The Guitar Hero series on Jemsite features interviews with guitarists and musicians who may not have star status YET, but their current situations have shaped them to be who they are--determined, fond of their craft, and heroes in their own right. Perhaps you'll see in these upcoming entries the next Jimi Hendrix, Melissa Etheridge, or Duane Allman. Or perhaps they'll become household names by doing what they do best--ripping a mean riff!
Clive Thompson is by no means a typical Guitar Hero (but then again, who is?) When I first decided to interview him for the site, I didn't know he had even picked up a guitar, let alone play one for 25 years. I wanted to interview him about his take on music and the video game scene. Talk about the influence of technology on music and mention some of his major accomplishments, like writing for Wired.com and keeping up a hugely popular blog called Collision Detection.
Of course, the musicians, teachers, critics, and aficianados that are interviewed on this site are all full of surprises and why should this one be any different. Wait, there's more.
Get this: Clive Thompson also plays banjo, ukulele, bass, and a bit of the keyboard, Go figure. He loves video games and has a bit to say about the state of music in video games--and despite all this, I've still made him this week's Guitar Hero--well, because he's just that cool.
Tell me about your experience in technology, science, and video games.
I’ve played video games since 1979, when I first played Pong; I’m 41 years old. I’ve been a technology enthusiast my whole life – learned programming when I was kid, was always doing tech projects in my spare t ime. What’s the state of music in video games? Has it modernized? Is it improving?
The big shift happened about ten years ago. Up until then, most games had their own original music, MIDI-style, with rather cheesy MIDI instruments, because they didn’t have the capability to do anything more sophisticated. But in the late 90s (roughly, I’m not sure when) games started having the memory capacity to include full recorded audio – so they started licensing music from bands. This is particularly true in games where modern live music seemed appropriate – like racing games, some sports games, but obviously not games set in medieval times so much. So you wound up with an interesting debate over whether a game was more fun with a well-known song by a well-known band playing in the background, or a piece of original music done by a composer. A lot of labels now lobby hard to get their music included in hot new games, because they know it’ll really expose young people to the song – if you play a racing game for 200 hours straight, unless you turn the music off you’ll wind up listening to the roster of songs over and over and over again, and they really get stuck in your head. The breakout game in terms of using licensed music was probably Grand Theft Auto; when you hijacked a car you could listen to the radio, and there were several radio stations with different themes – a lot of people found it so much fun to drive around listening to music that that’s all they’d do, for hours.
Many famous games continued to commission their own original music, but now they could hire entire orchestras to play it – most notably games like Final Fantasy and Halo, which had such well-known background music that nowadays there are orchestras that tour around playing it to sold-out crowd of game fans.
Another big evolution has been in the attempt to make the music responsive to what’s happening in the game. Most games now do this to some degree – i.e. when you enter a new area that’s dangerous, the music shifts to “dangerous”, or when you start a battle it shifts to battle-like music. But most games are pretty hamfisted at this, because to do a really smooth music transition you need to slightly anticipate – a few seconds before hand -- what a player is going to do in a game (so you can prepare the musical transition) and it’s really hard to do so.
The other big evolution in music has been rhythm games like Guitar Hero, where you try to manipulate a controller to match the musical notes or drum rhythm in a game. It turns out people absolutely love to do that, because it’s a new way to engage with and experience songs. What instruments, sounds are used for music in video games, gaming that you know of? Describe the sound.
The very early arcade games were very primitive synthesized sounds; the early generation of home-console cassettes were also pretty primitive MIDI instruments – they sound like the cheap, crappy synthesizers you could buy for home use in the 80s.
Now that music also uses sampled sounds and recorded audio from live instruments, the range of instruments you hear is indistinguishable from regular recorded music. There’s been a resurgence of online Flash and Java games that are intentionally retro, though, and they’ve started harkening back to the 80s by using intentionally 80s-sounding cheap synths. What are your favorite video games and what’s your favorite video game music (or if there isn’t just one, name a few)
My favorites in each genre are probably: World of Warcraft (online gaming), Halo (first person shooters), any Burnout game (racing) … in role-playing games I don’t really have a favorite. I don’t really play sports games. For retro games, I think Robotron is one of the best.
How has the advance of technology changed video game music specifically?
Two things: The increasing memory size of games has allowed game creators to include huge, recorded audio files instead of just MIDI, and the advent of music that’s customized to reflect what’s happening in the game.
Tell me about the creation of your blog, Collision Detection.
I started it while on sabbatical at MIT! Tell me about some of the other work you do. Is music involved in any way or do you write about music in any of your other tasks?
No, I never write about music professionally. I write about it on my blog sometimes because I play music in my spare time.
Do you personally have any background in music?
I’ve played guitar for about 25 years, and harmonica for about as long as that too; I also play several other stringed instruments (banjo, ukulele, bass) and a bit of keyboards.
I listen to almost anything, so I don’t really have big favorites. Or rather, my favorites change frequently. What is the future of video games and video game music, in your opinion?
No idea. I’ve long ago stopped trying to predict the future.
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