Often after going through a computer game or watching a movie, there is a desire to find a favorite track that was used in the game or movie. Such tracks have the abbreviated abbreviation OST, and recently they began to stand out even as a separate class of musical works.
What does the abbreviation OST mean?
OST stands for original soundtrack or official soundtrack. These phrases can be translated literally as “original soundtrack” or “official soundtrack”.
In a broader sense, OST is music for any multimedia content (film, cartoon, video game, series, commercials, etc.). In addition, the OST collection can also be created specifically for the process of reading a specific book, for example, John Tolkien (" Lord of the Rings "," The Hobbit ").
Often OST can be found in the name of various musical works next to the movie or game. OST in the songs means that this composition was used as the soundtrack for the film and / or game indicated in the title of the track.
OST classification
Having explained what OST means, we will present a conditional classification of soundtracks. All existing can be divided into two groups: according to the content and the method of creation.
By the method of creating OST there are:
- Official or original. These are tracks that were used directly by the authors or developers of one or another content for musical accompaniment thereof. These may include popular songs of different groups and individual composers or tracks created specifically for any particular game, film, etc.
- Unofficial or unofficial. In this case, OST means that this is an alternative selection of tracks collected by fans or fans of a particular content as its musical accompaniment. Unofficial tracks can be official tracks of other films and games or just some songs of different artists. Basically, these are created for various computer games.
According to the content of OST there are:
- Music to the process of reading a book.
- Part or full version of the musical, presented as an audio track.
- Background music, sounding in the film, series.
- Background music playing in a video game.
- The track that sounds in the film from a popular band or individual composer. Often such tracks have dialogs, excerpts from the film to which they relate, and can be in the form of a collection.
- A track that sounds in a video game from a popular group, a separate composer.
History of OST
The tracks for the cartoon "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" by Walt Disney Studios (1938) were the first soundtracks in history. At that time, OST meant that it would be a record containing several tracks from the film.
After the appearance of the first computer games and their subsequent popularity, composers began to appear who wrote music specifically for specific games. The first of these were Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway (1980s).
Purpose of creating OST
Initially, the idea of creating soundtracks was aimed at advertising a particular film and increasing interest in it. With the development of technology, when it became possible to use high-quality musical accompaniment in computer games and films, soundtracks began to be used as advertisements for composers themselves and their songs. Thus, various affiliate programs were formed. One example of this collaboration is EA Trax, a licensing agreement for Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) with major music labels. All copyright songs used in Electronic Arts games are united by the common name EA Trax.
In addition to advertising, soundtracks are also purely financially motivated. Fans of various computer games and movie series (for example, about Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars) are very happy to purchase collections of official soundtracks from their favorite games and films.
In this article, we looked at what OST means, classification, history, and purpose of creation. We hope you find it helpful.