Official Nontendo Music Thread

PES music has never been the same since they went with licensed music, these are absolute bangers.

Fannying about on Antstream earlier playing some retro shooters and minding my own business, when all of a sudden I get slapped by "the slappiest of slapbass".



Wooft!

To piggyback from the Nintendo thread with Balla's Switch tunes and myself's (mine does go a bit Nontendo, with multiformat games that could also be here) thought why not do here as well.

I've wanted to do a big FFXIV music series in this thread for a while and I'm not quite ready to jump into that, but I did want to highlight a very chilled city theme from the latest expansion Endwalker.



One thing I love about FFXIV's soundtrack is how often Soken - the composer - will take a melody from one track and use it to create a different track altogether. The main guitar melody from that city theme is used for the vocal melody in this track which makes the melody have a totally different meaning. It's really clever composing - it's something Toby Fox does a lot with his soundtracks as well and I love it a lot.



Oh, and not that anyone but Andy will care here, but spoilers for FFXIV Endwalker, natch.

I think I'm going to need to come back to all of these at another time, ten's (actually sixteen's) a lot to give a proper chance to!  I did listen to Jim's offering: faintly amused that he's picked a lyrics piece, but fair play, that's a decent bop.

Jay can listen to mine before I listen to his. I know he frequents both threads!

Jim's is a great bit in the game, likely the best part. Do come back as liked your little write up about mine in the Nintendo thread.

Okay, have at you.

• We start with something that I'm sure is perfectly good if you're into the genre. I'm not. Country/Western makes me roll my eyes.
  
• See also: rap.
  
• Yay, no lyrics! (Unless you count 'ah ah aaaaaaah'.) But this is definitely the sort of ethereal melody-less music you like more than I do.
  
• This is definitely the best of the three songs you've featured so far. I don't like Troy's singing voice much though.
  
• Not after you put that disclaimer above the video I didn't. This is okay, but there's a reason I don't tend to feature cut-scene specific pieces from e.g. Xenoblades. You're only going to hear them once, and you'll mostly be concentrating on the events anyway, so the composer doesn't have to make them as good.
  
• This is in the same vein as that Halo piece, but has more of an actual melody. Therefore it's my favourite so far.
  
• This one, I like. Nice gentle guitar, without anybody warbling over it. Low-key lovely.
  
• Come on lads/lasses/other, plinky-plonking a piano a couple of times in a vaguely mournful manner is a cheap musical trick that's not as effective as you think it is. You're better than that.
  
• This is the second-best of the songs you've featured so far, and that's all I really have to say about it.
  
• Okay this is a bit of a winner. Maybe I'm cheating here, I've given this a bit more time than some of the others and maybe they do the same and I've missed it - but this one actually develops, it spreads its wings, it develops a beat, other instruments come in, the orchestra takes over from the voices... This is my fave out of your ten by a way.

You'll probably have noticed that 90% of the time I tend to post gaming music that's either upbeat or bombastic, and 90% of the time you don't - or if you do it's an actual song. Otherwise your tastes seem to lean more towards the subdued and melancholic, or occasionally the quietly cinematic. So I hope this didn't come across as harsh: we just have very different tastes in gaming music, for the most part. Still happy to listen to any suggestions, mind, and I did like that Nier piece!

Artful Escape is folk, and the plot is centred around it.

I've not got a scooby how you got rap from Wolf Alice, an indie rock band.

Yeah, I normally go for songs/tracks which normally part of story beat, like that silent poets track kicks in when set off on a delivery in Death Stranding that it sets the mood.

Rap for me = singer talks rather than sings. Not sure if that's the correct definition. I do like some folk music, but that AE track isn't the folk I like.

Will wait for gJones for the definition.

Balladeer wrote:

Jay can listen to mine before I listen to his. I know he frequents both threads!

I hadn't popped into General Gaming on my last visit, but now you've no excuse!



This is another theme from Endwalker using the same melody line as I shared in the last two videos, except this one is for another city theme. The city has a distinct Indian flair to it, and that comes out in the track itself. The "drop", so to speak, at around the 1:45 mark always have me grooving when I have to travel to this city in game.

...I see what those two tracks did there. I think it works rather better in the first context, as a slow jazzy theme, than in the second, where - I presume from the video it's meant to be a battle track? Bit slow for that methinks. The third one is the best one for my money, and a more effective variation of the melody than the second. There's also a mini-beat drop around 0:45 that also works pretty well!

Yeah, the second video is a battle theme version as the vocal version of the track is the theme of the character you're battling. It's not a serious battle, but more of a sparring match with an ally, to provide some very very loose context as to why it's a bit slower. I think it works in the context, but I totally get that it's not a "normal" battle theme. Mind you, FFXIV often doesn't stick to the norm with its battle themes - you can get a normal JRPG guitar laden track for one boss and then a waltz track (yes, really) the next.

Now that I would like to hear... and it sounds from your posts like I will, in time.

masofdas wrote:

Will wait for gJones for the definition.

You could argue they are rapping as they are rhyming to the "beat", but then so did Chas and Dave, or George Formby did in the 1930s. It's not hip-hop music, however. Rap is quite hard to define in 2022, given the biggest rap artist in the world (Drake) blends singing with rapping. There's definitely a distinction between talking and rapping though - Gil Scott Heron and spoken word artists I would say are talking, someone like Method Man or Eminem are rapping as they are creating patterns and utilising the beat (ie. flowing to it). Then Mike Skinner came along with The Streets and confused everything. There ends your lesson in rap.

The master has spoken! Basically Muss is right and music genres are a nonsense.

I guess, just rap as in Drake I'm not keen on, so would never think of someone like Wolf Alice as the same or would I Mozart with Swifty.

You may have seen I bought the new The Last of Us Part II Vinyl, these are what on it.

Side A






Side B

The music composers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge absolutely went to town on that soundtrack. When it's good, it's utterly phenomenal:

Mas had already posted some of his top hits from that game, but without the necessary nostalgia I far prefer that track.