Sugiyama has things he does very well like overworlds and town music and sad music. There are things he does NOT do well , like battle music.
I think heâs got some good ones. I really love the combat music from DW3 and DW4. I think DW7âs boss music is really good.
I didnât like DQ7 as a game, but the music was good, especially the Symphonic Suite.
The symphonic suites are always pretty good.
Re: battle music: throw enough shit at the wall and something will stick. Sure , occasionally the music is decent, but thatâs more the exception and if I were to compare his decent battle tracks to other composers, he does not rank high.
I think that might be more of staying within the determined style than him actually being bad at writing intense themes.
What?
I think SG is saying that sometimes themes suck as standalone songs because they have to fit within the tone of the game. Listen to the fight themes from Radiata Stories. Most of them would be awful in any other place, but they make sense in context. Sometimes, even if a composer is really really good (Noriyuki Iwadare), a really great standalone song just canât be written for a particular game (RS).
Not even just context, but Dragon Warrior establishes a very specific musical STYLE, too. Like (not that anyone doesnât know this), but not all Orchestral music is the same. Thereâs baroque, classical, romantic, impressionism, avant-garde, neo-classicism, minimalism, and a whole bunch of other shit. Sugiyama remains within very specific genres of orchestral music, and with orchestral music genres, there are a lot more restrictions on whatâs appropriate when writing musicâŚlike, VERY specific rules.
Thatâs a very interesting point and I obviously do not have the musical theory knowledge you have to challenge anything you might have to say about it. Taking that into account, I can see how doing certain things like this can be very difficult. But does that make listenable? I donât think so.
No argument there. Sometimes, music just sucks to listen to unless youâre listening to it in a purely analytical perspective. Thatâs not only valid, but very important for a composer of music to remember.
SG, have you heard <a href=âhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdLoTPUNtD0â>this song</a> before? I tell people I like classical music because of songs like this, but at the same time Iâm just not a big fan of most classical composers. What subgenre would this be under? I wouldnât mind finding more songs like it. It reminds me of WC2. Does it still even count as classical? The composer is not THAT old.
Hmm, thatâs a weird song, but not necessarily in a bad way. ItâsâŚromantic, but it isnât. It has a lot of stylistic similarities to Romantic music (which it should - 1875 is the late romantic era), but itâs also very static, which is unusual for a romantic era piece. If you want to check out composers of that era you might like, I would suggest pianists like maybe Frederic Chopin or Franz Liszt. It still has a similar enough musical sound, in my opinion, but itâs more dynamic in emotion.
This Franz Liszt guy has chops.
Franz Liszt is a fucking nut. Not only is he super talented, but he had super huge hands that allowed him to do crazy shit that normal people canât do. For example, if you go to a piano and see the farthest interval you can play from your thumb to your pinky, it probably isnât much more than an octave. Lizst could play parallel 12ths, which means that if he played C with his thumb, he could reach the F key that was a whole octave up. ThatâsâŚjust retarded. Awesome, but retarded.
Personally, I like Chopin better, but most people i talk to seem to prefer Liszt. I just think some of Chopinâs music just reminds me of Castlevania, lol. 
Wouldnât it be G? Iâm only pointing that out because thatâs even more retarded
Iâm not even sure I could reach an octave. I have small hands for a guy, and last time I touched a piano, I think I remember having to reach pretty far just to play triads But I guess Iâd have a bit more reach without having to use my middle finger.
I want to get a piano. Thereâs so much more you can do on it than guitar. Guitarâs still one of the better polyphonic instruments, but itâs sure not piano.
And I like Chopinâs sound better too. My last post was made before listening to him. Liszt still has chops though
Ahh, yeah, I guess it is G. I always do the math wrong after the first octave
Still, yeah, the composer you showed me is an oddity. Romantic composers (as Iâm guessing youâre noticing by listening to Liszt and Chopin) are a lot more emotionally dynamic with their pieces. Although that Saint Saens piece in that, while the musical aspects of it sound romantic, itâs more like a Baroque piece in that it sticks to just ONE emotion for the entirety of the piece. Thatâs not a bad thing, in my opinion - as a vocalist, my specialty is Baroque aria - but there was a large movement to break away from that in the Classical era, saying that it didnât accurately reflect the human condition to be emotionally static like that.
Maybe not for long periods of time, but I think changing key every 30 seconds sounds jumpy and incoherent. The varied emotions you find in one or two different keys are enough for a single song. These romantic compositions sound like theyâre making the opposite mistake. They try way too hard to be radically emotional, and accomplish much less than a song with a more defined direction like the one I showed you. I want to be moved, but I donât want to be jerked around like a ball-in-a-cup. Theyâre both good, but I like Saint-Saensâ dynamic intensity more than Chopinâs dynamic emotions.
You really nailed it with the Castlevania comment, too. I like really gothic sounding compositions on piano. I think they balance out the pianoâs naturally mellow tone.
You might try Classical (the era) music, then. Classical music was the first movement that was like âThis static emotion stuff is bullshitâ, whereas Romantic came right after Classical, and that was more like âClassical doesnât explore musically enough, and it doesnât capture the intensity enough.â Classical has that emotional dynamism, but itâs a lot more refined.
Personally, though, I donât like Classical because itâs TOO refined - other than the best of the best, a lot of the compositions get old really quickly. Maybe you might like Romantic composers from earlier in the era, like Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck, or Hector Berlioz. Schubert and Schumann do a lot of vocal music, though, so if you donât care for listening to vocal music in foreign languages, a lot of their music probably wonât do the trick for you.
I havenât heard any of his vocal stuff, but so far this Schubert guy is spot-on.
Hereâs some of Schubertâs most famous vocal works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiMVPSzr7E <-- Der Erlkonig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvTLlP6LnLs <-- Gretchen am Spinnrade
Or, anything from the song cycle Winterreise:
Hereâs my favorite song from Winterreise, though:
Oh, and for shits and giggles, hereâs âDie Allmachtâ, the only Schubert song in my vocal repertoire (itâs really, really FUCKING hard):