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94-620: The Symphonic Game Music Concerts ( shortened to: Game Concerts ) are a series of award-winning orchestral video game music concerts first performed in 2003 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, notable for being the longest running and the first of their kind outside Japan. They are produced by Thomas Böcker and performed by various orchestras conducted by Andy Brick (2003–2007), Arnie Roth (2008, 2009 and 2011), Niklas Willén (2010, 2012) and Eckehard Stier (from 2012). In Leipzig,

188-488: A "new high watermark for what music in games could sound like." The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 (1992) in particular is considered "revolutionary" and "ahead of its time" for its blend of house music with " dirty " electro basslines and " trancey electronic textures" that "would feel as comfortable in a nightclub as a video game." Another important FM synth composer was the late Ryu Umemoto , who composed music for many visual novels and shoot 'em ups during

282-527: A CD drive supported 32 channels of PCM at the same resolution as the original PlayStation. In 1996, the Nintendo 64 , still using a solid-state cartridge, actually supported an integrated and scalable sound system that was potentially capable of 100 channels of PCM, and an improved sample rate of 48 kHz. Games for the N64, because of the cost of the solid-state memory, typically had samples of lesser quality than

376-495: A DAC engine of one or more streams. Only a minority of developers ever used Amiga-style tracker formats in commercial PC games, ( Unreal ) typically preferring to use the MT-32 or AdLib/SB-compatible devices. As general purpose PCs using x86 became more ubiquitous than the other PC platforms, developers drew their focus towards that platform. The last major development before streaming music came in 1992: Roland Corporation released

470-461: A MIDI controller to run the sequence. However, different products used different sounds attached to their MIDI controllers. Some tied into the Yamaha FM chip to simulate instruments, some daughterboards of samples had very different sound qualities; meaning that no single sequence performance would be accurate to every other General MIDI device. All of these considerations in the products reflected

564-490: A MIDI controller) to give it the features of a fully integrated card. Unlike the standards of Amiga or Atari , a PC using x86 even then could be using a broad mix of hardware. Developers increasingly used MIDI sequences: instead of writing soundtrack data for each type of soundcard, they generally wrote a fully featured data set for the Roland application that would be compatible with lesser featured equipment so long as it had

658-493: A My MLB sound track feature that allows the user to play music tracks of their choice saved on the hard drive of their PS3, rather than the preprogrammed tracks incorporated into the game by the developer. An update to Wipeout HD , released on the PlayStation Network, was made to also incorporate this feature. In the video game Audiosurf , custom soundtracks are the main aspect of the game. Users have to pick

752-461: A PC, inserting custom music into the stations is done by placing music files into a designated folder. For the Xbox version, a CD must be installed into the console's hard drive. For the iPhone version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars , players create an iTunes playlist which is then played by the game. WDR 4 WDR 4 is a German commercial-free public radio station owned and operated by

846-481: A TV for an affordable display monitor. Approach to game music development in this time period usually involved using simple tone generation and/or frequency modulation synthesis to simulate instruments for melodies, and use of a "noise channel" for simulating percussive noises. Early use of PCM samples in this era was limited to short sound bites ( Monopoly ), or as an alternate for percussion sounds ( Super Mario Bros. 3 ). The music on home consoles often had to share

940-502: A Yamaha chip, the YM2612 ), but largely held the same approach to sound design. Ten channels in total for tone generation with one for PCM samples were available in stereo instead of the NES's five channels in mono, one for PCM. As before, it was often used for percussion samples. The Genesis did not support 16-bit sampled sounds. Despite the additional tone channels, writing music still posed

1034-577: A challenge to traditional composers and it forced much more imaginative use of the FM synthesizer to create an enjoyable listening experience. The composer Yuzo Koshiro utilized the Genesis hardware effectively to produce " progressive , catchy, techno -style compositions far more advanced than what players were used to" for games such as The Revenge of Shinobi (1989) and the Streets of Rage series, setting

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1128-447: A cross between sequencing samples, and streaming music is used. Games such as Republic: The Revolution (music composed by James Hannigan ) and Command & Conquer: Generals (music composed by Bill Brown) have utilised sophisticated systems governing the flow of incidental music by stringing together short phrases based on the action on screen and the player's most recent choices (see dynamic music ). Other games dynamically mixed

