Into the Score 

Episodes:
1) Brief History of Game Music and some of the episodes in the near future.
a. Who I am
b. What the podcast will be about
c. Segments of the podcast
i. Opening
ii. Explanation of the game + credits
iii. Big musical pieces + info about the composer
iv. Analysis of the pieces and how they work musically, then how those pieces work into the musical scheme of the game.
v. OCRemix of the week.


Episode 1

"A new podcast, where game music has come from and where it's going.  I'm Kenley Kristofferson and this is Into the Score."

Game music has been fighting for legitimacy for quite some time now, just like movie music before it and ballet scores before that - struggle to be taken seriously is the plight of music in any new medium.  Only now in 2007 is it starting to be taken seriously, being performed by symphonies across the world, selling out concert halls and helping young and old alike to emotionally attach themselves to the music of a story they love.  

Thousands of gamers are hardcore into the music side of things, prime examples are OCRemix and the Video Game Music Archive, with addresses at ocremix.org and vgmusic.com respectively.  OCRemix is an online arranging community devoted solely to game music, where people submit their arrangements to a panel of judges, if it's good to go then it's posted on the site and people can download it, review it, have a listen, it's awesome.  Also, as people listen, arrange and contribute to the site more and more, they start to become real scholars in game music, knowing all the big pieces, the big works, the important projects - if you can have scholars in a field, especially one as large as game music, then its legitimacy is proven to me.  Even just looking at the grand scale of game music, the Video Game Music Archive houses over 21,000 music files and celebrated its 10th anniversary this past December, making it older than Google, Wikipedia and Slashdot.  

With this whole "user-created-content" thing going on now (which I love), people who ARE scholars of game music can spread what they know and learn from others with blogs, podcasts, forums, Wikipedia... it is a great time for information.  And that's what brings us to myself and this podcast.

I'm Kenley Kristofferson, wrapping up my fifth year of Music Education at the University of Manitoba up here in Winnipeg in the dead of an extremely warm Canadian winter.  I've been into games and game music since my early teens and my view on music really started to change when I got into wind band in high school.  I'd be playing SNES and hearing horn parts or flute parts, especially from Final Fantasy VI, which is the game that really started the engine for me.  I began making the connection with what was being played on the game  to what the live instrument sounded like in the rows ahead of me (I'm a euphonium player).  After that, I got really into game music scores and eventually composing original stuff myself.  

With that in mind, I would find podcasts and blogs that would say "this is a podcast about game music, this is this piece by this person" then listen to it, "okay that was fun, now this piece from this game." Though the radio show idea is awesome for people who just want to listen to music, and that's great, what good would music be if there were no one to listen? But when I would listen to radio shows, I would think "tell me something about the piece! Break it apart! Analyze, figure it out!" But they never did, and that leads us to this...

"Into the Score" is looking to be the first podcast to provide an academic study of video game music, at least as far as I've ever found.  We'll take a game and talk about its plot and characters then look at who wrote the music for the game.  After a short little biography, we'll dig into the music of the work and explore some of its bigger pieces and start looking at how they fit into the musical structure of the game.  We'll do a little work on harmony, melody or orchestration - the notes on the page and see how the composer gets the sound that they're looking for.  At the end, we'll take a look at the bigger picture of the game, have a listen to some more music and then take a look at a rearrangement from OCRemix, because they're working hard to get their music out there and I think that we, as critics and music lovers want to give them every chance we can.  

So now, let's get on with the episode! 

This one will be a bit different than the ones following, but the theme of this episode is where we've come from and where we're going.  Tonight, we look at the ongoing history of console video game music, from silence to the symphony.  

The first recorded game sounds are from Pong, released in1972.  I have no credits for who was the actual sound designer for Pong, but if someone would like to enlighten me by sending me a note, that'd be huge! Here is a pong match, right on...

(Pong example)

That, as well as most other examples, is taken from Gamespot's A Brief Timeline of Video Game Music - if you want to check it out then the address is attached in the shownotes.  I definitely recommend that you do because it's history is much more in-depth than mine, as it focuses on arcade as well as console, whereas mine only concentrates on the latter.

Anyways! Atari is released in 1977, featuring such classic games as Combat, Breakout and Space Invaders.  One of the things I loved about Space Invaders was that there was "sort of" music.  Just a semitone going up and down (do-do-do-do-do) then getting faster as the enemies come closer, increasing intensity! Not only being one of the first to have music, I would say that the Space Invaders alternating semitones accelerating in tempo would be one of the first attempts at encouraging an emotional reaction to what's happening on the screen.  Do I have an example of that (flips papers)... no, no dice.  

After that, we start getting more notes, harmonies, melodies and all that stuff that our ears are used to in, what is considered in terms of pop culture consciousness as "the most popular video game of all-time."  It was released in 1980 for the arcade machine and the theme, well... I have no credits.  All that I've been able to find is that the programmer's name is Tod Frye... anyone who could have credits for writing the infectious Pac-Man theme definitely drop me a line, I'll give my email at the end of the email! Anyways, here's the theme! (THEME)

That's pretty short, let's hear it one more time...

