@@NUKELEDGE, I see. I heard there's another YM chip that has PSG. I believe it was used for the PC-98 because I remember the early Touhou games were on this computer and the music had an FM + PSG sound style, plus a bunch of extra features this specific chip had.
i don't think the popularization of the term soundfont for any instrument set can be chalked down purely to their use in undertale; that term was widely used for everything like that way before undertale was even conceived. i'd say the more important event is the rise of people making soundfonts based on instruments ripped/recorded from video games (particularly the ultimate megadrive soundfont / genesisf) leading people to believe that those soundfonts were what the games used directly. i'm sure undertale played a part but i remember being upset at people commenting "soundfont" incorrectly since way before 2015.
@@skep2923 i won't say siivagunner did nothing for the word soundfont, but it's not going to be remotely close enough to what UNDERTALE did to even be worth bringing up, especially because undertale came before siivagunner lmao?
yk i think i needed this video because i personally have made misjudgements specifically for the misconceptions regarding jun senoue and 3d blast, so i feel really stupid yet humbled by that fact. i mean, i was told a few days ago that whatever i said was wrong, but it really makes me feel really dumb for making assumptions based off the research i did on only for sonic 3 and not even thinking about 3d blast lol
I'm glad I'm not the only one who made that misconception on Jun Senoue and 3d blast as well. Genuinely should known better since I usually frequent Sonic Retro for my info.
I would like to add further proof that Jun Senoue did program music: In an interview conducted by Style Factory, they ask Jun this: “What was your songwriting process for creating music on the Sega Genesis? The system worked entirely on FM and PSG synthesis with DAC samples, so were you initially working with guitars and keyboards and then translating it over, or working entirely from scratch on their development kit?” Jun says this: “I used MIDI keyboards and sequencers for composing then programmed it directly into the game.” This should help put to rest the misconception that he never programmed music on the Genesis. That was my original thought, as you know NUKELEDGE since the comment you cited in your video was a reply to my original comment about your Special Stage demo tape cover. However, so many knowledgeable people were saying otherwise that I started believing them instead. I’m glad that this subject has concrete answers. Also, THANK YOU for helping people understand the SoundFont format, and how it’s not even close to being the proper term. The gross misuse and calling everything a SoundFont gets on my last nerve, lol. Lastly, it’s great to know that my theory on Sonic Origins’ music was correct! That was a great read.
"Disliking something, and that something being bad, are not synonyms" are words that I practically live by. I'm especially glad that you went over the transitions from the Demo Tapes of 2, because I wasn't sure what to believe as to why the demo versions were slower. I feel quite enlightened by the information in this video, as I can now confidently say that Faded Hills just sucks cause it sucks and not cause "Tomoya Ohtani used a Genesis Soundfont"🙂
I remember when you launched the remix of "Ghost Town" from Sonic Forces in CD Style and I asked "Have Sonic CD a soundfont?", and a lot of people explain me why the concept of "soundfont" is wrong. I don't think that concept is Sonic Fan base exclusive, is a general misconception in Video Game music community (amounts of video remixes in internet have "soundfont" in his titles, that induces more and more people to reproduce the concept)
Hey, i remember you from the Ghost Town video, mainly because you writed D70 as R70, xd. Though i parcially agree with some points of this video and your comment , i think simply saying "soundfont" and other simpler words to refer to something, like a remix, is way more understandable to, as an example, people who don't know concepts of music production. For example, i think it is much better to just say "Peaches NES soundfont remix" as opposed to "Peaches but it's a NES soundchip based style remix/remake". The result and impact of the remix will be almost the same, anyways.
@@pufflord_gamesonicsoloesyo2365 Indeed. You know that the fanbase is really messed up when they call someone sick just because this person prefers dubstep/EDM as compared to rock. 💀
@@justsomelosercb Don't know if you're trying to say that it's deserved or if you're trying to agree, but either way, many fanbases are filled with these kinda people, singling out one fanbase gives them much more room to thrive.
I think another common misconception is the vgm deconstruction theme. Some people still have to learn that it's only possible to separate audio channels from music tracks using its "project file" or the archive where the music's note, effect and instrument data is stored. In the case of the Sega Genesis for an example, it's the .vgm files. The problem here is: you can't deconstruct or isolate channels in high quality music (.mp3, .wav and CD Audio in general, for example). High quality audio files only posess the waveform of the music track/song, meaning you don't have direct access to the instruments and notes in a separated form (because everything gets mixed as one). It's like cake. You can't take the eggs outta the baked cake. You'll have to try and buy the ingredients to have access to the separated things which make the cake. Basically, you can only deconstruct waveform type music if you recreate It from scratch. That's why not all of Sonic CD's songs were deconstructed yet.
Yet, you can get really REALLY close to deconstruction. (like, look at the spongebob title theme deconstruction, that shit is extremely fucking good) BUT you will never get a full deconstruction EVER from just a waveform. You may get close, but never perfect.
As a semi-metalhead it pisses me off whenever someone calls the Super Sonic boss themes from Frontiers "screamo" Even though its an actual genre of metal/heavy rock, people now just use it as a term for songs with harsh vocals and sometimes heavier than normal guitar.
Aren't the Frontiers boss themes more Metalcore? It's practically a genre that mix Punk Rock with some Metal segments, but, in Frontiers case, with a more variant style. Thus like Sonic and the Secret Rings OST being a Hard Rock/Alternative Metal/Rap Metal mix, although with a different tone in the vocals, I guess.
@@xanatanuwu Oh ok thanks for the clarification. One day I want to make a giant flowchart thing of how all the rock, metal, punk and alt music genres came to be so that's good to know.
The Sonic Origins thing was an eye opener. I recently told one of my friends Senoue remade the music, after watching this I had to go correct myself. Good stuff.
2:54 Seems like my SEGAudio soundfont made a cameo in this video (yes i'm the one who made that, hello youtube). That aside, THANK YOU for being another voice that clarifies how video game sound chips work and putting it quite succinctly and plainly, even I'm sick of people not even bothering to look up what a soundfont is and what its origins are. If MIDIs really were used in literally the exact same way, then platforms like the Nintendo DS would lock the drums to the 10th channel by default and allow more than one note's worth of polyphony much like how MIDIs on PCs do, yet you can see with various deconstructions of a number of DS games from searching "nintendo ds oscilloscope" (namely with Sonic Colors) that you can actually just use whatever sample you want on ANY of the channels so long as you know how to trick your way into attaining that fullness regardless of polyphony limits. Also, I had no idea Forces actually used a real Sega Genesis for its Classic stages. That said, they've still got a lot of improvement to make with that music if they're going to keep using it for any future projects (though I'd imagine they can't reuse instrument patches that other Genesis composers outside of Sega worked with and just shortcut it for legal reasons). Although, I can't say much about Sonic music as of late since it's not my specialty, so it's nice to have the insight. Finally, just to verify, soundfonts come from early-90s, so neither Nintendo, Sega, NEC, Atari, etc. had any involvement with it because their consoles released before even the Sound Blaster sound cards made their debut. tldr; This is a REALLY well-researched and well-sourced video you've got here, Nuclear. You've earned a sub! (Also if anyone's wondering, the point of my soundfont was not to purposefully evoke nostalgia or familiarity, but to simply explore what other sounds the Sega Genesis could make outside of either the common perception of the console's sound and/or even outside of what was already tried in the console's library.)
@@Mizu2023While the DS *could* do software mixing thanks to its CPU, it wasn’t necessary at all due to its sound chip natively having 16 channels of ADPCM audio.
my thoughts on the forces supersaw debacle is this: while the repetition of the lead isn't inherently bad, combined with the formulaic compositions you can basically swap any of the songs out with each other and nothing would change. what makes arsenal pyramid's outside track any different from luminous forest? how are they catered to fit the level? the lack of variety just makes this issue much worse. this applies 10x to the frontiers cyberspace tracks, although that's more of an issue with the game and sadly something the composers had to inherit. (i like both soundtracks btw)
I agree with this, and do admit that I'm heavily biased because of listening to Sonic soundtracks so thoroughly. I think part of this issue is caused by trying to have so many levels, 30 in Forces' case. Lost World had identifiable stage themes in its music since it only had a few, focused stage themes, whereas Forces just has "City," "Town," etc.
Well that's the thing, take something like Adventure or Adventure 2, multiple levels in those games and you can picture vividly going through those stages just by hearing the track that accompanies them. 06 has the same thing going on, and it's argued to be the best Sonic soundtrack in the franchise all the time right next to Unleashed. Granted 06's visual style is great, but I'm sure you can tell the difference between Rhea, Ares, Ouranos, Chaos and Kronos regardless of what movement or anything else. I'd also argue that certain cyberspace tracks fit the levels they are with perfectly. Like 2-6 fits perfectly, hearing that theme immediately brings me to it's level. Same with flowing. but it is rare in Cyberspace.
@@pufflord_gamesonicsoloesyo2365 i think the open zone music is perfect, i have no issues with it. and the cyberspace songs are generally great in isolation as well, like i said the samey-ness is just something that was inherited by there only being like 4 level themes
I'll admit it, I have myself been guilty of misgenre-ing Sonic songs before, and songs in general. I remember when I first heard Vandalize I called it pop, when obviously it isn't, listening to it now. I have also in the past tended to call every electronic song "EDM" as a blanket term without thinking more intricately about it. There was a lot of stuff I learned from this video that I didn't know previously, and I hope it reaches more people so we can have more educated discussions about these sorts of things, I think it's really helpful.
It's fine to make mistakes, as long as you acknowledge you've made them. It's people who are supposed to be, or act like authorities on media, who are confidently incorrect, that the sterner parts of this video are aimed towards.
The importance doesn't lie at all in the words. The importance lies in us making Sonic Team understand what games had the type of music we like. It's as simple as saying, that Sonic Adventure 2 style, or that Sonic Rush style. It's really not important. Ohtani gets the gist of anything anyway and could nail whatever he wanted to. Although he seems to also be bad at Classic music, just like Jun's modern classic music. (and I mean classic as in Classic Sonic).
That whole thing with people talking about Soundfonts are the exact type of people who'd trash MIDI because "it sounds bad". Like, have they even played it back on anything other than Windows Media Player?
That last bit was fun. A lot of Sonic fans are the same way about game design; they can't comprehend ideas that aren't from Sonic games, nor the idea that "good game design" sometimes means not doing things that they think of as their platonic ideal of "Sonic". If I ever get into making video essays I've always wanted to do one about that, because it drives me a little nuts. As for the factual misconceptions, one I see from time-to-time is that composers (Hideki Naganuma most commonly) "sampled" this or that random old source themselves, when in actuality they got sample packs/CDs from the companies they worked for, such as the Zero-G Datafile you mention. Sample packs are incredibly common, and while it's fun to find the original source of samples used in games, professional composers for games aren't necessarily seeking out old episodes of Batman just to grab a clip of Adam West saying "Let's go!". (Also I know I've gotten the one about Jun Senoue not doing sound programming wrong before, since I checked the Sonic 3 credits and there were separate credits for sound programmers and arrangers that didn't include him, so I assumed the setup was the same for the other Genesis games he worked on. I'm certain that one's relatively common, sadly. On that note, I didn't realize there were individual track credits for games that old, that's really cool to find out!)
I think it's worth accepting that "soundfont" and "MIDI" have become genericized terms for "sample set" and "tracker" (and, I'd argue it happened with "soundfont" way before Undertale came out). They're being used as convenient terms in general discussion to mean a certain thing that everybody partaking already understands, so they there really isn't any misleading technical misinformation being spread (The people with no knowledge as to what soundfonts and MIDI actually are already think it means one thing, and that's the thing it's being used to mean, so they aren't being made to believe something technically wrong. The people who DO know what said terms mean will most likely also know that the terms being used aren't being used *technically* correctly, so they aren't being mislead either) It's important to acknowledge that, with every technical field, its technical terms will have their meanings dumbed down for outsiders, and that's okay. In an ideal world, we'd be more on the same page, but even as it stands it's not really hurting anything. The people who haven't bothered to research the correct terms aren't the ones who actually need to know them.
Based. If you wanna get pissed off about soundfonts, get pissed off about the fact gargoyles are only the statues that spew water, the ones that don't are called grotesques, and that fungi is pronounced fun-jai.
I agree. There's people in every field who love to do this exact thing of not accepting the fact that a term has been adapted by general audiences to mean something different than its literal definition. Generally speaking, the only people who feel a need to make a big deal out of this are purists/elitists who aren't very fun to deal with. Quite frankly, I don't think one's ability to understand or even compose music is even remotely related to their ability to "properly" use terms, so to say "the sonic fanbase doesn't understand music" because of the words they've decided to use is kind of ridiculous and leaves a bad impression imo.
I like this, legitimately had no idea about a lot of this and i'm glad you put it out there. I feel like since you brought up Forces I might as well get something off my chest that i've never gotten the people who say the fan remixes of the modern and avatar stage themes are better than the original just because they get rid of the synth cause more often than not I think they just sound worse. There's this one in particular of Sunset Heights that replaces it with a Violin and while I usually love violins, it just sounds really "slurry" if that makes any sense, not sure what the technical term for it is, but the song loses a lot of its punch.
My personal issues with the remixes that try to "fix" the soundtracks are when they replace the live instruments with VSTs/libraries. They can be great, but for Forces, most of the appeal in the Modern Sonic tracks are from the performances of MASUO, Nishikawa, Eguchi, and Yamada. If someone made remixes where it's another live J-Rock band as well as the changed leads, that could be a good contender.
Absolutely great video. Glad to see we have some of the same gripes about the discussion around videogame music. Especially that last point. It's always weird when Sonic fans hate on Frontiers and Forces for having modern, more current music when Sonic music has always done that. Sonic CD was a product of its time with the 90's dance and techno sound, and Sonic Adventure and Heroes were doing the late-90's/Early 2000's Pop/J-Rock. All this to say, Sonic music has always been a product of its time (which is meant to mirror the fact that Sonic is cool and coolness is constantly being updated, making it inherently modern etc, etc) so a lot of people's disdain for modern Sonic music just comes off as conflating opinion with objective quality.
This is true and potentially extends to Sonic as a whole. Sonic has always tried to reflect and combine the contemporary and pop culture of the time, especially with its music.
