The place of video game music.

I am posting this as it is concurrent with SA's operation to determine the 10 Most Memorable Video Game Themes , or whatever Craig et al. are calling it. Not sure it will be meaningful, but it will be interesting anyway to see their choices and reasoning (to which I contributed).

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a professor, the director of the orchestra at my alma mater. I was writing him information on my chosen vocational goal (that of being a composer for video games) and it developed into a sort of essay. It is largely stream of consciousness, but I felt that this section stood on its own. It is written for a reader who has no real knowledge of video games, let alone their soundtracks.

(For the record: I have a BA in Composition and am investigating a masters.)

"While I love and appreciate music of almost any kind, when I was young it was the music of video games (and secondarily, films) that captured my attention. It seems that the music of video games is often scorned or scoffed at, thought of as being nothing but random beeps and boops accompanying other beeps and boops of the actions on screen. While this may have been true to a certain extent when video games were young, over the years the sound quality of the machines running the games has improved, and ultimately to the extent that, today, music recorded live can be and is regularly used for the soundtracks, written by dedicated composers for the studio(s) designing the games.

"Some composers started as amateurs and worked their way up, such as Nobuo Uematsu who was originally in a band (and who has since in his later years started a new one). Others were already professionals when they started writing for games, such as Koichi Sugiyama, who had a previously established career writing music for television, commercials, and film. In fact, Sugiyama and Uematsu are among the most respected video game music composers (among many others) living and working today. Albums of their work are released regularly and Sugiyama is considered the father of the video game soundtrack, not just for his own memorable contributions to the repertoire, but for propagating the idea that the music can be taken as seriously as any music, through his conducting and arranging of public concerts to having it studio recorded with professional orchestras. Sugiyama turned the soundtrack of his first game into a ballet which has performed yearly in Japan since its inception. Uematsu wrote what is essentially a 20 minute opera for one game. Koji Kondo, the composer for the ever famous and loved Super Mario Bros. series of games, has reached the Top 40. How? Cell phone ring tones.

"Like any music, not all of it is gold, but much of it is as deserving of attention as any film music (which itself has had a lot of similar trouble). Roger Ebert, whom I admire as a film critic, famously said recently (via his website, as he can no longer speak aloud) that video games could never be art. Realizing that he had erred, he quickly amended himself saying that they could never be 'high art', which ultimately is even worse of a proclamation. This is not to say that all games need be considered equally, but many I think, with all of the artistic talent poured into them, are art in a way, a way that is not yet fully explored or recognized or acknowledged. Ebert's reasoning was that, by their very nature, video games were an interactive medium and, with players controlling their direction and many times their endings, they could not be 'art' because games, being so variable, could not provide a concrete statement, unlike films, whose content and endings were, generally, prescribed. I appreciate his opinion, but respectfully disagree. Film has had much time to mature over the last century and much of the early material, if not considered art, is at least considered within its historical context. I think that it is only fair to give games, including their soundtracks, a similar chance."