Perhaps what the Whitmore bio stated as “adaptive” was more about adapting the themes, like you said above. So, taking a theme and morphing it into whatever the scene around it was displaying? It’s hard to say - it’s two different views on the same thing, except that both seem to contradict each other…

Actually, I really like what Clark has said about adaptive music. Like a scientist, I am quite delighted to be wrong so long the answer is found, and I think that Clark has hit the nail on the head with this one. I’m glad you found this article, it’s a keeper!

Kenley

Personally, Sakimoto’s work has really grown on me as stand-alone music in the last few years. I used to not enjoy it as much as, say, Uematsu, due to the dearth of catchy and recognizable melodies in favor of sweeping moods and textures, but lately I find I could really listen to FFXII music all day.

Definitely looking forward to Earthbound and the jazz combo in the next episode as well.

Oh, and I also enjoy a lot of the music from Wild Arms; it would certainly be something different to talk about. Of course, it also provides some prime examples of some video game composers’ tendency to “borrow” themes from pre-existing works pretty liberally. I don’t have the reference off the top of my head, but a few of the WA melodies are almost note-for-note with some old spaghetti western movie scores.

Matt - “Vagrant Story” is epic and you’re right, that should definitely make it onto the show in the near future! (but not the next two episodes, because I have those planned out already
Josh - thanks for the kind words!

secretbass - perhaps one of the first fans of the show! I’m pumped about that Decca release, I’m going to have to get my hands on that… You pose a lot of good points with Berlioz being similar to Sakimoto… I agree, they both really expose the colour within the orchestra (and add some extra stuff too), hence comparing the two in the podcast. With regards to Sakimoto’s writing, I like it much more when I’m playing the games at the same time. I mean, I LOVE the OST to “Tactics”, and I really like “Final Fantasy XII” (for example), but I’m not a huge fan of XII’s score on its own. I really like it when I’m playing the game, but I don’t think that I could sit down and listen to it on its own.

James - thanks for the compliments! It’s easy to be “hoity-toity”, but it’s a lot of fun using VGM to really teach big musical concepts and I think that it comes across really casual because we’re using video games as a medium, rather than, say… Beethoven or Schubert. It does also help that I’m a music teacher, so I’ve got some degree of music pedagogy, but I’m glad that you don’t think that the show comes off as pretentious That’s important!

I agree, the Dark Knights are killing machines, but if you’ve got the time to get them… I liked the re-translation because the Middle-English in the original PS1 release was really awkward and I feel that it kind of missed the mark. However, I think that the localization and translations teams for “WotL” really put a lot of work into making the dialogue legitimate and really deep. With regards to spells and stuff, whatevs, so long as it does that same thing then I don’t really mind what they call it
VGTO - glad to have you listening! I’m glad that you learn things, that’s one of the aims of the podcast! I have to get my hands on “Wild Arms”, I’ve heard that the score it good…
Thanks for the comments and keep’em coming!
Your listenership means a lot to me!
Kenley

Wild Arms came out in 97 as well, GRRR! I must angst about this because I was a fan of the wild west style music. That is all on that, :).

Again I enjoy your informative posts. I’ve played through tactics more than once and loved the story. The music and story is what kept me attached to this genre of franchise.

Great job man, I learn new things every day and a refreshing on what I knew before, hah.
I had to cut short on the whole listening, so I’ll hear the rest later, can’t wait to hear the rest.

But I’m curious, why do you like the release of FFT better? I thought that the “retranslation” was… tedious. I mean all the Middle-English stuff was annoying to me. And the changing of the names (i.e magic to magick, fire 2, 3, 4, to fira, firaga, firaja. ect) I dunno, it just seemed kinda pointless. Just about the only good thing good about it was the addition of the new classes. But even then, the dark knights are WAY OVERPOWERED. And, (I hate to ramble on here) but also the PSP seems to not have enough power to handle the graphics. So just about everytime you cast a spell, is slows down bad.

Anyway, all that aside, Tactics has amazing music. And I’m glad that you decided to do a show on it.

First of all, YMO is awesome, and Ryuichi Sakamoto at least has done a ton of interesting stuff since he left the band, so if you like Yellow Magic Orchestra you’d do well to follow up with his later solo work.

Second, its funny that you bring up Berlioz in the podcast, since I find more than a bit of similarity between Hitoshi Sakimoto’s style and Berlioz’ highly rythmically-oriented style of writing. Its worth noting that Berlioz’ influence was instrumental in the formation of the Russian school of composition, his music having a huge influence on the group of composers known as The Five, as well as his work on orchestration serving as an inspiration for Rimsky-Korsakov’s definitive work “Principles of Orchestration.”

To feed your Mahler fanboyism, Decca released a Canadian-only recording of the entire Mahler symphony cycle, with conductor Ricardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Its ridiculously cheap, and an absolute steal for such a huge body of work.

And I hate to say it, but Hitoshi Sakimoto’s music has never really done that much for me. He writes short but incredibly dense orchestral compositions that never feel like they have room to expand or breathe. I think giving him the opportunity to write a full length symphony would result in something absolutely sublime, but for videogame music his stuff just totally doesn’t work for me.

As always, a fantastic podcast, and even though it was heinously late this time, its always worth the wait.

They’ll be up by Wednesday night (as my school has its band camp for the next three days!)

Thanks for waiting - as always, I really appreciate your listenership and patience!

Kenley

Sorry, Kenley, I’m an FFVII buff. The Birth of a God actually seems, to me, to serve as a link between Those Chosen by the Planet and One Winged Angel. If you listen carefully, there’s a riff in Birth of a God that is exploited after the “Sephiroth motive” and in One Winged Angel is after the chorus. I may be just making an aural connection…but that’s what I think.