Came across this video where I was interviewed at the World Series of Video Games at CES 2007.

Laura gets interviewed by PodTech at CES 2007

I’ve decided to outlet one of my passions — performing transcriptions of popular themes — by uploading some performances to UnCut Video and elsewhere. 

Here’s a link to the latest — my transcription of “Tank!” by Yoko Kanno, the theme song to Cowboy Bebop.

A colleague of mine at work was bemoaning the fact that his wife wasn’t keen on having a Wii on the house because she thought their two girls shouldn’t be playing video games.   Crazy, huh?  Nintendo’s most child-friendly and interactive console yet is still meeting resistance.

I think one of the top reasons to have kids is to game with them!  More importantly, preventing a kid from playing games today is like refusing to let your kid play stickball out in the street 30 years ago — gaming is a key social and cultural touchpoint that enables kids to relate to one another.  Obviously, moderation for young kids and teens has got to be a good thing, but oh… so many of my happiest memories from my teenage years involved games, whether completing them on my own or going over to a friend’s house to play.  I think the key word there is “play”.

This is waaaaay overdue, but I saw the Police out in Vegas back in June, and they were tight!

I was delighted to find that they exceeded my expectations throughout their entire 3-set, 2-hour performance.**  They were in time, in tune, and energetic and innovative.

The only thing they didn’t really do was much 3-part harmony, but I don’t think that was their strong suit in the first place during live performances.  Half of the songs were preserved as per their original studio recording or early concert days, and the others were given new life.  I found it to be a very nice balance.  Nothing was stale, but nothing was unrecognizably foreign either.  In addition to crowd-pleasers like “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, they also played many more B-sides like “Voices Inside My Head” which were a real treat for a hard-core fan like me.

You have to hand it to Stewart Copland in particular.  What athleticism!  He utilized a special percussion cage for a few numbers which was set up behind his drumkit — Wrapped Around Your Finger, and… I want to say… Walking in your Footsteps… He would fool around on the percussion cage for the first verse or so, then, in the space of a mere measure, he would seem to teleport to his drumkit and play right on the next beat.  It was awesome! 

Well — there’s a lot more I could write, but other reviewers are going to do it better and more thoroughly.  From the perspective of both a hard-core fan and a (I like to think) decent musician, I found The Police concert well worth the money and I’m so glad I saw them live.  If you’re thinking of going to any remaining concert dates, I recommend it!

My only complaint was with the crowd.  What is it with people nowadays?  Do we need handbooks for behavior in social situations?  People left early, people crowded together and obstructed the view, people were TALKING ON CELLPHONES during the warm up act.  (One chick in front of me wore a strapless sequened dress and snuggled up all close to her big money boyfriend, grinding against his hip like she was at a beach party and therefore blocking my view of the glorious Sting.  When I politely… well, OK, somewhat despairingly… asked if she could please move because she was blocking my view, she and her boyfriend looked at me like I’d asked them to donate blood.)

**Well, short of Sting doing a strip-tease with a surprise appearance by Bono and Han Solo skydiving in, which was, let’s face it, a pretty high standard to meet!

So while Laura and Ian have been out cruising around the UK, my brother and friends somehow dragged me out to Otakon this year.  With other personal things happening this weekend it wasn’t exactly easy to go, thus why I probably wasn’t the happiest camper around.

 One of the musical highlights of the weekend was meeting up with the Overclocked Remix gang and various friends, you know like Sakimoto and Eminence.  Sakimoto has a history of fame in video game music, but more recently filled Nobuo Uematsu’s shoes with the Final Fantasy XII soundtrack.

The OC Remix panel was excellent.  It was great to hang out and meet some of the people behind the remixer handles.  Good to see David/DJPretzel again and relive some high school moments.  Laura and I will definitely be posting some new remixes as soon as things calm down a bit.

Is it just me, or was E3 seriously lame this year?  I miss the pizzaz and the wow factor (and OK, the booth babes - hey, I’m a guy).

33% lighter PSP?  Sigh - what happened to built-in hard drive? 

Wii-Zapper, Wii-Wheel, and Wii-Fit was the best Reggie could offer us?  Where’s the Wii-Sword?

Ok, but there was some interesting stuff here and there.  Unfortunately, it also means I need to give up and buy an Xbox360 or PS3…

• Reason #1 that I want a next-gen system: Beautiful Katamari, because its just like crack - literally
• Reason #1 that I don’t have to buy a next-gen system: Super Puzzle Fighter Remix will be on PC
• Regardless of what anyone says, the Wii is kicking ass in the industry right now, and its a great moment for developers to reel in casual gamers - take advantage of it!
• I will be buying Guitar Hero 80’s
• I will be buying Guitar Hero 3
• I will have to give into Rock Band, even though I’ll look (and sound - my neighbor will hate me forever) even more like an idiot than I did with GT2.  However, its required that someone else own it sop we can play online.
• We finally saw Mario Galaxies - finally
• Smash Brothers won’t make it until December
• Spore is still “going to be 2008″
• Donovan’s brother, Kevin is probably playing Zelda Hourglass as I type this, and I hate him for it, because unlike him, I’m not willing to play it through in Japanese.
• The new, very cool-looking Naruto game is being made by Canadians (Ubisoft)
• Adult Swim is making games (Birdman, Aqua Teen, and Sealab)
• Geometry Wars is coming to Wii
• I will have to play BioShock because I loved both System Shock games
• I totally dig Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4.  Might get me back into 1st person shooters again.
• Skate looks really cool, and proces why 8+ Tony Hawk games is not a good thing
• Wipeout is coming to HD
• Warhawk has awesome physics