1222-418: A dangerous situation, or rewarding them for specific achievements. Video game music can be one of two kinds: original or licensed . The popularity of video game music has created education and job opportunities, generated awards, and led video game soundtracks to be commercially sold and performed in concerts. At the time video games had emerged as a popular form of entertainment in the late 1970s, music

1316-462: A gameplay feature, with the game generating levels based entirely on the music on whatever CD the player inserted. Microsoft's Xbox allowed music to be copied from a CD onto its internal hard drive, to be used as a "Custom Soundtrack", if enabled by the game developer. The feature carried over into the Xbox 360 where it became supported by the system software and could be enabled at any point. The Wii

1410-488: A music file to be analyzed. The game will generate a race track based on tempo, pitch and complexity of the sound. The user will then race on this track, synchronized with the music. Games in the Grand Theft Auto series have supported custom soundtracks, using them as a separate in-game radio station. The feature was primarily exclusive to PC versions, and was adopted to a limited degree on console platforms. On

1504-467: A new game, such as the Namco titles Pac-Man (1980) composed by Toshio Kai or Pole Position (1982) composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi. The first game to use a continuous background soundtrack was Tomohiro Nishikado 's Space Invaders , released by Taito in 1978. It had four descending chromatic bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as

1598-662: A single note long, and play it back through the computer's sound chip from memory. This differed from Rally-X in that its hardware DAC was used to play back simple waveform samples, and a sampled sound allowed for a complexity and authenticity of a real instrument that an FM simulation could not offer. For its role in being one of the first and affordable, the Amiga would remain a staple tool of early sequenced music composing, especially in Europe . The Amiga offered these features before most other competing home computer platforms though

1692-658: A song "Goal Scoring Superstar Hero". These songs used long vocal samples. A similar approach to sound and music developments had become common in the arcades by this time and had been used in many arcade system boards since the mid-1980s. This was further popularized in the early 1990s by games like Street Fighter II (1991) on the CPS-1 , which used voice samples extensively along with sampled sound effects and percussion. Neo Geo 's MVS system also carried powerful sound development which often included surround sound . The evolution also carried into home console video games, such as

1786-612: A song (often not American) that is upbeat and has lots of rhythm. The inclusion on the FIFA soundtrack has given many artists exposure that helped launch their music careers. Sequencing samples continue to be used in modern gaming where fully recorded audio is not viable. Until the mid-2000s, many larger games on home consoles used sequenced audio to save space. Additionally, most games on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS used sequenced music due to storage limitations. Sometimes

1880-565: A sound card) would actually handle all the decompressing. Fifth generation home console systems also developed specialised streaming formats and containers for compressed audio playback. Games would take full advantage of this ability, sometimes with highly praised results ( Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ). Games ported from arcade machines, which continued to use FM synthesis, often saw superior pre-recorded music streams on their home console counterparts ( Street Fighter Alpha 2 ). Even though

1974-541: A variety of musical styles. The focus of the first concert was on music from publishers that had been recorded previously with live orchestras, which reduced the development phase to four months, starting in mid-April 2003. After evaluating feedback from the audience, more music from classic games eventually found its way into the programmes. The following concerts had Böcker busy with the planning for one year each and increasingly included newly written and more experimental arrangements that were not merely orchestral versions of

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2068-753: A year and announced Symphonic Odysseys – Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu , a homage to the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu. The programme, featuring arrangements from titles such as Lost Odyssey , Final Fantasy Legend , Blue Dragon and the Final Fantasy series, was performed twice at the Kölner Philharmonie on 9 July 2011. Symphonic Odysseys was also performed by the London Symphony Orchestra in June 2017, on 18 June at

2162-497: Is also able to play custom soundtracks if it is enabled by the game ( Excite Truck , Endless Ocean ). The PlayStation Portable can, in games like Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City and FIFA 08 , play music from a Memory Stick . The PlayStation 3 has the ability to utilize custom soundtracks in games using music saved on the hard drive, however few game developers used this function. MLB 08: The Show , released in 2008, has

2256-669: Is common for X-games sports-based video games to come with some popular artists recent releases ( SSX , Tony Hawk , Initial D ), as well as any game with heavy cultural demographic theme that has tie-in to music ( Need For Speed: Underground , Gran Turismo , and Grand Theft Auto ). Sometimes a hybrid of the two are used, such as in Dance Dance Revolution . Many sports game titles like Madden NFL , NBA 2K , and FIFA use popular and underground songs in their soundtrack to give their menus atmosphere. The phrase "FIFA song" has become popular in recent years, it describes

