Forum Pirate wrote: Reaperfan wrote: If you've heard one "epic" song you've heard them all
I'm going to have to disagree. It is a trend in games for music intended to be epic to sound pretty much the same as all the other music intended to be epic, yeah. But, to take yet another chance to advertise skies of Arcadia, Epic in skies of Arcadia is vastly different than the "you have no hope" epic and the "you are king ****" epic in most games.
You really are just argumentative for the sake of being argumentative aren't you?
Alright, I'll bite, though I can tell this will likely end with us simply having different ideas of what "epic" means in the context of music and not being able to reach a real conclusion
I'll start off by saying that, to me, "epic" music is used to emphasize actions, rather a setting or character. What this ends up boiling down to is that all "epic" music ends up being used for the same purpose, and very rarely will two "epic" tracks carry different meanings. This isn't to say "epic" tracks can't differentiate from each other, just that very few do or even try to. They almost always exclusively set the tone for "this is a big and amazing event the characters are taking part in." To provide some examples of this idea, I get very little out of the following songs because they all provide the same message in the same way. And for the record, these are all songs that I actually like, they just don't offer anything more than a very generic feeling of action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNdha5En9I&feature=relmfu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewpLAWlzhQ&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX51T-EipOo&feature=related (yeah I went there, come at me bro
)
Now back to a point I made earlier, this doesn't mean a song can't be atmospheric yet also still convey an "epic" feeling. In other words, just because a song's purpose is to convey a feeling of action, that doesn't mean it can't go beyond and add some meaning beyond that. The song from Skies of Arcadia you linked to before falls into this category. It goes beyond simply being "epic" and adds depth and emotion to it. I've not even played the games, but I could get a sense for what kind of emotions were going through the characters and player as I listened to it. This is what differentiates an atmospheric piece as opposed to an "epic" piece. Again, for proof of concept, the following I would classify as atmospheric as opposed to "epic" since while they have a "this is going to be some great action going on" undertones, that isn't the only or even most prominant emotion elicited from the piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Sf98K2oR0&feature=relmfu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrCmlrmHqg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlF0-Qs2xkI&feature=related
So I still stand by my original point; If you've heard one song that is written only to be "epic," then you've heard them all. However, you can still go one step beyond and add emotion to the piece, and it is these more emotional pieces I am partial to.
by Wade_Wilson Sat Jun 30, 2012 2:55 pm
my favourite composer.
