VGM Voicemail Dave and Jay

Jay calls Dave to marvel at the impressive one-man-show of Toby Fox’s Undertale, and it’s densely-packed narrative-theme heavy soundtrack.  He takes a look at the various ways in which Fox managed to weave trackable motifs throughout the story to help us connect to the large cast of quirky characters.  Specifically, Jay tracks the various themes of the character Mettaton, and how they ultimately culminate in the epic battle theme Death By Glamour.  Jay, with the aid of a surprising interruption, rocks out to this jam before bringing season 1 of VGM Voicemail to a close.

Dave calls Jay about his favorite mascot ever, and the game that started it all, Sonic The Hedgehog.  SEGA decided to kick off the franchise in a huge way, with Jpop superstar Masato Nakamura from Dreams Come True doing the music and sound design.  Bringing his pop music talents for strong melodies, he took a film score approach to the music composition, especially after seeing the epic production art that Sonic Team had provided.  Scrap Brain Zone is a prime example of this sound, not only including grandiose music techniques like the tritone “Space Chord”, but being directly influenced from the iconic sci-fi film, Bladerunner.

Jay calls Dave about the newly popular online adventure game Sea of Thieves.  With pirate culture having a bit of a renaissance period in the last decade or two, Sea of Thieves makes a big splash as one of the most widely successful pirate-themed games since the likes of Monkey Island.  With a soundtrack by none other than legendary game composer Robin Beanland, the music plays an active role in the game mechanics, with characters on your ship joining in an out of a minstrel-like spontaneous ensemble.  Similarly, the featured song of this call, Maiden Voyage, has its own unique evolution as you move from tutorial mode to the open seas.

Dave calls Jay to talk about the carefully crafted soundtrack of the PSP hit LocoRoco.  Game creator Tsutomu Kouno, who has been quoted as saying “Music is more important than graphics”, set out to create a gameplay experience where the visual and audio experience went hand in hand.  Going as far as creating a unique language for the blob-like characters in the game, LocoRoco uses music and lyrics to make the creatures feel more alive and interactive, as well as create an overall more believable universe for the player to explore.

Jay calls Dave to explore the orchestral soundscape of Octopath Traveler, and how composer Yasunori Nishiki leverages the eight characters to create eight unique themes that weave together into the main themes of the overall game.  To be more specific, the game's epic battle music, Decisive Battle 2, comes with an introduction that is tailored to whichever character you’re using, giving it a special musical flair that suits your individual adventure.

Dave calls Jay to unpack the surprisingly complex music of Snipperclips.  In the featured track Noisy Notebook C, composer Calum Bowen not only makes use of the previously explored “Whole Tone Scale”, but also uses an unusual trick of walking up and down octaves in 5ths to create a sort of unbalanced, dislodged feeling.  As if this wasn’t enough, the song structure itself utilizes a famous jazz progression known as “The Coltrane Cycle” to further offset the players equilibrium, and yet despite all this, the soundtrack is not only enjoyable to listen to, but addictive.