2350-650: The Chronos series, a suite of music from Final Fantasy XV was heard for the first time in Stockholm. Further events took place in Finland, Switzerland, Japan and Germany. The concerts in Japan were recorded and published as a double album by Square Enix 's music label. In addition to arrangements from Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XV , the world premieres of Octopath Traveler and Xenogears are part of

2444-477: The Commodore 64 and NES, which resulted in the chiptune genre. The release of a freely-distributed Amiga program named Soundtracker by Karsten Obarski in 1987 started the era of MOD -format which made it easy for anyone to produce music based on digitized samples. Module files were made with programs called " trackers " after Obarski's Soundtracker. This MOD/tracker tradition continued with PC computers in

2538-522: The Fifth Generation . In 1994, the CD-ROM equipped PlayStation supported 24 channels of 16-bit samples of up to 44.1 kHz sample rate, samples equal to CD audio in quality. It also sported a few hardware DSP effects like reverb . Many Square titles continued to use sequenced music, such as Final Fantasy VII , Legend of Mana , and Final Fantasy Tactics . The Sega Saturn also with

2632-781: The Game Concerts series was held as GC in Concert from 2003 to 2007 as the official, annual opening ceremony of the GC – Games Convention . From 2008 to 2012, a cooperation with the WDR and its in-house orchestra, the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln, was established, with concerts primarily held at the Kölner Philharmonie . Since 2013, the events have been presented internationally, including performances with

2726-584: The Leipzig Trade Fair , and they agreed to present a video game music concert during the GC – Games Convention , the first video game fair in Europe. The Leipzig Trade Fair promoted GC in Concert , while Böcker acted as creative director and producer. This involved creating a concert programme and obtaining the permission of individual publishers to perform music from their game releases. On 20 August 2003,

2820-725: The London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in London. Inspired by Far Eastern concerts with music from video games, in particular the Orchestral Game Music Concerts from the nineties, Thomas Böcker developed the concept for the first event of its kind outside Japan. Wanting to reach as many people in the demographic as possible, he planned the concert alongside an established industry event. In 2002, he submitted his idea to

2914-680: The Macintosh which had been introduced a year earlier had similar capabilities. The Amiga's main rival, the Atari ST , sourced the Yamaha YM2149 Programmable Sound Generator (PSG). Compared to the in-house designed Amiga sound engine, the PSG could only handle 1 channel of sampled sound, and needed the computer's CPU to process the data for it. This made it impractical for game development use until 1989 with

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3008-577: The NEC PC-8801 and PC-9801 in the early 1980s, and by the mid-1980s, the PC-8801 and FM-7 had built-in FM sound. The sound FM synth boards produced are described as "warm and pleasant sound". Musicians such as Yuzo Koshiro and Takeshi Abo utilized to produce music that is still highly regarded within the chiptune community. The widespread adoption of FM synthesis by consoles would later be one of

3102-617: The PC speaker , and some proprietary standards such as the IBM PCjr 3-voice chip. While sampled sound could be achieved on the PC speaker using pulse width modulation, doing so required a significant proportion of the available processor power, rendering its use in games rare. With the increase of x86 PCs in the market, there was a vacuum in sound performance in home computing that expansion cards attempted to fill. The first two recognizable standards were

3196-633: The Philharmonie de Paris and on 20 June at the Barbican Centre. A recording of the concerts in Cologne was released as a double album on 28 December 2011 by Dog Ear Records , Uematsu's own label. In May 2012, Thomas Böcker announced his tenth concert production titled Final Symphony , comprising music from Final Fantasy VI , VII and X , composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu . The world premiere took place on 11 May 2013 and

3290-573: The Roland MT-32 , followed by the AdLib sound card. Roland's solution was driven by MIDI sequencing using advanced LA synthesizers. This made it the first choice for game developers to produce upon, but its higher cost as an end-user solution made it prohibitive. The AdLib used a low-cost FM synthesis chip from Yamaha, and many boards could operate compatibly using the MIDI standard. The AdLib card

3384-473: The Super Mario Galaxy story. Video game music With technological advances, video game music has grown to include a wider range of sounds. Players can hear music in video games over a game's title screen, menus, and gameplay. Game soundtracks can also change depending on a player's actions or situation, such as indicating missed actions in rhythm games , informing the player they are in

