So much of the sound of the video games, or at least what makes them sound different from movie soundtracks, is the 8-bit sound.
video game music on YouTube, and finding a bunch of many-hours-long compilations meant I could skip through a single video and get lots of different music. Listened to a bunch of old school video game music today, and some new stuff that the Bristow 8th graders had recommended: Mario Brothers, Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft, among others. I think tomorrow I’ll need to listen to some old school upbeat video game music that’s less cinematic, like Mario Brothers or maybe even older?
Maybe I can start out happier and then get there eventually. I came up with sort of “Mission: Impossible” idea for them, although I’m not sure that’s the right mood to contrast with the first movement. I know at some point in this piece I want to feature the low brass and give them something melodic to play. On tricky thing I realized is that a lot of video game music is pretty minimalist (I remember attending a conference session about teaching students to compose video game music, and one of the important points was that the music had to be complex enough to be interesting, but simple enough that people wouldn’t notice that it was playing on a continuous loop.) I found a couple chord progressions that felt very “video game-y,” or at least cinematic, and I scribbled down a couple musical ideas.
I figured it might be easier to end the first movement if I know where I’m going next. I spent the afternoon listening to a bunch of video game music so I could get some ideas for the second movement.