Video Game Music Is Saving the Symphony Orchestra (wsj.com) 111
An anonymous reader writes: As music distribution has flourished, the popularity of live performances in certain genres has begun to wane. Symphony orchestra attendance has been dropping for years. A new report says ticket sales have dropped by 2.8% annually for the past decade. The downward trend has caused many performing groups to experiment with ways to appeal more to modern audiences. One way they're finding success is by including music from video games. "Orchestral videogame concerts first gained a following in Japan in the mid-1980s and spread to parts of Europe in the early 2000s. They began appearing regularly in pops repertoires in the U.S. about a decade ago as orchestras sought younger, more diverse audiences. Unlike classical-music performances, videogame shows feature arrangements that blend looping tracks of music designed to match various moments in a game, such as a slow, eerie medley of piano, percussion and string as the videogame character navigates a castle dungeon. ... The story of The Legend of Zelda isn't a far cry from such classics as Mozart's The Magic Flute. Both tales involve a brave fellow in a quest to rescue a damsel from a villain's clutches
Remember this? (Score:1)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7khL9Ms4ow [youtube.com]
I suppose they did compose their own though...
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... And I don't play the games!
The ultimate game design is the one you don't even know you're playing. Welcome to LifeSim (TM) where you sit in a cube and just code all day.
Our motto is: "Hey, it's more watchable than golf."
WarioWare Crossing (Score:2)
The ultimate game design is the one you don't even know you're playing. Welcome to LifeSim (TM) where you sit in a cube and just code all day.
Nintendo could make that right now if it wanted. It could start with Animal Crossing, nerf fishing and shaking trees, and add another source of Bells by getting people to like your WarioWare DIY and Super Mario Maker creations.
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Meh, atrocious character models and awful grind with 0 endgame content.
The violin came first. (Score:2)
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They are art. The problem is that too often they are poorly done art.
Music is too often poorly done art.
Same goes for movies, paintings, books and sculptures.
In fact, most art is crap.
It's almost as if the medium didn't determine if the art is good or not.
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It's called "pops" (Score:5, Informative)
When attendance is down, symphonies, theatre groups and other live performers retrench around the "pops" that they know the general population finds popular and puts people in the seats: Christmas songs, Broadway musicals, movie scores, adaptations of rock classics for Baby Boomers, and now video game music for Gen X and Millennials.
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They could fix that if they weren't charging $50-250 per ticket to go listen to them.
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Do you realize how many people are in an orchestra? They can't work for free.
Concert halls aren't cheap, either.
Couldn't they have free entry to the concerts and sell action figures and Tshirts to make money?
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The Action Figure of the timpanist is one of the most sought after. Most people overlook, though, that the English Horn player figure is much rarer.
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Re:It's called "pops"... and was (Score:3)
At one time, pop music *was* what the symphonic orchestras were playing.
Live music was either what you heard live, or played yourself. And what you played yourself was either traditional (folk) music, or something you heard. And most of what you heard was folk music, or a professional musician, or a knockoff of a pro.
When attendance declines, symphonies, theatre groups and other live performers retrench around their origins.
National Symphony Orchestra playing Zelda FTW! (Score:2)
Contemporary Classical (Score:2)
I remember going to see "Video Games Live" back in 2010 and it got me hooked, I bought season tickets to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra a few years back and never regretted it. YMMV but I was surprised at how inexpensive tickets were, and how much music you got...
A lot of games incorporate an orchestral score, hearing the music live though is absolutely worth checking out (even if you don't play the games.)
The problem isn't music distribution (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the cost of the damn tickets. My local orchestra hall is always complaining that only ~10-20 people attend their 1000+ capacity hall. I wanted to attend one for a date night out: $50/ticket. That is just absurd for a weeknight second rate (mostly student) orchestra.
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Jeez that's nuts. I live in Saint Louis which has one of the top 5 symphony orchestras in the world and 50 bucks can buy me a good seat on a Friday night show in a theater that is sold out.
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St Louis seems to be rising in a lot of ways, actually.