3478-559: The TurboGrafx-CD RPG franchises Tengai Makyō , composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto from 1989, and the Ys series , composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa and arranged by Ryo Yonemitsu in 1989. The Ys soundtracks, particularly Ys I & II (1989), are still regarded as some of the most influential video game music ever composed. However, there were several disadvantages of regular CD-audio. Optical drive technology

3572-592: The 1990s. As the cost of magnetic memory declined in the form of diskettes , the evolution of video game music on the Amiga, and some years later game music development in general, shifted to sampling in some form. It took some years before Amiga game designers learned to wholly use digitized sound effects in music (an early exception case was the title music of text adventure game The Pawn , 1986). By this time, computer and game music had already begun to form its own identity, and thus many music makers intentionally tried to produce music that sounded like that heard on

3666-528: The 1990s. Examples of Amiga games using digitized instrument samples include David Whittaker 's soundtrack for Shadow of the Beast , Chris Hülsbeck 's soundtrack for Turrican 2 and Matt Furniss's tunes for Laser Squad . Richard Joseph also composed some theme songs featuring vocals and lyrics for games by Sensible Software most famous being Cannon Fodder (1993) with a song "War Has Never Been So Much Fun" and Sensible World of Soccer (1994) with

3760-482: The Atari 2600 and several late Famicom titles. These chips add to the existing sound capabilities. From around 1980, some arcade games began taking steps toward digitized, or sampled , sounds. Namco's 1980 arcade game Rally-X was the first known game to use a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to produce sampled tones instead of a tone generator. That same year, the first known video game to feature speech synthesis

3854-709: The Barbican Centre in London with the London Symphony Orchestra. Albums have been released of concert recordings from both Cologne (via Decca Records ) and Tokyo (via X5Music / Merregnon Records ). After the positive feedback from attendees of Symphonic Fantasies , the WDR announced another game concert titled Symphonic Legends , which took place at the Kölner Philharmonie on 23 September 2010. The event featured music from Japanese game developer Nintendo , with titles such as Super Mario Bros. , Donkey Kong , Metroid , F-Zero and The Legend of Zelda being performed. The symphonic poem of The Legend of Zelda made up

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3948-483: The CD while retrieving game data exclusively from the hard disk, thereby allowing the game CD to be swapped for any music CD. The first PC game to introduce in-game support for custom soundtracks was Lionhead Studio's Black & White . The 2001 game included an in-game interface for Winamp that enabled the players to play audio tracks from their own playlists. In addition, this would sometimes trigger various reactions from

4042-460: The CD, allowed for much lower latency and seek time when finding and starting to play music, and also allowed for much smoother looping due to being able to buffer the data. A minor drawback was that use of compressed audio meant it had to be decompressed which put load on the CPU of a system. As computing power increased, this load became minimal, and in some cases, dedicated chips in a computer (such as

4136-568: The CD-ROM itself. The popularity of the Super NES and its software remained limited to regions where NTSC television was the broadcast standard. Partly because of the difference in frame rates of PAL broadcast equipment, many titles released were never redesigned to play appropriately and ran much slower than had been intended, or were never released. This showed a divergence in popular video game music between PAL and NTSC countries that still shows to this day. This divergence would be lessened as

4230-828: The Funkhaus Wallrafplatz was the first game music concert to be broadcast live on the radio, WDR4 . On 4 August 2009, pieces from Symphonic Shades were performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra . They were part of the concert Sinfonia Drammatica at the Stockholm Concert Hall , which additionally featured tracks from drammatica -The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura . The Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra 's 3rd Family Concert also featured arrangements from Symphonic Shades . Symphonic Fantasies – music from Square Enix took place on 12 September 2009 at

4324-989: The Kölner Philharmonie. Tickets for the event quickly sold out, necessitating a second concert on 11 September 2009 at the Rudolf Weber-Arena in Oberhausen. The concert at the Philharmonie was broadcast on WDR4 and for the first time available via video streaming on the Internet. This was to be the case for all Game Concerts until 2011. Symphonic Fantasies is dedicated to Japanese game developer Square Enix and includes arrangements of pieces from Final Fantasy , Secret of Mana , Chrono Trigger , Chrono Cross and Kingdom Hearts . In 2012, five more concerts were performed in Tokyo, Stockholm and again in Cologne, with an additional performance in 2016 at

4418-641: The London Symphony Orchestra in London, Osaka and twice in Yokohama. These performances marked the first time that a foreign orchestra gave concerts of game music in Japan. In addition to the events in Germany, the UK and Japan, Final Symphony II was also presented in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. A studio recording of Final Symphony II was released on 4 August 2023 (via Merregnon Records ), performed by