Video Games Live was at the Kennedy Center over the weekend — it’s not often that you get the NSO and Washington Master Chorale performing those scores in that historic location.  The hall was packed with kids and families, and it was nice to think that our orchestral tradition of performance will hopefully live on and grow instead of being relegated to yet another marvelously perfect performance of — insert dead white European composer’s name here — or a tenuously experimental monstrosity of modern music which is incapable of making our hearts soar and flutter.

Kids came to the Kennedy Center’s Symphony Hall, were quiet during the music and enthusiastic in their applause.  Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall (also conductor), composers and co-creators of the event, accomplished two important things at the performances in the Kennedy Center on Friday and Saturday: they demonstrated the legitimacy of video games and their soundtracks while emphasizing the legitimacy of a live symphony and ”classical” music to a new generation of young children.  For that reason alone, it was awesome, and long may the tour continue with ever-increasing additions!  (Star Fox and Final Fantasy VI please!)

note: I unreservedly love Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky, to name but a few, but we need to appreciate the here and now a little more too.  When’s the last time you heard John Williams’ “The Little People Work”, with its intimately contrapunctal woodwinds rivaling anything by Prokofiev, on your local classical station?

Chris and I are honored to have been invited up to Firaxis by the kind invitation of Mark Cromer, in-house composer and sound design manager.  We met Mark in the audio boot camp / GANG sessions out at GDC this past March.  We’re spending this coming Friday afternoon at his studio in Firaxis.  I’m particularly looking forward to it as Mark has a similar background to me — he has a classical background from a conservatory (Peabody) but also performs with a swing band he founded in Baltimore over 20 years ago.

It’ll definitely be a great learning experience to check out a professional facility first-hand.  It’s been a while since I spent time in a games music/sound studio, most “recently” helping to edit the VO for the squad chat in WWII: Frontline Command in late 2002.

Check out Mark’s bio here.

More on this after we get back!

- Laura

So Gina and Donovan tied my hands yesterday and forced me to buy Guitar Hero on our way to the Aqua Teen movie.  It was my second birthday for the year, so I caved.  And because of them, I spent a good few hours playing it this evening.    I got through all of the medium levels pretty much like it was nothing (all four or five stars), but have only made it through the first four sets on Hard mode, and usually just barely three stars at that.  Regardless, I was darn proud of myself and thought I was doing quite well…until I saw this at youtube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3yEjyuw42YY - Psycho Freakout
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5IIKePz1XZI - Freebird

I particularly like the Freebird video, but its hilarious watching him turn away from the TV on Psycho….and a Hero (i.e. professional gamer) was born!

What’s up with eight-year-old’s these days?  Wasn’t “Lil Poison” around eight when he made his claim to fame with Halo?

Caught VNV Nation last night at the 9:30 club.  It was a good concert, but we all agreed that we miss the real goth club of DC, Nation - now being filled with concrete as a parking lot goes up for the new baseball stadium - and we all know how awesome of a team the Nats are.  The sound at 9:30 just wasn’t as good as what I remember from Nation, and the atmosphere at 9:30 isn’t the same.  I liked Nation’s multi-venue setup.  I’m really pissed they didn’t do Saviour.  I love the remix of that on the Burning Empires remix album.

Been playing lots of God of War 2 lately.  Its definitely one of those “here we’ll just give you more from last time” types of sequels.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still amazed by how fun this game is, and the score is damn awesome, but as of yet, I don’t think I’ve run into a single new enemy.  Sure, the bosses are all new (and amazing!), and the plot is pretty good, but all the normal enemies for slashing are all the same - medusa, dog, dude with horns…tap circle to stab throat…etc.  All the same finishing moves and everything.  I guess I can’t ask for innovation on all fronts huh?

The music is superb of course.  I’m still overwhelmed after seeing the layout and design they went through to make the music for this (see Laura’s GDC notes).  I really like one track where the choir is making wicked cursed, aborigine types of sounds with a sweeping choir on the top as it migrates through a number of high-impact melodic tunes, where I particularly like the brass.  Its a very exciting track.

The soundtrack actually includes some interesting remixes.  JunkieXL is on there with a remix of the Colossus battle.  I don’t think its actually in the game, but its still a cool fit for the “hybrid” type of electronica-orchestral track they talked about at GDC.  The electronic instrumentation compliments the orchestration and vice-versa, sometimes where voices are being gated or staggered or some gritty effects on violins.  You’re left with something entirely new, but still remembering the original melodies and mood.

Laura wrote some cool jazz the other day.  Its pretty damn good too.  Maybe we’ll have it on our mp3 player soon?

…man, if I get hit by just one more cheesy archer picking at me from way back in the distance…might have to go through another PS2 controller.