Music Works WTH?

[Evie94]

Well, that's sukritact and I told.

Facts and logic < a gif of Beethoven blinking and spelling a username so that 'suck' is in the title

We shall await any logical argument with baited breath

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[El Caballerion]

I think what would've looked nice would be a change in the boring classical composer era graphic. I would love to see the front of the scores for the classical pieces, and perhaps an image of the appropriate instruments for the world music (i.e., Djembes and African percussion for African Great Music Works, Ouds and Nays for Arab music, Koto and Taiko drums for Japanese, etc.)

 

[Kwami]

Sorry, but I don't buy the "too expensive" excuse. Firaxis/2K was already paying royalties for many other things in BNW. If they put music low on the list and ran out of money, well, fine. But let's not forget that they put music low on the list. As a customer, player, and fan of the game, the OP has every right to be annoyed by that decision and to ask Firaxis to fix the problem. If you don't think that spending more of the budget on music is worth it, then fine, but remember that that's an opinion and it's really no more valid than the OP's.

And, let's get some perspective here. Firaxis wouldn't have to hire a professional orchestra and rent a fancy studio at some absurdly high fee. A decent university band in a basic studio could produce far better music than the crap that's currently in the game and they'd probably do it for next to nothing because of the good publicity. But if not, well, there's plenty of free music out there. For instance, see http://www.classiccat.net/. Some of it is under non-commercial licenses but much of it isn't.

 

[sukritact]

Firaxis/2K was already paying royalties for many other things in BNW

For example?

And, let's get some perspective here. Firaxis wouldn't have to hire a professional orchestra and rent a fancy studio at some absurdly high fee. A decent university band in a basic studio could produce far better music than the crap that's currently in the game and they'd probably do it for next to nothing because of the good publicity.

But if not, well, there's plenty of free music out there. For instance, see http://www.classiccat.net/. Some of it is under non-commercial licenses but much of it isn't.

Well, I just have a few problems with this. The university band thing, well no. That type of outsourcing can seem potentially unreliable (irregardless of the truth, unfortunately). Management would probably not be happy about it anyway. Firaxis is not a small indie developer that can do whatever it wants...

I'm not so sure about the link. A lot of it relinks to the PianoSociety and can't be used commercially. (the only exception I stumbled onto was Vivaldi's Spring Concerto, but that was old record quality and still not available for commercial use). None of the content is hosted on the site. Unless you can link to a better repository, I have my doubts about how viable this is.

My other concern is something I just realized. The music are complete pieces. You would have to fade out all the pieces. You may think this is easy, but it'd be extremely difficult to do this cleanly (ie. as if the band stopped playing as opposed to a regular fade out).

Then there's the issue of diversity and consistency. Everything I've seen so far is western. So you'd end up with a bunch of excellent western tracks (if you can find them at a non-vinyl record quality, and even then you might still need a bunch of lawyers to make sure everything's legal cause of America's sue culture), and a bunch of non-western tracks in midi format. Unless you expect Firaxis to go running around to find a Traditional Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native American, etc. orchestras. Probably not worth the price too, since it's just one or two 10 second pieces each.

and that part I don't think a university band could manage properly (especially since even Wikipedia seems to be lacking a lot of non-western pieces).

If anyone says "I don't care about non-western pieces", well, may you be cursed by the spirits of everywhere but the west; and may Gandhi nuke you all the time...

tl;dr: Let's just say it's stuffing in a bunch of midi files seems much easier; and the alternative ain't worth the effort.

 

[sukritact]

On that note, why don't you people complaining compile better alternative tracks? It's just a matter of replacing the music in the game's files.

 

[happyturtle]

Didn't Firaxis already hire an orchestra to play all the War and Peace themes for every era for every civilization? What would be the problem with having that same orchestra do the Great Works as well?

 

[sukritact]

Didn't Firaxis already hire an orchestra to play all the War and Peace themes for every era for every civilization? What would be the problem with having that same orchestra do the Great Works as well?

Only two per Civ. The west has some custom music I think, but the rest is just random stock music IIRC (if you were to use those for the Great Works, now THAT'S lazy).

Besides, the orchestra is western (Prague Philharmonic Orchestra), with maybe one or two non-western instruments. For the GWoMs you'd need a bunch of full non-western orchestras since we have a bunch of non-western civs as well.

 

[leachmonster]

Did you read?



What Beethoven would say doesn't matter. Either Beethoven's work is horribly reproduced or Firaxis cannot include the work at all because money. That is my point.

Considering that, would you prefer no music or bad music? Given money this is what is available.

It's long, but actually read my post. There's a reason why they cannot include good renditions of music in the game.

You can imagine Beethoven and Bach screaming bloody murder. That doesn't change the fact that it would cost money and time; either more than it's worth or more than Firaxis can afford.

I have read your post - it was long and enlightening, but it is still an opinion i cannot agree with.

I'm aware that money and time are huge factors regarding game content but we have a difference in values. We can agree that high quality music could have been added with enough resources?

I don't think great music works should have been included (in current form). I cant see that they can be scrubbed from the game now its published. I just want firaxis to make amends for a mistake i feel they have made

sukritact - you have written many things that i agree with whole heartedly but im still with the op on this one

 

[Makavcio]

First of all, Beethoven died a deaf man so he wouldn't say anything to his music in midi format

I agree that it would be nice to listen to GWoM in flac/wave/ape/anything_lossless format, but it's not such a big deal. Something spiked your interest? Go buy a proper recording. C5 introduced me to Maurice Ravel's work and I bought some of his recordings. Simple as that. We get small photos of works of art (paintings) and short, sometimes questionably translated passages of great books; why is everyone expecting flawless music?

