Snarkpit Forum Index » General Banter » Conducted by joystick
Conducted by joystick
1
Post Reply
Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by satchmo on Fri Jul 1st at 2:56pm 2005

I called in to cancel my shift in the hospital this morning so I can attend this concert. I am buying tickets right now... It's like a dream come true. The only flaw is that they're not playing Half-Life 2 music.

-----

From the Los Angeles Times
By Susan Carpenter, Times Staff Writer

Gamers get to control a lot of things in the videos they play. They choose their characters, their weapons, where they go and what they do. And Wednesday, during "Video Games Live" at the Hollywood Bowl, they will get to control something new ? the L.A. Philharmonic. For a portion of the two-hour video game music concert, the actions of two gamers playing live on stage will actually direct the 105-piece orchestra.

This "interactive symphony," as the event's founders call it, is one of the more intriguing segments in an already groundbreaking show. A conductor, watching the video game play out on a screen on the Bowl stage, will lead an orchestra that has rehearsed five musical sequences based on the action of the game. The music is for a vintage arcade game called Frogger.

Video clips, laser effects, costumed characters and stunt men will also share the stage as the Phil performs 20 other pieces of classic video game music, including Donkey Kong, Halo and EverQuest II.

"Some people might scratch their head and say, 'What? Am I going to see the L.A. Phil perform a lot of bleeps and bloops?' " said Tommy Tallarico, who co-founded and executive produced "Video Games Live" and composed the music for many video games, including Advent Rising. "That is not the case at all. This music is just as good as any film score out there. It's not just an orchestra playing merry-go-round melodies."

Video game music has come a long way in the 33 years since Computer Space and Pong first entered arcades. It's evolved from monotone bleeps to simple one-line melodies to full-blown orchestral, choral and opera arrangements today, yet popular perception lags; for nongamers, it's still the blippity bloops of Asteroids and PacMan that define the genre.

"We have become Hollywood as far as audio [goes]," said legendary game designer David Perry, creator of the classic Earthworm Jim and Matrix games. "We use the same talent in the same studios with the same conductors, and it sounds just as epic."

If nongamers find it odd that the Phil's signed on for such an unusual show, video game fanatics don't think it's such a stretch. It's actually building on the success of the Phil's "Final Fantasy" performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall last year. That show, which featured selections from the first 10 games in the top-selling adventure series, was the first live concert of video game music in the country. Tickets sold out in a day, and some later sold on EBay for $800 a pop.

"It was an incredible demographic in the hall," said Hollywood Bowl General Manager Arvind Manocha, who saw the show. "There were kids and gamers and families of gamers. We had a great concert and a great time, and it stuck in the back of our mind: There's this new art form that's emerging of video game music."

So, when Tallarico and his co-producer, Jack Wall, approached Manocha about hosting the show, it meshed perfectly with the Bowl's plan to "do something that would be a little bit different this year."

And then some. "Video Games Live" is a multimedia musical retrospective. It's a carefully choreographed tribute highlighting the best games and their best features, whether it's the full choir accompanying Halo or the light show complementing Tron or the montage of archival and future video clips for Zelda. Legendary Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima is even making his first live U.S. appearance at the event, introducing his game Metal Gear Solid just before the orchestra launches into its percussion-heavy soundtrack.

Marrying the cerebral, high-brow art of classical music with the adrenaline-filled, mass-appeal interactivity of video games actually furthers the agendas of both sides. For the L.A. Phil, it brings a new, younger audience to live orchestral music. For gamers, it takes the music out of its isolated, electronic context and humanizes it.

Instead of hearing the music as a driving force in the game, they get to sit back and see live human beings performing it. It also socializes the gaming experience by drawing players away from their computer screens and into a flesh-and-blood community.

Hard-core gamers who get to the concert early can also enjoy the free video game festival that begins 2 1/2 hours before the show. More than 40 video game designers and composers will be on hand to greet fans, including the creators of classics like Crash Bandicoot, WarCraft and Lara Croft Tomb Raider. The Videotopia traveling museum will lay out the history of video games and offer arcade classics to play. And there will be a costume contest for attendees who've gone to the trouble of dressing up like Mario, Lara Croft or another favorite video game character.

That's why Tallarico refers to "Video Games Live" as a concert event instead of a concert.

"It's a celebration of the entire video game," said Tallarico, who is bringing the show to 18 other cities this summer. "I want 'Video Games Live' to be the Barnum and Bailey of our generation. I want it to be the Woodstock of the 21st century."


"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by Myrk- on Fri Jul 1st at 3:12pm 2005

Lucky, could be a once in a lifetime event, and it sounds very cool :P

/me wonders what music would be like if they played HL1 and a dead barneys hand ended out on another barneys ass...




