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If you grabbed 100 random people on the high street and asked them ‘what is music’, you’re likely to get 100 different answers. What makes great music is entirely up to the individual person, although most would agree that bands, singers, orchestras and other more overtly musical things fit the bill.
The thing is though, music has crept into a lot of places and now comes in a lot of forms that many people would be on the fence about adding to that category. If you’re willing to keep an open mind, however, you can find a lot of great creative work happening outside the standard forms.
Video Gaming
This is becoming a much more widely known secret these days, however video games have music that in many cases can compete with anything in the charts in terms of popularity. Epic games on the lines of Skyrim or God of War each have specially made soundtracks that have been nominated for awards, not to mention the incredible detail put into the songs of many Japanese titles.
Beyond that, you have the games that manage to integrate music into the gameplay itself. Most critically acclaimed for this is the dark fantasy of Undertale, which not only has a chiptune soundtrack with incredible composition, but also incorporates the rhythm of the music into the battle system to some extent.
Casino Games
On the topic of games, most people don’t realise just how far casino games have come from silent spins and jingly win sounds. The modern digital slot has all the quality of a high-end mobile app and usually features its own soundtrack, which often get progressively more intense as the gameplay does.
What’s more impressive is the sheer quantity of games you can find at online casinos, and how fast they’re produced. Out of the hundreds of slots we found while looking through Royal Casino, a popular site in Denmark, almost all now feature bespoke music tracks, not even including the official slots created for bands such as KISS or Guns’n’Roses. Even Electric Six‘s Danger! High Voltage has its own slot!
TV Shows
Movies have long been a source of great music; Titanic, Star Wars and basically any movie featuring John Williams have legendary themes behind them. In the past, though, TV shows were much less dramatic when it came to music, with generally less production budget.
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Things have changed, though; it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t know Ramin Djawadi’s epic main theme to Game of Thrones these days, and it doesn’t stop there. Miami Vice was a giant tribute to the music of the 80’s, to the grungy Latin songs from Breaking Bad, the quality of TV music has shot up as studios put more effort and resources into capturing audiences.
The fact is, all across media, access to higher quality music production software and equipment, as well as massively more investment from companies, is making great music pop up in all forms and pretty much anywhere it can be used. Keep your ears open; your next favourite song may come at you from somewhere entirely unexpected.
