…because they don’t know the words! (OK, that’s a shameless ripoff of Gnomeageddon’s post over here, which got me thinking about a few different things.)
The Radical Dreamers song from Chrono Cross is one of my favorite pieces of music. (To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X is also a wonderful piece, but it doesn’t have lyrics.) The whole soundtrack is excellent, all 3 CDs of it, but that one stands out for me because of the acoustic guitar and vocals. But, y’see… I don’t know the words.
As I noted in the comment thread over in this discussion about Simon and Garfunkel, lyrics can be funny things. When I was just a wee little Tesh, my mother loved to listen to Simon and Garfunkel, so I grew up on that sort of folk music sound (along with James Taylor). Thing is, I listened to it pretty much as music with inscrutable vocals. It was only later that I listened to the lyrics as something other than music. That can change the meaning of songs, and dilute or enhance my appreciation of them. John Lennon’s Imagine is a simple, dreary bit of moderately pleasant hippie music, but I find some of the lyrics rather… unappetizing. (And, well, I can’t stand Yoko Ono. She’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.) I liked it a lot more when I didn’t listen to the lyrics, and just heard it as music with vocals.
In another instance, I like Suteki Da Ne from Final Fantasy X (aside from Otherworld, that game’s soundtrack is excellent). Melodies of Life from FFIX is also really good… but I prefer both as rendered in Japanese. The English versions are still pretty good, but suddenly, since I can understand the lyrics, they are no longer something I appreciate on a purely musical level, they are processed differently. Not only do the meter and pacing change with the translation, subtly mangling the flow of the music, but the words are, well… subpar poetry (like a lot of music, to be fair). Nothing really offensive, just… kinda cheesy and goofy. Because I now know the words, I find the songs less appealing (more so for Suteki Da Ne). I still love the Japanese versions, but I find the English versions less appealing. Sometimes, a little knowledge has a big effect. (And, as Jason points out, they don’t work as background music any more; since I subconsciously process the English lyrics, it divides my attention.)
Or, take the difference between this purely piano version of Skimming Stones from Sleepthief (recorded in the sadly now-destroyed Provo Tabernacle)… and this one with Kirsty Hawkshaw’s lovely vocals. Same piano line, but the lyrics (and other audio tidbits layered in, to be fair) change the song significantly. I actually like them both quite a bit, but they are definitely different.
Operatic music has a similar effect for me. I can listen to bits and pieces of something like La Traviata and appreciate the musicality of the singing, but that’s because I don’t understand it. (That I can’t stand heavy vibrato doesn’t help with a lot of opera, but that’s incidental.) The few pieces of English opera I’ve listened to just don’t work as well for me. (Though oddly, a musical like Fiddler on the Roof works pretty well. Maybe it has to start in English? And now I wonder how well Broadway musicals like The Lion King work in Japanese…)
Anyway, going back to games and Gnomeageddon, he notes that writing about World of Warcraft tends to meander in pretty similar, well-repeated circles, with authors (myself included) rehashing the same old arguments, just phrased in new ways. Perhaps the same could be said of writing or game design in general, what with that theory that there are only a handful of “original” stories, and everything is really just a remix.
Perhaps that’s the case, and what we need to make something truly entertaining or enlightening is for it to be a bit, well, foreign to us. That way we process it differently, and dodge the habits of familiarity and preconceived notions that can all too often taint our perception. (Think of it as a sort of rephrased idea of “fun is learning” or Raph Koster’s “Theory of Fun“.)
I think it’s a good thing to play games (and read books, listen to music, look at art, etc.) that are foreign to us. Not incomprehensible, incompetent games, just games that do things differently than what we’ve internalized and become accustomed to. We can learn things that way, from game design to personal preference. And as this interesting article notes, great artists draw from a wide variety of sources. I think this is true for music, games and pretty much any other artistic endeavor, whether as an artist or as a consumer.
Even if it means just humming along for a while.
I’ve watched the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf about a dozen times. The first time I watched it with the subtitles on, but since then, now that I know the gist of the story, I’ve always watched it without the subtitles. I don’t speak French, and so the words are lost on me, but watching it that way brings a level of focus on the physical aspects of acting, the movement and shot blocking, the choreography of the action sequences, that I don’t often get with films because I’m too busy listening to the dialog.
My mobile phone ringtone and sounds are all midis from Chrono Trigger…I’ve a whole Uematsu and Mitsua mp3 library at home on my PC that I listen to regularly. back in the days, me and a close friend were nuts about RPG Osts and he kept sending me compliations he had ripped off modules and game CDs himself, haha – good times! My favourite tunes are definitely by the Squaresoft crew (CT, FFs, Xenogears), but there were other pearls around too here and there that only few people would care about. we always felt we had a special thing going between the two of us – his favourite track of all times is Radical Dreamers.
I’ve been wanting to blog on game soundtrack for a long time, not just MMOs but console OSTs – somehow I never got around to do it. now you’ve inspired me to return to the topic! =)
And hear hear on appreciating the foreigness of things; I think there’s an ‘educational value’ in venturing down new paths every now and then, even if your ultimate bottom line is that you didn’t like it. it brightens your horizon and informs your choices and preferences – that’s why I always enjoy trying out new MMOs, even so-called bad ones.
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[...] …and second game (Sanctuary) among my favorites to just listen to. Sanctuary is a bit odd in that it uses lyrics played backwards to punctuate the piece. It fits with the theme a bit, and just works as mysterious music. Sometimes I prefer these game pieces in Japanese, since I don’t understand Japanese. I can just listen to it as music, and not engage the linguistic part of my brain. It’s a bit like those Gregorian chants that are good listening sometimes; I don’t understand them, so they are just something delightful to listen to. I think that’s valuable sometimes, as I wrote about a bit in this old article about hummingbir… [...]