The past two issues of “The International Musician,” a monthly publication produced by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), have had a major feature on the writing, scoring, and recording of music to be featured in video games. That’s right, video games.
Why is this so important? Because the AFM, and subsequently the “International Musician,” have been, for decades, the most prevalent professional organization, and the most widely-used resource, for musicians, composers, conductors, and music editors; yet they choose to focus their attention on recording some video game?
What about the concert halls? Auditioning for the Marine Bands, or the Huston Symphony? Yes, those classifieds still occupy the penultimate pages of the “International Musician,” but well before this is an article featuring the musicians recently called to Skywalker Ranch, in
So what does this all have to do with the future of music education? The answer is simple: to the pros, video game music is serious business. The demand for players in these soundtracks is extremely high, and the performers love the job. This adds a whole new level to the validity of using this type of music in the classroom.
In my opinion, video game music is the future of “classical” music, and may provide the newest—and possibly only—link between pop culture and what many view to be a “dying” art form. Instrumental music is waning; classical radio stations are shutting down and becoming hip-hop, classic rock, or top-forty stations due to lack of funding. Attendance in concert halls has declined massively in major cities over the years.
Recently, however, tours of concerts such as “Play: a Video Game Symphony” are selling out worldwide. This particular program features major symphony orchestras performing music from popular video games, accompanied by large LCD monitors displaying a mix of screenshots and full-motion-videos from the games with close-ups of the actual performers.
Some argue that this use of imagery and technology “distracts” concert-goers from the music; I believe enhances the concert experience, and brings the audience closer to the performers. Being able to watch the flutist—while sitting in your balcony seat—take a deep breath and glance at the conductor for a cue before playing is much more personal than barely being able to see anything but the mass of black tux jackets, white bowties and shiny instruments.
I had the pleasure of attending such a concert several years ago. It was called “Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy,” and included many favorites from the Final Fantasy series. Video games offer a much more personal connection to the player than film (though film music, I feel, is also an extremely valuable thing to study and celebrate); the player spends hours upon hours finishing the stories, and often becomes incredibly attached to the characters and action sequences. A good video game is like an interactive novel with a very, very long, engaging story that can be read and re-read. A good video game score invokes these same emotions and expounds upon them—much like Mozart’s piano sonatas might have enlightened audiences some three hundred years ago. Integrating these personal connections into the classroom can be extremely beneficial to the instruction of music, and can be a jumping point when discussing other forms of music.
For instance, I hear many, many famous Western influences in the music of Final Fantasy. Composer Nobuo Uematso utilizes sounds inspired by Debussy, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and even Shostakovich. Linking students with the video game score can easily translate into heightening their appreciation of the symphonic works that inspired the score. With these connections in mind, one could integrate technology even further and have students create storyboards for their own video game and compose programmatic music based on those storyboards. Then, aside from carrying the already existing personal connections with the typically expansive, romantic sounds of the game score, the students would have an additional connection with their creation.
The possibilities are endless. As long as the professional world continues to recognize this form of music more and more seriously, the educational world is able to—and indeed, should!—follow suit.
Sound File: Nobuo Uematsu, "To Zanarkand" from Final Fantasy X (MIDI version)
Kevin Scollin
