Myself, I'm a metal fan, ranging from thrash to grindcore with everything in between.
About 99% of what I listen to has to do with video games. 80's is generally good (synth stuff.)
I can't stand the Beatles primarily because everyone is obsessed with them. They're not that good. Guitars in general are too popular and sound bad (yay distortion?) Rock = sometimes, Metal = no.
movie osts
classic rock
electronic
metal
psychedelic
trance
house
i think that's all
oh and nujabes/hydeout productions, I know it isn't a genre, but whatever, it kicks the shit out of everything else hands down
Electronic (IDM-ish), right now especially Kettel, Wisp, and Clark
Some rock is good, some is terrible. I like progressive rock (Rush, Yes, Moody Blues in particular) and Todd Rundgren
I'm also a huge fan of Yoko Kanno, Tsuneo Imahori, Joe Hisaishi
Also, everyone needs to listen to Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.
-Video game music (My top favourite category though it's under appreciated just like SmartOne said. Includes SNESmusic, Nintendo music Game Boy music, video game OSTs as well as arranged soundtracks)
-Random mash-up genre (for those awkward unnameable lonewolf songs like)
-Scatjazz (Vocal improv jazz)
-Smooth Jazz
-Jazz
-60's (A large selection of Random genres from this era)
Alternative (Depeche Mode and whatnot)
-70's "
-80's "
-90's "
-Movie OSTs
-Japanese music
-Techno
-Techno Remixes
-House
-Trance
-Electronic(a)
-TV themes (including cartoon themes like Ren and Stimpy)
-Ska
-Satire
-Bluegras
-New Age
-Rock/Pop
-Rock
-And... Elevator music
I hate:
hip-hop (all of it)
rap
Country (what do you get when you mix country music and rap? Crap!
love songs (except for one or two, that's it!)
big band swing
Death Metal
Everything Else I didn't list as I like
edited 4:19 PM EDT September 26, 2009
outside of vgm i mostly listen to experimental electronic music ("idm" perhaps, stuff like venetian snares, squarepusher, ยต-ziq, boards of canada, aphex), progressive rock or progressive style stuff in general (LTE, dream theater, ELP, G-CLEF...), and a heck of lot of jazz funk & fusion, which i'm more into these days (casiopea, t-square, weather report, hiromi, elektric band, level 42, jamiroquai... etc.)
i listen to similar sort of things when it comes to vgm too... lots of older-style fusion and proggy stuff, by people such as ayako saso, hayato matsuo, soyo oka, jun ishikawa, YACK, motoaki takenouchi, yasuhiko fukuda, pretty much everything by Konami and Kukeiha Club, norio "NON" hanzawa, hiroki kikuta and the list goes on... (funnily not into sakuraba though...)
i have quite a large CD collection comprised of lots of different stuff (all physical copies):
http://www.discogs.com/collection?user=B1itz_Lunar&sort=artist%2Casc
next to no physical copies of VGM and no anime albums either sadly, even though that constitutes the significant majority of my listening these days (mainly cuz I can't be bothered to keep taking out CDs!)
edited 4:47 PM EDT September 26, 2009
Soundtracks are like opera without vocals.
So classical, soft rock/easy listening, classic rock, speed metal, chillout and new age. People are surprised I like speed metal and chillout.
I love The Eagles, RHCP, Led Zeppelin, the ventures, the shadows, dream theater, blind guardian, dick dale, mike oldfield. In a sense most of my musical choices are similar to vgm music.
I like every type of music except rap, hiphop and most r&b. I have rhythm, but for some strange reason i can't 'feel' the rhythm in those genres.