I must disagree with people who fantasize about extreme cost of introducing proper music to the game. There is no need to hire a whole orchestra to perform all these compositions again. It's been done hundreds of times and all of these recordings are available somewhere for purchase. All Firaxis would need to do is contacting a distributor in order to purchase rights to several seconds of each or their recordings. Sell (or rather: share) these rights and make money or deny Firaxis and make no money? I assure you that negotiation would be very brief.
Fading out is not a problem unless you are an extremely fastidious creature. Every piece of amateur-grade audio software offers easy to implement fade out patterns that sound well enough and it should be obvious for everyone that the 10 seconds long clip used in the game is not the whole recording, but a sample torn out of it.

All in all, it would be nice to have decent music and game devs really could do this for us. It's acceptable how it is now and I'm craving much more for better diversity in great works than their better in-game quality.

 

[leachmonster]

First of all, Beethoven died a deaf man so he wouldn't say anything to his music in midi format
.

I was hoping to have done with the whole beethoven thing. At the risk of repeating myself, beethoven wasnt born deaf, his hearing deteriorated in later life. I wasn't talking about reanimating beethoven (deafness and all) to get his opinion on the sorry state of his representation, that would be gross.

I am glad to hear that civ has helped broaden your musical interest. It has introduced me to some wonderful music. I had listened to some Grieg and had decided he wasn't for me until i heard 'death of ase' in civ V.

I really can't see how the GWoM audio will inspire anyone to go out and purchase the music represented

 

[sukritact]

I must disagree with people who fantasize about extreme cost of introducing proper music to the game. There is no need to hire a whole orchestra to perform all these compositions again. It's been done hundreds of times and all of these recordings are available somewhere for purchase. All Firaxis would need to do is contacting a distributor in order to purchase rights to several seconds of each or their recordings. Sell (or rather: share) these rights and make money or deny Firaxis and make no money? I assure you that negotiation would be very brief.

Have you any experience with this, or is this pure conjecture? I'd like to hear more about the situation if you do. How can you be sure negotiations would be brief? How much would it cost for lawyers to handle this? Etc.

My main issue with this idea is the fact that they'd probably have to contact a few dozen distributors at least. I imagine 2 or 3 might be able to cover all the western pieces, but you have a bunch of non-western pieces and I can't imagine them all being under 2 or 3 distributors.

I have read your post - it was long and enlightening, but it is still an opinion i cannot agree with.

I'm aware that money and time are huge factors regarding game content but we have a difference in values. We can agree that high quality music could have been added with enough resources?

I don't think great music works should have been included (in current form). I cant see that they can be scrubbed from the game now its published. I just want firaxis to make amends for a mistake i feel they have made

sukritact - you have written many things that i agree with whole heartedly but im still with the op on this one

So, you would rather there be no GWoMs than the current state? In which case, I really have nothing else to add, since that's a valid stance to take IMHO. I just have issues with the idea that the quality is bad because the intentionally ignored it (ie. the idea that they could have splurged on it at little to no cost but chose not to).

So my view is: yes, with more resources it could have been better, but chances are they didn't have such resources at hand.

That you value the music so highly is your choice, but remember that they wouldn't be able to improve that area without detracting from other parts of the game. If you have no issue with lower quality elsewhere (say graphics, customer support, or even just game play and balance in general), well, it's your values, and not the majority's.

 

[angryjuz]

OK let's get down to the bare bones... as thankful as I am for the legal advice the reason music licensing becomes so expensive is that lawyers get involved.

The recordings we speak of have been made hundreds of times and there are many versions that are out of copyright either because the copyright has expired or the owner has surrendered it. Typing in copyright free music into google confirms very quickly that there are a large number of companies out there with huge libraries of copyright free music who will happily license it for a small sum... give the scale of Civ 5 and the short nature of the clips this sum becomes hundreds of dollars per track... across all tracks this comes to about $5-10k.

What this is really about is the BNW project running out of time and some corners having to be cut to fill the gaps in with anything at hand, and it is this that is the issue. They could've spent $5-10k and half a day and genuine recordings of these *GREAT WORKS* would have been present and this would have fitted beautifully in with the rest of the music in the game... instead uncle charlie has a program on his computer that can do it in half and hour... there job done. I understand how this situation came about, I am now just suggesting that maybe they can now spend half a day and $5-10k putting this right.

And why do I care? Ok there have been very many posts on this subject raising a large number of good and valid points that have made me question why it matters and should I care so much about a minor part of the game... and then I re-heard some of the BNW tracks against the originals and understood exactly why I was so passionate about this in the first place.

It's so easy to dismiss an opinion in a forum but I ask that you revisit my central point. If you have given views on this post, or even if you haven't please listen to the three A / B comparisons below and tell me which you think are better, and whether you think the game would've been better had Firaxis included decent recordings. These are all part of the 'great works' created by great composers within the BNW expansion:

Handel's Water Music:
Midi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAi10OneKsY
Recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuw8YjSbKd4

Liszt Hungarian Rhaspsody
Midi:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAPEyCJOj8I
Recording:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdH1hSWGFGU

Tallis' Spem in Alium
Midi:http://www.classicalarchives.com/midi/composer/3437.html#tv=music
Recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ

 

[Browd]

Honestly, for 5-10 second stretches (to match what the game provides), I can't tell much of a difference, whether played through my crappy laptop speakers or ear buds. I can understand that folks with computers configured to reproduce high quality music might hear a meaningful difference, but not me.

(I should acknowledge that I'm a musical dunce, and usually play with sound turned off, so I don't have much interest in either side of this debate (other than, wearing my Mod hat, that the debate itself remain civil), but was curious enough about angryjus's side-by-side test to give it a try.)

 

[angryjuz]

Thanks Browd, all i ask is ppl have a listen and give their opinion. I appreciate you doing so.