Into the Score - May 29, 2007


(INTRO)

I'm Kenley Kristofferson and this is Into the Score.

CONTACT INFO:

Hey everyone, it's the beginning of June and you're listening to Into the Score, the only podcast that's solely devoted to the academic study of video game music and I am your host, Kenley Kristofferson.  Forgive the delay of Episode 7.2, I was kind of in Australia for all of May and figured that I miiiiiight have time to do a podcast, but in reality, there was no way.

However, I did a lot of thinking about this episode and what I should say about the music, the composer, the west... I don't know, doing a podcast on Monkey Island was a bit of a challenge.  Before I tell you why, let's tackle the contact info.

You can check us out at www.songofthefates.com and listen there or through iTunes and to reach me, you can send me a note at Kenley@songofthefates.com, k-e-n-l-e-y@songofthefates.com and that's all one word.

Okay, so in doing this podcast that turned into being a two-parter (but wasn't really supposed to be), I really wanted to talk about Western composers, so composers from the US and Canada primarily (but Europe could also be included) because it's important! It's important to look at all sides of the coin when talking about an entire genre of music, so looking at different schools is key! If you were to take 20th century music, you couldn't just talk about Stravinsky or Schoenberg or Satie or late-Strauss because that's just one piece of the pie (although they dominated a lot of the ideals of 20th century "Classical" music).  SO much happened in that century in that particular genre of music, which has many SUB-genres.  Similarly, one could do a podcast about 80s music, but they couldn't just talk about 80s rock, for example because there were SO many types of music that came out in that time and SO many bands.  There's 80s rock, 80s pop, 80s metal, 80s industrial... 

Anyways, where I'm going with this is that while there is little question that Japanese composers dominate the large culture of video game music, a lot is happening in the west too and I am trying to show that with Monkey Island.

The catch is, however, that there is zero information on Michael Land or his music on the internet... some midis here and there and a handful of Monkey Island websites.  This is not to say that Monkey Island has "bad music" or music not worth documenting, but it is tough for one to navigate an area which has been pretty much uncharted.

That's what got me confused - some of these composers have written for over 100 games! How is it that there is little-to-no information about some of these composers? Well, I didn't find a lot, but I found some, so this episode is going to continue where we left off in our video podcast with contributions that the west has made to video game music in general and there are some pretty big footprints.

Anyways, let's get down to this.  This is "The SCUMM Bar" by Michael Land from LucasArts' 1990 release, "The Secret of Monkey Island."

(03 - THE SCUMM BAR)

We'll talk about the importance of SCUMM as the title of the bar in a second, but first let's talk about the background of the game.  Taken from the Monkey Island press release...

"Lucasfilm Games today announced the Fall, 1990 release of THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND(TM), a comedy set during the "golden age" of piracy in the Caribbean. The game's twisty plot leads our hero, fresh from the Old World, on a hilarious, complex, swash-buckling search for the fabled secret of Monkey Island. Like other Lucasfilm Games graphic adventures, THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND features cinematic storytelling, high resolution graphics, and a unique point 'n click interface.

The late 1600s were the best of times for pirates. Secure in their Caribbean strongholds, they amassed huge fortunes, plundering shipments of New World gold. Tales of pirate wealth attracted many adventurers, among them our hero who lands in the port of Melee with high hopes, no money, and an insatiable curiosity. If he's clever enough, he will win the confidence of Melee's pirates and soon find himself blown by the winds of fate toward the terrifying and legendary Monkey Island -- an adventure that would chill the bones of even the most bloodthirsty buccaneer."
SCUMM

And that is taken from www.thescummbar.com.  Okay, so let's talk about this SCUMM thing.  SCUMM is an acronym for the "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion", or S-C-U-M-M, which we call SCUMM.  This means that your one character can walk around the screen, either by point-and-click or with a joystick and interact with his environment using verb-based options like "open", "close", "look at", "pick up" or whatever.  So then you walk up to the chest, for example, click "open" from your list of verbs and click on the chest, resulting in "open chest".  Very sensible, but it was a very cutting edge engine for the time.

Another really cool thing that the SCUMM engine can do is host other engines within it for like, animation or music - the one that goes in for LucasArts' music is called the Interactive Music Streaming Engine, or iMuse.  And Michael Land helped develop that! We'll thank Wikipedia for that and iMuse will catapult us into the music section of our episode.  This musis is heard while you're walking on the large map of Melee Island (where you start the adventure), it's called "Melee Island" and it's composed by Michael Land.

(07 - MELEE ISLAND)

MUSIC

That was "Melee Island" by Michael Land, bringing us to our analysis part of the podcast.  I did a bit of a bio in the last episode, and as there's not very much info on Michael Land anyways, we're just going to keep going.  

The score of The Secret of Monkey Island is more Carribbean than piratey because that's where the game takes place, and that's important.  But the more that I played and the more I listened to the music, it seemed like the music was more to colour the visuals than to have hooks that the player listen to.  With that being said, a lot of the game is silent - maybe this was a memory thing as the original release of The Secret of Monkey Island was for two 3.5" floppy discs but, I don't know.  The lack of music in a particular part of a game, movie or production implies the importance of moments where music IS present. While that sounds a bit confusing, let's think about it for a sec: If there is a lack of stimuli at any given point in a production, the return of that stimuli suggests that that scene is important.  The Wizard of Oz is a good example of that, where the first part of the movie is in black-and-white and really drab, then when Dorothy gets into Oz, it's like "whoa! Colour!" So we, the audience, place importance in that change.  

Usually it's the opposite with games or movies nowadays, where the REMOVAL of stimuli suggests importance.  Like when you're playing a game and, all of a sudden, the music stops, you just get pulled in and it's like "whoa! Something's going to happen!" And usually it does - with Monkey Island it's the opposite.

