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Music

Video Game Music

January 24, 2019

Music for video games is a growing if still underrated genre. Some tracks now even make it into the music charts.

https://p.dw.com/p/3C5wr
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What began with the simple 8-bit Game Boy melody has now warped into complex compositions and arrangements that are even finding their way into major concert halls.

Music for video games is highly complex, and far more than just a related genre of movie soundtracks. Documentary maker Michael Wende wanted to find out why something that started 30 years ago now exerts such a magnetic attraction.

But the success story is really the story of Nobuo Uematsu. The Japanese composer used a digital 8-bit machine to create the melodies for the first edition of today's cult video game series Final Fantasy in 1987, before there was even a concept of video game music as a genre. Parallel to the rapid development of computer games, which have now been part of the entertainment culture for over 40 years, Uematsu has been developing video game music. The current high point of his work is an arrangement of the numerous leitmotifs from the Final Fantasy series VI, VII and X. World-renowned orchestras perform Uematsu's symphonic works in concert.

The documentary accompanies the Munich Radio Orchestra as they rehearse and perform Ueamatsu's "Symphonic Poem” and meets pianist and gamer Benyamin Nuss. What makes many video game melodies so timeless? Is it the performance or the composition? In addition to talking to communications experts and German conductor Eckehard Stier, who encourages an experimental approach to this young genre, the documentary also shows the enthusiasm of some YouTube gamers and "let's players” for video game music. For them, the genre is much more than just background noise.

 

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