Plus the subjects in those songs are shallow as well.
yes, and that's THEIR opinion.
there ARE certain things that give video game soundtracks a sound/voice, an array of different musical traits that are quite common to vgm...
so these musical traits are common to vgm, how is that not a genre?
seems like a genre to me. maybe not as definitive, embodying a much wider range of music than say "rock" or "idm" (though idm does cover a lot of crap)
usually functional things like looping, mood-kits, predominantly instrumental, etc...
all of those things give VGM a sort of uniqueness if you will, separating it from other music, into its own genre (I'd even argue it as a "super-genre" in which it'd have its own sub-genres)
i don't think it can justifiably be called a genre intrinsically though, vgm covers all sorts of musical idioms, it just does it in an idiosyncratic way that makes it different from mainstream equivalents.
well yes, that's why I think its own genre encompassing many types of music that are different, but generally similar
the line is increasingly blurred these days, too.
that's why its one of my favorite genres, because it is influenced by newer popular music and other crap (which to be clear I generally don't like, but it influencing vgm slightly I do)
also, good tastes in music my friend, IDM & Warp Records are my favorite stuff, might i recommend grabbing "VA-Warp20_(Chosen)-2CD-2009-SiRE" and "VA-Warp20_(Recreated)-2CD-2009-SiRE"? :)
edit: added linebreaks to make it more readable
edited 3:52 PM EDT October 1, 2009
all of those things give VGM a sort of uniqueness if you will"
well those traits are more a matter of procedure rather than of taste. TV and film soundtracks do similar things as well - it's a functionality vs. aesthetic deal. of course they're definitive things, i wouldn't deny for a minute that vgm has some very distinct traits (although less so these days), but genre is the wrong word. vgm is comprised of genres, thus vgm is more of an umbrella term if you will, in the same way anime music and film music are; they're platforms. if you describe a piece of music as "vgm", that really says very little about it, and unfortunately leaves out more important musicological influence. without hearing it, about all you could predict of something described as "vgm" is that it's more-than-likely instrumental and more-than-likely loops indefinitely, and even those aren't determinate :D i can't think of any constants in vgm, which are pretty crucial for identifying something as a genre...
my point is video game music can't be video game music without being other things as well, and that's what stops vgm being a genre as i see it. you said "super-genre", but i really wouldn't go that far. i see the fact it's for a video game as secondary rather than primary... this coming from someone who near exclusively listens to vgm these days as well. it's the other influences/genres in vgm that make the music more distinctive.
"that's why its one of my favorite genres, because it is influenced by newer popular music and other crap"
well this has always been the case, even back in the 80s and 90s, and yeah i think it is a good thing. the only difference back then was technolical impairment. soundchip limitations are the obvious thing, but also unlike these days not everyone had a studio sat in their bedroom =p so game and TV musicians had to make do with lower budget hardware as well, more often than not being unable to approach the production standard that popular music enjoyed.
But yeah, in general I don't think you can really draw a line between film, TV and video game soundtracks. That it is intended to be used in support of a larger work is really the defining characteristic.
As I see it, the legacy of technical limitations and the lack of most anything else audible means that we still have fairly dense collections of catchy melodies, that's what I end up enjoying.
constants no, but generally vgm is similar, like having a general shared theme which makes it a genre
(I'd write more, but I don't really have the time today
)I wouldn't say calling something "mario-style" is entirely bankrupt (we all have an idea of the sort of music that implies), but it doesn't mean anything intrinsically, only by association. I think it makes more sense to understand what exactly "mario-style" means musicologically, it can be eye-opening and fun! cinematic, jazzy and latin-esque is how i would best define the majority of it. naturally it's all going to sound kind of similar because it's the same franchise, same sort of styles, and importantly it's largely the same composer as well, so there's gonna be lots of micromusical decisions going on that make it bespoke and unique.
also i'm only persevering with this because i enjoy these sorts of debates!
I don't see this as a problem at all. It helps me enjoy stuff! One way or another I come into listening with a lot of expectations, and I find it easier to enjoy soundtracks in general. I think the coloring of the associated game/movie/etc helps here, even if I've never played/seen it.
edited 4:53 PM EDT October 10, 2009
anyway, my point is if you're analysing music, you have to look at it out of context as-is, otherwise you run the risk of coming to questionable (or downright wrong) conclusions like claiming "mario-style" is an idiom - when it isn't, it's a rough description (a description i might use, but i'm under no illusions that it is more than that.)
but that's just MY opinion, maan.