This!! Forces and Frontiers are genuinely amazing soundtracks because they both represent a modern style and have a high production value to back it up. And the same applies to pretty much every game in the series...! If anything, people expressing distaste about the style is a sign that its production value is high enough to cause that split in opinions.
The ignorance that gets on my nerves the most is people thinking that the one cutscene song was meant to be Hidden Palace's music when the Demo Tape clearly proves it was supposed to be some sort of cutscene song. People are stuck to that simply because that music plays when loading the broken Hidden Palace stage in Sonic 2. It also annoys me when people ignore how Casino Night 2-Player was used for Oil Ocean and intended for that zone for most of development yet people say it was meant for Genocide/Cyber City. Also, I love how savage you are in this video. You are saying what I've been feeling for a while.
I don't think people will stop calling the general sound set of a game the sound font. Everyone gets what is meant when it's used, only the experts get annoyed
The irony is that the actual meaning that gets picked up from it generally isn't very well defined in that sense to begin with. I've seen people sometimes use it to describe a melody's or a bass's scoring/performance despite the term being AT LEAST more fitting to describe the timbres of the instruments, it's popular definition is THAT loose.
For better or for worse, the internet has decided that is what it will be called. You can't really argue the internet when they coin a term. It's like when they decided that "cringe" is an adjective, even though it's not, it's a verb. But the internet decided "no, it's an adjective now, screw what proper English says". Believe me, I hate when everyone uses "cringe" as an adjective as it just sounds ignorant, obnoxious and stupid, but I've had to come to terms with the fact that it doesn't matter what I think. The internet is going to continue to misuse the word however they want until the end of time.
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for making this video. You definitely clarified some things for me, in particular Jun Senoue's involvement in arranging classic tracks from the 90's and the nature of Sonic Forces' Classic tracks. I'm not a music guy, so I really appreciate having a better grasp of these topics. I hope more people see this video. Also, speaking generally about the Sonic fandom, I wish people would voice their criticisms of Jun and Ohtani more respectfully. I don't think they deserve even a tiny fraction of some of the rude things I've seen people say about them.
The amount of pure vitriol and spite I see people expel towards the same people who made defining aspects of their childhood is one of the most annoying things I've seen in my time on the internet.
@@NUKELEDGELike what the Star Wars fandom did with George Lucas, unfortunately. In the moment Tee Lopes slips even a little outside the script, the fandom is going to burn him alive as well.
I don't think ignorance about music genres has anything to do with media literacy. I'll never not be annoying hearing all dance music being described as dubstep and techno. Video game fans are video game fans and so often don't know about music. Think about the millions of people that played games in the 90s and 2000s who, through playing them, heard a ton of dance music and just have no clue and think it's 'video game style music.' A lot of Americans probably would have derided it all as 'gay music' and then gone home to play Ridge Racer 4 or something.
I will not budge on commercial music, as in video games, being media. I would differentiate between "musical literacy," which is knowing music, and "media literacy," which is knowing about musical history, musicians, and music in society. They are related, and learning one usually means learning the other as well, they but not the same. I agree that gamers in general not being musically-minded is the case.
@@ian09dbz Illiterate how? Because we use general terms and because it's Sonic and Twitter it's fair to just generalize? Even though it was a thing way before Sonic fans did it?
"Sonic fans absolutely suck at identifying music genres." Guilty as charged lol I'm very impressed with this video! I learned a hell of a lot. Hopefully, things work out as you hope they will having released this, though IMO I doubt it lol
So glad to see this video, I wish Sonic fans knew how to separate their opinions from whether music is good or not. Hoping people will pick up on this video and stop assuming the wrong things. Also, two thing, disregarding the extended opening, the S.A.M.E. version of That's The Way I Like It is actually shorter than the original track. While the song on multi-dimensional does have the second chorus as twice the length of the first, other releases (such as the SA2 digital OST and the 25th anniversary selection) have the last chorus go on for 4 times as much as the first, which beats the S.A.M.E.'s 3 times longer chorus. Not having access to the original hardware used for songs (like in SA1 and 2) wouldn't stop them from making remixes. It's very clear that, at least from SA1 onwards (if not earlier, like Sonic R), SEGA has been archiving stems for almost all Sonic music. This can mostly be seen in Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces where, not just Jun Senoue tracks are remixed with use of the original stems, but also tracks by Hideaki Kobayashi, Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani, Heigo Tani, and more.
As a composer this is one of the best videos I've seen on Sonic music. I usually stay in the classical world but even then I notice way too many people say dumb stuff about Sonic music (especially regarding Sonic's musical identity).
I know this video is old but my favourite recent example of sonic fans not knowing about what theyre talking about when it comes to music is the reaction to the Chaos Island remix from Shadow Generations, I've seen people claim its "dubstep" or "EDM" when its clearly on the drum and bass or liquid dnb side lmao they just hear one wub synth sound and refuse to engage any further in good faith.
Very well done, i'd be interested to hear you do a deep dive into one of the soundtracks and discuss how they work on a technical and musical level. also if it gives you an excuse to demonstrate all that tech i am ALL in.
Wow I love this video, and I didn't even know this was even an issue haha! I am so shocked that the Sonic 3 samples didn't come from Michael Jackson, and it's kind of comforting knowing the Sonic 4 ep 2 OST was made with ProTools defaults. I also got to say though that I originally didn't like the Sonic Forces soundtrack when it came out but it grew on me overtime, especially Fighting Onward. Definite Sub!
This is very cool and well made video. If a part two ever gets made, you should talk about how Sonic fans don’t know what New Jack Swing is and why that isn’t the only genre that’s in the Sonic CD and Sonic Mania OSTs.
It really pisses me off when people describe CD’s music as purely New Jack Swing. Like that’s definitely an influence, but it mainly draws on the house and techno music of the time, especially acts like 808 State and the KLF. People just don’t listen to enough music outside of video games to know this stuff I guess.
@@LongSinceDead1 I've noticed that people who like video game music, much like fans of many other genres, tend to stay within the "bubble" of video game music. It's not unique to video game music fans, but my biggest gripe with game reviews is that they can go on for over an hour yet the only remark on the soundtrack may be "it's good [I like it]" or "it's bad [I don't like it]," with the author usually not having the self-awareness to articulate or even understand that one's own musical palette is not universal. At best, the critic may speak in broad terms about what the soundtrack _is,_ but nothing beyond the superficial. Game critics are not music fans in the same way how film critics are not experts in special effects. Also consider the average age of a Sonic fan: what child or teenager in the 2020s is going to be knowledgeable about 80s and 90s acid house and techno unless their parents were ravers in that time period? Jungle, drum 'n' bass, and even IDM to an extent have all become popular again in the past few years among the youth (especially the "extremely online" ones), but these styles are all lumped under the name of the subgenre "breakcore," likely unintentionally because of the contemporary convention of making neologisms into compound words and giving styles and æsthetics the suffix "-core." There are no guiding hands in their communities to teach them the roots of the music they like; only "angry" "old" people who the youths refuse to listen to. Learning that there are genres of music that have lived and died before they were born is a life-changing event to them. Be patient with them. Give them time to understand music.
To be fair a lot of the common chip sounds used in games have been turned into SF2 (Sound Font v2) files to be used in a DAW to recreate that retro sound. Yes the chip doesn't use sound fonts, but the chip's sound is reproduced in sound fonts that exist.
That is true, although essentially snapshotting portions of the chip gives a bad reference of what it's capable of. The 2612 is a chip that relies heavily on editing and getting intricate with sound design, so it only does a disservice to defer to soundfonts instead. This is my personal issue because it really doesn't matter, but the landscape of Genesis remixes has been oversaturated with soundfont remixes pretending to be actual Genesis remixes that it skews people's perspective on how the Genesis actually sounded or what it can/can't do.
very well made video. as an FM synth musician myself it really does get me irrationally frustrated when people talk about the "genesis soundfont" or whatever when referring to the console, glad that you threw that in.
I feel like this is a video I needed to see. But man, I know he never will. But I do wish Ohtani would put more UK garage / 2-step in Sonic games. He did one track, in one game and that was "Space Trips Steps" and ticked all the 2-step boxes.
"Soundfont" was popularized as a term due to literal downloadable sample sets of various retrogames. It has literally nothing to do with Undertale, and was being used long before then. People only call it that becuase there is an NES soundfont for download, a Genesis soundfont for download and many specialized SNES game soundfonts that contain the same samples used in games such as Earthbound, Super Mario Kart and Final Fantasy 6. "Soundfont" is just a generalized term that has come to mean the identifable fingerprint of how a game instrument samples generally sounds. Maybe it wasn't a real actual musical term to begin with, but the internet MADE it a term because there was no other widely known term to easily call it for convenience before then.
I've watched this video from time to time, and for the most part I do like it. With that being said, there is one part that I feel misses the mark hard. Like, "can't see the forest for the trees" hard. 2:423:24 Unlike the other points you make here (which I agree with, don't get me wrong), this just seems pedantic in a way that I can only describe as alienating. I've seen other people spell it out in the comments, but when people casually use "soundfont" when talking about video game music, _obviously_ they're not actually talking about the namesake (a format designed to keyboards and DAWs, and a prepackaged file that contains WAVs to use for music). What they're referring to is the *soundscape* of a console's sound chip, like Nintendo's beep-oriented music or Sega's FM sound. Since other people have reproduced the soundscapes of these consoles using the _soundfont format,_ they infer that the way these different consoles' sound are called _soundfonts_ because it is a _font_ for _sound._ Anyone who has used a computer in the last 25 years knows that you can change fonts, which makes it easier to connect the dots. Music from old video games sounds different: If a Nintendo sounds different from a Sega, that means the soundscape of the music is inherently different. Mortal Kombat sounds different from console to console, so it obviously depends on the platform's "soundfont", or soundscape of a console. YM3438s and S-SMPs and what have you. That's what they mean by the Sonic sound font. It's not about the format (which obviously no one will read on Wikipedia), but simply the soundscape of a video game console's sound chip. You can obviously infer this from casual conversation! This is why some people call any drink Coke! That's why I called the consoles by their nicknames, you can _obviously_ tell what I'm talking about from the context. My father (a Gen Xer who loved music) often called any DAW or tracker a “MIDI setup.” I used to correct the s@$# out of him for years, but I eventually realized that it just made him not want to talk about music with me because I was becoming so pedantic about the terms that I missed the conversation. I let us talk using all kinds of terms with context and we managed to talk about all kinds of topics. By focusing too much on the definition of soundfont, either good or bad, you kind of miss what the person is talking about.
I agree with this point mostly, although my main issue with people using the term soundfont incorrectly is when they pretend to have expertise on a subject and don't. That, compounded with the use of the word soundfont, is what leads me to believe that the correction is necessary. I understand *why* people use soundfont in the way they do, and for layman it's not necessarily a problem, but if you're going to try to do hard-hitting critique, but the basic facts are wrong (as they usually are with Sonic fans and music), and in addition, they also don't know the correct terminology to use, I feel like a correction is necessary. For example, with your Dad, since he's an experienced musician, you inherently know that even if the term isn't 100% correct, you know he knows his stuff enough to accurately guess what he means by MIDI setup, and he's probably partially right anyway depending on the context. However, with a Sonic fan and "soundfont," the bulk of the criticism is usually entirely unintelligible, and then the word soundfont is sprinkled in incorrectly on top, just to make it more unreadable. I've seen someone criticize the Modern Sonic music in Forces as being bad because it uses a bad soundfont, even though most of the instruments are live. In that case, I have no idea what the other person is referring to and a correction is borderline required for the conversation to even be coherent.
The "soundfont" thing seems like basically the same situation as jet skis. Did you know that "Jet Ski" was coined by Kawasaki as a brand name for their own line of personal watercraft, specifically?
Yep, although in the Jet Ski situation, watercrafts that are imitating Jet Skis don't have enough differences to justify making the distinction, but there are many types of synthesis that don't even touch samples (FM, PSG, Wavetable, additive, subtractive, etc.) to where it's warranted.
@@NUKELEDGE "watercrafts that are imitating Jet Skis don't have enough differences to justify making the distinction" that & jet skis sounds cooler & is overall more memorable.
senoue only making the origins super sonic theme makes a lot more sense now, cause why else would he just use a _different drum sample_ from every other track
Awesome video, really dig the background aesthetic as well! I hope more people watch this, a lot more people should fact check before they form an opinion.
Very informative, even if I might not be informed enough about music in general to fully follow. One thing that's always bugged me is the myriad of terms people use to refer to the Crush 40 vocal "grand finale" songs, like calling it buttrock, glamrock, glam metal, so I gotta ask, what genre is it that they make?
Actually, that is one area where even those of us who are super in-depth with the music still can't concretely answer. Buttrock is a good answer but it's often less produced than the music for SA2, Heroes, etc. I would personally say that Senoue's direction from his beginning to 1999 is J-Fusion/Rock Fusion inspired, 2000-2004 is more Punk Rock/Ska inspired, Shadow is Nu-Metal, and everything onward is Hard Rock. It can honestly go in any direction though, Rock genres are hard to pin down.
"buttrock" is just a catch-all term for post-grunge rock tracks. you can usually define a song as buttrock if the vocalist is consistently using a gritty tone of voice with no variation, which applies pretty much perfectly to johnny gioeli. it's not really a genre, just a leftover term from the nickelback era. hard rock is probably a more "proper" term for those songs.
thanks for correcting an assertion I had about Senoue, I assumed the Sonic 4/Origins/(superstars bosses?) all sounded that way because Senoue never programmed for genesis, turns out he did but the hardware was unavailable for him to use...?
i think there's a few reasons; sonic 4 wasn't originally intended to be sonic 4, it started as sonic the hedgehog portable. perhaps sounding authentic to the classics was not part of the original direction. it's also possible that jun figured that the triton sounds he used would be a good approximation of what a "modern" equivalent of the genesis' sound could be. regardless, i think it was down to his artistic direction, and not a lack of knowledge or tools
@@EmmaMtH That would make sense, so he decided to use a better (yet somewhat similar) synth for Episode 2, now that he knew it was going to be on major consoles when he wrote the soundtrack.
Yes. He tried looking for an NEC PC-8801, but he couldn't find one. They're also very rare and expensive, so rare that I can't even find any listings to show how rare they are in the first place actually. In an interview with Sonic Stadium, he said he wanted to do FM tracks for Episode II, but Dimps told him not to as to not stray from Episode I's pre-existing direction.
