Evil Music

[davidn]

All right, I've got to throw this question out to a wide audience now because it's been bothering me for half a week - what's the name of that piece that's often used as the stock epic "evil music"? Not Toccata and Fugue (really hypnotic video, by the way), the other one that starts with the chanting and timpani.

I would link to an example of the piece in question, but seeing as I really have no idea what to search for after all my usual Google tactics have failed, I can only provide this as an obvious Jimmy-Harting of it (and the game is in fact the reason why I ask in the first place).

Comments

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Do you mean O Fortuna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana_(Orff)) from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff?

[davidn]

That's weird, I promise I replied to this last night but it never got there! You're absolutely right, so thank you for answering right off the bat - though at first I thought it wasn't, because the part that you always hear (and that I'd thought as the start of the movement, as described above) actually turns out to be the beginning of the finale of it.

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

I also suspect O Fortuna, but if it isn't, then perhaps Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY)?

(Even less likely, but in the same vein is Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_YSEbAWA0Y).)

[davidn]

It was indeed O Fortuna (the clue was really in the words, looking back at it) but those are also pieces that I'd heard before and didn't know the names of - I'm really bad at remembering which name goes to which classical piece, even though these ones at least have the benefit of having names rather than numbers.

[kjorteo]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StandardSnippet really helps. :)

[kjorteo]

I'll just leave this here....

[davidn]

I wonder if it would be trite and annoying to call Mario Paint Composer the musical equivalent of ZZT... that is, it doesn't share the legacy of new workarounds, but it's definitely sold itself on what it's possible to do with it in such a limited environment (that, as I've just rediscovered, sometimes just forgets to register clicks unless the window is hidden behind at least one other application). Perhaps the musical equivalent of BASIC. But there surely must have been a special type of insanity to get its creator to think "Music files identified by a close-square-bracket delimiter, in a folder called Prefs, and listed in a separate asterisk-delimited file - there can't possibly be a better way to do this!"

[kjorteo]

Beleive it or not, the original Mario Paint actually had even more limitations than that; there were no sharp or flat notes, and you could only have a maximum of three notes per column, and no two notes (not even two different notes, like a fire flower/star combination or something) could be in the same place on the column--one would simply overwrite the other. Saving wasn't exactly convenient, either, but then again, that one's almost excusable because it's an SNES game, so what did you expect?

On top of a horrible interface that ignores your clicks sometimes and the worst saving scheme ever, Mario Paint Composer brought all sorts of enhancements--sharp and flat notes, raising the per-column note limit to 5, allowing more than one note to be in the same spot, and even adding some new instruments--the four to the right of the heart (the piranha plant, coin, shy guy, and boo) weren't there before. Naturally, are some who think Mario Paint Composer is cheating, and even more who think it's cheating after you alter the soundfonts...of course that sounds exactly like the Game Boy version, you stole the Game Boy version's instruments directly and then just fed it the sheet music!

Anyway, that matter aside, there is something to be said about the added impressiveness when someone can do something amazing in the original pre-Composer good old SNES Mario Paint (presumably using an emulator to record it to PC.)

At the very least, the SNES version is less glitchy....

[davidn]

That's impressive indeed - not just picking through the interface (and on a controller!) to put a Mother medley into it, but doing that without half of Western music's commonly accepted notes has to be applauded. Anything in the major key would have to be transposed into C and every other key is just impossible.

(Though I just can't understand altering the soundfont that it uses... if you're going to go to that much trouble why not just use a decent music program instead!)

[kjorteo]

Also, in other news, Second Opinion's bonus chapter (the part that's actually not a direct clone of Under the Knife) managed to come up with a theme that's even cooler than UtK's Savato/X-mission theme for its final storyline mission. Not nearly as grandiose (no Ominous Latin Chanting,) but cooler.