Posted 09 February 2013 - 10:20 PM
Ok, so I don't like to hang around the forums much because I find that all the incessant whining that is omni-present in most threads just sucks-out all my energy and makes me want to stop playing out of despair from all the negativity.
It was a friend who told me about a MWO Soundtrack so I had to look for it and so here I am!
Disclaimer: I'm a Metal Head but I love a wide variety of different music and more than anything I think that regardless of the genre it's important for the music to.. well to be music and have soul rather than being just an amalgamation of senseless noises put on repeat like most of what I hear on Mainstream >.<
That said, your project has potential! (if you are still working on it? I hope)
I can tell that you've put a lot of effort into the soundtracks that have been released so far and you have a good head on your shoulders in affirming and knowing that everyone out there will have different tastes and preferences and trying to somehow touch them all.
I'm an old time MW2 fan, I owned both expansions for it and beat the games multiple times I used to put the Cds in my CD player to listen to the music when going to bed, ripped the music from the CDs to record them on cassettes so I could listen to the awesome music Activision had made for them in my walkman and even today I have simply converted the music to mp3 several years ago and still listen to it every now and then, especially when playing WMO. (WMO Was a GOD-SEND for me because I couldn't find my old MW2 CDs anymore to play the games on this old PC I kept just for it.)
Your Menu Music is perfect for exactly what it tries to achieve.
Forsaken is good, I recognise the end as being taken from the MW2 track 8; the DubStep does indeed feel out of place but I'll say more on that in a bit.
Falling is a beautiful Epic that combines a lot of different sounds and I LOVE the orchestrals except it feels too distant; listening to this song feels like watching the overall progression of a war of epic scales by seeing only glimpses of each battle and a map layout of territory lines.
Land of Fire is my favourite of them, it combines the epicness with Orchestrals, chorus, Distorted Guitar, techno and some ever present metallic sounds that remind you that you're in a hulking mass of metal. I think that this song also best meshes with the sounds of combat (will explain shortly)
Echoes of War accomplishes the Tribal drums sound that is so reminiscent of MW2 and it is a complex song with intricacies that can be found in the sound when listened to carefully but when listened to half-assedly (as one would while playing a game) it feels a bit drab and repettitive. I think what you're missing here is simply to take a step back and give the song a sort of progression like what you get in Falling.
I may not be a music composer of any sort but I am a music enthusiast and I've been told many times that I listen to music like someone who plays and I like to think that I have a good feel for what makes a song good.
Key points I believe need to be remembered:
1- I may really love the old MW2 music so much but I also agree that it is indeed outdated (and surely copyrighted?) and MWO deserves a Fresh new sound. There's nothing inherently wrong with Techno, DubStep or any other sound be it new or old; but it's all in the way that it is used. For Example I think that DubStep could be used to really give an emphasis on the highpoint of a song or perhaps it could be used to mimick some of the sounds one might hear coming from a mech.
2- MechWarrior is about battles and war in big hulking masses of destruction, so I believe it's important to have a certain "Oomph" to the music as some would say but rather than simply meaning something heavier like most are trying to say I refer more to what i like to call "Powerful music", this is something that can come in many forms and can be difficult to describe but it is a certain rythem and change in the song; to put it in the context of MWO, think of it as the initial tension of dropping into battle, building-up to the climax of battle followed by the anxiety of seeing what will be left when the dust clears. (You don't need the Devs to allow for a dynamic soudtrack for that just incorporate it into the song directly)
3- the pilots "Mechwarriors" are the elite of the elite so there's a definite sense of the Epic in there but also the music is just playing for one battle of many and only so many battles can be truly epic.
4- I think it's a great idea to have a mix of different types of music and using different sounds, not only will it reach a wider audience but it will help keep the sound fresh from one mission to the other. Some Industrial, some Tribal, Some Metal, Some Techno, Some Rock etc... Perhaps you could try to inspire a theme to each song such as to match with each map?
5- Last but not least, even though I may seem to be saying otherwise; this is still a videogame soundtrack, the music should leave room for the actual game sound effects to seem to blend-into the music seamlessly creating it's own unique song each time you drop into battle, this is perhaps the hardest part but in the same time consider that most songs include a singer and the music is supposed to blend with the voice of the singer into a full song to accompany and augment eachother (of course I'm not talking about the mainstream crap where it's just a singer and some background white noise) in that sense the singers voice is just another instrument and is the same as the Videogame Sound Effects.
Well that's my 200 cents; I think I've said plenty/perhaps even too much but if you want to discuss more feel free to reply/contact me.