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Xernobyl, I did not say it was what made his soundtracks good.

Do you guys listen to movie background music?

Do people listen to opera without actually watching?

psonice: good psytrance works with any visuals :)

oh the joys of syncing 3/4 of a demo and the musician deciding the day before the deadline that he wants to use a new version of the track, which ofcourse has changes in the pattern order or small second delays fucking all the hand sync timmings :D

ps: or better yet, he decides that the track works better at a different speed, and changes the bpm. Bonus points if he goes on to use 3 different speeds in different parts of the track too ;D

@knos: POINT TAKEN :)

skrebbel: Because, in my eyes, that's a much bigger achievement by the musician. I prefer tracks that I can listen to without seeing the demo (that I still see the demo in my brain while listening is a totally different story) ;) - and, agreed, it's a personal preference, but I believe that was what was asked for, no?

Clearly, you're no coder :D

nutman: Then you're not really looking for demo soundtracks, are you? You just want Good Music(tm), which is fine, but it doesn't really have anything to do with demo soundtracks.

Making a track that survives on it's own is muuuuch easier than making a track that fits a demo perfectly (trust me on this :)

Come join IRIS.
Here, musicians don't have nothing to say - they are mere slaves of the coders. ;)

Gloom: I still think that a demo tune is a better tune, seen from a technical point of view, if you can play it to non-sceners and they like it aswell.

As I said: it's not easy to make a tune that works in both the demo aswell as without the demo. I agree that it's much easier to do either the one or the other, but being able to mix them is rather hard, I think. But it's what I strive to do, always. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don't create the music when looking at the visuals - usually, I'm being told, very loosely, what is needed and then I use my imagination to build a track from that. Takes a lot of rewriting that way, but can also introduce some new and fresh ideas that you might not have had, had you been "locked down" by visuals that you can help associate with specific musical tricks and unwritten rules.

Of course, it should've been "can't help" - not "can help"

I get what you are saying, I just don't agree. :) The premise that a tune is better because non-sceners can listen to it and like it is fundamentally flawed, simply because it's more a question of musical style and composition once you remove the music from it's intended companion (= the demo / visuals).

@Gloom, I don't think it's easier or harder... it's just a different task and some person are good at one and it's rare to be good at these two tasks.. some person are naturally driven by their creativity and can't really work an other way while some people are very good at organising themselves, knowing all the techniques to all kind of sounding etcetc...

@Nutman: well.. err... it's always been nah?

Ho and... sorry gloom but your argument does not work.
A music can be boring as hell and enhanced by all the sync. fxes and imo, it happens a looooot.

Gloom: Well, I guess we have to agree on disagreeing, hehe.
I just believe it's much harder to combine those 2 things. That it's beside the point for demo music to make music that can stand on it's own, is not my point of view. I do believe that's it's not the primary objective, but it's a nice bonus and it's definately much harder to do.

Right... :D

What has always been what?

I agree, especially since that is not my argument at all. :) What I said was that I think it is fundamentally wrong to assume that a tune used in a demo is Better(tm) if random people outside of the demoscene like it without ever having seen the demo.

Damn, so... we agree(tm), can we be friends(c) ? :D

I guess it depends on the demo. It's like a part in a film.. for one part or demo you can use any music as background and it'll work, in another part you need something written specifically to match the visual side.

In the first case, I think if the tune is good it should be listenable alone, in the second in most cases it won't be.

why not getting a tune, making visuals inspired by the tune then synchronizing on this tune... I dunno but it's not only about writting a tune specifically to fit visual...

Kaneel that's kind of what I was after.

The opera question is tricky. Some do, others don't. But I'm not an opera expert.

kaneel: That's how it works very often, but even here you end up with the never-ending "Look, that part there lasts 40 seconds, but the part in the demo gets dull after 25 - can't you just move that next part back 15 seconds?", so the collaboration often goes both ways here as well. That said, people who have been doing code or music for a long time usually get it pretty right on their first try, because of experience.