Zoatebix
Working on it
I'm never going to use this in a game, but I am so bookmarking wyrd is bond.
Does the flutter of joy my heart felt when Ottergame bashed so-called 'alternative' radio make me some kind of hipster? That's really not what I'm going for. And does anyone else get depressed when they hear The Clash on a classic rock station? It's usually one of their sillier songs off of Combat Rock, like "Rock the Casbah," - but that record's younger than me! Does that make me 'classic George'?
U2 is more understandable on a classic rock station, and I guess I don't mind being older than those songs - but the Clash!? "I fought the Law," "Give 'em Enough Rope," capital-P-Punk-as-all-get-out-the Clash?
Anywho, I think if you pay enough attention to your soundtrack, keep the volume down, and you can control the music selection without really distracting the players, you can get away with ANY kind of music in any genre of play.
I've had plenty of varied soundtracks in play before, but the best examples of musical mixing and possible genre clashing I can think of are from film: two films by Terrance Malick, and two impeccably edited and well-directed Anime television series with scores composed by Yoko Kanno: The Vision of Escaflowne, and Cowboy Bebop.
Badlands is set during the late 1950s in the, well, badlands of South Dakota and Montana. The music is primarily contemporary small ensemble 'classical' music, with some kind of slight non-Western influence (I haven't read up on the composer, sorry), and the main theme is lively and upbeat, even though the film is about a killing spree. The musical tone shifts dramatically at a couple of points - there's some period 50s pop music, and an entire scene based around one Nat King Cole song on the radio. Another scene uses a piece of classical choral/orchestral sacred music (It's been a while since I've seen the film, so I could be remembering this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's choral sacred music). Now, I don't have much to go on besides my opinion, but I feel that these big shifts really added to the film.
The second Mallick film takes place during WWI on Guadalcanal. Mallick got Hans Zimmer -the dude who writes the ridiculous bombastic music for stuff like The Rock- to write what is possibly the most sensitive and tranquil music of his career - it's sublime. The shifts in mood are less drastic, but could be jarring if taken out of context. The soundtrack also uses the theme from Charles Ives "The Unanswered Question," - a modern, somewhat atonal work - "In Paradiso," the last movement from Faure's Requiem circa 1885, contemporary sacred choral music by Arvo Part, and finally traditional Melanesian choir chant!
Kanno's compositions are even more disparate. For the fantasy show, Escaflowne, her soundtrack is primarily recorded with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus and an Italian chamber orchestra. It also features hard industrial electronica, soaring (and thankfully non-annoying) J-pop, a kitschy synthesizer number, some soft-rock, some techno, some jazzy stuff, and an opening theme song that features a bagpipe break (well, at least in the CD version
.
For the science fiction end of the spectrum, any given episode of Cowboy Bebop could contain Dixieland, big band swing, Latin, and bebop jazz, and faux-country hoe-down music - AND, for example, an episode that has some of the above (including the country), plus an Ave Maria, a piano and treble-voice choir piece, and a slow popish song that relies heavily on pipe organ. Elsewhere in the series, harmonica blues, some not-quite bluegrass, some electronica, and driving instrumental heavy metal are all explored.
I really feel that the music adds to both of these shows immensely - maybe even more than the characterization in the case of Cowboy Bebop. All this in spite of the jarring mix of styles.
I really think that a DM could effectively use Bach, Bad Religion, The Buena Vista Social Club, the bit that plays over Boromir's last stand, Blackalicious, Brahams, and Ben Folds Five in a single gaming session of any genre.
That said, I've been up for 20-ish hours, and I wrote this while exhausted.
-z
Does the flutter of joy my heart felt when Ottergame bashed so-called 'alternative' radio make me some kind of hipster? That's really not what I'm going for. And does anyone else get depressed when they hear The Clash on a classic rock station? It's usually one of their sillier songs off of Combat Rock, like "Rock the Casbah," - but that record's younger than me! Does that make me 'classic George'?
U2 is more understandable on a classic rock station, and I guess I don't mind being older than those songs - but the Clash!? "I fought the Law," "Give 'em Enough Rope," capital-P-Punk-as-all-get-out-the Clash?
Anywho, I think if you pay enough attention to your soundtrack, keep the volume down, and you can control the music selection without really distracting the players, you can get away with ANY kind of music in any genre of play.
I've had plenty of varied soundtracks in play before, but the best examples of musical mixing and possible genre clashing I can think of are from film: two films by Terrance Malick, and two impeccably edited and well-directed Anime television series with scores composed by Yoko Kanno: The Vision of Escaflowne, and Cowboy Bebop.
Badlands is set during the late 1950s in the, well, badlands of South Dakota and Montana. The music is primarily contemporary small ensemble 'classical' music, with some kind of slight non-Western influence (I haven't read up on the composer, sorry), and the main theme is lively and upbeat, even though the film is about a killing spree. The musical tone shifts dramatically at a couple of points - there's some period 50s pop music, and an entire scene based around one Nat King Cole song on the radio. Another scene uses a piece of classical choral/orchestral sacred music (It's been a while since I've seen the film, so I could be remembering this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's choral sacred music). Now, I don't have much to go on besides my opinion, but I feel that these big shifts really added to the film.
The second Mallick film takes place during WWI on Guadalcanal. Mallick got Hans Zimmer -the dude who writes the ridiculous bombastic music for stuff like The Rock- to write what is possibly the most sensitive and tranquil music of his career - it's sublime. The shifts in mood are less drastic, but could be jarring if taken out of context. The soundtrack also uses the theme from Charles Ives "The Unanswered Question," - a modern, somewhat atonal work - "In Paradiso," the last movement from Faure's Requiem circa 1885, contemporary sacred choral music by Arvo Part, and finally traditional Melanesian choir chant!
Kanno's compositions are even more disparate. For the fantasy show, Escaflowne, her soundtrack is primarily recorded with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus and an Italian chamber orchestra. It also features hard industrial electronica, soaring (and thankfully non-annoying) J-pop, a kitschy synthesizer number, some soft-rock, some techno, some jazzy stuff, and an opening theme song that features a bagpipe break (well, at least in the CD version
.For the science fiction end of the spectrum, any given episode of Cowboy Bebop could contain Dixieland, big band swing, Latin, and bebop jazz, and faux-country hoe-down music - AND, for example, an episode that has some of the above (including the country), plus an Ave Maria, a piano and treble-voice choir piece, and a slow popish song that relies heavily on pipe organ. Elsewhere in the series, harmonica blues, some not-quite bluegrass, some electronica, and driving instrumental heavy metal are all explored.
I really feel that the music adds to both of these shows immensely - maybe even more than the characterization in the case of Cowboy Bebop. All this in spite of the jarring mix of styles.
I really think that a DM could effectively use Bach, Bad Religion, The Buena Vista Social Club, the bit that plays over Boromir's last stand, Blackalicious, Brahams, and Ben Folds Five in a single gaming session of any genre.
That said, I've been up for 20-ish hours, and I wrote this while exhausted.
-z
Last edited:
