There s nothing quite like the sound of a great orchestra at its best as the music swells and fills a concert hall. And there s nothing that sticks in your mind like the sound of the Super Mario video game, especially after you ve heard it a few thousand times. But bringing them together?
The orchestra plays video game theme music as popular gaming images flash on giant screens and walls, and the musicians change what they are playing based on the actions of someone from the crowd with an electronic transmitter on his or her back? It sounds a bit crazy, right? And it may be, but that s what the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra will be doing at 7:30 p.
m. Sunday when producer Tommy Tallarico brings the Video Games Live show to Kleinhan s Music Hall. We like to think we re inventing a whole new form of entertainment, said Tallarico, who s a video game music composer and the producer of Video Games Live.
Tony Hawk s Pro Skater and Spider-Man are among his game music credits. Never before has a symphony been interactive on stage before in synchronization, all changing the music on stage, he added. That s a sweeping claim, but in reality technology has already had huge effects on all of the performing arts, from dramatic theater to rock concerts to spectacles like Disney s High School Musical.
In fact, it s difficult to see any borders between them sometimes. It s most obvious at the spectacle level, where shows like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra combine musical bombast, hightech laser lighting, synchronized special effects, guitar solos and classical music in arenas around the world (including the HSBC Arena in Buffalo on Nov. 25).
But it s true at every level. Bill Hedrick, the production manager at Shea s Performing Arts Center, sees the pervasive influence of technology with every major show that comes in. Remember the sound check, where tour engineers used to play with the audio in a hall until they got it right?
Hedrick says it s different now. What will typically happen during the sound installation is there s a guy walking around the building with a laptop or a little hand-held unit, Hedrick said. He s going to the different zones in the theater with a stylus, touching a screen, tuning the sound system, doing the EQ so that every seat has a decent sound.
Does it work? Well, Hedrick said, you know that concert from way back when, the one you remember so fondly? If you think back to that concert when you were 18 or 15, and it was the greatest show in the world, and you have that memory, he said.
What it really sounded like in 1979 or 1985 or 1990, there s no comparison, because of the way technology s gone. If you were to go back to the technology of the 1980s or 90s now, someone who s a regular concert-goer, I think they d notice. That is, if they weren t too busy paying attention to things like computerized video and lighting.
When video screens started popping up at concerts in the 1980s, they usually just showed the performers in close-up shots so people in the nosebleed sections could feel like they d been in the same municipality as the performer. Now they ve become integral parts of the performance. In fact, when country singer Brad Paisley performs, he ll almost stand off to the side of the stage at times when his videos are playing on the big screen behind him.
An admitted tech geek who has shot and edited some of the videos he shown during his performances, Paisley has also made some of the funniest music videos in recent years including Online with its chorus of I m so much cooler online. Paisley also had a hit in a duet with Alison Krause on Whiskey Lullaby, but she s got her own tours to do. So when the band starts the song, Krause s holographic image is projected life-size on one side of the stage, while Paisley sings with her recorded voice.
From more than 30 rows back, it s difficult to tell at first that Krause isn t actually there. It s like a futuristic projection out of a Star Wars movie ( Help me Obi-Wan Kenob i . .
. ) . Maybe they took their cue from the concerts in Memphis celebrating Elvis Presley on the anniversary of his death.
The King performed well, not actually live on stage but projected with a full ensemble of real musicians who had played with him. They hadn t aged quite as well. That kind of technology brings its own questions.
For example, if you re the Pussycat Dolls, why bother bringing and paying a band when you can just bring along the recorded tracks and play to them? And then there are the dance-oriented performers whose moves are demanding enough that they re performing to recorded vocals when they re onstage ( sing and dance at the same time, who do you think I am James Brown? ).
There are potential problems with this, such as reducing the opportunities for improvisation and audience interaction. There are potential technical problems, too, such as what happens when the computers break down. Hedrick said most productions carry two of three backup computers, with everything needed for the performance on them.
In fact, he said, if the control console goes down, it s frequently possible to plug in a laptop and run the show off it. Tallarico said his group has never had a computer go down, but it still carries two back-ups. And he s purposely tried to avoid locking the show into a mode where the spontaneity is squeezed out.
In parts of the Video Games Live show where audience members are called on stage (hence the interactive part), the orchestra will be called on to switch what it s playing depending on what the person does, so no two shows are exactly the same. Interactivity could be the biggest technology challenge facing performers today. Brian Milbrand, the technical director at Buffalo s Squeaky Wheel media center, said software like the Max/MSP Jitter that allows live interactive installations involving audio, video and robotics is one interesting step.
It s testing a way of interacting with the media that goes beyond clicking with the mouse or clicking with the remote, said Milbrand. That could be a precursor to new technology being developed, like the way Wii sort of came out of the idea of Max/MSP. Milbrand said he could see some of the work coming out of those areas today eventually being accepted and put before larger audiences the way installation techniques that bubbled up in places like Hallwalls in the 1970s and 80s have made their way onto mainstream stages today.
Video Games Live conductor Jack Wall, Tallarico s partner and a composer for Jade Empire and the Myst series of video games, will also interact with the BPO musicians. Wall will communicate changes to the orchestra by a system of hand signals, and the musicians will bounce between spots on their scores which extend wide across their music stands instead of fitting standard- sized pages. The orchestra does perform to a click track, and while Tallarico said his computers have never gone down, the lines carrying the click tracks a metronomic rhythmic device to keep the performers together have stopped working.
Tallarico said it hasn t been a problem. Then the conductor just watches his [computer] screen and conducts, like in the old days, he said.
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