CP: Can you talk a little bit about orchestra selection? You tour around the world going mostly with local orchestras. Can you talk about exactly how you select which orchestra to go with? You’ve worked with orchestras of varying levels of prestige.
TT: What we do is when we go into a city, especially for the first time, we try to find who is the biggest, most prestigious symphony in that town, because for us, it adds legitimacy not only to our show, but for all the people in the audience. We’d play Washington, D.C., for example, and when we have 160 musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra on stage playing Mario and Sonic, the people in the audience are like, “Man, look how far my hobby and my love, my passion for games… look how far it’s come. That’s the National Symphony on stage, my hometown symphony!”
It’s also great for the symphonies, because we’re helping to usher in a whole new generation of people that they would normally never play in front of. For them to play it, for them to get a whole new audience introduced to them, and then maybe the week after that [those audiences] come back and see the Disney music, or maybe it is Beethoven, they get that experience like it was for me. So that’s important, to really go for bringing that sense of community to there instead of just rolling in with our own orchestra (which is kind of what Star Wars: In Concert does). We like to get that hometown [orchestra] because it helps the community, too. It helps the symphonies in that area, and that’s part of our goal.
CP: I was actually talking to one of your flute soloists, Laura, and I was mentioning to her that you guys should try and book the Chicago Symphony Orchestra if you ever get a chance.
TT: That’s a tough one, because there’s a couple of symphonies in Chicago. There’s like five or six of them. One of them actually is run by Arnie Roth, who does the Distant Worlds show. I think the Chicago Pops is his? Chicagoland Pops, I think? He runs that. Again, sometimes the symphonies don’t like doing pop shows. Some symphonies are very, very traditional, and they don’t need the pops in order to sell seats. They don’t want to do it. They don’t want to usher in a new generation of people. Who knows where they’ll be in ten years from now, I don’t know. It’s like religion, you better change with the times or else no one’s going to listen to your message anymore. So sometimes it is tough to get some of the bigger symphonies.
But a lot of times, the symphonies will hire us. They’ll say, “Oh my gosh, we’ve heard so many amazing things about your program, we’re going to pay you to come and put on a show for us.” We just played the Dallas Symphony, two shows this weekend, and that was a situation where they came to us. They said, “We want your program. We want you to play here.” We sold thousands of tickets for them, so that was cool.
[Editor's Note: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was actually slated to perform a Distant Worlds concert with Arnie Roth tomorrow, August 1st, at the Ravinia Music Festival, but the event was canceled due to a venue conflict.]
CP: Well I want to wrap up now. You talked about how Video Games Live is influencing so many younger kids, younger generations. A lot of them are now trying to figure out, “How can I get involved in video game music?” “How can I be a composer for video game music?” “How can I perform in Video Games Live or other video game orchestras?”
TT: So here’s what you do. If you’re looking to get into the video game industry as a composer or sound designer, voice over, whatever, you’ve got to join up and become a member of the Game Audio Network Guild, or G.A.N.G. So you’ve got to become a G.A.N.G. member, and the website is AudioGANG.org. It’s a non-profit organization that I started about nine years ago, and we currently have over 2,000 members representing 35 countries. The reason I created this network was not only for us professional game composers from all over the world to share information and resources, but also for people who are looking to get in the video game industry. “How much should I charge?” “What does a contract look like?” “What’s the best way to submit a demo?” “How do I create a demo?” “What kind of music do you want to hear?” “What tools should I be using?” All that information, we have interactive forums. It’s kind of like the “Facebook” of game audio. You can post your profile, you can post music,
we have communication and networking, we have deals off of gear and software, and the conferences, the GDC conference, things like that. So that’s really important. So going to AudioGANG.org is the first thing.
Second thing, go to the Game Developers Conference, GDConf.com, because to get into game audio, it’s all about networking, and you have to meet the people. Just sending in a CD of your music, forget it. It’ll never happen, it’s impossible these days. It won’t happen. You have to meet the people, you have to sit down with them. You have to convince them [of] your passion, show your passion. Show your knowledge. Show them that you’re the right guy to go to. “Hey, can I do anything for you? I’ll do it for free! What do you need, I’ll do it for free! I just want to prove myself to you.” So getting out there and networking is huge, you do that at the Game Developers Conference.
