![]() “You had to write something that people could listen to over and over again without it becoming annoying. “A lot of the guys who started back then–they really know how to write a good tune,” he told me in his quick-fire, North Yorkshire accent. The reason his work endures, and continues to inspire video game composers, boils down to two things, said Kirkhope: the melody and chords. ![]() The Nintendo Entertainment System could only play three notes simultaneously, yet Kondo still managed to conjure magic from the machine, digging deep into his creative toolbox to overcome its hardware limitations. It’s a far cry from the days when the legendary Nintendo composer, Koji Kondo, sat down to write the Super Mario Bros. G ames are even blowing the cobwebs off classical music, with Video Games Live and other game-themed symphonic concerts packing music halls. (Kirkhope, who left Rare in 2008, received a BAFTA nomination for his Viva Piñata score and won an International Film Music Critics Association Award for his work on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.) Musicians who grew up playing video games increasingly incorporate their musical motifs into their work, and the BAFTAs, Ivor Novello Awards, and Grammys all recognize the outstanding achievements of video game composers. However, while their work has been played in millions of bedrooms around the world, the greatest video game composers haven’t always enjoyed the same profile or respect as their counterparts in the film industry, or the visual artists who designed iconic characters like Sonic, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Master Chief. Other tracks are more deeply buried in the circuitry of my memory, but within a few seconds of hearing the opening bars I’m transported back to my childhood and the carefree joy of playing a brilliant platform game or RPG. ![]() Some of my earliest musical memories center around the bleeps and bloops produced by the BBC Micro, and I can still whistle the Zelda or Tetris themes at a moment’s notice. The soundtracks crafted by composers like Kirkhope, David Wise, and Nobuo Uematsu belong to Gen-Y in the same way that great music by bands like the Beatles and the Stones belongs to our parents’ generation. He is, in fact, a video game composer, and if you grew up during the golden age of Rare, the British video game developer that produced the likes of Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, and Perfect Dark, there’s a good chance his work is as much a part of your teenage years as the music of Blur or Oasis. And while he’s a great admirer of the work of John Williams, he doesn’t write film scores. He isn’t a member of my favorite band, though he used to play the trumpet for Little Angels, a hard rock group that once opened for Bon Jovi and Van Halen. “The music from your childhood–you never forget it,” said Grant Kirkhope, the man who pretty much wrote the soundtrack to my youth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |