passive or active listening...?

Ever since I could remember, I have been involved in video games. One of the things about a video game that most people don't notice very much is the soundtrack. But for a particular game, it is very important to the players of this game that the music is good. For the Final Fantasy series, music has always been an integral part of game play.

Perhaps it is the fact that some parts of this game plays out like a movie, with amazing computer generated graphics, and the recent (within the last 10 years) addition of voice acting, music is just as important here as it is in a full movie. Starting with the first game of the series, Final Fantasy I, the soundtrack of this game began to put a signature on the game. Every fan of the series starting at any point in the series's history, whether you started at Final Fantasy I or the Final Fantasy XII, will know it is this series whenever you hear the theme of victory played after every successful battle.

Naturally, there has been more than one composer for the games' soundtracks, but one particular composer to note is Uematsu Nobuo (Nobuo Uematsu in the western name order). He started composing for the series from game 1. His works are the ones most people look forward to hearing. He uses very grand chords and almost always manages to compose a melody that is memorable so you will know exactly which game that song or piece came from. Those games whose soundtracks were not composed by Uematsu or that he didn't have any involvement in sold noticeably less copies. There is a general consensus that he is The composer for Final Fantasy.

Other composers for this line of games may not be bad composers, just as there are movie composers who compose pieces that are very repetitive does not mean they are bad composers. The important thing is to understand whether the audience that you are composing for will be actively or passively listening to the piece that you are currently composing. I believe that Uematsu is every Final Fantasy fan's music composer of choice because he was able to find that balance between music for active and music for passive listening. When you are in-game, you do not want a soundtrack that is annoying because it is so present nor do you want something that is so without presence that it is not memorable and you have unable to remember it even after hearing constantly for the 15 or more hours that you might spend in one location. Uematsu was able to find that balance. In contrast, the composer for the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XII (the previously latest installment), Sakimoto Hitoshi, who composed most of the soundtrack, created what the players would call, the annoyingly present soundtrack. Because of the nature of the game play in Final Fantasy XII, the music did not change unless the player entered a different map area which meant that you were hearing the same thing more often and for longer periods of time. However, the soundtrack had so much movement and demanded so much of your attention that it became a chore to listen to it. During certain points, the music was the reason you really wanted to stop playing the game.

That being said, the Final Fantasy XII soundtrack should be good for active listening then. Well, it fails in this category as well in that it does not demand THAT much attention. It hovers between the fully active and semi active, semi passive listening states which is annoying because then it's not good for anything.

The thing about Uematsu's music is that it is wonderful for fully passive and semi-passive, semi-active listening AND for fully active listening, for a short amount of time. You can't have everything but Uematsu comes close. He understands exactly which tracks you'll be listening to actively and writes those with amazing chord arrangement to make it so grand and amazing that, along with the eye-popping computer graphics, creates a scene of shear awesomeness that makes the hairs on your neck stand on end.

Yes, there are many aspects to a game worthy of the roman numeral and a place in the Final Fantasy line, but the aspect of music is surely half the game.