sega: a retrospective
A magic event this afternoon. As part of the current GameCity mini-festival thingy, a smogasbord of computer game/art events, myself and lawes got to see richard jacques. He's a composer who works for sega writing music for games, and this afternoon he played some stuff - both recent and old - on piano in a church. brilliant.
i think the sonic medley was my favourite moment for pure nostalgia and the added 8-bit backing tracks, while some of the more recent stuff was firmly into the category of 'orchestral film score' in terms of narrative intent and lush execution. the only dodgy moments were a couple of lyrical works which were very much in the J-pop miliue; fine if you like that kind of thing (i've most often heard them played over the end credits of manga films), but i'm sticking to 8-bit sounds from here in.
check out richardjacques.co.uk for more info, i'm particularly impressed with the fact that his score for headhunter was played by the los angeles philharmonic at hollywood bowl last year. nice.
i think the sonic medley was my favourite moment for pure nostalgia and the added 8-bit backing tracks, while some of the more recent stuff was firmly into the category of 'orchestral film score' in terms of narrative intent and lush execution. the only dodgy moments were a couple of lyrical works which were very much in the J-pop miliue; fine if you like that kind of thing (i've most often heard them played over the end credits of manga films), but i'm sticking to 8-bit sounds from here in.
check out richardjacques.co.uk for more info, i'm particularly impressed with the fact that his score for headhunter was played by the los angeles philharmonic at hollywood bowl last year. nice.
posted by paul at 9:41 pm
2 Comments:
"narrative intent and lush execution"
Was the sound lush too, or was it tinny 8-bit style with no bass?
yeah, twas pretty lush on the more orchestral pieces. man with piano + laptop for backing score + big speakers. and loud and tinny on the older stuff!
personally i like the older stuff more though, because it's more game-specific. the sweeping orchestral stuff is all well and good, but it's not unique to games, not like the 8/16-bit sound of yesteryear. sonic and mario still rule ok.
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