4512-659: The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at Konserthuset Stockholm. Symphonic Memories – Music from Square Enix was premiered by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the Stockholm Concert Hall on 9 June 2018. The concept of the production is to present popular scores from previous programmes such as Symphonic Fantasies , Final Symphony and Final Symphony II , and to combine some of them with new arrangements. In addition to music from Final Fantasy VI , VIII and

4606-605: The US as the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. It was capable of five channels, one being capable of simple PCM sampled sound. The home computer Commodore 64 released in 1982 was capable of early forms of filtering effects, different types of waveforms and eventually the undocumented ability to play 4-bit samples on a pseudo fourth sound channel. Its comparatively low cost made it a popular alternative to other home computers, as well as its ability to use

4700-493: The action role-playing game Starfield , which had just been released at the time. The recording took place with the London Symphony Orchestra at LSO St Luke's . The video was published on YouTube on 13 September 2023. The Chamber Music Game Concerts performed by a string ensemble as well as the school concerts Heroes of Our Imagination and Super Mario Galaxy – A Musical Adventure were three sub-series of events also produced by Böcker. A Chamber Music Game Concert in 2005

4794-501: The audio stream. Manipulating the stream any further would require a far more significant level of CPU power available in the 5th generation. Some games, such as the Wipeout series, continued to use full Mixed Mode CD audio for their soundtracks. This overall freedom offered to music composers gave video game music the equal footing with other popular music it had lacked. A musician could now, with no need to learn about programming or

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4888-467: The available channels with other sound effects. For example, if a laser beam was fired by a spaceship, and the laser used a 1400 Hz square wave, then the square wave channel that was in use by music would stop playing music and start playing the sound effect. The mid-to-late 1980s software releases for these platforms had music developed by more people with greater musical experience than before. Quality of composition improved noticeably, and evidence of

4982-416: The chip itself. Konami 's 1983 arcade game Gyruss used five synthesis sound chips along with a DAC, which were used to create an electronic version of J. S. Bach 's Toccata and Fugue in D minor . Beyond arcade games, significant improvements to personal computer game music were made possible with the introduction of digital FM synth boards , which Yamaha released for Japanese computers such as

5076-424: The composition of a sequenced soundtrack. Being able to play one's own music during a game in the past usually meant turning down the game audio and using an alternative music player. Some early exceptions were possible on PC/Windows gaming in which it was possible to independently adjust game audio while playing music with a separate program running in the background. Some PC games, such as Quake , play music from

5170-483: The differences and similarities between classical music and game music and to make orchestral concerts more accessible to a younger audience. Five more school concerts took place in January 2010. The Super Mario Galaxy – A Musical Adventure series was the spiritual successor to Heroes of Our Imagination . The concerts were officially licensed and sponsored by Nintendo . The music was accompanied with short narrations of

5264-460: The enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature continuous, melodic background music was Rally-X , released by Namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay . The decision to include any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code. Some music was original, some was public domain music such as folk songs. Sound capabilities were limited;

5358-466: The entire second half of Symphonic Legends. The LEGENDS performance on 1 June 2011, presented by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, was partly based on arrangements from Symphonic Legends . On 13 July 2014, the London Symphony Orchestra performed the symphonic poem for The Legend of Zelda from this programme. With the reveal of Symphonic Legends , Winfried Fechner opened up in an interview that audiences could expect two game music concerts

5452-690: The fifth generation of home consoles launched globally, and as Commodore began to take a back seat to general-purpose PCs and Macs for developing and gaming. Though the Mega CD/Sega CD, and to a greater extent the PC Engine in Japan, would give gamers a preview of the direction video game music would take in streaming music, the use of both sampled and sequenced music continues in game consoles even today. The huge data storage benefit of optical media would be coupled with progressively more powerful audio generation hardware and higher quality samples in

5546-636: The first GC in Concert took place as part of the official opening ceremony of the GC – Games Convention , performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra . Four annual concerts with different programmes followed until 2007, from then on featuring the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague. Böcker decided not to limit the selection of compositions for the GC in Concert series to European games and instead chose Asian, American and European titles, resulting in

5640-450: The first General MIDI card, the sample-based SCC-1 , an add-in card version of the SC-55 desktop MIDI module. The comparative quality of the samples spurred similar offerings from Soundblaster, but costs for both products were still high. Both companies offered 'daughterboards' with sample-based synthesizers that could be later added to a less expensive soundcard (which only had a DAC and

