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I share your POV Olrox in all its details. Not surprising as we are simpatico in many ways - as individuals & creators in several mediums. We also have a fair sense of what the other is about as a musician / composer.... plus I am aware of your classical music foundations (thereby I did not hesitate in my musical references). It is out of that context that I spoke initially &, of course, now. Not that I would compare our respective travails but I had a similar period in life and in my case the trigger was the deaths of my older brother & mother within 3 months of each other. Life is too short and precious not to go full tilt boogy, savor every moment and not waste a split second on the ramblings of authoritarian nincompoops.
I also agree with just about all HairyLee has expressed.
That said, I do feel it of value to share a few more thoughts on all of this. And please don't mistake any of the following for mere ivory tower philosophical musings; they are lived with every breathe & wholly utilitarian so are more aptly called a credo.
1.) An artist (in any medium) has to be a fearless warrior. First, because you would make something where there was nothing but your vision. You are stepping into the formless. full tilt, without a safety net, to begin the alchemical process of making something new, something that stands apart from the status quo or the conventional mind set. That takes balls. And that alchemical process, more often than not, yields dross lead in the beginning. So again, you need the courage I call persistence of vision, to work that dross lead into gold. Most have not a clue about that process, even some of the self-proclaimed artists. Those who I can tell clearly do understand this process, besides yourself, would include HairyLee, macuser, Black Project and some few others whose nicks escape me at present (I'm quite fatigued at the moment so don't take my shortlist as being all inclusive). Some of my works take years of effort to fully mature into their final state. Heck, the great Leonardo worked on his
Mona Lisa for well nigh 40 years of his life (among his many other gifts, he was also a fine musician, composer and dancer; quite a ladies man too.)
2.) Take no others expressed reality tunnel (or bubble) personally for if you do you forfeit your personal power to an others opinion and thus render yourself impotent. What others have to say could be of practical use (or not) in the alchemical process of creation but that is all the power you grant it.
3.) As far as Tempo, 90-100 sounds about right as a
compromise for WZ. Composing for WZ is really NOT at all like composing a soundtrack for a movie. A movie is set in stone and the music is composed to fit every dramatic turn, the highs and the lows and everything in between. A game is entirely open-ended, inter-active, the dramatic high & lows emergent and unpredictable. You have 4 basic atmospheric moods in WZ and each would ideally have there own different tempo: combat free tasking desolation, imminent threat of battle, the battle itself, the aftermath of battle. Ideally, the way to do music without compromise in WZ would be through a
dynamic triggering schema. Till such is created for WZ, any single tune will either be a Tempo compromise or it will be entirely mood specific and will thus be tempo specific to that mood and none of the others. Of course you can approach a composition in the classical symphonic construction, with multiple movements, moods and time signatures but then again there is no way at present for those to trigger aptly to match the game play at any given juncture.
4.) Would Electric Guitar fit into WZ's musical aesthetic - absolutely can be done, even if the original composer of WZ's music made no use of that voicing. That is not just a personal bias either merely because as much as I love playing my electric guitar, I equally love playing my keyboards and thus the path of imitating the original WZ stylings is not beyond my ken (& I did many moons ago in 4 compositions) it's just a matter of why re-hash the same ol, same ol, instead of boldly exploring new territory.
I too can point to an electric guitarist whose stylings would fit just fine in the WZ aesthetic. He's Norwegian, he's in 70's, been putting out seminal recordings for decades now on the great German label
ECM. His name is
Terje Ripdal and you can check out a bunch of his work on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... ypdal&aq=3
(I could also add a bunch of work by electric guitar giants
John McLaughlin and
Robin Trower but Terje's work is a great place to start vis-a-vis WZ...)
WZ Creators conceived WZ as a living, evolving, product. For the first 5 years of the game's history the community thoroughly comprehended this mainly because they had intimate contact with members of the Pumpkin team. After the source was released and folks came to the game because of that alone this understanding was lost and WZ was treated like Biblical revelation. I spent years till I was blue in the face trying to get the original design intent across. Finally last year a member of the original creation team gave us a visit and at my behest confirmed this PoV so that mostly it has sunk in that WZ was not meant to stay frozen like religious dogma.
I'll conclude this rather longish post with a few quotes that sum-up the forgoing with panache, poetry and artful wit.
If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve.
- Emily Dickenson
By believing passionately in something that still doesnot exist, we create it. The nonexistent is what we have not sufficiently desired.
- Nikos Kazantzakis
Perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes.
- Jorge Luis Borges
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Eden Phillpotts
Your only limitations are those you set-up in your mind, or permit others to set-up for you.
- Og Mandino
Regards, RV
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