The Music In Winter Levels Sounds Like Winter

Have you ever noticed how every video game winter level sounds kinda the same? Not identical, obviously, but there's definitely a characteristic sound, to the point where you can often tell a piece was written for a winter level without ever actually seeing the level in question. But how does that work, and why?

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[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) Another way that subjectivity creeps into this is deciding which labels apply to which pieces in the first place. In the case of instrumentation, this isn't that hard, (although with synthesized instruments, there is some level of judgment involved) but, like, what counts as arpeggiated accompaniment? How heavy does the reverb have to be to qualify as "heavy reverb"? These are questions a human has to decide the answer to.

2) While I largely agree with the prominent tags the authors chose to ignore, I am somewhat unsure on their decision to exclude woodwinds, specifically flutes, from their analysis. These are also highly correlated with the other winter tags, and while it's true that they also show up in other settings, they do still feel wintery to me when used in winter themes, much like arpeggiated accompaniments do. It's possible their use of meta-tags, grouping all woodwinds under the "woodwind" banner obscured how prominent flutes, specifically, were in their dataset, but I dunno.

3) Speaking of arpeggiated accompaniment, another thing to note is that not only are they common in retro video game music, they're also common in orchestral pieces (due to the prevalence of single-note instruments in orchestral settings) which are a major influence on modern video game scores as well.

4) That harp part in Antidote was a huge pain to transcribe and it's very possible I got parts of it completely wrong. If so, whoops!

5) Technically, Winter Bliss has more of a dance drum kit, not a rock drum kit, but I mostly just meant that standard trap-set beats are still common, albeit less so than one might naively expect.

6) On that, I feel like I may not have made it clear that the main point here is that, outside of drum kits, there are basically no other non-metallic percussion instruments that show up regularly. No timpani, no congas, no orchestral snares… And, like 4/4, drum kits are so common across video game music that their presence here doesn't really signify much.

[wmxx]

I like this idea as a series. What makes a desert level? What makes a forest level? What makes a cave level? What makes a sky/flying level? There is a lot of options here.

[smalleranimals]

yep.

what you need for winter is 'sparkly and brittle' - crisp arpeggios, bright metallic instruments, lots of reflectivity (reverb / delay), and a lot of high frequencies. because that's the sound of a beautiful hard-frozen landscape - bits of ice tinkling onto frozen ground, bright flashes of sunlight catching in ice, hard echoes, and a bit of danger lurking (because you can freeze to death)

[RafaelSCalsaverini]

As someone who does computational statistics for a living, one thing I missed is including in the dataset pieces that are definitely NOT winter themes. This way, instead of only looking at shows up frequently in winter themes the authors could have studied what distinguishes winter from non-winter themes. What are good predictors of "winterness"? One idea would me to randomly select other level themes from a pool of not-winter-related levels.

Of course this would be a lot of additional work so, that's probably why it wasn't done. It doesn't invalidate the conclusions. It would only make them stronger.

But it would help clean up blatant population effects like "being in 4/4" and add adequate weight to features that aren't as strong like "arpeggiated harmony ".

[eaglescout]

2 observations:

First, I'm surprised you didn't mention Vivaldi, since he actually wrote music titled "winter". And although reverb and percussion weren't a thing in baroque music, the second movement employs plucked strings. So, that's been a theme in winter music for 4 centuries now.

Also, Diddy Kong Racing has a winter song (Frosty Village) and you might as well call it "variations on winter wonderland". So, some video games do sample public domain Christmas/winter songs to evoke winter as well.

[DC_Prox]

I don't know if this needs to be a series, but I notice that water levels and dessert levels also have their own sounds that would make for some good analysis. Also, less common but almost as iconic: tech levels.

[Lemanic]

I think the western association of winter with the Alps and Russia can explain the arps and string instruments used here. They want associations to Mozart and Tchaikovsky with that. It’s that simple.

[mxspokes]

There's often a Wind subtheme to winter levels, a lot of open things like hisses or breeze design but harsh and cold.

[mr.bennett]

I was told by a musician "video game and movie soundtracks are just what olden days opera music was." It's interesting you didn't mention the concept of cliches. Each level type is defined by a set of musical cliches.

[MatthewMe]

I'll add my thoughts here, though I'm not a trained musician. Winter music is often about evoking environmental conditions though the music. And this showed up the study indirectly - metallic instruments evoke the sounds of ice cracking, sleet falling, and the hollow sound of movement when the environment is blanketed in snow or ice. This is often accomplished with bells and chimes. Reverb gives the impression of echoing cold winds. Great video! Thanks!

[teucer]

Click Clock Woods from Banjo-Kazooie goes through all four seasons using variations on the same theme. It's fascinating as an example of this.

[andyduke]

This has been my favorite by far, and I'd love to see a series about video game music or a "why this music type has these traits".

[chrishillery]

A lot of these characteristics are common to the soundtracks of "winter" movies, especially Christmas movies. Which is hardly surprising - if there is a video game vocabulary for "winter" it almost certainly was derived in large part from movie soundtracks, which in turn probably got it in large part from Baroque and Classical music.

[aloysious]

I believe it may be more accurate to say that reverbing the high frequencies of a song gives it a winter-feel, as that gives a shimmering bell effect. That's what I notice across all those songs.

[Drakethatsme]

I had the pleasure of hearing Prof. Lavengood present the paper at the AMS/SMT/SEM conference last year! Afterward, I actually brought up the winter as a place vs. winter as a season idea that you've brought up here!

[danielcorrigan]

I'd love to see the same analysis for underwater themes since that is another setting that has a very clear musical style, and invokes some of the same techniques like heavy reverbs.

[jafujiyoshi]

Wonder if they could’ve subtracted from the tag population of randomly chosen tracks from the same games. Would take care of the 4/4 issue - I think 3/4 would actually be more relatively common. Also would bump up something like sleigh bells, if 25% of winter tracks had them and 2% of random tracks did. Maybe that also provides insight into the contribution of technology.

[SebiStr]

If I had to describe winter-themes I'd say: bright; short notes/arpeggios; no/low mids; bells, chimes and other metallic "ding"-sounds; reverb on higher frequencies;
(sounds like snow drowning out the mids and bass, ice sparkling and reflecting at the top end)
Edit: usually similar to crystal-cave themes, probably due to crystal caves having an ice like aesthetic

[tfdband]

This is very cool! I do a composition exercise with my gaming-inclined students that involves writing a short theme based on a level, town, or character. It’s really fun to hear how different students interpret the same themes.

[isaac_lin]

Interesting thoughts about reverb in winter--personally, freshly fallen (or falling) snow is the archetypal image in my mind for a wintery scene, and in the real world the sound is very hushed with a lack of echoes, as light, fluffy snow absorbs sound really well.