5734-403: The first in-house concert including video game music titled PROMS That's Sound, that's Rhythm and, a little later, Symphonic Shades – Hülsbeck in Concert . In late 2007, Thomas Böcker announced his role as producer of Symphonic Shades , two concerts held on 23 August 2008 dedicated to the music of German composer Chris Hülsbeck. The premiere performance with the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln at

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5828-469: The fly for output on a speaker. Sound effects for the games were also generated in this fashion. An early example of such an approach to video game music was the opening chiptune in Tomohiro Nishikado 's Gun Fight (1975). While this allowed for the inclusion of music in early arcade video games , it was usually monophonic , looped or used sparingly between stages or at the start of

5922-518: The game architecture itself, independently produce the music to their satisfaction. This flexibility would be exercised as popular mainstream musicians would be using their talents for video games specifically. An early example is Way of the Warrior on the 3DO , with music by White Zombie . A more well-known example is Trent Reznor 's score for Quake . An alternate approach, as with the TMNT arcade,

6016-409: The game systems were capable of "CD quality" sound, these compressed audio tracks were not true "CD quality." Many of them had lower sampling rates, but not so significant that most consumers would notice. Using a compressed stream allowed game designers to play back streamed music and still be able to access other data on the disc without interruption of the music, at the cost of CPU power used to render

6110-462: The generation could boast similar abilities yet did not have the same circulation levels as the Super NES. The Neo-Geo home system was capable of the same powerful sample processing as its arcade counterpart but was several times the cost of a Super NES. The Sega CD (the Mega CD outside North America) hardware upgrade to the Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) offered multiple PCM channels, but they were often passed over instead to use its capabilities with

6204-428: The high cost of memory storage which rapidly declined with the optical CD format. Taking entirely pre-recorded music had many advantages over sequencing for sound quality. Music could be produced freely with any kind and number of instruments, allowing developers to simply record one track to be played back during the game. Quality was only limited by the effort put into mastering the track itself. Memory space costs that

6298-447: The introduction of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis, providing more organic sounds than previous PSGs. The first such game, Marble Madness used the Yamaha YM2151 FM synthesis chip. As home consoles moved into the fourth generation , or 16-bit era, the hybrid approach (sampled and tone) to music composing continued to be used. The Sega Genesis offered advanced graphics over the NES and improved sound synthesis features (also using

6392-450: The late 1980s, video game music was being sold as cassette tape soundtracks in Japan, inspiring American companies such as Sierra , Cinemaware and Interplay to give more serious attention to video game music by 1988. The Golden Joystick Awards introduced a category for Best Soundtrack of the Year in 1986, won by Sanxion . Some games for cartridge systems have been sold with extra audio hardware on board, including Pitfall II for

6486-428: The major advances of the 16-bit era , by which time 16-bit arcade machines were using multiple FM synthesis chips. One of the earliest home computers to make use of digital signal processing in the form of sampling was the Amiga in 1985. The computer's sound chip featured four independent 8-bit digital-to-analog converters . Developers could use this platform to take samples of a music performance, sometimes just

6580-431: The manager of the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln, attended the fifth GC in Concert in Leipzig in the hope of introducing a new genre of music to his own ensemble. Impressed by the response of the audience there, he saw an opportunity to inspire young people with orchestral music and entered into a collaboration with Böcker's Merregnon Studios , which soon led to the CD release drammatica -The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura- ,

6674-655: The original compositions, but personal interpretations by the arrangers. The pioneering work done by Böcker and his team paved the way for many comparable events. All five concerts in Leipzig took place in front of sold-out audiences of around 2000 people each. In their role as official opening ceremonies of the GC – Games Convention , they also included various speeches by industry representatives and politicians such as Wolfgang Tiefensee . In addition, numerous composers took part, including Nobuo Uematsu , Yuzo Koshiro , Chris Hülsbeck , Rob Hubbard and Allister Brimble . Following an invitation by Thomas Böcker, Winfried Fechner,

6768-453: The other two, however, and music tended to be simpler in construct. The more dominant approach for games based on CDs, however, was shifting toward streaming audio. In the same timeframe of the late 1980s to mid-1990s, the IBM PC clones using the x86 architecture became more ubiquitous, yet had a very different path in sound design than other PCs and consoles. Early PC gaming was limited to

