Video game jazz standards

[CliffR]

This is a lot of fun:

[TheGrandWazoo]

My daughter is a wonderful young musician (17yo) and regularly scores out video game and anime music on Musescore. She likes current pop, but video game music is definitely her jam. Video game music is definitely going to be much more prevalent and mainstream in all styles, not just jazz.

[CliffR]

That's awesome! My daughter recently sent me a video of music associated with water in computer games, and a couple of my old colleagues got name-checked.

Back in the early 80s, I wrote a few games. In those days you had to enter the notes as hexadecimal numbers. If I remember, the computer this ran on had three voices. I found the melody for Blow The Man Down and added my own bass line in what I intended to be the style of Geddy Lee. Luckily I stuck with programming rather than composing!

[delo054]

I love playing tunes from games that were impactful to me when I was young. The changes in a lot of these compositions are also very fun to improvise over. Here's a couple of recordings of tunes from games I've done in the past:

[mr. beaumont]

My high school students fall into three categories-- those who just listen to the radio, those who only listen to Chicago scene drill music, and those who discover nearly all of their music through video games and anime. This last category is definitely the "biggest ears" of the crowd, and they are into some really diverse and interesting stuff.

I still hate video games, but they certainly influence young ears, and often for the better.

[A. Kingstone]

I played Pong once.

[TomasZ]

[rafaelordanini]

Hi all, I ran into this website recently and thought it was worth sharing with the group: jazzguess.com

It’s a 'guess the tune' style game for jazz standards. I've been using it to test my ears when I'm away from the instrument. It’s surprisingly tough on the harder settings.

Has anyone else seen this?

[JazzPadd]

Hi all, I ran into this website recently and thought it was worth sharing with the group: jazzguess.com

It’s a 'guess the tune' style game for jazz standards. I've been using it to test my ears when I'm away from the instrument. It’s surprisingly tough on the harder settings.

Has anyone else seen this?

Obrigado! That was fun. Played 5 rounds and bookmarked. Some of them I knew by the melody, others guessed from genre, instrument, etc.

[mheton]

jazzguess is fun thx for sharing

[brent.h]

VGM composers are the reincarnation of Tin Pan Alley songwriters. I've been saying this for a long time!

The composers have to write in the old song form (32 bar, 24 bar, AABA, ABAC, etc), and every little thing has to be extremely tight and well-thought out. Some of these tunes are INCREDIBLE jam tunes with great melodies (and interesting non-functional harmonies). Real pity the composers aren't taken seriously by older players/listeners.

I've met VGM composers who know have really good ears for harmony because of how much they write e.g. they can hear a jazz tune and spell out the chords, "Oh, that's a dom7 with a 13th and flat 9th," or "Oh, that whole song is in minor 7ths and 9ths" and they don't even play jazz.

I wish these VGM tunes can become standards of today.

[benhatchins]

Video game music has some incredible harmonic writing that works perfectly for jazz. A lot of composers were clearly influenced by traditional jazz theory. Translating those melodies to guitar is both fun and challenging. It’s also a great way to connect with younger listeners. I’ve used a few arrangements as warm-ups before gigs. Finding recordings sometimes feels like digging through hulu hulu.pissedconsumer.com/review.html for hidden gems.