 1: that that's built on that foundation from any es days,
Speaker 1: you know, and now we're just capable of making much
Speaker 1: more sophisticated music than we were back then. So I
Speaker 1: expect that the musical aspect of video games will continue
Speaker 1: to grow in importance, and of course we'll we'll continue
Speaker 1: to cherish those older tunes that just sort of evoke
Speaker 1: that feeling that we got back when we were you know,
Speaker 1: in our our our our teens, early teens playing various
Speaker 1: video games that was awesome, and we didn't even get
Speaker 1: into things like the music games. Yeah, like typically like
Speaker 1: Guitar Hero and rock Band and Rapper, the Rapper, the Rapper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the harmonics games, mean all the harmonics games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's tons of That's the whole podcast to itself,
Speaker 1: just where music is the gameplay. It's not just to
Speaker 1: to enrich it, but it is the gameplay. A lot
Speaker 1: to do another episode on that at some point. So
Speaker 1: let's wrap this one up. If you guys have any
Speaker 1: what's you know? Tell us what your favorite video game
Speaker 1: music is. Let's know, we're curious. Tell us on Twitter
Speaker 1: or Facebook, are handled There is tech Stuff h s
Speaker 1: W or you can email us. That address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. So learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
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