One more time...

Okay, now it'll be in your head for a week! Hahaha! Now, onto another infectious and important theme.  Called by gamerankings.com as the "the best game featuring a plumber rescuing a princess from a big ape pretty much ever," Donkey Kong graced the coin-op in 1981 and featured one of video game's greatest heros - Mario! The concept and soundtrack were both written by Shigeru Miyamoto (who I'll talk about in a minute, very important man)... A big gorilla hurls barrels at a plumber... it made so much sense at the time...

(Theme)

Now, home consoles are starting to change, and after 1985, they will never be same again.  Nintendo releases the Nintendo Entertainment System that fateful year and, though Atari was fairly successful, I truly believe that this console brought "success" to a whole new level.  

Aurally, the sound card featured the NES 2A03 APU chip.  This chip would process the waves and modulate them for different frequencies and pitches, waveforms (giving them different "colours") and allowed for different lengths of notes.  Now, the chip allowed  for four tracks of audio, which means for different lines can go on at the same time.  Here's an example, Alex Pajitnov's "Tetris", though most of the music is traditional Russian music, I think that Brad Fuller gets the credit for being the audio guy, let's do this.

(THEME)

Now that's in your head for a week :) Though there were some very solid and memorable themes from NES, some of the best NES musical themes come from the next two games, spawning some of the most popular and infectious themes to ever grace the console genre.  They were both composed by resident composer at Nintendo, Koji Kondo and he still writes for these two franchises today - the first, Super Mario Brothers.

(THEME)

The next: A game released on February 21 of 1986 in Japan and August 22 of 1987 in North America (and yes, November 27 of the same year in Europe), this is the Overworld Theme from The Legend of Zelda.

(THEME)

Then something interesting happened.  A company on the verge of bankruptcy sits around a table and discusses the future of their company, agreeing that they need a product that will save the sinking ship.  They have enough money to make one last game, their consensus: A mythical adventure game - one last attempt to save their company, their "Final Fantasy", if you will...

(PRELUDE)

In 1987, Square Ltd. Releases Final Fantasy for the NES console and it changes the way that the world plays games.  Driven by an epic story to unite four crystals and save the world from four demonic fiends, this game redefined the way that gamers work through a story and was one of the first console games to use the turn-based battle system (but not the first, I think that Ultima or Dragon Quest get that honour).  This game turned heads from everyone, especially musicians.

The score was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and he was brought on the project because he had a friend who worked for Square Ltd.  At the time, Nobuo was the keyboard player in a bar band who had been composing on his own for some time.  With this gig, this would change that forever.  This background music is the prelude from Final Fantasy, the next one is the overworld theme, composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

(OVERWORLD)

With these three games, people young and old can identify with music belonging to stories that they enjoy and feel passionate about.   This is not to say that these are the only three games that do this, these are among SEVERAL others that I just don't have time to explore in this episode, but will be explored in further ones, such as Mega Man, Castlevania, Metroid, Bubble Bobble... too many to mention.  Also, it's without question that Final Fantasy took video game music to the "mainstream" and I also know that there are a lot of people who love FF music but are looking for more obscure things - for example, there are HUNDREDS of final fantasy remixes on OCR, many of which are big themes.  A lot of judges want to hear stuff they've never heard before, but in recording this podcast, talking about game music without putting massive emphasis on Final Fantasy is like talking about Wagner without talking about the Ring Cycle. Okay, now that we're all good, where was the next step for this medium? In the US, nowhere for a while; in Japan, the next stop of this train was the symphony.

(Orchestral Mario)

In 1991, Orchestral Game Concert struck Japan with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra performing under Koichi Sugiyama (composer of the highly-acclaimed Dragon Quest series), Yoko Kanno (of anime fame) and Kosuki Onozaki, among others.  We're listening to the SMB medley that they performed, other pieces from the concert included works from the Legend of Zelda, Wizardry and Final Fantasy IV as well as others - it appears that Square didn't go under after all.  This is the Redwings Theme from Final Fantasy IV, written by Nobuo Uematsu.

Love it! If you can find this album, pick it up, because it is awesome and a ground-breaking concert.  So what's happening here? Video Game music being played by a symphony? In 1991? It's 2007! Why did it take so long?

Well, some crucially important music had to be written next and it would be on a newer system: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or the SNES.  This would be a nice improvement for composers because they now had more tracks to work with AND, are you ready for this... instrument patches! This means that flutes could sound like flutes, drums could sound like drums and guitars... well, we're getting there.  

I can't give a source for this, but being a video game music buff and the composing for a game company in Winnipeg called Dragonfly games, I can confidently say that reputationally and among circles of game music critics, the following game has always been among the top for the coveted title of "The Best Video Game Score of All-Time." Personally, I think that this is, without question, the best game score ever written, are you ready here it is.