An example of this is walking through the village in Melee Island and it's silent, then when we enter the Voodoo Lady's house...

(08 - VOODOO SHOP)

That's the "Voodoo Shop", and there are some important scenes in there, so it has music.  If we listen to the colours in it there's a drum kit, a bass, a synth, a low brass section and a flute (sounds like a synth pan flute to me).  The drum kit and bass play an ostinato, the brass just comes in, like a call-and-response kind of idea and then the flute just kind of dances on top of everything.  Not a very whistle-able tune, but maybe that's the idea.  That's generally called "Ambient Music", but not in the trance or electronica way, it's there to directly reflect the ambience and is the opposite of "Thematic Music" which uses thematic melodies to make reference to a person, place or thing in a work.  The instruments are used to help support the visuals... just think of every horror movie you've ever seen... reeeeeeeeeeeeee... yeah, ambience.

So while all of the music is ambient, there are still traces of themes in there, like any music - it's a balance, there are elements of ambience and themes in any music.  But one thing that really irks me about this score, like drives me totally bananas is that a lot of things in the soundtrack are musically unbalanced.  This was probably Michael Land's point to make, but I don't really like it - and I'm going to explain what I mean and why I don't like it.

There are two ways that he has unbalanced a lot of the music in the score; the first is using an odd number of beats and/or bars to lead into his melodies.  The first time I noticed this was in the games introduction.  First it's a bunch of ambient percussion and organ, which is kind of fun (or would be really fun to perform) and then it goes into the theme.  Let's have a listen.

(01 - OPENING THEMES - INTRODUCTION - 0:00 - 0:50)

When the vamp comes in at around the 20-second mark, I expected two bars of either 3/4 or 4/4 to lead into the theme because we, as listeners, usually hear things musically in pairs of 2,4, 8, 16 or at the very least, an even-numbered number of bars.  But no! What does he do? He puts in a bar of 3/4 and THEN a bar of 4/4 that continues through the theme.  Have a listen.

(01 - OPENING THEMES - INTRODUCTION - 0:21 - 0:30)

At first, it sounds like it's going to be a piratey 3/4 jig feel, but then... well... it's not.  I'll count over top of it, this is what I mean:

(01 - OPENING THEMES - INTRODUCTION - 0:21 - 0:30)

Maybe he's trying to play with our sense of expectation, which is cool sometimes because music that goes exactly where we expect to isn't quite as fun.  But still... I don't know, maybe I'm a purist, I just like when things are a bit more symmetrical.

Another way that he displaces the balance of the score is when he has steady ostinati (the repeating thing underneath the melody) and melody that's really out there and doesn't really flow with the piece.  A good example of this is "Following the Shop Keeper," have a listen.

(05 - FOLLOWING THE SHOP KEEPER)

Yeah, I don't know, I just never really feel settled, but maybe that's what he wants.  As much as I complain about it, that does also show the mark of a good composer too because he/she is achieving their goal - invoking an emotional response in the audience.  So yeah, that's what I was getting at, I just can't really follow what key he's in or what the rhythm is... I mean, I can sense it because of the percussion, but it's like... I don't know, it just irks me.

This is not just a western thing - no shots to the west BECAUSE there was one thing that they have done that has surpassed the expectations of many video game music lovers that I did not mention in the previous episode... and that would be Video Games Live.

VIDEO GAMES LIVE

The excerpt that you are about to hear is from an independent documentary called "Play! A Video Game Documentary" which was created, produced and co-directed by Paul Levering.  The first person in the interview is Tommy Tallarico and the second is Jack Wall and we talked about both of them in the last episode.

(clip)

Right on - you can see clips of the movie at the documentary's myspace page, which is www.myspace.com/vgmmovie and word on the street is that it's not finished production yet, so I can't send a link as to where to pick it up. 

So as you could've guessed, Video Games Live is a concert that involves a symphony orchestra and the genre of video game music.  While Orchestral Game Concert and Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy had been doing this already, the shores of North America had never had the chance to experience this for themselves.  The tour was created by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall and premiered in Los Angeles, California in July 2005 at the Hollywood Bowl and was very successful.  It featured music from Halo, Super Mario Brothers, Warcraft, Myst, Sonic and more.  Believe it or not, it was less successful in other places during it's first year, with Jack Wall saying that the goals were a bit ambitious for its first year and that the sound they were producing didn't have a very large audience yet.

Well, it appears that now in 2007, that problem has been solved.  With dates being added continually, Video Games Live is a running success throughout North America; in fact, I'm going to see it Calgary when it comes in November... pretty stoked about that.  

Unfortunately, there are no official recordings that I can play or cite, and I'm not really sure it's cool to play bootlegs, so I can't play any recordings but I'm sure they're out there...  

In terms of western composers, I think that VGL might be their greatest contribution to gaming.  While they've composed for hundreds of games together, they brought the music to life with hundreds of thousands of people, and that really says something for the state of the art in North America.  My hats off to them, nicely played!

REMIX

The featured remix of the show is by Ryan8bit and it's from OverClocked ReMix.  It's called "Metal Monkey," it's got some guitars, drums and bass in it... You can find it at www.ocremix.org as well as many other wicked amazing remixes and arrangements! But before we do that, you know where to find the podcast - you can always find it at www.songofthefates.com and if you want to talk to me, it's Kenley@songofthefates.com.  Our next episode should be back on schedule now that I'm back in Canada and we're going to talk about Kingdom Hearts I and II, polythematicism and Yoko Shimamura! So here's "Metal Monkey" from Ryan8Bit, thanks for listening and we'll see you next week! Go Sens Go!