Conducted by joystick

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."

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

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

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

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

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

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 :biggrin:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

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.

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

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...

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

LOL, that was awesome :biggrin: He really shoulda made the suit for somebody a little more in shape :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

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

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

---

<div class="content">By Steve Hochman, Special to The Times</div>

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.

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

I was the daddy at Frogger, btw.

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i eat paint

Is there any footage available ?

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer