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From The Entertainment Depot - http://www.entdepot.com Interviews
MP3 FORMAT – Part 1: VGL Run time: 25:53 Download Here. Part 2: Life of Tommy Run time: 14:53 Download Here. Part 3: VG Remixing Run time: 15:50 Download Here.
In an exclusive E3 interview, The Entertainment Depot was able to speak with Tommy Tallarico, famed video game composer and producer of the Video Games Live concerts. Tommy has been a permanent fixture of the video game industry for over sixteen years, and has composed some of the catchiest melodies for games like Earthworm Jim, Advent Rising, Cool Spot, and, we mustn’t forget, Color a Dinosaur for the NES.
We have separated the interview into three segments for your listening pleasure, as Tommy Tallarico talks up a storm (that’s a good thing for us).
In the first segment, Tommy explains the listeners his inspiration for Video Games Live what it is he’s trying to accomplish with the show. He even lets a few surprises slip, including special performers to appear at the newly-announced Hollywood Bowl show in September, and the production of a VGL CD and DVD slated for a 2006 release.
In the second segment, we are taken through the typical day in the life of Tommy Tallarico. He tells us about the creative process and the hectic schedule he faces every day. We also discuss the absence of Color a Dinosaur at the VGL shows as I shock Tommy by humming the title song from the game.
Finally, we talk about the video game music remix community and the many remix projects Tommy has been working on. Video game music remixers Mazedude, Dale North, and Mustin join us for this segment as we talk about The American Tribute Album, which is a compilation of arrangements of video game tracks written by American composers, all remixed by Mazedude. Tommy and Mustin reveal the existence of another remix project titled, “Earthworm Jim Anthologies,” which is set to be released in June, and will contain fan-arrangements. Listeners are in for a few surprises as well, as two other famous game composers stumble across our interview location and take the time to say a few words.
For more information about Tommy, Video Games Live, the remixing community (including Mazedude, Dale North, and Mustin remixes), please visit the following sites! I definitely recommend visiting the VGL site to find a concert near you before tickets sell out!
Tommy Tallarico: http://www.tallarico.com/ Video Games Live: http://www.videogameslive.com/
Mazedude: http://www.mazedude.com/ Dale North: http://www.dalenorth.com/ Mustin: http://www.oneupstudios.com/ Overclocked Remix: http://www.ocremix.org/
--- PART I: Video Games Live (VGL)
Jayson Napolitano (JN): We’re here tonight with Tommy Tallarico, famous game composer…
Tommy Tallarico (TT): Who, me?
JN: And co-creator of the Video Games Live concert series, and the guy behind the Gaming Audio Network Guild (GANG), so he’s always looking recruit GANG members.
TT: I am!
JN: That tells you the kind of individual he is.
TT: You have to show your colors, or else I’ll bust a cap in your ass.
JN: Yeah, definitely. That’s what we want to relay to our listeners.
TT: Yeah, exactly.
JN: I’m sure what you hear the most of these days with the success of the Video Games Live concerts, and the Hollywood Bowl, are questions about Video Games Live, so we’ll start with that naturally.
TT: Sure!
JN: So, I know you had been working on this for about five years before it actually went on in 2005. So what inspired you and Jack Wall to do such a new concept when you didn’t really know it would be successful?
TT: Well, the thing is, I have been in the game industry for a long time, sixteen years. The industry has evolved so much. Some really great music over the last couple years has really changed and evolved the way composers approach game music. There have been some amazing things coming out. We didn’t want video game music to be looked at as a bunch of bleeps and bloops or whatever. You know, you talk to someone who’s a non-gamer, and you say to them, “what do you think of video game music?” They kinda would laugh. They say, “Oh, I turn that stuff off,” or, “That’s annoying bleeps and bloops.” Absolutely not the case. We wanted to prove to the world, and to gamers, gamers know, gamers get it, gamers understand how great the music from Final Fantasy or Mario or Zelda is. But for the non-gamers out there, I wanted to create an event that could be enjoyed by everyone whether you’re a gamer or non-gamer. And to really kinda say, hey, look, game music is just as good as any movie soundtrack or score out there as well. And what better way to show the masses what we have than put on a live entertainment event, not just a concert, but an event. And the amazing thing is that when we launched it at the Hollywood Bowl, about half the audience were gamers, and the other half were non-gamers. You know, moms, grandmothers, girlfriends who were bringing the neighborhood kids, or bringing their grandchildren. They were the ones who we got the most positive response from after the show. They were freaking out the most going, “Oh my god, I never knew that the visuals in games these days were so stunning, I never knew the music was this emotional. I get it now. I understand why my kids are so much into this thing.” That’s why it’s so important to put on a show for everyone. That’s why we did the show the way we did, with amazing visuals, synchronized video, lights, and lasers, you know, the whole thing.
