Audio, Music Composers

Within a minute of listening to Feathers, it was apparent that the music was good. The songs are short but sweet, what would you recommend someone to search if they wanted to know more about this style of music? I'd ask if you could teach me, but I'm sure you're very busy.

Are you referring to what's called incidental music?

I think in general, people who create animations or whatever tend to put music at a lower priority than art and (especially) writing. I can't remember where I read it, but somewhere it said that people often forgive bad art and sound if a story is well done, but criticize things with bad stories even if the art and sound is good. Of course that's not always true, but I think it's a pretty valid rule of thumb.

I messed with music production in the past but ultimately dropped it. I felt like the effort and time needed to get any good at it was more than I cared to put in, compared to my other hobbies. 

I guess I sort of think of the story as the heart of something and the other parts as the way it's presented? Obviously it depends on what in particular is being discussed, though, and one's personal preferences. A lot of people would probably tell you that visual novels, for example, are made or broken by the story, and while it's good to have good art and music to present it, those areas can be forgiven provided the heart of it is good enough. On the other hand, if you're making a music video, the visuals and music, especially, will probably be considered the most important aspects, and a "story" could even be forgone entirely. I guess that's why you'd call it mixed media.

I can't think of many good examples of good stories vs bad art off the top of my head, unfortunately! There's probably lot of examples of that in amateur visual novels and video games, though. Certainly with video games people make the point of gameplay being more important than graphics a lot, which is very similar. Not to decry art and sound, of course! Obviously they are extremely important in most mixed media. However, in the context of amateur work, with only a small or one man team, they might be seen as less important.

(If I talk about things a too much in the context of games, I'm sorry! That's what I'm the most focused on creating so it springs to mind the most.)

Regarding your last comment, there are triple a games that have virtually no story, and plenty of others where you can completely ignore the story and jump into different modes of play where it's irrelevant. I feel like games are harder to compare to visual media, since they have the fourth 'dimension' of gameplay, meaning it's even less critical if one of the other dimensions isn't up to par.

On the original topic, I would totally agree. Appropriate music and synchronized timing can created very memorable moments and really accentuate a scene. I also write all of my own music (even though for me that often means lazily stringing together a few rhythms on my keyboard) and I always try to make sure that what's going on in the music fits with what's going on in the scene.