Xbox 360
This last week saw a first in Scotland. The first Video Games symphonic orchestral concert ever in the country (indeed, the second of its kind in the UK). This involves over 120 people on stage, playing some of the best music from video games, along with video and even some live play sections.
Video Games Live is in its fourth year now, the brainchild of Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, veteren composers of the Video games industry. Between them they have worked on such titles as EarthWorm Jim, MDK, Mass Effect and Myst to name a few.
Fidget caught up with Tommy and Jack to ask some questions about the show, and answer some of their questions about Scotland.
Tommy, you have been working on games for 18 years now... But what is your favourite game to have worked on?
Tommy Tallarico (TT) - Easily Earthworm Jim. The whole design process was just to have ten guys in a room and for them to have fun. Ther was no-one looking over your shoulders, we just had to have a game after nine months. It was a good experience.
Working with Miyamoto on Metroid Prime was amazing too. He works so differently to the rest of the industry. Normally sound design is all post production, 'make a sound for this weapon' and so on. But Miyamoto does it differently, he says like, ‘make the sounds first - make a really awesome sound for a weapon, and then we will make the weapon around that’, and that where the pulse gun came from - the game designers heard our sound and imagined that weapon. That’s Miyamoto, that’s why he is where he is, a legit genius. A Speilberg of our industry.
What score are you most proud of?
TT – Advent Rising probably. I always loved Italian opera and it was such a body of work, I worked 3 years on that…
Jack Wall (JW) - Myst, Probably Mass effect - I really loved that game.
What game do you wish you had written the music for?
TT – I loved Beyond Good & Evil, the score was awesome. Also a game like Shadow of The Colossus; I'm not slagging the music that was done for those games, I love the music in those games. But I would have loved to have been involved because of those designers.
Michel Ancel and Famito Ueda are really creative people in our industry. Its not necessarily about the game being made, but about the people you work with for me.
JW – I cant really say, I don’t envy other games. I'm really happy about what I have done. I'm always intrigued by games that are really interesting… But you know, mostly it's all about doing something really original.
So where did the idea for a Video Game concert come from?
JW - We have always had emails about our music from fans all over the world. When we talked to other composers, and they had the same experience, so we started to think about ways some us could work together. Then we were like, "Why not do a concert?" Originally we were only going to do one show, and for some insane reason it happened we were going to do this in front of 16 thousand people at the Hollywood Bowl.
You know, people rehearse their entire career and dream of the Hollywood Bowl. And so we came along and thought if we were only going to do one show, then it should be there.
TT - From there things just snow balled. We ended up doing three shows first year. Eleven the next, 29 last year and now we're going for somthing like 50 shows.
And, while there have been video game concerts in Japan for years - it's strictly a symphonic experience over there. But we didn’t want to do that; our idea was that there seems to be a disconnect between people who grew up on video games. We grew up on it. Grew up on Star Wars, MTV, and interactivity – we wanted to combine all that with the orchetstra as they don’t generally connect with the younger audience today.
I like to think VGL has all the power and emotion of orchestra, all the excitement of a rock concert, mixed together with all the visuals, technology and interactivity of video games. So we put it all together – and what's exciting for us is that no matter where we go video games are played and are an important part of the culture. Games are revered and loved everywhere.
So how has the show come along since that first show at the Hollywood Bowl?
TT – The great thing about VGL is that we can update it every year. This year we have Halo 3 and Mass Effect which we couldn’t do last year. We also have Castlevania, Command & Conquer and Harry Potter too.
JW – Yeh, we started out with about 21 segments for the first show. Now we have about 40 or 50 in total.
TT – So this lets us do special things; when we played Vegas we had a C&C segment with music from the new game, it was made in LA so we had the composers come down to the show.
Also we try and play whatever is popular wherever we are on. We really listen to the song request form up on the website.
Did you have any problems getting the show together, obstacles. Objection
JW – The first two years were all about going to companies and trying to get rights to music, explaining what we were up to.
TT – Yeh they were all like ‘You wanna get the rights to Pong… for the music??’
JW – You want to play it, with a symphony???
TT - We started in 2002, it took 3 years to get this off the ground. No one had done this before, we were the first to play music to Metal Gear or Kingdom Hearts – Mario had been done, Final Fantasy too. Getting to those companies and not only getting the music, but video too. It was an uphill struggle.
Everyone refused five or six times, but we refused to take no as an answer. That’s why we had to do it at the Bowl, to bring some value… So we could say ‘Well you don’t want you stuff on here? Its going to be on at the Bowl but alright… MTV, USA Today etc. are all going to be there, and you don’t wanna be involved… ok'
They all thought we were insane. And mostly still do.
Did the orchetras take any convincing?
TT – That was an even harder challenge. But the thing is they want to perform, and well... bring in new meat. So that’s why they wanted to bring us here.
I loved video games that’s all I did. Then in '77 Star Wars came out and I heard John Williams. Till then I had only loved rock and roll. But because of that I got into classical and symphonies etc. Thats the first time i had heard it, and now Beethoven is my boy and that is because of Star Wars. We want to recreate that and get the younger gerneration involved.
Not only that but we get to show video games to an older audience. The patrons at the symphonies that come all the time - many of them won't have played a game before. So it's cool to show them how culturally significant games are today.
Does VGL take up all of your time these days, do you still have chance to compose for games?
JW – I did Mass Effect, but that’s one game in a year. The show does take up a lot of time, it's like one show a week, plus travel time. I did mass effect with 29 shows on and now its 50 shows, i'm slated for Mass Effect 2 so that should be interesting….
TT - I still work sounds effects for smaller games, but its just a time thing. I don’t mind not composing.
JW – its harder for me to give up as I love writing music. Composing is at my heart and as it [VGL] goes on i'll probably take on more of a producer role, i'll be involved as much as I can. But we will have to see how things go.
TT – I consider myself a performer first so for me this is natural. After 18 years of composing this is where my passion is right now, and it's good to be able to take a breaks from composing. Some people go at it all year and its hard work…
The interactive elements of the show, you have people come up and play games on stage, and the orchestra plays along live. Is this difficult to pull off?
TT - Me and Jack have set up a system that’s not been done before let alone with all the musicians – there's over 120 folk people on stage, all watching Jack. And Jack watches the screen and is conducting in real time. Changing the music on the fly depending on what the player is doing…
We use some technology and other stuff to help the musicians jump around. Different lighting and colours etc. But it comes off without a hitch everytime
JW – We figured out a way to split the control to be able to track people movements across the stage, and that movement plays out on screen. It's pretty cool.
So aside from more shows, do you guys have anything else up your sleeve?
TT - Actually yeah. This summer, we are releasing a video game compilation CD. Based around the show and featuring a whole load of the tunes we perform. Castlevania, Tetris, Halo, Tron, Kingdom Hearts and Warcraft will all feature for sure. It's released worldwide this summer and is the first video game compliation of its kind. Check it out.