Symphony Orchestras and Video Games

robi2106 writes "The BBC is running an article regarding the cooperation between video game composers and top symphony orchestras, like the recent Los Angeles Philharmonic concert entitled Video Games Live. The VGL event contained orchestral productions of video game music, a live video game match between audience members on jumbo screens behind the orchestra, and pre-recorded game footage accompanied by the orchestra. Such productions are becoming more and more popular." From the BBC article: "With the emergence of machines like the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, anything became possible musically, and sound became a fundamental part of gaming experiences. When Mr Wall composed the score for Myst III, he used a full symphony orchestra and choir. "

Comments

Really Cool

[1967mustangman]

I got a chance to hear a little of the concert on NPR and it sounded great. I really enjoy classical music so I think this is great. It is funny people have been saying for decades that classical music is going to die, but if this kind of thing keeps up there will be many future generations of classical music listeners...................thanks to Microsoft,Sony, and Nintendo.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassian...

[Anonymous Coward]

...had music by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, composed by Jesper Kyd. While not up to the level of some of the other soundtracks mentioned here, it did fit the bullet opera mood of the game perfectly. The right combination of music, slow motion and visual effects can make a character's death by gunplay seem less like a whoops-annoyance-main menu-reload and more like the inevitable consequence of his chosen profession. Good show.

Not quite anything

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

anything became possible musically, and sound became a fundamental part of gaming experiences

There's still one thing music can't yet do in video games: change styles in synchronization with the player's actions. Sure, music comes at important points, but it starts or stops then. You still can't have a dynamic score.

For example, Halo famous musical score is only present in the single-player game, when the game knows that certain events will happen sooner or later. The multiplayer game is devoid of any music, because the important events - a bomb being planted, a flag being stolen, a large battle in one spot, whatever - are impossible to schedule and cue ahead of time. The point is that recording high-quality orchestral scores is well and good, but the next crucial step is for the music to be generated on the fly (possibly from prerecorded snippets).

Re:Not quite anything

[Anonymous Coward]

X-Wing and TIE Fighter had a dynamic music system that did basically what you describe. Sure, it was only MIDI, but it was impressive by the standards of the time. Pretty quickly, though, you got to recognise which sorts of in-game events would produce which musical cues. So, for example, a squadron of TIE Fighters launching would give a few bars of the Imperial March, a Star Destroyer entering the battle would give a snippet of the emperor's theme and so on. You could actually pick up a lot about the flow of some of the larger battles just from listening to the music. TIE Fighter was particularly impressive in a way, because it actually managed to make the Imperial March sound more noble than menacing... the power of association, I guess.

They abandoned this for X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter and just used CD audio instead. The result of this was you got music that sounded a lot better at first, but it got etched into your brain pretty quickly and didn't adapt to the flow of a battle as well as in the earlier games. I've a feeling that X-Wing Alliance moved back to the older dynamic system, albeit with higher quality samples, but I could be wrong on this. Will have to reinstall it when I get home and check, or else that's going to be bugging me all day.

Games Convention Concert

[MadMoses]

The 2000 tickets for the game music symphony concert of the FILMharmonic Orchestra of Prague at the Games Convention in Leipzig were sold out in under two hours, according to heise.de.