There's many more fan misconceptions out there that were not covered in this video and they all seem to centre around Michael Jackson. 1. Everybody thinks the Bridge theme in Sonic 1 8-bit is the Janet Jackson song ''Together Again'' when in reality it merely shares a few chords and is completely different. 2. When Michael Jackson died in 2009 there was a wave of Sonic fans flooding the community spreading the lie that MJ secretly composed the entire soundtrack to Sonic 2 and didn't want to be credited. 3. Michael Jackson composed all of Sonic 3's soundtrack on his own. 4. This one was actually made by a fellow composer on Sonic 3 who is now trying to sue Sega for royalties. He said that MJ didn't want to be credited in Sonic 3 because he wasn't happy with the sound chip and felt it devalued his music. This statement made in 2009 totally disregards the fact that Michael Jackson was fine with how Moonwalker sounded three years earlier in 1990 as he was the final person who approved that game's soundtrack. So the FM-YM2612 is fine in 1990 doing Jackson's music but somehow in 1993 it devalued his music to the point where he didn't want to be associated with it? Mind you this was the year that the first child molestation case came out.
I didn't cover the S3 ones because in the original draft I mentioned a good video that cleared it up, but I removed it for brevity. Also yeah, I never understood the "wasn't happy with the chip" claim given Moonwalker is much more primitive in its renditions yet is somehow better than the music specifically made for the 2612? And at what point did MJ hypothetically determine the music to be unfit for credit, given that we know they made at least 30 "cues."
@@NUKELEDGE Thanks for the reply. I think because MJ was larger than life people decided to make up stuff upon learning that MJ had a very small hand in Sonic 3's music. The fan-made misinformation has led to a few urban legends because of it namely what I already covered.
Good video! When I first heard the super sonic music in Origins and didn't like it that much, I was under the impression that Jun Senoue only composed the music for 3d Blast, and had someone else arrange it, to which I assumed he had no experience with actual genesis hardware, which is why Sonic 4 sounds the way it does. Turns out he just had different hardware. I'll make sure to have a more open mind before I start forming opinions on an industry I have no experience in.
Ooooh, yeah, as a video game music guy I hate the whole "calling everything a soundfont" thing. You know what was really fucked though? Someone called my SNES music "ad-lib midi" music in a critique once in a review, it just irked me so badly at how off he was from what it really was lmao.
Pretty much how I feel whenever I hear sonic fans criticizing the recent games for using edm. Like, it's ok to not like edm, but call the genre itself bad? That's just wrong. They act like rock and orchestra are the only acceptable genres for the franchise, when sonic always had a very wide variety of genres in it's soundtrack.
I mean, if you want my opinion, at the end of the day, it’s just music. There’s no reason to go too serious into music. Honestly, I can say that I myself have no knowledge on music, but will that stop me from enjoying music? Absolutely not. Even if I don’t know genres, (because for me, as long as a song sounds good to me, it sounds good, nothing more than that. If a particular song sounds bad, it sounds bad, to a personal opinion, because I can’t speak for anyone that also dislikes that specific song that ends up grouping it up to the whole genre), Im not gonna fuss over it. Also the point around the “ Adventure prototype music “ talk, at least to a personal level, I assumed there was gonna be the Adventure Remakes because of the fact that I was not aware that there was a charity going on before those releases. I should have checked everywhere before assuming that they were Adventure remakes, and honestly, thats my fault. All in all, this was a great episode on music, even if I have short term memory and will probably forget lmao (because lets be honest, if you’re not too focused on a subject, you’ll most likely forget everything about it)
"Sonic Frontiers music is bad because modern music is bad" ...EDM isn't new. Sure, Frontiers leans into the genre a lot more than older games, but it's nothing more than a change. EDM has existed since the 2000s and the 2010s, and in both cases, some would pledge that Sonic music was better then. In fact, if you count IDM as part of the same genre, EDM goes back as far as Sonic's own roots. Maybe I'm just a little biased considering I like all kinds of EDM, (IDM, House, Indie, Drum & Bass, you name it.) but I feel as if this is a bad point. (Not to say that older Sonic music wasn't bad, not at all.) Look up Sonic Before & After The Sequel's OST. (Or the Spark The Electric Jester games) They've got a good mix of electronic and rock music.
Media literacy in general is something that Sonic fans seem to be completely incapable of. I swear to god some people just get things wrong about this series on purpose just to be upset over something.
I disagree that making the past themes sound “prehistoric” in a way using the sampled instrumentation was the *main* reason they weren’t CD audio. The sampled audio was practically necessary to make the game fit on a CD, and as the Cutting Room Floor puts it “When accounting for four CD audio variations instead of three (for reference, an average Sonic CD track is 1-2 minutes, or 10-20 megabytes), the data and music stored on the Sonic CD disc amounts to 600 - 700 megabytes which is dangerously close to an audio CD's storage capacity limit (around 650 - 700MB).” I do think the overall sound/atmosphere the sampled audio gave was at least a little bit of a bonus to the composers though, with Mazin himself tweeting “I feel like the past side of Sonic CD was playing PCM the best. At the time, it turned out that the capacity of the DA was not enough, so only the past was built in, but I wanted to listen to the "sound" of the built-in sound source of the mega CD, so I decided to do so at the time, and I was grinning inside. I was doing double.” Other than that though, there’s some great info in the video that I didn’t know before! It’s certainly a great testament to the power of doing your own research instead of immediately adopting the first opinion you see on a subject, something many people could benefit from.
you can definably tell someone has severe music illiteracy when they refer to any rock song with an heavy electric guitar as "butt rock" (which isn't even a real god dam genre), or any more electronic music as "dubstep". Especially mimetic Sonic fans....
You know I think you should make a video explaining why making music for the Yamaha is very difficult as a lot of Mega Drive games as well as arcade Sega System 16 games had a very "hard, loud and sometimes screechy" sound (see for example Altered Beast or Phantasy Zone 1).
the section talking about soundfonts is something i genuiely get annoyed about, cuz, there have been many times I've seen a hardware-acurate chiptune and one of the comments says something along the lines of "I reALy lIKe tHis SoUNdFoNT" Ik people dont understanding trackers and all, but why do you call it a soundfont?! Most, if not all the time, the music in question has a certain _style_ Eg. The Sonic Advance trilogy's music are all similar, but im pretty sure they _don't_ use a soundfont, rather, they have a style that the composers stick to.
Thank you! It's really annoying how people constantly spout nonsense on topics they have no idea about. If only they did some research on a given topic before talking talking about it, internet would've been auch better place. Sidenote: how do people STILL believe Zippo? Wasn't he proven wrong, like, ages ago?
The information he gets right comes from other sources as well, and even when he receives it, he adds his own details to it which makes it incorrect. He tried to say Superstars was a Modern 2.5D game.
@@NUKELEDGE Yeah, I know about the "Modern 2D Game" I think that Zippo leaks are a great example of confirmation bias. People focus only on the parts he got right, while completly ignoring everything he got wrong. In the case of Superstars, the right part is the "New 2D game" part - anyone can make a prediction like that - and the wrong part is everything else This fanbase is wild
3:52 Hypothetically speaking, I think the Wii may have had the capability to run a sound font if you made your own soundfont playing software for it... though it might sound a bit off depending on certain things I'm far from qualified to explain.
You could theoretically make a sound driver that uses MIDIs and .SF2s on any system, it just depends on the resources that you want to allocate to the rest of the game. With some programming tricks and heavy optimization, you probably could get a soundfont player to work on the Genesis, given what MarkeyJester was able to do with Sonic 1: The Next Level. Any console past the Saturn could easily run a driver that uses soundfonts, and in fact the Dreamcast does have a driver that supports straight-up MIDI, but it was very rare and wasn't used in any notable games.
These are all things that I feel like needed to be said, and I learned many new things as well. However, I do not take as well to the tone of the video. We need to be patient with people who simply do not know any better. It is not the fault of the fans that society in general is not very musically literate. Most people never have a "call to action" that makes them truly care about music besides for the emotions it makes them feel or the people it causes them to meet. In fact, I argue that we must be extra patient with Sonic fans because of just how young they usually are. I recall a conversation with my mother who frequently went clubbing in the 90s about electronic music from that period.¹ She never considered that there could be different subgenres and called any danceable electronic music "techno." If many adults cannot distinguish between the various different genres they like or reason about music, it seems unreasonable in my mind to expect children with a much less sophisticated worldview to be capable of it. Because the Sonic fandom is so heterogeneous, I think it is quite wise to treat it as a subset of the general population, with their average in no dimension being deviant from the norm in any meaningful capacity besides factors correlated with young age. This fracturing is caused by the exhausting amount of experimentation and reinvention the series does. With the number of different aesthetics and moods born from the many different eras and subseries, the Sonic fandom is basically a group of smaller fandoms under the impression that it is one large fandom because of them all nominally sharing the same basic characters. If we can accept this notion, then it seems perfectly reasonable that Crush 40 fans would not appreciate drum 'n' bass or that fans of the house-style Japanese CD soundtrack would not understand the ambient-style American soundtrack. Sonic fans are people after all, and people tend to not like change or things they do not understand. -------- ¹ After listening to "Qmart" by 808 State featuring Björk: ruclips.net/video/WeuwKHgHgcI/видео.html (Edits: syntax, wording, excessive comma splicing.)
I think whether or not someone is interested in a field, if they're discussing aspects where you are expected to at least have surface level knowledge, like music production or game development, it's required to double-check yourself since false information can spread so quickly. For example, not a lot of people are programmers, and that's fine, however, those same people were given so much weight in their opinions that it led to a lot of people thinking Hedgehog Engine is responsible for physics. They were then rightfully corrected and called out for pretending to be knowledgeable abot game dev. I think the same basis of research should be applied to music as well.
I think even the Sonic CD US version from the soundtrack also has various genres. It's probably composed by New Wave/R&B styles, following the logic that Sonic CD JP OST is New Jack Swing in general and Sonic Boom music is New Wave too.
I think it'd be more accurate to say that the modern day average person doesn't understand music. Very few people have any kind of formal musical education these days and those that do usually just learned to play piano or guitar at an early age, then stopped. It's truly a shame how much music gets misunderstood and how increasingly rare it is to find people with an ear for it.
People talk shit about music all the time without knowing half of what they're talking about, unfortunately that's common even outside of the Sonic fanbase. I don't even know that much about music but I'm still constantly reminded that people like to pretend they know what they're talking, just by having basic knowledge.
It is at least a little sad to me that Sonic fans, for a franchise with such a rich musical legacy and with such an amazing art and fangame community, seem to have so little musical imagination. I have a series of playlists where I construct and extrapolate new types of music that would fit for the series or particular entries: ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8EtfJGkIt6e97bXD6VyB50G (Forces, one track per stage except where explicitly mentioned otherwise) ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8FC7UV24hh8lWk73YxOKV1L (Frontiers) ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8FN5sUEaRxHE6tcebyTYlv3 (Classic Sonic, general) Compare this to my contemporaries who seem to have the same goal: ruclips.net/p/PLr8ZkNBOPi-Qwii4Jid3OoJFXxRZYGoml (Forces) ruclips.net/p/PLXSKsIBHDH4iSXbgWxMmthlt5lFY49GcZ (Forces) ruclips.net/p/PL-grwrKG-djNg8Aq1LyOpgY557V1gFWGO (Classic Sonic, general) ruclips.net/p/PLgcoT7-W0fP1lMUh9m3k5--rA0reCCMyV (Modern Sonic, general) The gap in inspiration, I feel, is tragic. They are cannibalistic, often featuring music already in the series, and almost universally within the bubble of video game original soundtracks and occasionally anime (which is a step in the right direction). If not, then it is music popular from flash-in-the-pan memes or comedy music. Even notable examples, such as Triple-Q's Modern Sonic playlist are subject to these problems. I imagine that my choices are strange to just about anyone, but at least I extend even slightly outside the box.
Anything that's not another animal character is neglected Think about all the cool robot designs this series, and then think about how many people like care about that's not named Metal Sonic
@@TechBlade9000 I agree with you, but I'm not quite sure what it has to do with what I said except for the abstract notion of "Sonic fans often have narrow interests."
Many of these issues extend beyond the "sonic fanbase". It's common for the average person to oversimplify topics they aren't deeply interested in, resorting to popular terminology being used to get their points across. While it's great that as an enthusiast you're educating others, it's unrealistic to expect everyone with a casual interest in music to possess the same level of knowledge as you do.
I have no problem with oversimplification given the information being simplified at its core is correct, and I also recognize that not everyone is interested in music or its history within the fanbase, but I do think cursory research is required if you're going to be critical about a subject. For example, I don't know much about drawing, so I'd never call someone's artwork bad and try to dig into why I think it's terrible unless I was super confident in what I was saying. Sonic fans, however, don't agree with this perspective, and would take their lack of knowledge as a badge of honor to say the most uninformed, unintelligible opinions with no regard for accuracy. It's most obvious with the point about Jun Senoue programming his music for 3D Blast. There's no excuse for getting that wrong, even if you're not interested in music, because all you have to do is a Google search. It's the equivalent of getting the writer wrong when talking about a movie. In my opinion, Sonic fans are one of the worst with their gifted inability to do basic research to the extent that I made this video in the way that I did.
@@NUKELEDGE I see what you're saying. I feel the term "misinformation" should be reserved for credible sources and not to those lacking authority or expertise on the subject. If an individual is getting their information from random nobodies on the internet, that's their problem.
I feel so validated knowing that I was completely on the ball with Sonic CD past music using the genesis soundchip because Sonic was traveling back in time. that was always a headcannon of mine so it's cool to know that was 100% correct
Correction. The term soundfonts wasn't popularised with Undertale, it existed with the definition of 'instrument samples pertaining to a game/hardware' even before that, I remember back in around 2011 that people were using the word 'soundfont' in regards to Pokémon music (And being technical, the soundfonts for Pokémon are all from various VSTs, but altered to work on GBA/DS hardware), so it's definitely been a thing for years before Undertale was released
Tbf I've seen Crush 40 performances that don't even have Jun and they're still considered Crush 40 concerts. I guess Johnny is just the core part of Crush 40 lol.
