• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

The value of musical silence: when the void need not be filled

Vermanubis

King of Evil
BRoomer
Joined
Jun 12, 2008
Messages
3,399
Location
La Grande, Oregon
NNID
Vermanubis
3DS FC
1564-2185-4386
If you're an artist of any sort, you know that art is an infinitely delicate balance of soft and hard. Black and white. Empty and full. It's an endless continuum of extremes. More is less is perhaps the most poignant and familiar expression to express this idea. So why is that which is ambient; minimalist; silent, even; so frequently overlooked as one of the composer's most invaluable assets?

Anyone who's played the game Metroid Prime or Echoes knows that it almost arrogantly prided itself on just how ambient and atmospheric it was. You're isolated on a hostile planet in the presence of eldritch and abominable creatures who'd find no greater joy than in eviscerating you and making love to your insides.

Needless to say, a suitable environment for such a scenario is an ambient one. Kenji Yamamoto realized this and composed (I use this term loosely) the famous Metroid Prime soundtrack. As we play through MP, we note, even if not cognizant of it, a distinct lack of conventional traits in the music to which we're so accustomed. No urge to tap your foot and nothing that really constructs a musical statement. We pay it no mind aside from a passive acknowledgment of its oddity. There are no sprightly melodies and no complex harmonies, rather, the platinum of subtlety. I want to examine this further.

Without being pedantic, one can divide music into two categories--very disparate categories whose natures and purposes are distant: ambient and traditional. While traditional music is far too expansive to elucidate what it is, allow me to elucidate what it isn't. To me, traditional music serves as a complement to the environment. The field is set, the cards are down; all that remains is the wrap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IHIcPtJXxs - "Traditional" music

Notice how the music encapsulates the sandy, arid and exotic flavor. As language flows in a rhythmic balance of consonant statements and phrases, so too does this music. Dissonance is not pervasive, and if present, only serves to contrast the consonance.

Then we find:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymv7GQR6jqc - Ambient music

What do hear when you listen to this? Predictable--nay, safe--rhythm? Well-formed musical syntax? No. Erratic rhythms. Garbled, minimalist and cruelly brief intervals of structure.

Traditional music is built on structure. The relationship between the sounds is exulted and placed in highest regards. As previously mentioned, traditional music approaches music in such a way that it endeavors to translate the context into sound--an abstract homeomorphic bridge of sight to sound and sound to sight connecting two worlds, if you'll excuse the written acrobatics. Ambient music serves a purpose entirely different. It aims to not restate the visual thesis, rather, to project itself onto the very walls and make them crawl--to be heard not with your ears, but with your body. It does not vivify the environment, rather, it sterilizes the air around you. It disturbs you and manipulates your senses. It clasps an unutterable nerve. Just as the sounds and minimalism are primitive, so is the aspect of us which it aims to affect and appeal: primal.

One could go as far as to say ambiance and silence are almost offensive to the ears and mind. Being as such though, has it not accomplished the ultimate goal of music? To move us to our bones? To aggravate our comfort and burgle the safety of rhythm and consonance. Such is the execrated, yet indispensable value of silence and ambiance. To focus not on the structure and relationship of the notes in baroque fashion, but on the very aesthetics of each sound--or the hauntingly fashionable lack thereof.

It starves us of the patterns and rhythm we lust for. It makes the floor slither, the air sting and the walls knock. The responsibility now lies within the artist to gracefully allocate this silence and ambiance to the dimensions of his/her vision. Whether it be the psychotic vestiges of "rhythm" that unsettle the dormant madness in us, or the dramatic undulation of sounds to wrap our perceptions in marionette strings--there's limitless potential in the oft-ignored and imprecated art of perturbation. It's easy to give into the temptation of grandeur, but sometimes, the void simply need not be filled.
 

Falconv1.0

Smash Master
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
3,511
Location
Talking **** in Cali
Silent Hill 2 has really good examples of this, where they use silence as a way to set the mood of certain parts of a map. That being said, sometimes a good epic score can do a game justice, like the music in Shadow of the Colossus which is ****IN' AMAZING.
 

Vermanubis

King of Evil
BRoomer
Joined
Jun 12, 2008
Messages
3,399
Location
La Grande, Oregon
NNID
Vermanubis
3DS FC
1564-2185-4386
I agree. It's just all about using one's artistic sensibilities to fight the temptation to make the most epic score possible, and instead opt for the simplest of ambiance. :colorful:
 

~automatic

Smash Legend
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
11,498
Location
Arcata, CA
NNID
automaticdude
This is what can make a film, game or whatever truly great. Like you said, the void doesn't always need to be filled.

Amazing read dude!
 

RyuReiatsu

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 17, 2009
Messages
408
Silent Hill 2 has really good examples of this, where they use silence as a way to set the mood of certain parts of a map. That being said, sometimes a good epic score can do a game justice, like the music in Shadow of the Colossus which is ****IN' AMAZING.
You posting about Silent Hill reminds me of your funny text walkthrough, what happened to it? It made the game almost sound hilariously funny more than scary :awesome:

@OP: I agree with you, silence can be something very powerful. It was a good read.
 

Falconv1.0

Smash Master
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
3,511
Location
Talking **** in Cali
You posting about Silent Hill reminds me of your funny text walkthrough, what happened to it? It made the game almost sound hilariously funny more than scary :awesome:
I either got tired of keeping it up or tired of the game, I mean whichever came first. SH4 has some really ****ing questionable decisions, that being said, EVERYONE NEEDS TO PLAY 2 AND 3. EVERYONE.
 
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
8,100
Location
Baklavaaaaa
I love ambience, so much so that I actually played some on my PSP when I was walking through lava caves at Lava Beds National Monument.
Basically I love feeling like I'm in a video game.

Oddly enough, World of Warcraft has some pretty good ambience, IMO.

Especially the ambience in cursed or creepy places.

Also

inb4
>using a PSP to play music
>carrying it around
 

RyuReiatsu

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 17, 2009
Messages
408
I either got tired of keeping it up or tired of the game, I mean whichever came first. SH4 has some really ****ing questionable decisions, that being said, EVERYONE NEEDS TO PLAY 2 AND 3. EVERYONE.
Well, it was fun while it lasted I guess. But I'm too much of a ***** to play Silent Hill entirely :(.


No one on this board can relate to this.
I ****ing LOL'd, words of wisdom.
 

Shorts

Zef Side
Premium
Joined
Jun 8, 2009
Messages
9,609
3DS FC
3136-6583-3704
I've been in the type of mood where you get defensive and argue every point anyone brings up simply because it was brought up. However, after reading this, I can't help but totally agree. I played the Demo for Resident Evil Revelations, and there wasn't any music whatsoever. I'm a newbie to the series, so walking through a creaky ship as Jill Valentine's light footsteps clank lightly against the metallic floor really made me on edge. The silence left me open to get extremely scared by a zombie hiding in the stall of a bathroom. I’m terrible at shooting games, so of course I couldn’t even finish the demo. But, ya know~

If they had even creepy music playing the whole time, I know I would have been MUCH less scared. The silence really left the game open. You had no music to fill your thoughts and waste your time. You simply were there, alone, left to your insecure thoughts on whether your decision to go right or left will be your last.
 
Top Bottom