Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Frankly, I'd consider both Uematsu and John Williams in the same category. They both can produce amazing melodies and works. But they both tend to focus on the same things. They focus on 'sweeping melodies' and 'character themes' and a lot of the overall works tend to lose focus. Take any of their most famous works, say Final Fantasy for Uematsu and Star Wars for John Williams. In both works, you will see heavy focus put towards the main themes, character themes and themes for specific areas (such as towns in Final Fantasy or something like the 'Asteroid Field' in Empire Strikes Back). But then, when they step back away from those areas, a lot of their music tends to lose that focus and turns more towards well....improvisation. Or even sounding like elevator 'background' music. As if they were just writing stuff to fill the space in between the main themes and so there would be music playing. So what I'm trying to say is, there's amazing composers for both video games and film. But I would say both Uematsu and John Williams have the same problem of focusing too much on the 'meat' and not providing any of the 'potatoes'. The measure of a good artist is one where you want to listen to the majority of their works. Not shuffle through a quarter or more of their songs to get to the 'good' ones. |
I can agree with the most you say.... I have specified John Williams beacause it's a famous example of movies composion but he is not a perfect composer.I agree that he focus more on themes, wich are often repeated in movies and he focus less on the rest of composition but also I can't say that the quality of those are on the same level of Uematsu themes....I don't remeber a theme from Final Fantasy quite as evocative and epic as a star wars or Indiana Jones theme(just for example)....still as I said I have mentioned him more because its famous, I think he is a great comnposer but there are also many others on a similar or better level in movies. My personal preference goes to Vangelis, even if he has made just a few OSTs (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, 1942:Conquest Of Paradise, are the most famous) I don't know enyone like him who is so emotional, athmosferic and epic at the same time he is also very original mixing classical and ethnic instruments with electronic sythetizers. It would be a great thing to see a game soundtrack made by him, even if it is very unlikely.