8:25 the sonic CD prototype that recently surfaced shows that they were originally using redbook audio for palmtree panic past, and not PCM samples; its very close in style to the final track. i think it's clear this means they switched to PCM sample based tracks due to size limitations, and not just to use "cheaper" sounds (im curious what the original word used was, if the interview was in japanese), since they were doing that with redbook audio anyway.
Demo versions would have to exist regardless as the only way for them to know what to sample for the Ricoh chip was to have a demo to convert originally. Plus, from some people I know who are well-versed in SEGA CD development, there was apparently more than enough space for extra CDDA songs. There was actually more than 64kb allowed per PCM song as well, through the use of bank switching which the game already makes use of, which implies that they intentionally limited themselves.
@@NUKELEDGE > the only way for them to know what to sample for the Ricoh chip was to have a demo to convert originally since when is making a demo required for sampling? maybe the japanese devs were unfamiliar with PCM sampling on the sega cd, but look at what was going on with music trackers in the west: it was (and is) absolutely possible to make a sequenced song using just samples without making a demo first. > from some people I know who are well-versed in SEGA CD development, there was apparently more than enough space for extra CDDA songs. who are these people, and what are their claims? you can look at a bin/cue rip of sonic cd yourself to see how much space you'd need. there's 7 zones, so you'd need 7 past themes. the average length of a level track is 14.04 MiB, so you'd need about 100 MiB. out of the 650 MiB allotted on a standard length CD, 556 MiB is used on the disc. based on that alone, it's *possible* they could have fit 7 past tracks onto the disc (though it's cutting it pretty close), but remember: they cut r2 for disc space early on as well. using PCM sample based tracks was almost certainly a strategy to cut back on disc usage, even if in the end (you know, 6+ months later) they might have been able to make it work. hindsight is 20/20 :^) > bank switching >implies that they intentionally limited themselves i mean, maybe? but like i said, they were already doing that with the redbook audio version of palmtree panic.
@@shade221 Of course it's possible to make sequenced songs without a demo, but that's not what we have record of SEGA Sound Team doing. Every classic game has demos that were used to make sequenced tracks: Sonic 1, 2, 3, and most likely CD. In the liner notes for the DataDiscs Sonic CD vinyl release, Hataya mentions that CD's music was mixed live off the floor, meaning they'd go to the studio, make the music, and all they'd have to come back with is a final mixed track (read: no stems). This is why Stage Clear and Game Over use full cuts of Cosmic Eternity and YCDA respectively. It's also why Op and Ed had to be remade for 2011. Given that, it's more likely that CDDA Past versions were created in the same sessions that the rest of the music was, especially considering that they likely used studio-exclusive gear (Cosmic Eternity uses a KORG SG1 which was never used before or since in a SEGA game). In addition, a lot of CD's music was also made pretty early in development. December 1992 has Collision Chaos Present, so by that time, the rest of CC was likely done, only excluded due to the rest of the zone not being in a showcase-able state. Because of those factors, in my opinion, it's more likely that: -CDDA versions of the rest of the rounds do exist -The primary reason for sequenced tracks was for aesthetic purposes.
One odfity about the Sonic Forces Classic Sonic music is that the incincibility thene used the drum samples from Sonic 1 and 2 unlike all the other Classic Sonic songs.
Casino Forest also uses the Sonic 1/2 snare, and Egg Dragoon uses the timpani from Sonic 2 (although it could also be from Golden Axe II which Hataya also composed for).
This is why I just say that I don't like specific songs, because I have no idea what makes good or bad music. Like, to me. Faded Hills from Forces is a bad song to me, it just sounds ear-grating; but someone could come up to me and say that it's actually a good song due to the malform wave compression through a digital Yamaha synthesizer and it uses a Alphonian Key note sequence used in many other songs and I'd just nod along. Because I literally have no experience with music.
I knew Nuclear BEFORE he was cool RUclips video guy. Don't frick with me. Yeah the Sonic fanbase is Dunning-Kruger personified. I get this burning urge to jump off a bridge whenever I see their takes regarding music, not sure what's up with that. Currently standing on the edge of one right now
i always liked the classic songs in Forces, but i did not know they were made with real genesis hardware. and im also unfortunately one of those people who kept saying jun didn't program any of his own tracks in 3d blast... this is a really good video.
There's a few points here that rub me the wrong way; not because you're technically wrong, but because it expresses a sense of elitism I'm not comfortable with. I know you mostly brought up the genre thing to call out fans who are trashing one thing because they want more of something else and don't realize they're asking for the wrong thing. But just because I can't tell the difference between microgenres used doesn't mean that I can't, say, express how much I enjoy the laid-back feeling of the guitars in Big's exclusive songs, or the making-sense-of-the-chaos feeling that Naganuma's heavy use of samples brings to Rush. We could all stand to use more accurate language in critique, of course, but getting annoyed that someone says "soundfont" instead of "soundchip" or "soundset" seems petty in most conversational situations. Maybe I'm not the target of this video, and I'm very grateful you're hopefully bringing a lot of this to the community's attention. I might also just not know the circles of fandom you're calling out here, goodness knows I've been fed up with the drama channels centered on the franchise for a long time. But when I have a friend who literally can't experience Sonic Forces because the choices in sound direction hurts their ears too much, I think I'm entitled to considering that a bad decision in direction. I might sometimes even simplify that from "this is a bad decision" to "this is bad," but I'd like to believe most folks aren't assuming I know some objective standard that doesn't exist. Overall though good video! I'm certainly going to spread the word on it, despite my reservations. Especially about the 3D Genesis thing.
As I said in another comment, I see no issue with people who want to learn but currently don't have the vocabulary. At some point, we either were or are the person who can't differentiate between two (admittedly) similar styles of music. I also don't mind people who don't like the Forces soundtrack. Even as someone who likes a lot of it, there are a few tracks that I've only listened to once or twice because I'm not a fan of their direction. My problem is with people who, as a real example, tweeted directly to Ohtani, telling him to stop making music like Forces because they didn't like it. When those people are the same people who start incorrectly detailing the process of music production, is when the tone of this video starts to apply to them. Regarding the soundfont v. soundchip, etc, distinction, I don't mind it in general conversation with people who are (and acknowledge that they are) layman. Those people aren't going to get anything useful out of that distinction anyway, because they're never going to use it, as they don't make music. It is a bit annoying occasionally when uninformed posts get popular and the term continues to spread, but it's not the end of the world.
Well-stated response, and one I also share. For me in particular, it was the genre thing. I'm a percussionist, so I'm not entirely clueless on how music works or is generally classified, but I'm not a music producer, and I certainly couldn't really tell you the difference between any two tracks with similar genre. And while it was prefaced by saying that the genre talk is subjective, I don't think it's fair to come at it from the perspective of "people just don't have the correct vocabulary" because genre classification *is* ultimately subjective in nature. It's understandable to have that kind of reaction if someone were to call jazz "rock," but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to say that there is no one correct genre classification for a song that blurs the lines between many different sub-genres, especially Sonic music. I've heard Shadow's theme from SA2 labelled as techno, grunge, industrial, among others and while I'm sure there are signifiers of certain things, I don't think you can definitively point to one and say "this is what this song is." All art is subjective, as is art classification. I agree it is a problem when people pose as experts but are incorrect. But I don't think a discord post labelling Big as "classic guitar" from someone who, at least to me, doesn't seem to be claiming any expertise is something worthy of pointing and laughing at. It's always good to learn, and your sharing of your expertise in this field is well appreciated. I just think, at least in those situations, it's probably better to offer knowledge in a way that doesn't seem adversarial.
@@untapped8776 As added context for that screenshot, it was someone who was coming into a conversation to portray themselves as having the right answer above the rest of the discussion thread.
You have a super interesting perspective on sonic fandom music takes. Would love to hear you talk about the differences between classic sonic music, and jun senoues take on it for Sonic 4/Superstars, if thats something youre interested about.
Somehow, finding out 3's music wasn't remade for Origins but was infact older prototype music makes the implementation even more frustrating to me.. though the Super Sonic music still sounds strange to me. oh well. Big thanks for making such an informative video! Though I do think it was a little unnecessarily condescending at times. If this video gets out there it could definitely help the direction of discussion but many (not all) of these takes were probably made in good faith, trying to understand a situation they were frustrated about or didn't know amid a lack of clear resources. I think a lack of full understanding on subjects like this is fairly understandable especially when resources like Retro aren't widely known anymore and nowadays there's so much misinformation on bigger websites with seemingly professional presentation.
the issue is that nowadays "6 second Google searches" will get you 9/10 things that aren't reliable or useful, with 1 useful result. How are newer fans meant to know which resource is correct? When you Google "Sonic 3 composers", 9/10 of the first page results are clickbait articles about MJ. Retro comes up and many older fans know it's reliable, but a lot of newer fans (often the same ones making these claims) don't know about Retro yet. They have no reason to trust it over Sonic News Network for example, which has become the most popular Sonic resource (it comes up first in most Sonic google searches). With Google becoming less and less reliable, introducing fans to resources like Retro is important, but treating them like idiots for not *automatically* knowing why Retro is more reliable than the other bs you find on Google isn't fair.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on the point of "No game console uses soundfonts" - while it's not technically down to the console's abilities, I'd argue any music that uses data samples (Sonic Advance series on the Game Boy Advance, Sonic Rush series on DS, Sonic 4 on Wii) could be called a "soundfont", even if the technical term is something different. (Some DS games even have banks that are incredibly close to being 1:1 with a standard soundfont when converted over to SF2, often missing drum sound effects or putting them on the last patch.) So while yes, it's wrong to say "The Sonic 1 Soundfont" in reference to just the sounds the original game makes, it's not entirely wrong to say "The Sonic Colors DS Soundfont" in reference to the sounds it makes, give or take some songs that just use the hardware to synthesize a sound, even if it's not the "official" definition of a soundfont (2), it's pretty close, and the words used are an apt description of what someone might mean when referring to the sound. I don't think it's as useful to be so strict in this terminology about anything past hardware synth consoles.
It could be called that coloquially but only by coincidence. DS soundbanks and SF2s only occasionally line up because most soundfonts try to fulfill the General MIDI standard as do some DS soundbanks, but that's not an inherent quality of either. Soundfonts in their primary usage was just a way to store samples from a sampler into a file format, and its only used in the way that we know now from being essentially resurrected from its dead parent company's intentions. Standard soundfonts aren't a thing, it's just become common to lay them out in the GM format by the various fan communities who still make them, usually for low-effort MIDIslaps. By this reasoning, you could call any sampler format (.nki, .exs, .akp, etc) a soundfont and it would make just as much sense, even though that would be similarly unhelpful. You could call every console a "Nintendo," and some consoles are closer than others in the way they work, but beyond the basics, it's not really a useful term and you'd be missing a lot of nuance. Relating this back to sound, while you could call Sonic Advance's soundbank a soundfont, it's missing the detail that almost every song heavily uses the GBA's PSG system and that there are only 4-5 sample channels allowed. Because that detail is missing, most Sonic Advance remixes are nothing like the actual game's soundtrack besides the surface level samples.
![Nuclear [NUKELEDGE]](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_ndcEgfT9K8j9IJNvAV3OEwd5x4I4QO-RtDsZ7QJ7ukbqU=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
Isn't the PSG made by a different chip on the Genesis?
Yes, I think I accidentally cut out the line about the SN76489. Pinning this so that people can see this correction easily.
@@NUKELEDGE, I see. I heard there's another YM chip that has PSG. I believe it was used for the PC-98 because I remember the early Touhou games were on this computer and the music had an FM + PSG sound style, plus a bunch of extra features this specific chip had.
was going to mention this
@@NUKELEDGEAh, I wondered about that.
Wait, what? Thanks for the pin.
i don't think the popularization of the term soundfont for any instrument set can be chalked down purely to their use in undertale; that term was widely used for everything like that way before undertale was even conceived. i'd say the more important event is the rise of people making soundfonts based on instruments ripped/recorded from video games (particularly the ultimate megadrive soundfont / genesisf) leading people to believe that those soundfonts were what the games used directly. i'm sure undertale played a part but i remember being upset at people commenting "soundfont" incorrectly since way before 2015.
SiivaGunner probably also has a significant hand in its popularization.
@@skep2923 no
@@skep2923 i won't say siivagunner did nothing for the word soundfont, but it's not going to be remotely close enough to what UNDERTALE did to even be worth bringing up,
especially because undertale came before siivagunner lmao?
@@TurretBot mmmmm fair. Forgot to factor that in.
so j guess midi slaps are the reason that it was popularized
yk i think i needed this video because i personally have made misjudgements specifically for the misconceptions regarding jun senoue and 3d blast, so i feel really stupid yet humbled by that fact. i mean, i was told a few days ago that whatever i said was wrong, but it really makes me feel really dumb for making assumptions based off the research i did on only for sonic 3 and not even thinking about 3d blast lol
Oh my god John tay!!!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who made that misconception on Jun Senoue and 3d blast as well. Genuinely should known better since I usually frequent Sonic Retro for my info.
i hope more people see this entirely due to the soundfont stuff. i get unreasonably ticked every time i see someone mention the genesis soundfont lmao
ultimate genesis soundfont
@@spleenikfan158 GenesiSF
A
I would like to add further proof that Jun Senoue did program music:
In an interview conducted by Style Factory, they ask Jun this:
“What was your songwriting process for creating music on the Sega Genesis? The system worked entirely on FM and PSG synthesis with DAC samples, so were you initially working with guitars and keyboards and then translating it over, or working entirely from scratch on their development kit?”
Jun says this:
“I used MIDI keyboards and sequencers for composing then programmed it directly into the game.”
This should help put to rest the misconception that he never programmed music on the Genesis. That was my original thought, as you know NUKELEDGE since the comment you cited in your video was a reply to my original comment about your Special Stage demo tape cover. However, so many knowledgeable people were saying otherwise that I started believing them instead. I’m glad that this subject has concrete answers.
Also, THANK YOU for helping people understand the SoundFont format, and how it’s not even close to being the proper term. The gross misuse and calling everything a SoundFont gets on my last nerve, lol.
Lastly, it’s great to know that my theory on Sonic Origins’ music was correct! That was a great read.
