Who are these guys?
Don't answer, I don't care. Bach, Mozart and God could say that it's the best soundtrack they ever heard and my oppinion wouldn't change. Because that's what matters for me. It all boils down to the personal appreciation of the music, if the music sounds good to the person on certain context.
EDIT: Fuck, I'm hours later. I'll keep this here anyway.
Who? James Newton Howard and Michael Giacchino? They are two people who very likely never played a videogame in their lives and who know nothing about what videogames music is about, and who also happen to be movies music composers, one of them being great (James) and the other (Michael) one being boring, from what I've known so far.
I agree, in the end personal opinion is the only thing that matters, and awards are just, as someone said some time ago, glorified opinions.
The opinion of people who give awards isn't better than mine or yours, and in this case, you, me and anyone from this forum could have a better opinion on what is good videogames music and what is not.
Movie composers choosing the best videogame soundtrack award? Pst!
Next time we can go ourselves to choose the Nobel Prize nominees...
There are plenty of soulful and very feeling musicians who have no training in classical music. It may have been during Bach's era that a lot of theory "rules" were put into place that we still use today, but it goes even as far back as Pythagoras. Music is a tower with floors being built on top of each other year after year. Maybe I misunderstood you but I think it would be hard to say that various songs by the likes of Bob Marley, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, etc. don't have feeling because they're simple and may only have 3 chords. Flamenco music is an excellent case in point. Some very very emotional music yet also very simple in a lot of cases, sometimes only consisting of two chords (and in many cases your beloved i-V-i progression haha!) There's theory involved with any music, but that doesn't mean the people making the music are actually thinking about it. I don't think about theory when I write or play (not very often anyway.)
Yes and no, you misunderstood me just a little
Those musicians you mentioned, with The Beatles on top, are masters of their own art.
I was referring, in general terms, to musicians who don't know all possibilities available, so they always end up making the same chords over and over, and if they don't have a classical base, chances are those chords will be boring... I don't know the word, in my country we use the word "square music", but I don't know if in english it's the same.
On top of that, many artists don't have classical training, but it's very likely they've grown up and formed themselves as musicians listening to Queen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin... bands that had classical basis on their compositions, so the base is there.
It's not the same case with other kind of musicians, but I've forgotten a very important part in my argument, and that's something I always talk about: you can insert jazz instead of classical music. Jazz is one of the greatest and richest music genres in the world, and it's part of why I love SO MUCH Michiru Yamane.
Django Reinhardt is a godd way to start listening if anyone's interested and wants to know what I'm talking about (though I have many jazz favourites, also).
On an additional note, The Beatles studied Tellemann (a baroque composer) a lot in order to enrich their compositions, and that shows in compositions like Girl or Michelle.
But anyway, one way or the other, there's no denying The Beatles condition of geniuses, just like Queen and many other bands that changed and improved music forever, almost as much as those classical and baroque composers I always mention.
About the progression, I-V-I is too simple. One of my favourites that I always mention is I-IV-VII-III-VI-IV-II-V (in minor mode, I and IV are minors and the rest are majors, I don't know if I wrote it right because in english the nomenclature is very different than in my language).
There's no telling what will reach someone's soul emotionally. The same song can affect one person deeply yet affect another not at all. It's all very personal.
I agree with that. It's a very personal thing.
Yet, I don't have any respect for the majority of modern movie soundtracks. I think they are cookie-cutter products, not music. It's sad, because so far, the only recent movie I've seen featuring good music is "A Royal Affair", and that's a danish movie, and that alone makes a full statement about current poor condition of Hollywood productions in terms of music.
And likewise with LoS, I feel the score DOES have that Castlevania feeling. It doesn't always give me the same feeling as older soundtracks, but it still makes me think Castlevania. I can't really quantify what gives me the Castlevania feeling in a piece of music, but I know that I could hear it in something either incredibly simple or complex. It just matters what the composer does with the piece. You don't like Araujo's music, and it's possible that Araujo hasn't ever heard a CV soundtrack before he composed the LoS OST, but in many ways, he captured what *I* personally hear in a CV soundtrack. Is it the best OST in the series? No. But it belongs there in my personal CV world.
That would be more personal and I can't argue with that. For me, it does nothing. But don't misunderstand me, what I really don't like is the battles music; the ambience tracks, as I said previously some pages ago, are way better than the vast majority of Hollywood soundtracks today.
I can't find the exact quote now, but I remember to read that Araujo said (in spanish, a little time after LoS release) something like "I've heard some works from previous games, and it didn't fit with the vision we wanted to imprint the game with, so we chose to make a couple nods and let the rest to be a completely new vision about this universe".
I lol'ed.
Haha! That was the intention of that edit