-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by ReNo on Fri Jul 1st at 3:23pm 2005

You going to dress up for the event satch, go in for some prizes perhaps? :P

Indeed this sounds like a very cool event. You don't often hear of such things, with the exception of Nobuo Uematsu (the famous Final Fantasy composer) touring under either an orchestra or his rock band "The Black Mages" (who also play Final Fantasy music). I'd love to hear the FFVII boss music "One Winged Angel" played by a live orchestra... There is some really good music in Halo that should come out nicely, though I can't quite imagine how Donkey Kong music will sound <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">




Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by satchmo on Thu Jul 7th at 4:31pm 2005

The concert took place last night, and it was not exactly what I envisioned. It's a lot less interactive than I expected, but to hear all the music being played by the LA Philharmonics was quite an unforgettable experience.

I also had the chance to meet a bunch of game designers, but the line was too long. Here is the post for the meeting. I did have a chance to revisit some of the good old timers in video games, like Pong, Asteroid, Tron, and Joust. I remember playing those games with my cousin when I was in junior high school.

But the best thing about the concert was that the huge stadium was filled with mega-nerds like me. A guy dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog won the costume contest.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by Myrk- on Thu Jul 7th at 9:47pm 2005

Hehe, was his sonic costume any good? You should have gone as someone from tron- I distinctly remember (well its more scared into my brain) some dude making his own tron costume, but he was quite overweight, and the tron costumes are quite skintight...


-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by ReNo on Thu Jul 7th at 9:51pm 2005

LOL, that was awesome <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif"> He really shoulda made the suit for somebody a little more in shape <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">




Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by satchmo on Thu Jul 7th at 10:02pm 2005

I was hoping to find someone dressed as Gordon Freeman, with the HEV suit and all. But that didn't happen.

I was with my wife, so I didn't want to be *that* nerdy and dress up.




"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by satchmo on Fri Jul 8th at 4:57pm 2005

"The Philharmonic's salute to video games music was a mixed bag," reviewed the LA Times.

-----

By Steve Hochman, Special to The Times

Next year, perhaps the Los Angeles Philharmonic will do a salute to classic ring tones.

Well, if the Phil can do a concert of music from video games ? as it did Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl ? why not?

The very notion of "Video Games Live" invites such jokes. But the bid to afford music from the vast field of video games ? not to mention the games themselves ? some legitimacy as an art/entertainment interface was at times successful.

The presentation (premiered here in advance of a planned national tour involving local orchestras) was clearly modeled on evenings of movie music the Bowl has hosted. Video clips that accompanied the music were often cut to resemble animated movie sequences rather than games, and the musical suites and lush arrangements often sounded like film scores.

"Myst"? "Final Fantasy"? "Advent Rising"? Heck, even the bleeps from "Pong" and the cartoonish sounds of the "Super Mario Brothers" games are the real soundtracks of a few generations now.

"I know that music!" chimed a chipper young boy on the walk up into the bowl, hearing something being played by pianist Martin Leung ("the Video Game Pianist," as he is billed) in the entry concourse amid a few dozen "vintage" arcade games.

The formal show opened with conductor Mark Watters leading the Philharmonic and the John Alexander Chorus in a medley of tunes from the primitive '70s and '80s games. The humorous approach was a nice touch, echoing the knowing laughs and cheers from the audience and remarks at various points in the show by organizers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, themselves game music composers. In a few segments, a couple of costumed actors complemented the screened images with live-action scenes. (And it was a "rated E for everyone" evening, appropriate for the large family presence in the audience of 10,000.)

Musically, it was a mixed and derivative bag. Music from "Metal Gear Solid" matched orchestral sweeps with Vangelis-like electronic fusion. A suite from the "Zelda" series echoed the swashbuckling sounds of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's classic "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Captain Blood" scores. "Tomb Raider" jumped from Handel-esque counterpoint to thick tonalities evoking Bernard Herrmann.

And there were a lot of allusions to John ("Star Wars") Williams and to the ripe dramatics of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" ? the latter in particular just about any time the chorale was employed, not surprising as its tone has long been a familiar signal of quasi-spiritual mystery/terror in many movie scores.

In an attempt to counter charges of irresponsible use of violence, the music from "Medal of Honor" was matched not with game clips but with newsreel footage depicting the human toll of World War II ? grieving women, fleeing refugees and, perhaps disturbing to the younger ones on the audience, anguished children.

On the other end of the scale, a parent-aged woman and a 13-year-old boy were brought up from the audience to compete on the old game "Frogger" ? as the orchestra adapted the music to what was actually happening on screen. The woman (who said she'd never played a video game) lost badly. There was no doubt whose world it was this night.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by fishy on Fri Jul 8th at 9:03pm 2005

I was the daddy at Frogger, btw.


i eat paint



Quote
 Re: Conducted by joystick
Posted by Forceflow on Fri Jul 8th at 9:04pm 2005

Is there any footage available ?



:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer




1
Post Reply