"Disliking something, and that something being bad, are not synonyms" are words that I practically live by. I'm especially glad that you went over the transitions from the Demo Tapes of 2, because I wasn't sure what to believe as to why the demo versions were slower.
I feel quite enlightened by the information in this video, as I can now confidently say that Faded Hills just sucks cause it sucks and not cause "Tomoya Ohtani used a Genesis Soundfont"🙂
I think if the lead was lowered an octave the song would be infinetly better
I remember when you launched the remix of "Ghost Town" from Sonic Forces in CD Style and I asked "Have Sonic CD a soundfont?", and a lot of people explain me why the concept of "soundfont" is wrong. I don't think that concept is Sonic Fan base exclusive, is a general misconception in Video Game music community (amounts of video remixes in internet have "soundfont" in his titles, that induces more and more people to reproduce the concept)
Hey, i remember you from the Ghost Town video, mainly because you writed D70 as R70, xd. Though i parcially agree with some points of this video and your comment , i think simply saying "soundfont" and other simpler words to refer to something, like a remix, is way more understandable to, as an example, people who don't know concepts of music production. For example, i think it is much better to just say "Peaches NES soundfont remix" as opposed to "Peaches but it's a NES soundchip based style remix/remake". The result and impact of the remix will be almost the same, anyways.
Sonic always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to bad video game/community thing discussions
@@pufflord_gamesonicsoloesyo2365 Indeed. You know that the fanbase is really messed up when they call someone sick just because this person prefers dubstep/EDM as compared to rock. 💀
@@justsomelosercb Don't know if you're trying to say that it's deserved or if you're trying to agree, but either way, many fanbases are filled with these kinda people, singling out one fanbase gives them much more room to thrive.
@@pufflord_gamesonicsoloesyo2365 Not to mention it also having ties with furries, which very much helped it getting the short end.
I think another common misconception is the vgm deconstruction theme.
Some people still have to learn that it's only possible to separate audio channels from music tracks using its "project file" or the archive where the music's note, effect and instrument data is stored.
In the case of the Sega Genesis for an example, it's the .vgm files. The problem here is: you can't deconstruct or isolate channels in high quality music (.mp3, .wav and CD Audio in general, for example). High quality audio files only posess the waveform of the music track/song, meaning you don't have direct access to the instruments and notes in a separated form (because everything gets mixed as one).
It's like cake. You can't take the eggs outta the baked cake. You'll have to try and buy the ingredients to have access to the separated things which make the cake. Basically, you can only deconstruct waveform type music if you recreate It from scratch. That's why not all of Sonic CD's songs were deconstructed yet.
Yet, you can get really REALLY close to deconstruction. (like, look at the spongebob title theme deconstruction, that shit is extremely fucking good) BUT you will never get a full deconstruction EVER from just a waveform. You may get close, but never perfect.
As a semi-metalhead it pisses me off whenever someone calls the Super Sonic boss themes from Frontiers "screamo" Even though its an actual genre of metal/heavy rock, people now just use it as a term for songs with harsh vocals and sometimes heavier than normal guitar.
Aren't the Frontiers boss themes more Metalcore? It's practically a genre that mix Punk Rock with some Metal segments, but, in Frontiers case, with a more variant style. Thus like Sonic and the Secret Rings OST being a Hard Rock/Alternative Metal/Rap Metal mix, although with a different tone in the vocals, I guess.
@@elmemearana Yeah they are metalcore.
Tomoya Ohtani described the songs as being "Post-Hardcore and Metalcore"
Screamo isn't a genre of metal, it's a genre of emo (which itself is a genre of hardcore punk) and hardcore.
@@xanatanuwu Oh ok thanks for the clarification. One day I want to make a giant flowchart thing of how all the rock, metal, punk and alt music genres came to be so that's good to know.
The Sonic Origins thing was an eye opener. I recently told one of my friends Senoue remade the music, after watching this I had to go correct myself. Good stuff.
2:54 Seems like my SEGAudio soundfont made a cameo in this video (yes i'm the one who made that, hello youtube).
That aside, THANK YOU for being another voice that clarifies how video game sound chips work and putting it quite succinctly and plainly, even I'm sick of people not even bothering to look up what a soundfont is and what its origins are. If MIDIs really were used in literally the exact same way, then platforms like the Nintendo DS would lock the drums to the 10th channel by default and allow more than one note's worth of polyphony much like how MIDIs on PCs do, yet you can see with various deconstructions of a number of DS games from searching "nintendo ds oscilloscope" (namely with Sonic Colors) that you can actually just use whatever sample you want on ANY of the channels so long as you know how to trick your way into attaining that fullness regardless of polyphony limits.
Also, I had no idea Forces actually used a real Sega Genesis for its Classic stages. That said, they've still got a lot of improvement to make with that music if they're going to keep using it for any future projects (though I'd imagine they can't reuse instrument patches that other Genesis composers outside of Sega worked with and just shortcut it for legal reasons). Although, I can't say much about Sonic music as of late since it's not my specialty, so it's nice to have the insight.
Finally, just to verify, soundfonts come from early-90s, so neither Nintendo, Sega, NEC, Atari, etc. had any involvement with it because their consoles released before even the Sound Blaster sound cards made their debut.
tldr; This is a REALLY well-researched and well-sourced video you've got here, Nuclear. You've earned a sub!
(Also if anyone's wondering, the point of my soundfont was not to purposefully evoke nostalgia or familiarity, but to simply explore what other sounds the Sega Genesis could make outside of either the common perception of the console's sound and/or even outside of what was already tried in the console's library.)
GBA's software mixer was able to do single channel polyphony. So did the DS's. (I hope I didn't read your comment wrong lol)
@@Mizu2023While the DS *could* do software mixing thanks to its CPU, it wasn’t necessary at all due to its sound chip natively having 16 channels of ADPCM audio.
my thoughts on the forces supersaw debacle is this: while the repetition of the lead isn't inherently bad, combined with the formulaic compositions you can basically swap any of the songs out with each other and nothing would change. what makes arsenal pyramid's outside track any different from luminous forest? how are they catered to fit the level? the lack of variety just makes this issue much worse. this applies 10x to the frontiers cyberspace tracks, although that's more of an issue with the game and sadly something the composers had to inherit.
(i like both soundtracks btw)
I agree with this, and do admit that I'm heavily biased because of listening to Sonic soundtracks so thoroughly. I think part of this issue is caused by trying to have so many levels, 30 in Forces' case. Lost World had identifiable stage themes in its music since it only had a few, focused stage themes, whereas Forces just has "City," "Town," etc.
Well that's the thing, take something like Adventure or Adventure 2, multiple levels in those games and you can picture vividly going through those stages just by hearing the track that accompanies them. 06 has the same thing going on, and it's argued to be the best Sonic soundtrack in the franchise all the time right next to Unleashed. Granted 06's visual style is great, but I'm sure you can tell the difference between Rhea, Ares, Ouranos, Chaos and Kronos regardless of what movement or anything else.
I'd also argue that certain cyberspace tracks fit the levels they are with perfectly. Like 2-6 fits perfectly, hearing that theme immediately brings me to it's level. Same with flowing. but it is rare in Cyberspace.
@@pufflord_gamesonicsoloesyo2365 i think the open zone music is perfect, i have no issues with it. and the cyberspace songs are generally great in isolation as well, like i said the samey-ness is just something that was inherited by there only being like 4 level themes
@@haha_hollie Oh yeah I would definitely agree, it lends itself to a lot of issues in that regard
That’s because the music all works with the rhythm of the stage itself
I'll admit it, I have myself been guilty of misgenre-ing Sonic songs before, and songs in general. I remember when I first heard Vandalize I called it pop, when obviously it isn't, listening to it now. I have also in the past tended to call every electronic song "EDM" as a blanket term without thinking more intricately about it.
There was a lot of stuff I learned from this video that I didn't know previously, and I hope it reaches more people so we can have more educated discussions about these sorts of things, I think it's really helpful.
It's fine to make mistakes, as long as you acknowledge you've made them. It's people who are supposed to be, or act like authorities on media, who are confidently incorrect, that the sterner parts of this video are aimed towards.
The importance doesn't lie at all in the words. The importance lies in us making Sonic Team understand what games had the type of music we like. It's as simple as saying, that Sonic Adventure 2 style, or that Sonic Rush style. It's really not important. Ohtani gets the gist of anything anyway and could nail whatever he wanted to. Although he seems to also be bad at Classic music, just like Jun's modern classic music. (and I mean classic as in Classic Sonic).
That whole thing with people talking about Soundfonts are the exact type of people who'd trash MIDI because "it sounds bad".
Like, have they even played it back on anything other than Windows Media Player?
midis dont even sound that bad. it actually sounds pretty good
That last bit was fun. A lot of Sonic fans are the same way about game design; they can't comprehend ideas that aren't from Sonic games, nor the idea that "good game design" sometimes means not doing things that they think of as their platonic ideal of "Sonic". If I ever get into making video essays I've always wanted to do one about that, because it drives me a little nuts.
As for the factual misconceptions, one I see from time-to-time is that composers (Hideki Naganuma most commonly) "sampled" this or that random old source themselves, when in actuality they got sample packs/CDs from the companies they worked for, such as the Zero-G Datafile you mention. Sample packs are incredibly common, and while it's fun to find the original source of samples used in games, professional composers for games aren't necessarily seeking out old episodes of Batman just to grab a clip of Adam West saying "Let's go!".
(Also I know I've gotten the one about Jun Senoue not doing sound programming wrong before, since I checked the Sonic 3 credits and there were separate credits for sound programmers and arrangers that didn't include him, so I assumed the setup was the same for the other Genesis games he worked on. I'm certain that one's relatively common, sadly. On that note, I didn't realize there were individual track credits for games that old, that's really cool to find out!)
As a fellow synth enthusiast, I thank you so much for this
I think it's worth accepting that "soundfont" and "MIDI" have become genericized terms for "sample set" and "tracker" (and, I'd argue it happened with "soundfont" way before Undertale came out).
They're being used as convenient terms in general discussion to mean a certain thing that everybody partaking already understands, so they there really isn't any misleading technical misinformation being spread (The people with no knowledge as to what soundfonts and MIDI actually are already think it means one thing, and that's the thing it's being used to mean, so they aren't being made to believe something technically wrong. The people who DO know what said terms mean will most likely also know that the terms being used aren't being used *technically* correctly, so they aren't being mislead either)
It's important to acknowledge that, with every technical field, its technical terms will have their meanings dumbed down for outsiders, and that's okay. In an ideal world, we'd be more on the same page, but even as it stands it's not really hurting anything. The people who haven't bothered to research the correct terms aren't the ones who actually need to know them.
This
Absolutely based comment sir, take my like
Based. If you wanna get pissed off about soundfonts, get pissed off about the fact gargoyles are only the statues that spew water, the ones that don't are called grotesques, and that fungi is pronounced fun-jai.
I agree. There's people in every field who love to do this exact thing of not accepting the fact that a term has been adapted by general audiences to mean something different than its literal definition. Generally speaking, the only people who feel a need to make a big deal out of this are purists/elitists who aren't very fun to deal with. Quite frankly, I don't think one's ability to understand or even compose music is even remotely related to their ability to "properly" use terms, so to say "the sonic fanbase doesn't understand music" because of the words they've decided to use is kind of ridiculous and leaves a bad impression imo.
@@rando_calrissian W-wah? So... Then... Gargoyle... Eh..?
I like this, legitimately had no idea about a lot of this and i'm glad you put it out there. I feel like since you brought up Forces I might as well get something off my chest that i've never gotten the people who say the fan remixes of the modern and avatar stage themes are better than the original just because they get rid of the synth cause more often than not I think they just sound worse. There's this one in particular of Sunset Heights that replaces it with a Violin and while I usually love violins, it just sounds really "slurry" if that makes any sense, not sure what the technical term for it is, but the song loses a lot of its punch.
My personal issues with the remixes that try to "fix" the soundtracks are when they replace the live instruments with VSTs/libraries. They can be great, but for Forces, most of the appeal in the Modern Sonic tracks are from the performances of MASUO, Nishikawa, Eguchi, and Yamada. If someone made remixes where it's another live J-Rock band as well as the changed leads, that could be a good contender.
@@NUKELEDGEno bands needed, we are in the future just record the drumloops live and every instrument separated then merge em and sync em
@@ZphyZphyer It still requires a drummer / drumset to get started which is the main issue.
Absolutely great video. Glad to see we have some of the same gripes about the discussion around videogame music. Especially that last point. It's always weird when Sonic fans hate on Frontiers and Forces for having modern, more current music when Sonic music has always done that. Sonic CD was a product of its time with the 90's dance and techno sound, and Sonic Adventure and Heroes were doing the late-90's/Early 2000's Pop/J-Rock. All this to say, Sonic music has always been a product of its time (which is meant to mirror the fact that Sonic is cool and coolness is constantly being updated, making it inherently modern etc, etc) so a lot of people's disdain for modern Sonic music just comes off as conflating opinion with objective quality.
This is true and potentially extends to Sonic as a whole. Sonic has always tried to reflect and combine the contemporary and pop culture of the time, especially with its music.
This!! Forces and Frontiers are genuinely amazing soundtracks because they both represent a modern style and have a high production value to back it up. And the same applies to pretty much every game in the series...!
If anything, people expressing distaste about the style is a sign that its production value is high enough to cause that split in opinions.
Im pretty ashamed to say that i did not know that Jun Senoue programmed his own music
The ignorance that gets on my nerves the most is people thinking that the one cutscene song was meant to be Hidden Palace's music when the Demo Tape clearly proves it was supposed to be some sort of cutscene song. People are stuck to that simply because that music plays when loading the broken Hidden Palace stage in Sonic 2.
It also annoys me when people ignore how Casino Night 2-Player was used for Oil Ocean and intended for that zone for most of development yet people say it was meant for Genocide/Cyber City.
Also, I love how savage you are in this video. You are saying what I've been feeling for a while.
I don't think people will stop calling the general sound set of a game the sound font. Everyone gets what is meant when it's used, only the experts get annoyed
The irony is that the actual meaning that gets picked up from it generally isn't very well defined in that sense to begin with. I've seen people sometimes use it to describe a melody's or a bass's scoring/performance despite the term being AT LEAST more fitting to describe the timbres of the instruments, it's popular definition is THAT loose.