Final Fantasy VI is released by Square in 1994 and is one of the most celebrated games of all-time, rating #9 on EGM's "Top 100 Games of All-Time", the link is provided in the show notes.  The game takes place in a pre-Industrial Revolution Era world where society is finally getting back to where it was after an epic magical war 1000 years before.  The protagonist is a woman, Terra, who is seeking to find out who she is after having her memory wiped by the evil Empire that she was forced to serve.  There are 14 playable characters in the game, more than any other in the series, including a cocky adventurer, a thrill-seeking gambler and a maniacal power hungry villain named Kefka, who takes control of the empire and destroys the entire world.  All the characters in the game have their own reasons to fight the empire and every character is developed as the story progresses, each of them even have their own musical theme! The Original Soundtrack of this game clocks in at an incredible 60 pieces of music and is 3 Cds long.  If the soundtrack is over 60 pieces, then that is going to occupy over half of the entire memory of the cartridge, which is wild because every technical aspect of that game pushed the SNES to it's limits, Mode 7 graphics, complex colour schemes, and yes, an incredibly large soundtrack.  Other important notes to mention: 17-minute final battle theme (including a wild organ cadenza, yeah!), a 21-minute ending theme (including EVERYONE'S character themes!) and an opera house sequence which has become one of the most famous scenes in gaming history.  We'll be doing an episode or two on the game in a few weeks.  Let's have a listen, this is Aria di Mezzo Caraterre, from the Opera House sequence in Final Fantasy VI, written by Nobuo Uematsu - I shook his hand this September, more on that later!

(ARIA)

Final Fantasy VII was released for the Sony Playstation in 1997, creating what are now "video game standards" for orchestral performance.  Nobuo also did the score for that one.  In special CD releases called "Final Fantasy VII Reunion", there feature three tracks arranged for orchestra - "Main Theme", "Aeris's Theme" and "One-Winged Angel", the amazing and crunchingly dissonant final battle theme with Sephiroth.  We'll hear that in a bit.

Within the next seven years, symphonies across the world would begin to embrace video game music as, well, legitimate! It managed to pack concert halls and do what most symphonies struggle the most with in their programming: bringing the next generation of young adults into the performance hall.   Here's One Winged Angel, by Nobuo Uematsu and I'm having a tough time finding the orchestra that did it.  I've heard rumor of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, but I can't back that with a source.  Here goes:

(OWA)

Symphonic Game Music Concert took place in Germany on August 20, 2003 and performed a concert ENTIRELY of game music.  The performers were the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and were directed by Andy Brick.  This was the first symphonic game music concert ever outside of Japan, and no surprise, it was sold out.  There were four of these concerts, one per year for four years, all sold out.

Final Fantasy music was featured at all of these concerts.  In 2004, the Dear Friends tour began with different symphonies performing concerts comprised entirely of Final Fantasy music.  It toured from May 11, 2004 to July 24, 2005 and sold out concerts all throughout the US - it appeared that the battle for legitimacy of this new genre of music was being won very quickly by our underdog in the view of the public eye. 

More concert tours came to follow, Video Games Live and Play! A Video Game Symphony selling out several locations.  I actually went to Play in Toronto at the end of September last year, flying out from Winnipeg, staying at my cousin's in Toronto, chocking up $125 for the ticket... yep, it was good times.  Well, it was amazing, it was the best concert I'd ever been to! And about 9 seats to my left and one seat back, were ALL the composers - Jeremy Soule (who I met) and Nobuo Uematsu as well, I shook his hand, it was awesome.  

Where are we now? We've come from silence to the symphony.  Famed movie composers are writing for games, game composers are being recognized by outside sources - Nobuo is listen in Time magazines "Top 40 New Wave" in the music category and MTV has a "best video game music score of the year" award, which Jeremy Soule won last year for Oblivion from the Morrowind series, and it was much deserved, what a great writer! 

I think it's time to cap off this podcast, it's longer than usual, but it's the first episode and I really wanted to dig in to where we were and now where we're going.  We couldn't catch everything, but there's always more episodes to have! 

Let's hear some OCRemix.  This is the second movement from Jeremy Robson's "Final Fantasy VII Philharmonic Suite."  Keeping with the theme of game music moving to the orchestra, I think that it's a prudent choice.  This explores Red XIII's theme and different orchestrations of it, it's amazing work and this composer is just...wow, great composer, arranger and a phenom producer.  Here it is:

There it is, that's the second movement from Jeremy Robson's "Final Fantasy VII Philharmonic Suite." Please go to OCRemix, listen to the stuff, review, critique and support all of the arrangers who are the next wave of game music scholars.  Also, there is a podcast of OCRemix called VGDJ, you can find it at vgdj.org or do a little iTunes search on it online.  Listen, support one another, yeah... right on...

If you'd like to contact me, my email is siven7@gmail.com, that's s-I-v-e-n-number-7 at gmail.com, if you have any show ideas for the show or if you can give any credit to some of the sources I just couldn't find, that'd be stellar, I'd love to hear from you.

Here's a glimpse of the next episode, our good friends at Capcom giving us a release in 1988 - Megaman II.  The composers on this game were Ogeretsu Kun, Manami Ietel and Yuukichan's Papa! This is the first level from Dr. Wily's Lair, I'm Kenley Kristofferson and this is Into the Score, thanks for listening!


(WILY 1)

(FADE OUT)