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Saint Louis has had a very vibrant arts community for a while mostly due to free admittance to most of the city museums, parks, and our zoo (all of which are located in Forrest Park within easy walking distance of each other). I think this results in a much wider variety of people becoming exposed and involved in the arts community which drives demand for payed programs like the symphony and opera.
Funny enough the people here are very proud of our free attractions. We have the only free zoo in the world,
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While St. Louis has a wonderful orchestra, it would be more accurate to say it's one of the top 50 in the world - there are a LOT of really good orchestras out there! Top 5 in the midwest United States, I'll grant you that, but there are a number of better orchestra in the US alone.
I would also say that $50 for a great orchestra ticket, to ANY top 50 orchestra, is a great bargain. Have people seen the prices of tickets for rock concerts or sporting events? Sure you can gt bleacher seats for a baseball game
Re:The problem isn't music distribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Your local orchestra appears to have little idea how to price tickets. If they charged $2 and filled the hall, they'd make twice as much money.
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Yes, I live in a town with ~40-60k students (several universities and colleges) that have nothing to do all night. The problem is that their attendance started dropping at some point and they raised prices to keep up their income.
midi based music in games was good. BSMT2000 (Score:2)
midi based music in games 80's to 90's was good. The Arcade BSMT2000 lasted a bit to long by the time games stopped using it midi based music was dated.
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The music part of it.
Movie Music as well (Score:2)
I would go to one of these, if they'd advertise them better. I had a friend who flew out to NYC from Texas to see an orchestra play the entire score of LOtR live to the movie (with the score cut out and just the dialog and sound effects left in) somewhere in Manhattan. That is a really cool idea and they sold out all of the performances months in advance and only played at a handful of venues worldwide. I would pay good money to go see that if I'd known about it. I always find out about the Final Fantasy sy
commentsubjecthere (Score:2)
To be fair, most video game music has a narrower invoke scope, and your CoDs, your loldotas, your Flappy Crush games aren't really music'ing because they have no narrative. But many other games ARE
Kill those flappy birds (Score:2)
Does Flappy Crush [google.com] even have music?
Two words: Baba Yetu (Score:2)
The Civililization IV theme - first videogame music to win a Grammy.
The official trailer [youtube.com]
Video Games Live orchestra and choir on PBS [youtube.com]
views of performances on the Dubai Fountain [youtube.com]
and lots more performances [youtube.com]
It's a (WTF!) musical setting of The Lord's Prayer translated into Swahili - and well enough done to be a regular performance on a premier art attraction in the United Arab Emirates.
I've probably watched/listened to this more than any other thing on You Tube.
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There's an entire song cycle, in fact; Baba Yetu is the first of a set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Overture to the symphony. Several other albums! (Score:2)
There's an entire song cycle, in fact; Baba Yetu is the first of a set.
Just listened through it once. I read the album as a symphony, of which Baba Yetu is the overture. Each of the songs seems to expand on one theme from it.
Thanks greatly for the link. It also brings up several of Christopher Tin's complete albums - on YouTube deliberately, pending better distribution channels for the recordings.
(He seems to like writing orchestra-and-choral-or-solo-singer pieces in a collection of foreign languages. M
ROFL (Score:2)
ROFL
Best music (Score:1)
I remember Star Wars concerts (Score:3)
The first orchestra concert I ever voluntarily attended was in 1978. It was a concert of Star Wars and Star Trek music, complete with laser show (lame by today's standards, but awesome to 14 y.o. me in the 70's) and WILLIAM FREAKIN' SHATNER hosting...and reading poetry about whales.
Good for the Orchestra, and for music (Score:5, Insightful)
I am saddened by the attitude that many people have that by performing music such as what comes from games that the orchestras are somehow "cheapening their brand" or that it is "diluting the culture." To claim this is to completely ignore why people listen to music in the first place, and where much of "classical" music came from. This elitist attitude is what has significantly contributed to the decline in attendance numbers seen over the last few decades.
Mozart was a party animal. He was essentially a 18th century rock star, complete with the fame and lavish lifestyle that implies. As much as he was a musical genius, he was terrible at managing his personal affairs and died penniless, buried in an unmarked grave.
Beethoven, who is often called the "Father of the Modern Symphony" (thanks to his groundbreaking work in his 9 Symphonies), was also very much involved in the popular music scene of his day. His Egmont is music that was written to be performed alongside a production of a play of the same name (only the overture is performed with any regularity today, as the play itself is pretty awful). This makes it essentially 19th century movie music.
When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first premiered, a riot broke out among the audience. This wasn't just because of the nature of the music itself, but because that was the culture of performance at the turn of the 20th century - the audience was looking for something to get riled up over, and the music hit that emotional chord perfectly.
Modern performances are often formal affairs that remove the context of the music from its original conception. This isn't always a bad thing, as a good performance of a Mozart Symphony can be very exciting, but to try to stick to that because of some idea that it's meant to be that way is to ignore what the music actually is. Modern orchestral composers don't compose symphonies any more, they compose for movies and video games. That movie and video game music of today will be tomorrow's classical music. I've already seen performances of movie music from 50 years ago or so programmed into classical performances (not the pops concerts where such music usually resides), and such will become more and more common as time goes on.
In any case, something that increases awareness of the medium is a good thing. Today's kid that attends a video game concert performance might be tomorrow's grandmaster concert soloist, inspired by the music they heard when they were young. Even someone just making the leap from attending a video game concert to deciding to attend a classical concert isn't a very big one, but is extremely important to the long-term health and survivability of the genre.
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Re:Good for the Orchestra, and for music (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it is true that most movie and video game music is pretty boring without being attached to its original material (much like Beethoven's Egmont suite I mentioned in my original post - with the exception of the overture, essentially the equivalent of a Main Title theme in modern terms - it's not all that interesting). That said, the vast majority of music written during the 17th through 19th centuries (the period of time that what people now call "classical" was written) is not heard any more. What we hear now is the best music, the music that has survived the test of time. The same will be true in 100 years - most video game music will be virtually lost, never heard again unless someone happens to dig up the actual game. Some of it, however, is actually quite good, and will survive to become part of the standard classical repertoire. I think the Zelda Symphony alluded to in the article is a potential example of this.
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| When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first premiered, a riot broke out among the audience. This wasn't just because of the nature of the music itself, but because that was the culture of performance at the turn of the 20th century - the audience was looking for something to get riled up over, and the music hit that emotional chord perfectly.
That premiere was of course a ballet, and that riot had quite a bit more to do with the co
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Mozart was a party animal. He was essentially a 18th century rock star, complete with the fame and lavish lifestyle that implies.
A long time ago I once took an interdisciplinary class that combined history with literature with music, very enjoyable. It was a bit of an experiment by 3 professors (who implied they were drinking buddies)
The Music professor involved said outright that Mozart was the Elvis or Michael Jackson of his day and that if we didn't believe him, read the reports written about his concerts at that time.
Modern orchestral composers don't compose symphonies any more, they compose for movies and video games. That movie and video game music of today will be tomorrow's classical music.
I've said that myself, I'm reminded of a scene from Singin' in the Rain.
On a smaller scale... (Score:1)
Numerous artists are doing covers of video game music. One successful one is Taylor Davis. Search for her on youtube.
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Thank you for that suggestion. I was entirely unaware of her.
Das lied von der erde (Score:2)
Somehow, symphony orchestras have managed to survive 50 years of the rock and roll era. I seriously doubt video games are going to suddenly "save" them.
Is it possible that attendance at the symphony is down because nobody's got any goddamn money?
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That's cool. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is sold out most nights. The Civic Opera is also sold out most nights.
Awesome music symphony orchestra (Score:1)
Daft Punk (Score:2)
Video Games Live! (Score:1)
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Or even classic rock like what Jaz Coleman did for the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Nirvana...
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Or...or...or combining rap music with real...err...classical music. Classical Rap, kind of like Folk Rap except without all the sex and violence.