I can relate to this comment _heavily_
For better or for worse, the internet has decided that is what it will be called. You can't really argue the internet when they coin a term.
It's like when they decided that "cringe" is an adjective, even though it's not, it's a verb. But the internet decided "no, it's an adjective now, screw what proper English says". Believe me, I hate when everyone uses "cringe" as an adjective as it just sounds ignorant, obnoxious and stupid, but I've had to come to terms with the fact that it doesn't matter what I think. The internet is going to continue to misuse the word however they want until the end of time.
@@the-NightStarCringe is a verb?
I am not a native speaker, so I thought "internet made a new word"
@@the-NightStar Bro it's both.
Fantastically edited and voiced video with lots of good information, learnt some new stuff from this video. Hope more people see it!
You killed it! I really hope more people see this video it's really well informed.
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for making this video. You definitely clarified some things for me, in particular Jun Senoue's involvement in arranging classic tracks from the 90's and the nature of Sonic Forces' Classic tracks. I'm not a music guy, so I really appreciate having a better grasp of these topics. I hope more people see this video.
Also, speaking generally about the Sonic fandom, I wish people would voice their criticisms of Jun and Ohtani more respectfully. I don't think they deserve even a tiny fraction of some of the rude things I've seen people say about them.
The amount of pure vitriol and spite I see people expel towards the same people who made defining aspects of their childhood is one of the most annoying things I've seen in my time on the internet.
@@NUKELEDGE The secondhand embarrassment I feel watching people say such harsh things about them without an ounce of shame is intense. lol.
@@NUKELEDGELike what the Star Wars fandom did with George Lucas, unfortunately.
In the moment Tee Lopes slips even a little outside the script, the fandom is going to burn him alive as well.
I don't think ignorance about music genres has anything to do with media literacy. I'll never not be annoying hearing all dance music being described as dubstep and techno. Video game fans are video game fans and so often don't know about music. Think about the millions of people that played games in the 90s and 2000s who, through playing them, heard a ton of dance music and just have no clue and think it's 'video game style music.' A lot of Americans probably would have derided it all as 'gay music' and then gone home to play Ridge Racer 4 or something.
I will not budge on commercial music, as in video games, being media. I would differentiate between "musical literacy," which is knowing music, and "media literacy," which is knowing about musical history, musicians, and music in society. They are related, and learning one usually means learning the other as well, they but not the same. I agree that gamers in general not being musically-minded is the case.
@@njsynthesis it's not the same thing. The whole 'media literacy' thing is mostly people not recognising subtext in stories.
Wow Xenophobic for what?
i've seen many media illiterate sonic fans on twitter.....
@@ian09dbz Illiterate how? Because we use general terms and because it's Sonic and Twitter it's fair to just generalize? Even though it was a thing way before Sonic fans did it?
"Sonic fans absolutely suck at identifying music genres."
Guilty as charged lol
I'm very impressed with this video! I learned a hell of a lot. Hopefully, things work out as you hope they will having released this, though IMO I doubt it lol
So glad to see this video, I wish Sonic fans knew how to separate their opinions from whether music is good or not. Hoping people will pick up on this video and stop assuming the wrong things.
Also, two thing, disregarding the extended opening, the S.A.M.E. version of That's The Way I Like It is actually shorter than the original track. While the song on multi-dimensional does have the second chorus as twice the length of the first, other releases (such as the SA2 digital OST and the 25th anniversary selection) have the last chorus go on for 4 times as much as the first, which beats the S.A.M.E.'s 3 times longer chorus.
Not having access to the original hardware used for songs (like in SA1 and 2) wouldn't stop them from making remixes. It's very clear that, at least from SA1 onwards (if not earlier, like Sonic R), SEGA has been archiving stems for almost all Sonic music. This can mostly be seen in Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces where, not just Jun Senoue tracks are remixed with use of the original stems, but also tracks by Hideaki Kobayashi, Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani, Heigo Tani, and more.
As a composer this is one of the best videos I've seen on Sonic music. I usually stay in the classical world but even then I notice way too many people say dumb stuff about Sonic music (especially regarding Sonic's musical identity).
I know this video is old but my favourite recent example of sonic fans not knowing about what theyre talking about when it comes to music is the reaction to the Chaos Island remix from Shadow Generations, I've seen people claim its "dubstep" or "EDM" when its clearly on the drum and bass or liquid dnb side lmao they just hear one wub synth sound and refuse to engage any further in good faith.
Very well done, i'd be interested to hear you do a deep dive into one of the soundtracks and discuss how they work on a technical and musical level. also if it gives you an excuse to demonstrate all that tech i am ALL in.
I have a series like that actually, here's the episode I made about Ohtani and co.'s sampling: ruclips.net/video/A7LpMm24kHA/видео.html
Wow I love this video, and I didn't even know this was even an issue haha! I am so shocked that the Sonic 3 samples didn't come from Michael Jackson, and it's kind of comforting knowing the Sonic 4 ep 2 OST was made with ProTools defaults. I also got to say though that I originally didn't like the Sonic Forces soundtrack when it came out but it grew on me overtime, especially Fighting Onward. Definite Sub!
This is very cool and well made video. If a part two ever gets made, you should talk about how Sonic fans don’t know what New Jack Swing is and why that isn’t the only genre that’s in the Sonic CD and Sonic Mania OSTs.
It really pisses me off when people describe CD’s music as purely New Jack Swing. Like that’s definitely an influence, but it mainly draws on the house and techno music of the time, especially acts like 808 State and the KLF. People just don’t listen to enough music outside of video games to know this stuff I guess.
@@LongSinceDead1 I've noticed that people who like video game music, much like fans of many other genres, tend to stay within the "bubble" of video game music. It's not unique to video game music fans, but my biggest gripe with game reviews is that they can go on for over an hour yet the only remark on the soundtrack may be "it's good [I like it]" or "it's bad [I don't like it]," with the author usually not having the self-awareness to articulate or even understand that one's own musical palette is not universal. At best, the critic may speak in broad terms about what the soundtrack _is,_ but nothing beyond the superficial. Game critics are not music fans in the same way how film critics are not experts in special effects.
Also consider the average age of a Sonic fan: what child or teenager in the 2020s is going to be knowledgeable about 80s and 90s acid house and techno unless their parents were ravers in that time period? Jungle, drum 'n' bass, and even IDM to an extent have all become popular again in the past few years among the youth (especially the "extremely online" ones), but these styles are all lumped under the name of the subgenre "breakcore," likely unintentionally because of the contemporary convention of making neologisms into compound words and giving styles and æsthetics the suffix "-core." There are no guiding hands in their communities to teach them the roots of the music they like; only "angry" "old" people who the youths refuse to listen to. Learning that there are genres of music that have lived and died before they were born is a life-changing event to them. Be patient with them. Give them time to understand music.
The fans opinions on sonic music and "why it's bad now" always seems to sound so fucking dumb. Glad someone has made a video to point that out lol.
To be fair a lot of the common chip sounds used in games have been turned into SF2 (Sound Font v2) files to be used in a DAW to recreate that retro sound. Yes the chip doesn't use sound fonts, but the chip's sound is reproduced in sound fonts that exist.
That is true, although essentially snapshotting portions of the chip gives a bad reference of what it's capable of. The 2612 is a chip that relies heavily on editing and getting intricate with sound design, so it only does a disservice to defer to soundfonts instead. This is my personal issue because it really doesn't matter, but the landscape of Genesis remixes has been oversaturated with soundfont remixes pretending to be actual Genesis remixes that it skews people's perspective on how the Genesis actually sounded or what it can/can't do.
THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO. Not only did I learn stuff, but I also agree discussions surrounding Sonic music online are generally awful.
very well made video. as an FM synth musician myself it really does get me irrationally frustrated when people talk about the "genesis soundfont" or whatever when referring to the console, glad that you threw that in.
Same
I feel like this is a video I needed to see.
But man, I know he never will. But I do wish Ohtani would put more UK garage / 2-step in Sonic games. He did one track, in one game and that was "Space Trips Steps" and ticked all the 2-step boxes.
"Soundfont" was popularized as a term due to literal downloadable sample sets of various retrogames. It has literally nothing to do with Undertale, and was being used long before then. People only call it that becuase there is an NES soundfont for download, a Genesis soundfont for download and many specialized SNES game soundfonts that contain the same samples used in games such as Earthbound, Super Mario Kart and Final Fantasy 6. "Soundfont" is just a generalized term that has come to mean the identifable fingerprint of how a game instrument samples generally sounds. Maybe it wasn't a real actual musical term to begin with, but the internet MADE it a term because there was no other widely known term to easily call it for convenience before then.
I'm aware of its rise, but I'm referring to Undertale "adding fuel to the fire" so to speak. It has the most popular soundfont at 286k downloads.
I've watched this video from time to time, and for the most part I do like it.
With that being said, there is one part that I feel misses the mark hard. Like, "can't see the forest for the trees" hard.
2:42 3:24 Unlike the other points you make here (which I agree with, don't get me wrong), this just seems pedantic in a way that I can only describe as alienating.
I've seen other people spell it out in the comments, but when people casually use "soundfont" when talking about video game music, _obviously_ they're not actually talking about the namesake (a format designed to keyboards and DAWs, and a prepackaged file that contains WAVs to use for music).
What they're referring to is the *soundscape* of a console's sound chip, like Nintendo's beep-oriented music or Sega's FM sound. Since other people have reproduced the soundscapes of these consoles using the _soundfont format,_ they infer that the way these different consoles' sound are called _soundfonts_ because it is a _font_ for _sound._
Anyone who has used a computer in the last 25 years knows that you can change fonts, which makes it easier to connect the dots. Music from old video games sounds different: If a Nintendo sounds different from a Sega, that means the soundscape of the music is inherently different. Mortal Kombat sounds different from console to console, so it obviously depends on the platform's "soundfont", or soundscape of a console. YM3438s and S-SMPs and what have you.
That's what they mean by the Sonic sound font. It's not about the format (which obviously no one will read on Wikipedia), but simply the soundscape of a video game console's sound chip. You can obviously infer this from casual conversation! This is why some people call any drink Coke! That's why I called the consoles by their nicknames, you can _obviously_ tell what I'm talking about from the context.
My father (a Gen Xer who loved music) often called any DAW or tracker a “MIDI setup.” I used to correct the s@$# out of him for years, but I eventually realized that it just made him not want to talk about music with me because I was becoming so pedantic about the terms that I missed the conversation. I let us talk using all kinds of terms with context and we managed to talk about all kinds of topics. By focusing too much on the definition of soundfont, either good or bad, you kind of miss what the person is talking about.
I agree with this point mostly, although my main issue with people using the term soundfont incorrectly is when they pretend to have expertise on a subject and don't. That, compounded with the use of the word soundfont, is what leads me to believe that the correction is necessary.
I understand *why* people use soundfont in the way they do, and for layman it's not necessarily a problem, but if you're going to try to do hard-hitting critique, but the basic facts are wrong (as they usually are with Sonic fans and music), and in addition, they also don't know the correct terminology to use, I feel like a correction is necessary.
For example, with your Dad, since he's an experienced musician, you inherently know that even if the term isn't 100% correct, you know he knows his stuff enough to accurately guess what he means by MIDI setup, and he's probably partially right anyway depending on the context.
However, with a Sonic fan and "soundfont," the bulk of the criticism is usually entirely unintelligible, and then the word soundfont is sprinkled in incorrectly on top, just to make it more unreadable. I've seen someone criticize the Modern Sonic music in Forces as being bad because it uses a bad soundfont, even though most of the instruments are live. In that case, I have no idea what the other person is referring to and a correction is borderline required for the conversation to even be coherent.
The "soundfont" thing seems like basically the same situation as jet skis. Did you know that "Jet Ski" was coined by Kawasaki as a brand name for their own line of personal watercraft, specifically?
Yep, although in the Jet Ski situation, watercrafts that are imitating Jet Skis don't have enough differences to justify making the distinction, but there are many types of synthesis that don't even touch samples (FM, PSG, Wavetable, additive, subtractive, etc.) to where it's warranted.
@@NUKELEDGE "watercrafts that are imitating Jet Skis don't have enough differences to justify making the distinction" that & jet skis sounds cooler & is overall more memorable.
senoue only making the origins super sonic theme makes a lot more sense now, cause why else would he just use a _different drum sample_ from every other track
Awesome video, really dig the background aesthetic as well! I hope more people watch this, a lot more people should fact check before they form an opinion.
Very informative, even if I might not be informed enough about music in general to fully follow. One thing that's always bugged me is the myriad of terms people use to refer to the Crush 40 vocal "grand finale" songs, like calling it buttrock, glamrock, glam metal, so I gotta ask, what genre is it that they make?
Actually, that is one area where even those of us who are super in-depth with the music still can't concretely answer. Buttrock is a good answer but it's often less produced than the music for SA2, Heroes, etc. I would personally say that Senoue's direction from his beginning to 1999 is J-Fusion/Rock Fusion inspired, 2000-2004 is more Punk Rock/Ska inspired, Shadow is Nu-Metal, and everything onward is Hard Rock. It can honestly go in any direction though, Rock genres are hard to pin down.
"buttrock" is just a catch-all term for post-grunge rock tracks. you can usually define a song as buttrock if the vocalist is consistently using a gritty tone of voice with no variation, which applies pretty much perfectly to johnny gioeli. it's not really a genre, just a leftover term from the nickelback era. hard rock is probably a more "proper" term for those songs.
thanks for correcting an assertion I had about Senoue, I assumed the Sonic 4/Origins/(superstars bosses?) all sounded that way because Senoue never programmed for genesis, turns out he did but the hardware was unavailable for him to use...?
Unless he worked on Forces too, could simply be 30 years of rusting skills
i think there's a few reasons; sonic 4 wasn't originally intended to be sonic 4, it started as sonic the hedgehog portable. perhaps sounding authentic to the classics was not part of the original direction. it's also possible that jun figured that the triton sounds he used would be a good approximation of what a "modern" equivalent of the genesis' sound could be. regardless, i think it was down to his artistic direction, and not a lack of knowledge or tools
@@EmmaMtH That would make sense, so he decided to use a better (yet somewhat similar) synth for Episode 2, now that he knew it was going to be on major consoles when he wrote the soundtrack.
Yes. He tried looking for an NEC PC-8801, but he couldn't find one. They're also very rare and expensive, so rare that I can't even find any listings to show how rare they are in the first place actually.
In an interview with Sonic Stadium, he said he wanted to do FM tracks for Episode II, but Dimps told him not to as to not stray from Episode I's pre-existing direction.
can't wait until the sonic frontiers soundfont drops
16:04 "End of The World" from Sonic '06 is the most common example. "The Doom" from Shadow the Hedgehog. Much of Riders as well.
I think Nuclear should've used "Cyberspace 4-2: Ephemeral" as the example. It's quite literally a modern 'Liquid DnB' song.
There's many more fan misconceptions out there that were not covered in this video and they all seem to centre around Michael Jackson.
1. Everybody thinks the Bridge theme in Sonic 1 8-bit is the Janet Jackson song ''Together Again'' when in reality it merely shares a few chords and is completely different.
2. When Michael Jackson died in 2009 there was a wave of Sonic fans flooding the community spreading the lie that MJ secretly composed the entire soundtrack to Sonic 2 and didn't want to be credited.
3. Michael Jackson composed all of Sonic 3's soundtrack on his own.
4. This one was actually made by a fellow composer on Sonic 3 who is now trying to sue Sega for royalties. He said that MJ didn't want to be credited in Sonic 3 because he wasn't happy with the sound chip and felt it devalued his music. This statement made in 2009 totally disregards the fact that Michael Jackson was fine with how Moonwalker sounded three years earlier in 1990 as he was the final person who approved that game's soundtrack. So the FM-YM2612 is fine in 1990 doing Jackson's music but somehow in 1993 it devalued his music to the point where he didn't want to be associated with it? Mind you this was the year that the first child molestation case came out.
I didn't cover the S3 ones because in the original draft I mentioned a good video that cleared it up, but I removed it for brevity.
Also yeah, I never understood the "wasn't happy with the chip" claim given Moonwalker is much more primitive in its renditions yet is somehow better than the music specifically made for the 2612? And at what point did MJ hypothetically determine the music to be unfit for credit, given that we know they made at least 30 "cues."
@@NUKELEDGE Thanks for the reply. I think because MJ was larger than life people decided to make up stuff upon learning that MJ had a very small hand in Sonic 3's music. The fan-made misinformation has led to a few urban legends because of it namely what I already covered.
Good video! When I first heard the super sonic music in Origins and didn't like it that much, I was under the impression that Jun Senoue only composed the music for 3d Blast, and had someone else arrange it, to which I assumed he had no experience with actual genesis hardware, which is why Sonic 4 sounds the way it does. Turns out he just had different hardware.
I'll make sure to have a more open mind before I start forming opinions on an industry I have no experience in.
Ooooh, yeah, as a video game music guy I hate the whole "calling everything a soundfont" thing. You know what was really fucked though? Someone called my SNES music "ad-lib midi" music in a critique once in a review, it just irked me so badly at how off he was from what it really was lmao.
Would've been worth mentioning that there is a sample from MJ's Jam in Carnival Night Zone even though the sample doesn't actually feature his voice.
Pretty much how I feel whenever I hear sonic fans criticizing the recent games for using edm. Like, it's ok to not like edm, but call the genre itself bad? That's just wrong. They act like rock and orchestra are the only acceptable genres for the franchise, when sonic always had a very wide variety of genres in it's soundtrack.
I mean, if you want my opinion, at the end of the day, it’s just music. There’s no reason to go too serious into music. Honestly, I can say that I myself have no knowledge on music, but will that stop me from enjoying music? Absolutely not. Even if I don’t know genres, (because for me, as long as a song sounds good to me, it sounds good, nothing more than that. If a particular song sounds bad, it sounds bad, to a personal opinion, because I can’t speak for anyone that also dislikes that specific song that ends up grouping it up to the whole genre), Im not gonna fuss over it. Also the point around the “ Adventure prototype music “ talk, at least to a personal level, I assumed there was gonna be the Adventure Remakes because of the fact that I was not aware that there was a charity going on before those releases. I should have checked everywhere before assuming that they were Adventure remakes, and honestly, thats my fault.
All in all, this was a great episode on music, even if I have short term memory and will probably forget lmao (because lets be honest, if you’re not too focused on a subject, you’ll most likely forget everything about it)
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO
"Sonic Frontiers music is bad because modern music is bad"
...EDM isn't new.
Sure, Frontiers leans into the genre a lot more than older games, but it's nothing more than a change.
EDM has existed since the 2000s and the 2010s, and in both cases, some would pledge that Sonic music was better then.
In fact, if you count IDM as part of the same genre, EDM goes back as far as Sonic's own roots.
Maybe I'm just a little biased considering I like all kinds of EDM, (IDM, House, Indie, Drum & Bass, you name it.) but I feel as if this is a bad point. (Not to say that older Sonic music wasn't bad, not at all.)
Look up Sonic Before & After The Sequel's OST. (Or the Spark The Electric Jester games) They've got a good mix of electronic and rock music.
Media literacy in general is something that Sonic fans seem to be completely incapable of. I swear to god some people just get things wrong about this series on purpose just to be upset over something.
I disagree that making the past themes sound “prehistoric” in a way using the sampled instrumentation was the *main* reason they weren’t CD audio. The sampled audio was practically necessary to make the game fit on a CD, and as the Cutting Room Floor puts it “When accounting for four CD audio variations instead of three (for reference, an average Sonic CD track is 1-2 minutes, or 10-20 megabytes), the data and music stored on the Sonic CD disc amounts to 600 - 700 megabytes which is dangerously close to an audio CD's storage capacity limit (around 650 - 700MB).”
I do think the overall sound/atmosphere the sampled audio gave was at least a little bit of a bonus to the composers though, with Mazin himself tweeting “I feel like the past side of Sonic CD was playing PCM the best. At the time, it turned out that the capacity of the DA was not enough, so only the past was built in, but I wanted to listen to the "sound" of the built-in sound source of the mega CD, so I decided to do so at the time, and I was grinning inside. I was doing double.”
Other than that though, there’s some great info in the video that I didn’t know before! It’s certainly a great testament to the power of doing your own research instead of immediately adopting the first opinion you see on a subject, something many people could benefit from.
After doing research, I was wrong about that part.
Never imagined I'd hear your voice, such an entertaining video! ❤
Appreciated, although it's not narrated by me! One of my close friends narrates my edited videos.
@@NUKELEDGE 💀
Very good info, but I feel the video's tone was a tad condescending.
Then again, Sonic fans get off on humilation and being berated, so it's all good.
love your content 🔥
you can definably tell someone has severe music illiteracy when they refer to any rock song with an heavy electric guitar as "butt rock" (which isn't even a real god dam genre), or any more electronic music as "dubstep".
Especially mimetic Sonic fans....
Coming back to video after superstars release. it's been so helpful so far!
You know I think you should make a video explaining why making music for the Yamaha is very difficult as a lot of Mega Drive games as well as arcade Sega System 16 games had a very "hard, loud and sometimes screechy" sound (see for example Altered Beast or Phantasy Zone 1).
I have considered making a video about SMPS as an addition to the pre-existing video by GST about GEMS.
1:56 Look, Gary! There I am!
Twitter search was very unkind as you happened to be the first result!
@@NUKELEDGE Damn, I tried looking it up myself and couldn't find the tweet. I figured it must've been deleted.
As a sonic fan, my mentality is "Unga Bunga music good, monke liek"
the section talking about soundfonts is something i genuiely get annoyed about, cuz, there have been many times I've seen a hardware-acurate chiptune and one of the comments says something along the lines of "I reALy lIKe tHis SoUNdFoNT"
Ik people dont understanding trackers and all, but why do you call it a soundfont?!
Most, if not all the time, the music in question has a certain _style_
Eg. The Sonic Advance trilogy's music are all similar, but im pretty sure they _don't_ use a soundfont, rather, they have a style that the composers stick to.
Thank you! It's really annoying how people constantly spout nonsense on topics they have no idea about. If only they did some research on a given topic before talking talking about it, internet would've been auch better place.
Sidenote: how do people STILL believe Zippo? Wasn't he proven wrong, like, ages ago?
The information he gets right comes from other sources as well, and even when he receives it, he adds his own details to it which makes it incorrect. He tried to say Superstars was a Modern 2.5D game.
@@NUKELEDGE Yeah, I know about the "Modern 2D Game"
I think that Zippo leaks are a great example of confirmation bias. People focus only on the parts he got right, while completly ignoring everything he got wrong. In the case of Superstars, the right part is the "New 2D game" part - anyone can make a prediction like that - and the wrong part is everything else
This fanbase is wild
Fantastic video! It's cool to see a genuinely informative Sonic video these days 😅
fighting the good fight, awesome video
Nuclear my goat, another banger 🔥🔥🔥
Earned a sub; takes balls to point out people's ingorance, *especially* in the Sonic community.
I want some of the older hardware to be used for songs nowadays and remake things
Nintendo trying to not use the Bottle Blow from SC-88 in a new Mario game:
Me being a producer and my special interest being Sonic 👁️👄👁️
don't feel stupid, i'm the same way
3:52 Hypothetically speaking, I think the Wii may have had the capability to run a sound font if you made your own soundfont playing software for it... though it might sound a bit off depending on certain things I'm far from qualified to explain.
You could theoretically make a sound driver that uses MIDIs and .SF2s on any system, it just depends on the resources that you want to allocate to the rest of the game. With some programming tricks and heavy optimization, you probably could get a soundfont player to work on the Genesis, given what MarkeyJester was able to do with Sonic 1: The Next Level. Any console past the Saturn could easily run a driver that uses soundfonts, and in fact the Dreamcast does have a driver that supports straight-up MIDI, but it was very rare and wasn't used in any notable games.
These are all things that I feel like needed to be said, and I learned many new things as well. However, I do not take as well to the tone of the video. We need to be patient with people who simply do not know any better. It is not the fault of the fans that society in general is not very musically literate. Most people never have a "call to action" that makes them truly care about music besides for the emotions it makes them feel or the people it causes them to meet. In fact, I argue that we must be extra patient with Sonic fans because of just how young they usually are. I recall a conversation with my mother who frequently went clubbing in the 90s about electronic music from that period.¹ She never considered that there could be different subgenres and called any danceable electronic music "techno." If many adults cannot distinguish between the various different genres they like or reason about music, it seems unreasonable in my mind to expect children with a much less sophisticated worldview to be capable of it.
Because the Sonic fandom is so heterogeneous, I think it is quite wise to treat it as a subset of the general population, with their average in no dimension being deviant from the norm in any meaningful capacity besides factors correlated with young age. This fracturing is caused by the exhausting amount of experimentation and reinvention the series does. With the number of different aesthetics and moods born from the many different eras and subseries, the Sonic fandom is basically a group of smaller fandoms under the impression that it is one large fandom because of them all nominally sharing the same basic characters. If we can accept this notion, then it seems perfectly reasonable that Crush 40 fans would not appreciate drum 'n' bass or that fans of the house-style Japanese CD soundtrack would not understand the ambient-style American soundtrack. Sonic fans are people after all, and people tend to not like change or things they do not understand.
--------
¹ After listening to "Qmart" by 808 State featuring Björk: ruclips.net/video/WeuwKHgHgcI/видео.html
(Edits: syntax, wording, excessive comma splicing.)
I think whether or not someone is interested in a field, if they're discussing aspects where you are expected to at least have surface level knowledge, like music production or game development, it's required to double-check yourself since false information can spread so quickly. For example, not a lot of people are programmers, and that's fine, however, those same people were given so much weight in their opinions that it led to a lot of people thinking Hedgehog Engine is responsible for physics. They were then rightfully corrected and called out for pretending to be knowledgeable abot game dev. I think the same basis of research should be applied to music as well.
I think even the Sonic CD US version from the soundtrack also has various genres. It's probably composed by New Wave/R&B styles, following the logic that Sonic CD JP OST is New Jack Swing in general and Sonic Boom music is New Wave too.
I think it'd be more accurate to say that the modern day average person doesn't understand music. Very few people have any kind of formal musical education these days and those that do usually just learned to play piano or guitar at an early age, then stopped. It's truly a shame how much music gets misunderstood and how increasingly rare it is to find people with an ear for it.
People talk shit about music all the time without knowing half of what they're talking about, unfortunately that's common even outside of the Sonic fanbase. I don't even know that much about music but I'm still constantly reminded that people like to pretend they know what they're talking, just by having basic knowledge.
It is at least a little sad to me that Sonic fans, for a franchise with such a rich musical legacy and with such an amazing art and fangame community, seem to have so little musical imagination. I have a series of playlists where I construct and extrapolate new types of music that would fit for the series or particular entries:
ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8EtfJGkIt6e97bXD6VyB50G (Forces, one track per stage except where explicitly mentioned otherwise)
ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8FC7UV24hh8lWk73YxOKV1L (Frontiers)
ruclips.net/p/PLRbkF_JK5i8FN5sUEaRxHE6tcebyTYlv3 (Classic Sonic, general)
Compare this to my contemporaries who seem to have the same goal:
ruclips.net/p/PLr8ZkNBOPi-Qwii4Jid3OoJFXxRZYGoml (Forces)
ruclips.net/p/PLXSKsIBHDH4iSXbgWxMmthlt5lFY49GcZ (Forces)
ruclips.net/p/PL-grwrKG-djNg8Aq1LyOpgY557V1gFWGO (Classic Sonic, general)
ruclips.net/p/PLgcoT7-W0fP1lMUh9m3k5--rA0reCCMyV (Modern Sonic, general)
The gap in inspiration, I feel, is tragic. They are cannibalistic, often featuring music already in the series, and almost universally within the bubble of video game original soundtracks and occasionally anime (which is a step in the right direction). If not, then it is music popular from flash-in-the-pan memes or comedy music. Even notable examples, such as Triple-Q's Modern Sonic playlist are subject to these problems. I imagine that my choices are strange to just about anyone, but at least I extend even slightly outside the box.
