Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky...who comes next?

Throughout history music has been used with the other arts to create entertainment. Opera was a popular amusement of past times, and the modern day equivalent would have to be film. The audience are allowed to sit and allow the sights and sounds to tell them a story. Film music is often looked down upon by classically trained musicians, but I love it. In my opinion, Howard Shore and John Williams bring orchestral music to the masses, just as Mozart and Wagner did in their time with opera.

I recently discovered a new channel for orchestral music. For some people, it is not enough to be stimulated by just sight and sound. They have to actually be involved in the action, and to dictate the events. I am of course talking about the world of computer games. Through my brother and his friends I was given a glimpse of this massive industry. They used to spend weekends in Oxford at LAN parties (local area network parties) where a hall full of young men would link their computers and play games against each other almost non-stop for 48 hours.

It can get a lot bigger than that though, and the music industry is catching on to this fact. A couple of years ago two orchestral concerts were performed in Sydney and Melbourne which sold out weeks in advance and still had people queuing on the day. They were concerts of the music used in computer games. A similar series was held at the Festival Hall in London last year.

When I heard of this, I imagined orchestral arrangements of the electronic music in games like sonic the hedgehog; not great concert material. However, after last week I can now say I understand the art of the modern computer game’s soundtrack, and therefore the appeal. A major games company, Blizzard, is releasing an album of their music, and I was hired to do one of the recording sessions. I spent the day at Fox studios in Sydney, recording two tracks.

Those of you who watch film DVD extras will have seen images of the recording studios where the music soundtrack is created. Picture a whole orchestra wearing headphones, listening to a click track to keep in time, surrounded by wires and microphones, and with a conductor at the front. This is what I did last Monday. A darkened booth to the side contained the composer and recording engineers, who communicated to the orchestra via the conductor, who heard them in an earpiece. It was quite disconcerting when the conductor first started conversing with the almighty shadows from the booth, rather like when you see someone talking to themselves and then realise they are not mad but just on a hands-free phone.

As for the music itself, I really enjoyed playing it. Good tunes, lots of loud bits, and excellent basslines. It had a lot in common with film scores such as Lord of the Rings, which are often a lot more fun to play than a lot of the ‘proper’ classical music of our time (weird dissonant compositions where if you can spot a melody you’re lucky). No, if computer games and film scores are the future of popular orchestral music I’m not complaining. In fact, I think I might buy the album of Diablo 3 when it comes out.