6862-458: The player's Creature, like dancing or laughing. Some PlayStation games supported this by swapping the game CD with a music CD, although when the game needed data, players had to swap the CDs again. One of the earliest games, Ridge Racer , was loaded entirely into RAM, letting the player insert a music CD to provide a soundtrack throughout the entirety of the gameplay. In Vib Ribbon , this became

6956-465: The player's actions. This was further improved upon by Namco's 1982 arcade game Dig Dug , where the music stopped when the player stopped moving. Dig Dug was composed by Yuriko Keino, who also composed the music for other Namco games such as Xevious (1982) and Phozon (1983). Sega 's 1982 arcade game Super Locomotive featured a chiptune rendition of Yellow Magic Orchestra 's " Rydeen " (1979); several later computer games also covered

7050-589: The popular Atari 2600 home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones at a time. As advances were made in silicon technology and costs fell, a definitively new generation of arcade machines and home consoles allowed for great changes in accompanying music. In arcades, machines based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and accompanying various Yamaha YM programmable sound generator sound chips allowed for several more tones or "channels" of sound, sometimes eight or more. The earliest known example of this

7144-977: The popularity of the music of this time period remains even today. Composers who made a name for themselves with their software include Koichi Sugiyama ( Dragon Quest ), Nobuo Uematsu ( Final Fantasy ), Rob Hubbard ( Monty On the Run , International Karate ), Koji Kondo ( Super Mario Bros. , The Legend of Zelda ), Miki Higashino ( Gradius , Yie-Ar Kung Fu , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ), Hiroshi Kawaguchi ( Space Harrier , Hang-On , Out Run ), Hirokazu Tanaka ( Metroid , Kid Icarus , EarthBound ), Martin Galway ( Daley Thompson's Decathlon , Stryker's Run , Times of Lore ), David Wise ( Donkey Kong Country ), Yuzo Koshiro ( Dragon Slayer , Ys , Shinobi , ActRaiser , Streets of Rage ), Mieko Ishikawa ( Dragon Slayer , Ys ), and Ryu Umemoto ( visual novels , shoot 'em ups ). By

7238-454: The potential to produce much more realistic sounds, each sample required much more data in memory . This was at a time when all memory, solid-state ( ROM cartridge ), magnetic ( floppy disk ) or otherwise was still very costly per kilobyte . Sequenced soundchip-generated music, on the other hand, was generated with a few lines of comparatively simple code and took up far less precious memory. Arcade systems pushed game music forward in 1984 with

7332-562: The release of the Atari STE which used DMA techniques to play back PCM samples at up to 50 kHz. The ST, however, remained relevant as it was equipped with a MIDI controller and external ports. It became the choice of by many professional musicians as a MIDI programming device. IBM PC clones in 1985 would not see any significant development in multimedia abilities for a few more years, and sampling would not become popular in other video game systems for several years. Though sampling had

7426-765: The release of the Super Famicom in 1990, and its US/EU version Super NES in 1991. It sported a specialized custom Sony chip for both the sound generation and for special hardware DSP. It was capable of eight channels of sampled sounds at up to 16-bit resolution, had a wide selection of DSP effects, including a type of ADSR usually seen in high-end synthesizers of the time, and full stereo sound. This allowed experimentation with applied acoustics in video games, such as musical acoustics (early games like Super Castlevania IV , F-Zero , Final Fantasy IV , Gradius III , and later games like Chrono Trigger ), directional ( Star Fox ) and spatial acoustics ( Dolby Pro Logic

7520-502: The release. In 2021, for the tenth anniversary of Bethesda Softworks ' action role-playing game Skyrim , Thomas Böcker produced a concert film featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices at Alexandra Palace in London. The video was released on YouTube on 11 November 2021, shortly followed by a music album. In September 2023, Thomas Böcker produced another concert film, again for Bethesda Softworks , for

7614-558: The snowboarder lands, the music resumes regular playback until its next "cue". The LucasArts company pioneered this interactive music technique with their iMUSE system, used in their early adventure games and the Star Wars flight simulators Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter . Action games such as these will change dynamically to match the amount of danger. Stealth-based games will sometimes rely on such music, either by handling streams differently, or dynamically changing

7708-521: The song, such as Trooper Truck (1983) by Rabbit Software as well as Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984) and Stryker's Run (1986) composed by Martin Galway . Home console systems also had a comparable upgrade in sound ability beginning with the ColecoVision in 1982 capable of four channels. However, more notable was the Japanese release of the Famicom in 1983 which was later released in