Anything that's not another animal character is neglected
Think about all the cool robot designs this series, and then think about how many people like care about that's not named Metal Sonic
@@TechBlade9000 I agree with you, but I'm not quite sure what it has to do with what I said except for the abstract notion of "Sonic fans often have narrow interests."
bro the soundfont thing makes me so frustrated haha
4:26
synths would be a good one for synthesised sound (like the Yamaha chip)
Many of these issues extend beyond the "sonic fanbase". It's common for the average person to oversimplify topics they aren't deeply interested in, resorting to popular terminology being used to get their points across. While it's great that as an enthusiast you're educating others, it's unrealistic to expect everyone with a casual interest in music to possess the same level of knowledge as you do.
I have no problem with oversimplification given the information being simplified at its core is correct, and I also recognize that not everyone is interested in music or its history within the fanbase, but I do think cursory research is required if you're going to be critical about a subject.
For example, I don't know much about drawing, so I'd never call someone's artwork bad and try to dig into why I think it's terrible unless I was super confident in what I was saying.
Sonic fans, however, don't agree with this perspective, and would take their lack of knowledge as a badge of honor to say the most uninformed, unintelligible opinions with no regard for accuracy.
It's most obvious with the point about Jun Senoue programming his music for 3D Blast. There's no excuse for getting that wrong, even if you're not interested in music, because all you have to do is a Google search. It's the equivalent of getting the writer wrong when talking about a movie.
In my opinion, Sonic fans are one of the worst with their gifted inability to do basic research to the extent that I made this video in the way that I did.
@@NUKELEDGE I see what you're saying. I feel the term "misinformation" should be reserved for credible sources and not to those lacking authority or expertise on the subject. If an individual is getting their information from random nobodies on the internet, that's their problem.
I feel so validated knowing that I was completely on the ball with Sonic CD past music using the genesis soundchip because Sonic was traveling back in time. that was always a headcannon of mine so it's cool to know that was 100% correct
CD uses the RF5C68 for the Past music; the YM2612 is only used for SFX.
@@NUKELEDGEOh I see thank you!
Correction. The term soundfonts wasn't popularised with Undertale, it existed with the definition of 'instrument samples pertaining to a game/hardware' even before that, I remember back in around 2011 that people were using the word 'soundfont' in regards to Pokémon music (And being technical, the soundfonts for Pokémon are all from various VSTs, but altered to work on GBA/DS hardware), so it's definitely been a thing for years before Undertale was released
Tbf I've seen Crush 40 performances that don't even have Jun and they're still considered Crush 40 concerts. I guess Johnny is just the core part of Crush 40 lol.
8:25 the sonic CD prototype that recently surfaced shows that they were originally using redbook audio for palmtree panic past, and not PCM samples; its very close in style to the final track. i think it's clear this means they switched to PCM sample based tracks due to size limitations, and not just to use "cheaper" sounds (im curious what the original word used was, if the interview was in japanese), since they were doing that with redbook audio anyway.
Demo versions would have to exist regardless as the only way for them to know what to sample for the Ricoh chip was to have a demo to convert originally. Plus, from some people I know who are well-versed in SEGA CD development, there was apparently more than enough space for extra CDDA songs. There was actually more than 64kb allowed per PCM song as well, through the use of bank switching which the game already makes use of, which implies that they intentionally limited themselves.
@@NUKELEDGE > the only way for them to know what to sample for the Ricoh chip was to have a demo to convert originally
since when is making a demo required for sampling? maybe the japanese devs were unfamiliar with PCM sampling on the sega cd, but look at what was going on with music trackers in the west: it was (and is) absolutely possible to make a sequenced song using just samples without making a demo first.
> from some people I know who are well-versed in SEGA CD development, there was apparently more than enough space for extra CDDA songs.
who are these people, and what are their claims? you can look at a bin/cue rip of sonic cd yourself to see how much space you'd need. there's 7 zones, so you'd need 7 past themes. the average length of a level track is 14.04 MiB, so you'd need about 100 MiB. out of the 650 MiB allotted on a standard length CD, 556 MiB is used on the disc. based on that alone, it's *possible* they could have fit 7 past tracks onto the disc (though it's cutting it pretty close), but remember: they cut r2 for disc space early on as well. using PCM sample based tracks was almost certainly a strategy to cut back on disc usage, even if in the end (you know, 6+ months later) they might have been able to make it work. hindsight is 20/20 :^)
> bank switching
>implies that they intentionally limited themselves
i mean, maybe? but like i said, they were already doing that with the redbook audio version of palmtree panic.
@@shade221
Of course it's possible to make sequenced songs without a demo, but that's not what we have record of SEGA Sound Team doing. Every classic game has demos that were used to make sequenced tracks: Sonic 1, 2, 3, and most likely CD. In the liner notes for the DataDiscs Sonic CD vinyl release, Hataya mentions that CD's music was mixed live off the floor, meaning they'd go to the studio, make the music, and all they'd have to come back with is a final mixed track (read: no stems). This is why Stage Clear and Game Over use full cuts of Cosmic Eternity and YCDA respectively. It's also why Op and Ed had to be remade for 2011. Given that, it's more likely that CDDA Past versions were created in the same sessions that the rest of the music was, especially considering that they likely used studio-exclusive gear (Cosmic Eternity uses a KORG SG1 which was never used before or since in a SEGA game).
In addition, a lot of CD's music was also made pretty early in development. December 1992 has Collision Chaos Present, so by that time, the rest of CC was likely done, only excluded due to the rest of the zone not being in a showcase-able state.
Because of those factors, in my opinion, it's more likely that:
-CDDA versions of the rest of the rounds do exist
-The primary reason for sequenced tracks was for aesthetic purposes.
BRO DID A VOICE REVEAL!!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!
This video is narrated by Danny Swentin, who is 100% more British than I am!
a
One odfity about the Sonic Forces Classic Sonic music is that the incincibility thene used the drum samples from Sonic 1 and 2 unlike all the other Classic Sonic songs.
Casino Forest also uses the Sonic 1/2 snare, and Egg Dragoon uses the timpani from Sonic 2 (although it could also be from Golden Axe II which Hataya also composed for).
This is why I just say that I don't like specific songs, because I have no idea what makes good or bad music. Like, to me. Faded Hills from Forces is a bad song to me, it just sounds ear-grating; but someone could come up to me and say that it's actually a good song due to the malform wave compression through a digital Yamaha synthesizer and it uses a Alphonian Key note sequence used in many other songs and I'd just nod along. Because I literally have no experience with music.
I knew Nuclear BEFORE he was cool RUclips video guy. Don't frick with me.
Yeah the Sonic fanbase is Dunning-Kruger personified. I get this burning urge to jump off a bridge whenever I see their takes regarding music, not sure what's up with that. Currently standing on the edge of one right now
i always liked the classic songs in Forces, but i did not know they were made with real genesis hardware. and im also unfortunately one of those people who kept saying jun didn't program any of his own tracks in 3d blast... this is a really good video.
My brain seeing that video title: 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫
Me starting to watch the video: *hold your fire*
There's a few points here that rub me the wrong way; not because you're technically wrong, but because it expresses a sense of elitism I'm not comfortable with. I know you mostly brought up the genre thing to call out fans who are trashing one thing because they want more of something else and don't realize they're asking for the wrong thing. But just because I can't tell the difference between microgenres used doesn't mean that I can't, say, express how much I enjoy the laid-back feeling of the guitars in Big's exclusive songs, or the making-sense-of-the-chaos feeling that Naganuma's heavy use of samples brings to Rush. We could all stand to use more accurate language in critique, of course, but getting annoyed that someone says "soundfont" instead of "soundchip" or "soundset" seems petty in most conversational situations.
Maybe I'm not the target of this video, and I'm very grateful you're hopefully bringing a lot of this to the community's attention. I might also just not know the circles of fandom you're calling out here, goodness knows I've been fed up with the drama channels centered on the franchise for a long time. But when I have a friend who literally can't experience Sonic Forces because the choices in sound direction hurts their ears too much, I think I'm entitled to considering that a bad decision in direction. I might sometimes even simplify that from "this is a bad decision" to "this is bad," but I'd like to believe most folks aren't assuming I know some objective standard that doesn't exist.
Overall though good video! I'm certainly going to spread the word on it, despite my reservations. Especially about the 3D Genesis thing.
As I said in another comment, I see no issue with people who want to learn but currently don't have the vocabulary. At some point, we either were or are the person who can't differentiate between two (admittedly) similar styles of music. I also don't mind people who don't like the Forces soundtrack. Even as someone who likes a lot of it, there are a few tracks that I've only listened to once or twice because I'm not a fan of their direction. My problem is with people who, as a real example, tweeted directly to Ohtani, telling him to stop making music like Forces because they didn't like it. When those people are the same people who start incorrectly detailing the process of music production, is when the tone of this video starts to apply to them.
Regarding the soundfont v. soundchip, etc, distinction, I don't mind it in general conversation with people who are (and acknowledge that they are) layman. Those people aren't going to get anything useful out of that distinction anyway, because they're never going to use it, as they don't make music. It is a bit annoying occasionally when uninformed posts get popular and the term continues to spread, but it's not the end of the world.
Well-stated response, and one I also share.
For me in particular, it was the genre thing. I'm a percussionist, so I'm not entirely clueless on how music works or is generally classified, but I'm not a music producer, and I certainly couldn't really tell you the difference between any two tracks with similar genre. And while it was prefaced by saying that the genre talk is subjective, I don't think it's fair to come at it from the perspective of "people just don't have the correct vocabulary" because genre classification *is* ultimately subjective in nature.
It's understandable to have that kind of reaction if someone were to call jazz "rock," but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to say that there is no one correct genre classification for a song that blurs the lines between many different sub-genres, especially Sonic music. I've heard Shadow's theme from SA2 labelled as techno, grunge, industrial, among others and while I'm sure there are signifiers of certain things, I don't think you can definitively point to one and say "this is what this song is." All art is subjective, as is art classification.
I agree it is a problem when people pose as experts but are incorrect. But I don't think a discord post labelling Big as "classic guitar" from someone who, at least to me, doesn't seem to be claiming any expertise is something worthy of pointing and laughing at.
It's always good to learn, and your sharing of your expertise in this field is well appreciated. I just think, at least in those situations, it's probably better to offer knowledge in a way that doesn't seem adversarial.
@@untapped8776 As added context for that screenshot, it was someone who was coming into a conversation to portray themselves as having the right answer above the rest of the discussion thread.
Some stuff in here blew my mind
You have a super interesting perspective on sonic fandom music takes. Would love to hear you talk about the differences between classic sonic music, and jun senoues take on it for Sonic 4/Superstars, if thats something youre interested about.
I would probably do it in the form of a Livestream or longform video which I'm not sure people would be totally interested in.
Somehow, finding out 3's music wasn't remade for Origins but was infact older prototype music makes the implementation even more frustrating to me.. though the Super Sonic music still sounds strange to me. oh well.
Big thanks for making such an informative video! Though I do think it was a little unnecessarily condescending at times. If this video gets out there it could definitely help the direction of discussion but many (not all) of these takes were probably made in good faith, trying to understand a situation they were frustrated about or didn't know amid a lack of clear resources. I think a lack of full understanding on subjects like this is fairly understandable especially when resources like Retro aren't widely known anymore and nowadays there's so much misinformation on bigger websites with seemingly professional presentation.
I didn't find it condensending at all and Sonic retro is pretty well known. Either way the info presented here all easy 6 second Google searches away
the issue is that nowadays "6 second Google searches" will get you 9/10 things that aren't reliable or useful, with 1 useful result. How are newer fans meant to know which resource is correct? When you Google "Sonic 3 composers", 9/10 of the first page results are clickbait articles about MJ.
Retro comes up and many older fans know it's reliable, but a lot of newer fans (often the same ones making these claims) don't know about Retro yet. They have no reason to trust it over Sonic News Network for example, which has become the most popular Sonic resource (it comes up first in most Sonic google searches).
With Google becoming less and less reliable, introducing fans to resources like Retro is important, but treating them like idiots for not *automatically* knowing why Retro is more reliable than the other bs you find on Google isn't fair.
doing god’s work 🙏
I don't have a twitter account so I guess this is the only place I can publicly say that I love your music!
@@NUKELEDGE oh--thank you so much!! i really appreciate it ^^
Let’s see a Sonic fan point out a New Jack Swing track.
Hold on, you’re telling me Masato had a hand in the Beta Casino Night Zone track?! I always liked that version
I'm going to have to disagree with you on the point of "No game console uses soundfonts" - while it's not technically down to the console's abilities, I'd argue any music that uses data samples (Sonic Advance series on the Game Boy Advance, Sonic Rush series on DS, Sonic 4 on Wii) could be called a "soundfont", even if the technical term is something different. (Some DS games even have banks that are incredibly close to being 1:1 with a standard soundfont when converted over to SF2, often missing drum sound effects or putting them on the last patch.)
So while yes, it's wrong to say "The Sonic 1 Soundfont" in reference to just the sounds the original game makes, it's not entirely wrong to say "The Sonic Colors DS Soundfont" in reference to the sounds it makes, give or take some songs that just use the hardware to synthesize a sound, even if it's not the "official" definition of a soundfont (2), it's pretty close, and the words used are an apt description of what someone might mean when referring to the sound. I don't think it's as useful to be so strict in this terminology about anything past hardware synth consoles.
It could be called that coloquially but only by coincidence. DS soundbanks and SF2s only occasionally line up because most soundfonts try to fulfill the General MIDI standard as do some DS soundbanks, but that's not an inherent quality of either. Soundfonts in their primary usage was just a way to store samples from a sampler into a file format, and its only used in the way that we know now from being essentially resurrected from its dead parent company's intentions. Standard soundfonts aren't a thing, it's just become common to lay them out in the GM format by the various fan communities who still make them, usually for low-effort MIDIslaps.
By this reasoning, you could call any sampler format (.nki, .exs, .akp, etc) a soundfont and it would make just as much sense, even though that would be similarly unhelpful.
You could call every console a "Nintendo," and some consoles are closer than others in the way they work, but beyond the basics, it's not really a useful term and you'd be missing a lot of nuance.
Relating this back to sound, while you could call Sonic Advance's soundbank a soundfont, it's missing the detail that almost every song heavily uses the GBA's PSG system and that there are only 4-5 sample channels allowed. Because that detail is missing, most Sonic Advance remixes are nothing like the actual game's soundtrack besides the surface level samples.
great video! I learned something new :)