Another place locally, in your local area, is the International Game Developers Association, of the IGDA.org, another non-profit, where you go and a lot of independent developers are there, again, meeting the people, getting involved with the indies from the ground-level up, and always coming through for them.
Then the final thing is there’s some great books out there. The Complete Guide to Game Audio by Aaron Marks is an amazing read. Alexander Brandon, who’s a composer of Unreal, has a great game audio process book. If you just go on Amazon.com and put in “game audio,” two or three of the best books will come up. It’s a great way for twenty bucks or whatever to know everything there is to know about our industry.
CP: I’m going to wrap it up now. Is there anything else you want to mention, maybe you want to mention your PBS special or your E3 concert again?
TT:Yeah, the big thing is from a national level, VideoGamesLive.com, coming to PBS nationwide, July 31st, for a whole week in primetime. We have a CD coming out, a DVD, a Blu-ray as well with the launch of that. But make sure, everybody out there, just get on your local PBS website and email them to make sure they’re going to show it. Say, “Hey, can you please play Video Games Live?” The more requests they get, the more times they’ll air it. They really do listen to those folks.
And just one quick thing about the CD, the DVD, and everything, and the Blu-ray: this is the first time ever that the music to Mario, and Zelda, and Mega Man, and Sonic has ever been made available for sale outside of Japan. It’s the first time ever. You can’t go on iTunes right now and download Zelda music. Can’t do it, right? Until now. This is going to be huge. The first time that Mario Bros. – you’ll be able to actually buy Mario, instead of trying to figure out how to get it imported [from] Japan or illegally downloading it like most of us do. But now it will actually be available.
Again, it’s a legitimacy thing. If all the folks out there support this stuff, it sends out a message to the record companies, it sends out a message to the game developers and the game publishers to say, “Wow, people really are willing to pay for this stuff. We should start putting out more of it.” It’s been tough because a lot of people love video game music, but they’re illegally downloading it ’cause that’s the only place they can get it! So now that we’re making it available for the first time — Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, Sonic — I need people to support it out there. I’m not just saying that because I want your money, no. I’m saying for the industry, tell all your friends about it, and let’s put ourselves on the map and show these companies and show these record companies and game publishers that people are interested.
We prove it all the time with our show. Everybody thought that when I created Video Games Live that I was completely insane… and that was the game publishers! They’re like, “Who would go pay to see our music with… a symphony?! People don’t go to the symphony to begin with, and now you want to put video games on top of it? You’re crazy!” We did our first show at the Hollywood Bowl right down the street here — 11,000 people showed up. The L.A. Philharmonic, 140 musicians on stage. Now we’ve been doing it all over the world. I think that says a lot. No matter where we go, whether we’re in New Zealand, or Singapore, or Portugal, or Spain, or France, or Mexico, or Brazil, thousands and thousands of people are coming out to appreciate video games and video game music. That’s saying a lot, I think, for our industry and for video game music. There’s fans all over the world. I don’t know that there’s a lot of bands out there who can say that. You’ve got your top bands like the U2s, and the Madonnas, and the Rolling Stones, and things like that, but a lot of bands, somebody who’s super popular in Germany might not be known in Taiwan. Here we go, we roll into any of those places. I mean, we’re doing a show, we’re putting together a show now in Israel for this year. Tel Aviv! We’re putting a show together. Crazy, right? Who would’ve thought? We played Poland last year, and Ireland, and Wales, and it’s just… it’s nuts. It’s insane. There’s video game fans everywhere, and they all love and appreciate the music.
CP: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for your time! Be sure to check out VideoGamesLive.com for upcoming tour dates, and we’ll see you all on PBS!
TT: Rock on!
For a partial list of air times for the Video Games Live PBS special around the United States, head over to the Video Games Live site. For full programming schedules in your area, please visit the PBS site and check your local listings. If there are no listings for your local area, please call your local PBS station and let them know you’d love to see it added to the program!
