You know, there’s been a question that’s been bugging me for a long while now. The main them of Panzer dragoon is by a live orchestra, as is the first level, and yet, the rest of it seems to be completely of synth. Now, I think the sountrack throughout the game sounds amazing, but why do you think so different?
Do you think it was intentional to have different instruments in these sections? Personally, I wonder if perhaps there was an issue in budget and they decided, after recording two tracks, it was too costly to make the whole game with an orchestra soundtrack, so resorted to composing the rest in synth instead.
I don’t think even the first in-game music is played by an orchestra though is it? As for an issue of budget… it would have been an extra cost to record every piece of music live, so I’m sure the title track was the one big ‘splurge’. But Yoshitaka Azuma’s portfolio was already more electronic / studio stuff anyway, so I feel equally sure that’s the sound everyone intended and wanted for the game?
I?ve thought about this question briefly in the past and presumed it was due to a combination of a preference for less conventional music in-universe and constraints upon the amount of money that could be spend on live musicians for multiple tracks.
Having said that, the first game isn?t hugely useful as a basis for extrapolation to the series as whole, for it didn?t do a huge amount to set the stage for the soundtracks of its successors: although it tends towards electronically produced sounds too, it has a more traditional feel than the much more otherworldly composition and timbres of the subsequent games.
Don?t forget, though: the title of Panzer Dragoon Saga is also orchestral. I think Orta has an orchestral theme for its title, too (I confess I can?t remember at all and can?t check right now). Zwei doesn?t qualify as being orchestral, but its title has a more familiar sound and set of instruments than much of the rest of the game. So, there?s perhaps a trend of some sort towards orchestral or at least more traditional elements in the titles of the games.
Anyway, Orta incorporates a greater proportion of more traditional orchestral instruments into its in-game songs alongside the otherworldly timbres reminiscent of Zwei and Saga. That may be a mixture of intention and/or perhaps, if said instruments are canned rather than live, the better hardware and virtual instruments (most likely samples) available all those years later. In any case, Orta seems to represent a good balance between familiar and more artificial instruments.
Was that done intentionally to tie all the games together, including the inaugural title? Who knows! Its OST also seems to fall somewhere between those of Zwei and Saga in terms of composition, so maybe. It?s not unreasonable to suppose that Saori Kobayashi and Yutaka Minobe might have taken cues from earlier games in the series when composing.
in my opinion, SEGA wanted to give to panzer dragoon a “Saturn sound”.
The firts Panzer Dragoon have a great OST with beautiful symphonic orchestra.
But, the Playstation could do the same music because this ost is CD soundtrack.
Contrary to Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Panzer Dragoon saga.
With these OSTs you can feel the same thing. The whole OSTs have a sense. The first ost was beautiful but nonsensical.
The second and the third osts used the same instrumentation and give a sense to the things that passing the TV screen.
And so, the osts of Panzer Dragoon zwei and panzer dragoon saga, wasn’t soundtrack, but was programmed with the Sega Saturn Soundchip, which give an identity to the musics.
In fact, you cannot reproduce the same musics on the playstation because the soundchip is totally different. So if you want the same music on the playstation you must record them, compress them and transform to CD soundtrack wich is unusable to make different things.
With programmed music you can program different things like : you have a map music, and you have a fight with a fighting music. When you come back on the map the map music begin where was stopped before the fight.
With a soundtrack music, the map music begin at the beginning each time after a fight.
I hope i am clearly ?
So SEGA wanted to give a SEGA Saturn identity to Panzer Dragoon Serie after the success of the first episode. And SEGA wanted to make a beautiful programmation to the entire of a panzer dragoon game
Indeed Zwei and Saga have a very unique identity in their soundtracks. Those two are my favourite soundtracks of the four main games. They define what Panzer Dragoon sounds like for me.
[quote=“PXL”]With programmed music you can program different things like : you have a map music, and you have a fight with a fighting music. When you come back on the map the map music begin where was stopped before the fight.
With a soundtrack music, the map music begin at the beginning each time after a fight[/quote]
You could probably get around that problem by saving the track time before the beginning of the fight, then starting the music from that point after the battle.
[quote]
You could probably get around that problem by saving the track time before the beginning of the fight, then starting the music from that point after the battle.[/quote]
I’m not a programmer, but i suppose, you must save the track time in the Ram memory. And the ram of the 32Bits console wasn’t very expand.
You can see the problem clearly in the game : Albert Odyssey which uses only soundtracks.
They are not streamed but rather sequenced and rendered using samples. This distinction, or at least correct use of the relevant terminology, is important here.
Streamed music would save only a small amount of memory at best: CD audio itself is streaming audio, and even a soundtrack using lower quality and/or something like ADPCM would still occupy much more space on the disc than the actual solution, which uses short and low-rate/-depth samples arranged according to sequences.
Yes, the samples have to be loaded into memory in advance, but they are designed to be short and small, and considering that the SCSP has its own separate built-in memory that would otherwise be left unused and wasted, this trade-off is totally worth it in saving space on the CD for other data.
The tracks still sound good as they were, aside from the fantastic composition and instrumentation, assembled from samples that were efficiently made (separate from their great timbres) and also made good use of the (limited) available articulations and built-in effects to elevate them somewhat above the canned and sterile sounds one might otherwise expect from sample-based synthesis. resists urge to put sarcastic quotes around that last word
Had they been streamed, we might have gained little besides a few more CDs (and probably an associated overdraft).
