From bleeps of 'Pong' and 'Mario,' game music comes of age
PARIS (AP) — The electronic bleeps and squawks of Tetris, ''Donkey Kong and other generation-shaping games that you may never have thought of as musical are increasingly likely to be playing at a philharmonic concert hall near you.
From the "ping ... ping" of Atari's 1972 ground-breaking paddle game "Pong," the sounds, infectious ditties and, with time, fully-formed orchestral scores that are an essential part of the sensory thrill for gamers have formed a musical universe.
When audiences pack the Philharmonie de Paris' concert halls this weekend to soak in the sounds of a chamber orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra performing game music and an homage to one of the industry's stars, "Final Fantasy" Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu, they will have no buttons to play with, no characters to control.
"When you're playing a game you are living that music every day and it just gets into your DNA," says Eimear Noone, the conductor of Friday's opening two-hour show of 17 titles, including "Zelda," ''Tomb Raider," ''Medal of Honor" and other favorites from the 1980s onward.
Noone, known herself for musical work on World of Warcraft, ''Overwatch and other games, says the technological limitations of early consoles — tiny memories, rudimentary chips, crude sounds — forced composers to distill their melodies down to the absolute kernels of what melodic content can be, because they had to program it note by note.
Today, more young people are listening to orchestral music through the medium of their video game consoles than have ever listened to orchestral music.