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VGL (Video Games Live)
Has anybody ever heard of the musical video game concert called Video Games Live? If not then I will briefly describe it. It's basically a concert where a full orchestra plays music from various video games, hosted by world-famous video game composer Tommy Tallarico. It travels across the USA and parts of Europe, and the locations are usually random.
If any of you have been there, I'd like to know what you thought of it.
If any of you have been there, I'd like to know what you thought of it.
Comments
I went last year, and while I thought it was great, I probably would have had a better time if I hadn't gone by myself. It's usually great to hear a professional symphony play anything live, and I thought they made good attempts at livening the presentation up for people who would be bored just watching a bunch of people play music for a few hours. Without that element of friends to whisper comments to and watch react, however, I think I probably missed out on the full fun of going. There were a couple more games that I would have liked to see represented and a few that I thought could have been left out, but overall, it was a good selection of music. The best parts were probably the classic games medley, the Zelda arrangement, Sephiroth's theme (and I'm not even a big FFVII fan), and when they got audience members to come up and play games of Space Invaders and Frogger while the orchestra played and changed the music for the games in real time.
This year, I will be going with other people, so hopefully that makes it better. I also got seats for the second row in the orchestra pit, so hopefully we have a good chance of one of us being called up on-stage to play a game.
The next year they decided to not cancel everything and I went with James. I should preface this with the fact that I like classical music, I played the violin for close to 10 years and we had season passes for the Houston Symphony Orchestra for two years at this point. The HSO is a fantastic orchestra with a wonderful conductor. Their talents were completely wasted with this concert. The sound guys didn't balance anything properly and I didn't understand why they were trying to amplify everything to begin with. At a normal concert everyone in the concert hall will be able to hear the orchestra. Add to this the horrible guitar that overpowered everything else. The MC, Tommy?, was horrible and made a few jabs about how the orchestra would normally never play cool things like this (when they recently did a James Bond concert and a Pirates of the Caribbean for kids concert). The little games mixed in were cute and entertaining but that was about the only enjoyable part of the concert. I enjoyed some of the pieces that were played but I didn't understand why some made it into the final list. Especially the music pieces that Tommy and the conductor wrote, I never heard of these games before that night and I still haven't heard or seen anything about them. Two other well known video game pieces could have replaced those and the concert would've been better for it. It felt like they were simply trying to advertise their own skills and made the whole concert feel like a bad commercial. The finale with Sephiroth's theme was ruined by Tommy playing his guitar over the chorus and orchestra. The concert's only good points were the games involving the audience and Martin Leung. Martin Leung is the video game pianist and I was seriously impressed by his skill and speed on the piano. If I saw a youtube video of him first I probably wouldn't believe he actually played that fast. However it felt like Tommy handled Matrin poorly (Martin seemed very shy) as if he was trying to make him play a lot more than (I think) he was supposed to. In summary, the concert was poorly run and put together; the only enjoyable parts involved audience participation and Martin Leung.
In contrast James and I drove to Chicago from Rochester NY for the Dear Friends music from Final Fantasy concert in 2005. That was worth the time and money it took to go out there even if it was only for a weekend. They really took advantage of the orchestra and chorus (I don't remember which chorus was used though). Nothing sounded out of place because it was mixed very well. The conductor, MC and everyone else that spoke was very eloquent and also enhanced the performance. The concert also used screens showing clips from the games during the various pieces. All in all this felt and sounded like a fantastic video game music concert done by an orchestra. For the finale they played Sephiroth's theme (just as Video Games Live tried to do) and it was one of the best pieces I've heard played by an orchestra or chorus. I had goosebumps with the first few notes and I've never heard an orchestra hall so quiet when everyone realized what was going on. I would recommend this concert to anyone who wanted to see a well planned and managed video game concert.
If you went to Otakon in 2007 and saw Eminence, they were a better concert than Video Games Live. They only used 5 people (2 violins, viola, cello and piano) with no additional stage screens or videos playing and they were amazing. They played songs people recognized from video games and some from an anime I hadn't heard of but, the point was that it all flowed together and sounded fantastic. Nothing was out of place or smashed together to make a quick buck.
So I would recommend Eminence or Dear Friends very enthusiastically to anyone that wanted to go see a video game concert. I can't recommend Video Games Live when there are so many better options available.
I have heard that other video game related concerts like PLAY! are better than VGL, and I really wish one of them would come by my neck of the woods so that I could hear for myself and compare. It especially made me sorry not to hear them when I saw that Silent Hill is on their list of games. *sigh* Oh well, VGL is all we can really get here, and it's good enough for now, I think.
The Cosplay contest? There were five or six finalists and you could tell two worked on their costumes for hours and probably were regular Cosplayers. The winner that the audience chose? Little eight year old Luigi with a dirt devil on his back. As an audience member I loved that the little guy won, but the cosplayer/craft person in me hates that the people that put effort into this contest failed. They should have been more on the ball with rules and regulations for their contests or had divisions in it at least. Houston is a very big anime and gaming city, there are several conventions here every year and all of them could have helped Video Games Live run their contest in a much better fashion.
If you took Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall out of Video Games Live I'm sure the quality of the concert would improve. However, in addition to getting rid of those two you would also have to make a decision. Is this a rock concert, a classical concert or a successful merging of the two? Video Games Live gave off the feel of wanting to be a rock concert so badly with Tommy on his guitar and all of his on stage antics. It did not work. They did not successfully pull the two styles together in any enjoyable fashion. I think it can be done as I've heard only good things about the Play! concert series. Whoever would run this concert would need to either merge the two styles much more carefully, perhaps with a better music selection, or try a more exclusively rock or classical direction. The latter with Dear Friends and Eminence is wonderful. If the useless commercial that consisted of Tommy's Advent Rising piece and Jack's Jade Empire piece were removed and replaced with something better (even better if people have heard of it) then the total set list would improve. Playing WWII footage during a WWII game instead of game play was also an unsettling deterrent during the concert. And while I can understand wanting to use One Winged Angel as a finale it had already been done, and much better by Dear Friends. At least during Dear Friends I could actually hear the orchestra and chorus. At Video Games Live all I could hear was Tommy Tallarico pushing himself into the song with his guitar; the song would've been fine without him (if he hadn't played I wouldn't have to watch him incessantly tap his foot to try and keep time either). It doesn't help that he had to get his last few moments parading around the stage at the end of the concert trying to show off and take the focus off the orchestra. His antics came off as a cheap cry for attention that fulfilled his childhood dream of being a rock star. His behavior wasn't necessary at this concert.
I am sure Video Games Live has a novel appeal for anyone who hasn't seen something similar, however there are much better video game concerts out there. Play! just started their 2008 tour and James and I will be going to the Fort Worth concert to check it out.
Anyways, what I'd like to know is, what should I tape/record? I'd just like to have something cool from there put up when I get back home.