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No.. .not combining, like the "traditional" Kashmir, but rather a recomposition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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.. because such games are so well known for their music?
Honestly, symphonies pair well with all sorts of things, it doesn't just have to be video game music. I greatly enjoyed the pairing [youtube.com] of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra with Skálmöld, Iceland's best known viking folk metal [wikipedia.org] band. A symphony orchestra makes anything feel more "epic".
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.. because such games are so well known for their music?
Yes, they are.
Michael Giacchino was a computer of music in video games, specifically the Medal of Honor series (1999 - 2007) and the Call of Duty series (2003 - 2004). J.J. Abrams found out about him through his work in those game series, and brought him in to handle the muscle for Abram's new series Alias. After that, it was natural for him to write music for Lost as well, and then to jump into movies, including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up (which won him an Oscar), Star Trek, Inside Out..
Good thing J
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"Who cares about Nintendo kiddie games?"
Music is about culture, and Nintendo games have huge cultural penetration beyond dude-bro call of duty games for awkward teenagers and gun toting rednecks.
Re:Dumbing down culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Is there some rule that anything symphonic must have been written over 100 years ago?
Good music, performed by professionals, should be enjoyable, no matter where the music originally came from. The London Symphony Orchestra did a great job with the Mario Brothers music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - does it not have any cultural value since it was created for a video game?
What about the soundtracks from various movies, like Star Wars?
If it's copyrighted, it's a product (Score:3)
Huh? Is there some rule that anything symphonic must have been written over 100 years ago?
"Symphonic" refers to a composition for orchestra or concert band in usually four movements, with the first in sonata form.
But I think the rule that people are getting at is that the composer has to have died over 70 years ago. Or in the United States, the sheet music needs to have been published more than 95 years ago or before 1923. Until the music belongs to the people [freedomdefined.org], it's a "commercial product" more than it is "art".
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I think what a lot of art snobs fail to realize (and lament every time creative talent doesn't go in a direction that they unilaterally deem "correct") is that nobody wants to listen to the same 100+ year old piece of work over and over again. Tastes inevitably change, people inevitably want something new. That said, any artist that always clings on to the old ways of doing anything and/or insists that older art is better than what we have today is inevitably never going to make it anywhere.
Contrary to what
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Perhaps some of the snobs are producers who wanted to use a particular composition under license, but the composer's estate quoted a prohibitive royalty.
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I was agreeing with you until you mentioned Star Wars. Anything touched by George Lucas should not be given credit for any positive cultural impact.
Star Wars music is not George Lucas. Star Wars music is John Williams.
Heathen.
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I agree.
A few years back, I saw what was basically Symphonic Zeppelin, where they did Led Zep music with an orchestra backing a guy named Randy Jackson. [wikipedia.org]
It actually was a lot of fun...
Jeremy Soul FTW! (Score:2)
* Main Theme Song starts around 2min.
Theme Song only. [youtube.com]
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What about the soundtracks from various movies, like Star Wars?
For folks near/around North Carolina - look up the Durham Performing Arts Center
- Legend of Zelda Symphony came through in September
- Danny Elfman music - next week
- Star Trek Symphony is coming in Feb. 2016
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Alternatively, it's a stepping stone that will expose a new generation and maybe some of them will continue on to appreciate the classics. Since the first time humans started rhythmically banging sticks together, music has always adapted to our technology and culture.
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It's sad. People expect the video game, social media, mobile app experience from everything. It's like fast food.
You do remember that the 'symphony orchestra' was, once upon a time, a filthy innovation ruining real culture? It's certainly far from impossible to make value judgments about cultural phenomena; but just equating age with highbrow respectability is a lazy way to do it.
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This is, in fact, the opposite.
They expect more than amusement from video games.
The symphony orchestra have suffered from the disdain of classical music and classical music has suffered from snobs. It is a good thing we have films and video games to make people realize that, yeah, orchestral music can sound damn good.
Same thing for classical music itself. I mean, who sincerely doesn't like Mozart or Beethoven? This is music accessible to anyone, so don't make it the stuff of "elites".