Some of my favorite game soundtracks started off strictly as albums, because I'd never played the games themselves, or intended to. In fact, I only ever ended up interested in (or even knowing about) the games themselves -- Symphony of the Night, Genso Suikoden 4, and Sonic Adventure 2, to name a few -- because of how much I'd grown to love the albums over the months before playing the games.
However, I also agree that sometimes, knowing something is from a game is helpful. There are songs that I really dislike musically until I see their names are things like "Unexpected Encounter", "Strategy Conference", "Fated Duel", or some other similar idea for which I can say, "Oh, I can imagine this part of the game now and see how this would fit." In other words, for the songs whose value lies primarily in the song's application in context rather than in musicianship (which I believe is what hcs was getting at with his opera comparison), knowing that something was a dramatic cutscene in a game can put a different spin on it and make it seem far less boring.
On the other hand, I've had this conversation many times with my brother:
me: Hey, check this song out, I think you'll like it.
....
him: Hey, wow, that's really good.
me: I thought you might enjoy it. The guitar sounds a lot like <band>, doesn't it?
him: Yeah, who's playing?
me: I'm not actually sure, I haven't looked at the credits.
him: Well what is it?
me: A song from the new <game> arranged album.
him: ....Oh.
This has happened with Metroid Metal, Sonic Adventure 2 OST, Perfect Selection Dracula Battle (Castlevania metal), and countless others. Or we'll be listening to something he knows is from a game and it'll "sound like" a certain style -- Sonic Adventure's casino stage songs "sound like" Big Band; a few songs from Castlevania Chronicle "sound like" Trance, etc. -- rather than actually being in that style.
Lunar also hits on a point of perceptions being shaded. That is, take any song and then say it's from a Mario game, and it will be perceived differently. We have a certain expectation of "Mario style" or "Castlevania style" or whatever else, so when that name is applied to a song, it's judged relative to that expectation rather than simply as a Latin song or Jazz song or whatever else (or in Suikoden 4's case...a "What the hell genre is that?" song). This is not true only of video games, though -- We do the same when our favorite bands come out with new albums ("WTF happened to Metallica?"), when watching a movie ("How is this chase scene music?"), and many other things. The solution, to me, isn't to avoid knowing something is from a game -- since, as stated above, that information is sometimes useful -- but to be aware of how much of your like of a song is shaded by that knowledge and either let yourself enjoy it knowing that's why or try to see past it.
While I agree that "VGM" as a genre is oversimplifying and shouldn't be done, I don't believe the "it's from a game" factor should be completely ignored. I also believe there is some music -- music from many NES games, etc. -- that really can't be classified in any other genre and has a distinct style to it, so perhaps "VGM" as a genre could define that; but I don't believe that simply because something is from a game, it should get its own genre label.
It's based on a related experience, which means a decent song for a good game scene improves slightly to the listener(as has already been noted)
It's limited to the sounds that can be produced on a given type of hardware, which prevents someone from using a huge range of instruments, or locks them into a selection of them on semi-old hardware. This is characteristic, in my opinion. Modern hardware loses this aspect, as well as a certain degree of it's uniqueness when artists have no direct challenge to their creativity besides "Encode it in lower quality", or "Get rid of a big song".
On a related note, the difference in hardware abilities creates a type of sound you'd be hard pressed to get any way but electronically, and getting composers for a game is the best method I can think of for paying authors to compose such music for limited musical systems. Sheer output tends to provide success in some form for any given person's view of 'good'.
The songs are usually designed to loop, which tends to reduce the intro and outro strength(musically), unless the intro only plays once.
There's a greater acceptance(sometimes downright expectation) of writing different music for the same melody(Banjo-Kazooie, Mario series)
A recent development in it's favor: There's no RIAA battle(that I know of), nor Anti-RIAA pundits throwing insults or distracting one from the enjoyment of listening to the music.
I'm not expecting any strong response to this, but I thought it was pertinent to the discussion.
edited 9:55 AM EDT October 12, 2009