7802-452: The sound on the game based on cues of the game environment. As processing power increased dramatically in the 6th generation of home consoles, it became possible to apply special effects in realtime to streamed audio. In SSX , a recent video game series, if a snowboarder takes to the air after jumping from a ramp, the music softens or muffles a bit, and the ambient noise of wind and air blowing becomes louder to emphasize being airborne. When

7896-408: Was Sega 's 1980 arcade game Carnival , which used an AY-3-8910 chip to create an electronic rendition of the classical 1889 composition " Over The Waves " by Juventino Rosas . Konami 's 1981 arcade game Frogger introduced a dynamic approach to video game music, using at least eleven different gameplay tracks, in addition to level-starting and game over themes, which change according to

7990-403: Was also released: Sunsoft's shoot 'em up game Stratovox . Around the same time, the introduction of frequency modulation synthesis ( FM synthesis ), first commercially released by Yamaha for their digital synthesizers and FM sound chips , allowed the tones to be manipulated to have different sound characteristics, where before the tone generated by the chip was limited to the design of

8084-571: Was held in conjunction with the gaming tournament GC-Cup at Augustusplatz in Leipzig, while two more of these performances were given in the context of a GC – Games Convention press conference and the exhibition Nintendo – Vom Kartenspiel zum Game Boy at the Landesmuseum Koblenz. The four school concerts Heroes of our Imagination by the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen in 2006 were conceived to demonstrate

8178-640: Was performed by the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal at the Stadthalle Wuppertal. Another performance took place on 30 May 2013 with the London Symphony Orchestra, the first concert of game music for the orchestra. The Final Symphony programme then went on a world tour with performances in Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, the USA, New Zealand, China, Austria, Australia and Poland. A studio recording of Final Symphony

8272-492: Was previously a concern was somewhat addressed with optical media becoming the dominant media for software games. CD quality audio allowed for music and voice that had the potential to be truly indistinguishable from any other source or genre of music. In fourth generation home video games and PCs this was limited to playing a Mixed Mode CD audio track from a CD while the game was in play (such as Sonic CD ). The earliest examples of Mixed Mode CD audio in video games include

8366-755: Was released on 23 February 2015 (via X5Music / Merregnon Records ), performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios . Plans for Final Symphony II were announced in March 2015. The world premiere with music from Final Fantasy V , VIII , IX , and XIII took place on 29 August 2015 at the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, performed by the Beethoven Orchester Bonn , followed by four performances in September and October 2015 by

8460-599: Was still limited in spindle speed, so playing an audio track from the game CD meant that the system could not access data again until it stopped the track from playing. Looping , the most common form of game music, was also a problem as when the laser reached the end of a track, it had to move itself back to the beginning to start reading again causing an audible gap in playback. To address these drawbacks, some PC game developers designed their own container formats in house, for each application in some cases, to stream compressed audio. This would cut back on memory used for music on

8554-483: Was stored on physical media in analog waveforms such as cassette tapes and phonograph records . Such components were expensive and prone to breakage under heavy use, making them less than ideal for use in an arcade cabinet , though in rare cases such as Journey , they were used. A more affordable method of having music in a video game was to use digital means, where a specific computer chip would change electrical impulses from computer code into analog sound waves on

8648-536: Was to take pre-existing music not written exclusively for the game and use it in the game. The game Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and subsequent Star Wars games took music composed by John Williams for the Star Wars films of the 1970s and 1980s and used it for the game soundtracks. Both using new music streams made specifically for the game, and using previously released/recorded music streams are common approaches for developing sound tracks to this day. It

8742-464: Was used in some games, like King Arthur's World and Jurassic Park ), as well as environmental and architectural acoustics ( A Link to the Past , Secret of Evermore ). Many games also made heavy use of the high-quality sample playback capabilities ( Super Star Wars , Tales of Phantasia ). The only real limitation to this powerful setup was the still-costly solid state memory . Other consoles of

8836-530: Was usurped in 1989 by Creative 's Sound Blaster , which used the same Yamaha FM chip in the AdLib, for compatibility, but also added 8-bit 22.05 kHz (later 44.1 kHz) digital audio recording and playback of a single stereo channel. As an affordable end-user product, the Sound Blaster constituted the core sound technology of the early 1990s; a combination of a simple FM engine that supported MIDI, and

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