How have people who aren’t into video games reacted? Do they get that message?
Some of the greatest emails and letters well get after a performance are from the non-gamers. They come from the parents who brought the neighborhood kids or the grandparents who are bringing their grandkids to the symphony for the first time or whatever. They are the ones going, “Oh my gosh! I never knew that video games were this amazing. I never knew the music was so powerful and the characters and the storylines were so amazing. Now I get why my kids are so much into video games. And hey, these things look so great that me and my kids are getting together this weekend and they are going to show me some of the games they are playing.”
Sounds like a tent revival, dude…
And to get those kind of letters is really an amazing thing. That was the reason that I created Video Games Live. And to have the program now air nationally to 90 million people in the United States on PBS, the most well-respected television station in history, an artistic and educational and cultural institution, for the last 40 years… I mean, you think about it, right? When you turn on a PBS concert, it’s Sting, Andrea Boccelli, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sarah Brightman, Enya, Yanni. The highest quality and worldwide loved performers ever, and now you are getting Video Games Live, too?! Holy s**t! It’s a great thing, not only for Video Games Live, but I really feel for the entire industry. And, maybe ten years from now, people will look back and say, “When did video games crossover into the mainstream?” Maybe this is one of the things that help it turn the corner, a national television special on PBS.
You rattled off a whole bunch of names, with some classical artists, but also modern contemporary pop artists. Who do you think are the game music composers that people should know about?
I think the name Koji Kondo comes to mind. He’s the composer of all the Mario and Zelda music. Now, when you think about it, 100 years from now, people will still be humming the Mario music. Just like 300 years later they are humming Beethoven, I am sure 100 years from now people will be humming Star Wars and know that music as well. But Mario will live on forever, and that music will as well. And when people think of Mario, that theme comes to your mind.
And there are so many fantastic composers today, too. A guy like Michael Giacchino, for example, who won the Academy Award this year for the movie Up. Well, Michael Giacchino’s been composing video game music for over 15 years. Now he is doing all the Pixar movies. He did ‘The Incredibles’ before that. His music is beautiful. Giacchino really, really sticks out to me as one of the top guys. And his roots are in the video game industry.
How do you make the older stuff in the VGL program sound good in symphonic arrangements?
The hard part, the challenging part, is already done for me. You ask any composer and he will tell you the same thing: coming up with that hook, that melody, is the toughest thing to do. And in regards to the stuff from classics like Castlevania, Mega Man, Metroid and all those, that’s already done. I mean, it’s all right there in front of you. Once you have that, creating arrangements or orchestrations or everything, that’s the easy part. So it isn’t really challenging to me. I have got the greatest job in the planet. I mean, it really is.