What is your opinion of Video game music's impact on EDM?

Renz Envy

Renz Envy

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
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I think a lot of people over look video game music as being one of the founding tools that served as a building block for modern pop and EDM.

Why?
I have heard music taste is largely based on nostalgia and memories. If video games gave us good feelings as kids, then wouldn't the electronic music be part of our sub-conscious frame of reference around what we favor and do not?

But psychology aside, what genre would you consider early video game music? We're talking NES -> N64 time era.
 
I agree with the second paragraph but for me it was my parents old disco records that first got me to enjoy club music and a bunch of classical and jazz influence perverted me in the direction of liquid dnb which I've enjoyed for probably the longest sequential stretch of time now.

Video games are probably a huge influence for someone like Deadmau5 whom I believe even has an NES gamepad tattoo and likes fucking with all kinds of 8-bitish noises. Contemporary dubstep seems to have a lot of video game noise. I dunno, a lot of EDM sounds like bad noise to me.
 
ambient artist Loscil made the music for Prototype and a few mobile apps. who knows what else he is doing :D
 
chiptunes is the definitive rip of the gameboy, probably not that much to be honest. I like Streets of Rage, and Streets of Rage II but I don't think it really had an effect on EDM. People just getting those sounds for the retro vibe.
 
jpgrdnr said:
chiptunes is the definitive rip of the gameboy, probably not that much to be honest. I like Streets of Rage, and Streets of Rage II but I don't think it really had an effect on EDM. People just getting those sounds for the retro vibe.
Click to expand...

it's fun to hook a GBC up to your laptop and pull sounds from old games
 
Absolutely. For one example, Flying Lotus has outright stated the huge influence that 8-bit Nintendo music had on his sound. You can hear it, too.

I think my music tastes are strongly impacted by the soundtrack to the Ocarina of Time. Some of those simple harmonies are still my favorites.
 
all i know is that i first heard edm through video games as a kid, and was never up until recently able to pinpoint the exact genre(i.e. that song on the game i liked, what kind of music is this? lol) but yes i would say that video games in some fashion or another played a centripital roll on the development, or at least peoples musical taste in edm.
 
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