It’s been a while since I’ve posted an interview that I’ve really liked. Emily Reese’s interview of Matt Uelmen on Minnesota Public Radio somehow slipped through the cracks on me. He’s one of my favorite composers. His work in Diablo II still reminds me of my youth- hacking and slashing down Meph runs, getting my items stolen by people who said they were my friends, tricking people into thinking I was trading them a Shako when it was actually just a green hat, etc etc. Not really great memories, I guess. BUT MEMORIES ALL THE SAME.
I’ve mentioned his involvement with Torchlight II briefly in an older post and highlighted a small interview with him. This interview, though, is really at length and really lets you hear what the composer has to say about his music. It’s definitely worth listening to, even though it’s a couple months old. It’s great to hear him list his influences and explain his tracks in detail. He’s not just some composer who presses the buttons on his computer and makes sound. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he knows a lot about theory. His compositional technique seems really solid.
You can find the complete interview HERE. It’s only about 17 minutes long. Check it out and let me know what you think! And I love that he’s a real nerd.
Gamasutra reports composer Robert Holmes (of Sierra-Online’s Gabriel Knight series) and developer Jane Jensen (known for the same series, as well as Kings Quest IV and she also happens to be married to Robert Holmes, hah) are launching a new company to bring back adventure games.
Last but not least, my lovely little video game chamber ensemble, Beta Test Music, will be featured in a showcase this Saturday night, April 7th, in Philadelphia. For details, take a look here. We’ll be playing some interesting duets as well as new versions of my Super Mario Land arrangement and Final Fantasy III (JP) Battles arrangement (links will let you listen to the tracks for absolutely free!). Come on out if you’re in the area. Tickets are free in advance and $5 at the door.
Have a good weekend, folks, and a good Passover/Easter if that applies!
This is my 5th and final blog post on arranging the music for the new Beta Test Music concert, Beta Test Presents: HEROES! In this entry, I talk about arranging music from “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” for the ensemble. This is a continuation of Part 4. Also, in case you missed it, here’s links to Part 1 and Part 2 talking about “Super Mario Land 1/2″ and here’s Part 3 talking about “Sonic the Hedgehog”.
This is Part 4 of my blog posts on arranging the music for the new Beta Test Music concert, Beta Test Presents: HEROES! In this entry, I talk background and musical selection from “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past”. In case you missed it, here’s links to Part 1 and Part 2 talking about “Super Mario Land 1/2″ and here’s Part 3 talking about “Sonic the Hedgehog”.
Many of what we know about video game music today was influenced by Koichi Sugiyama. Here’s some exceedingly brief background information.
A classically trained conductor, Sugiyama graduated from University of Tokyo will full honors in 1958. After a brief stint in broadcasting, he shifted his focus to composition, writing many movie and anime sountracks. In the 80s, he was contacted by Enix to work on Dragon Quest for the Nintendo Famicom (aka Dragon Warrior in the US). His career took off and Sugiyama, at age 79, is still composing game music today. There’s so much to talk about when it comes to Sugiyama, I’d rather split it up into a couple blog posts. I’m very excited to get to his orchestral contributions rather than bore you with his life story (though it is really fascinating).
That being said, Sugiyama is credited as being the first game music composer to have his works arranged and composed live. In 1987, Sugiyama arranged and conducted his music from Dragon Quest II at the first “Family Classic Concert” series (performance by the Tokyo City Music Combination Playing Group on August 20th, 1987). He has since then participated in many other orchestral game music concerts as a conductor and arranger.
(A wiki aside: the wiki for Koichi Sugiyama is horrible- I’ll highlight all the errors soon enough. For one, it says that he released Dragon Quest 1: Symphonic Suite on CD in 1986. Right… considering I took two seconds to google this and found that the CD was released in 1994. Plus the fact that Sugiyama hadn’t written the music to Dragon Quest II yet so… how would he know it was to be called Dragon Quest 1 ? Bahhhhhhh!!! Reference here.)
Okay, let’s listen in on a track of his original Dragon Quest music and orchestral arrangements:
This is the “battle theme” from the game. It’s effective and epic in its own regard if simplistic. I spent many hours listening to this (and being frustrated). It never got old. Here’s Sugiyama’s orchestral version from Dragon Quest I: Symphonic Suite:
As you can see, there was… considerable orchestration done here. This (I BELIEVE) is Sugiyama conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It is a live recording (hence the really bad french horn clam at around 0:18). What is fascinating is that it was largely cited that Sugiyama wrote orchestral arrangements first and then “dumbed” them down to fit the sound limitations of the Famicom.
What is interesting to note is that Sugiyama has re-recorded many of these tracks 12-15 times making alterations, orchestration changes, etc many of which are recent and actually of a better quality. There is a large amount of misinformation I’m finding on the exact releases of his works and their original forms. It could be assumed that perhaps his works in the 80s were released on LP (a Japanese friend of mine confirmed that he did indeed own Dragon Quest LPs. I’ll have to look into this). I’ll have to research this. At any rate, this has been Part 1 of an introduction to Koichi Sugiyama. Comments welcome.
One of the perks of being an adjunct (one of the very very few) is access to printers. Glorious glorious printers, as far as the eye can see 15 hours ago
