I did like the game, - but i used to load the game more to listen to the music. so i d be loading that game| and then sitting with my ear to the.to the spectrum. and that s. the thing was, when i came| to arrange it, i already knew it inside out because i ve known it for a long time. | orchestra plays. matt s challenge was notjust to transplant the original arrangement to an orchestra, which, of course, wouldn t sound that great. no instead, he expanded it in length and in breadth. even the compositions of modern games like battlefield 2042 have to be interpretations, because these days, gaming scores aren t even linear pieces of music. every time you play, the music changes to follow the action. what s important to understand is that composing for a game is such a multifaceted job. you have to compose for when nothing s going on. you have to compose for when action is happening. you have to account for the fact that the player might do something unpredictable. the amount of music
Market was worth more than £7 billion. another result of the amount of time that video gaming has been around is the way that it s permeated into other areas of our lives. yes. and equally, it s started to draw on and draw in other parts of our culture, and that includes music. music: firestarter by the prodigy. the first time i realised that games were starting to take their music scores seriously was when i played wipeout 2097 and realised that the accompanying soundtrack was not some random plinky plonk. it was firestarter by the prodigy. # i m a firestarterl twisted firestarter. # hey, hey, hey.#. and in recent years it s been recognised as a major art form. well known hollywood composers like hans zimmer and michael giacchino have turned their hands to writing scores for games. and that s why this week, video gaming came to the uk s
And they re being controlled individually and blended in with what the orchestra are doing. a lot of modern video games come with ready made orchestral scores. that is the music that you hear in the game. but when you think about it, if you re trying to adapt music from a 1980s computer game, you re basically talking about taking beeps and bloops, that s all it is, just single notes, and somehow adapting it and turning it into something that can be played by an orchestra this size. i mean, that s a hell of a lot of work. game music plays. i say beeps and bloops, but those early theme tunes were actually pretty clever, managing to give the impression of chords and multitrack audio, even though the computers could only make one sound at a time. it s something that astounded a young matt rogers, who s now been asked to arrange a new version of the theme tune to this the 1987 zx spectrum game chronos.
Point in your life that you were at when you were playing that game, and maybe who you were playing it with. so i m in my thirties. growing up with. mega drive was my first - console, and if i hear sonic, i immediately get put straight into that, that christmas - where me and my two sisters got our first console. - robert ames is a conductor and arranger who s worked on film scores and who s conducted previous proms based on experimental electronic music and sci fi movies. he s helped to curate the choice of music here, which is a journey from the 80s, through pokemon, final fantasy viii, shadow of the colossus, and right up to battlefield 2042. and in order to recreate the sounds and feelings of these games, some of which emerged through tiny, tinny speakers on the zx spectrum, he s augmented the traditional orchestral make up ever so slightly. you have an electronically expanded orchestra. can you show me your electronic expansion? yeah, ican. ican. it s not a large electronic expan
Best known celebration of classical music, the proms, and pokemon took over the royal albert hall. musicians tuning up. so let s give it a go. start the clock. orchestra plays. i m at the bbc s maida vale studios for the final rehearsals of the first ever gaming prom, called from 8 bit to infinity. it s a celebration of gaming music through the ages, all played by the royal philharmonic orchestra, a performance that should take many gamers back way back. in the same way as you hear a song on the radio and it reminds you of a certain time of your life, maybe who you were with, what you were doing, when you hear a piece of music from a video game, it takes you right back to that