JN: I know you produced the show gearing it for that audience. Were you surprised at all that 50% of the audience were [non-gamers]?
TT: No. That was always our goal from the beginning. Creating a show for the masses, and using all of the amazing visuals that the video game industry provides. I wasn’t surprised. Everyone else who I’ve been telling this to for a long time was surprised. The Hollywood Bowl themselves was surprised. The Los Angeles Philharmonic was surprised. The concert promoters and Clear Channel were surprised, who I had been preaching this to for the last 5-6 years. People were like, “Do people really care about videogame music?” I said, “Trust me. There’s a huge, huge market out there that has been waiting for a concert like this for their entire lives.” We had people traveling from all over the world just to come to our first debut show. I think that speaks volumes about how popular this stuff is. Now, and moving forward, but again, bringing in a whole new audience of non-gamers so they can appreciate the art and culture that video game music is as well, I think that’s important.
JN: I also know that for a show like this, song selection is very important. Everyone wants to know the formula for determining which songs are going to be chosen. In particular, I want to satisfy my own curiosity, for your own works, I understand Advent Rising is more geared for being arranged for a symphony since it was obviously written that way. Why wasn’t there tracks from Earthworm Jim or other works of yours that are also very popular?
TT: Well, first of all, I didn’t want to do a concert that was mostly my music. There’s so many great, great scores out there that I didn’t even feel comfortable putting two of my scores in there because that would mean something else would have to be cut out. It’s really important for me that all of the industry is represented, whether it’s from Japan or Europe or the US. You know, there are so many great titles out there, I could do a three-hour long concert easily…
JN: Please do! (laughs)
TT: …and have it be great. But what we do is have a lot of different segments that we play, but we don’t play the same thing every night. The Seattle show was different from our San Jose show, which was different from our Hollywood Bowl show. We do try to mix it up as much as we can. But for me, Advent Rising was three years of my life, and I poured a lot of heart and emotion into that. It won a lot of awards and garnered a lot of attention even though the game didn’t… as much (laughs). But you know, it was a score I was really proud of, using 13th century Italian to tell a story, a whole kinda operatic vibe to it. I thought it just fit in well because it’s so different from everything else we have in the show. But to answer your first question about how we pick the music, basically it’s the music that I like the most. I’m a gamer, right? And this is a concert made by gamers, by the industry for gamers, and for the industry. That’s very important. I don’t think anyone else ever in the world would play music from Beyond Good and Evil. Right? It doesn’t necessarily have to be the biggest selling games and this and that. But I gotta tell you, gamers freaking love and appreciate something like a Beyond Good and Evil that’s in there. For anyone who hasn’t played it, I totally recommend it. Talk about a sleeper hit, Beyond Good and Evil is incredible. So maybe it didn’t sell the most, and maybe it’s not the most popular game. But that particular title, it’s important to represent everything. But then the classic stuff, like Castlevania, how can you do a music concert and not have Castlevania in it, right? If you’re doing a greatest hits thing? And of course you have to have Zelda, and Mario, and Sonic, and the grand finale of Halo, and the beauty of Myst, and the touching emotional scores of Medal of Honor, and the electronic drums with the orchestra and the synths with Metal Gear Solid. Yeah, there are a lot of really popular titles out there, but it seems like a lot of the triple-A titles that I just mentioned all have great music in them because they spend so much on the budget, get the greatest composers in the world to work on those games. If you look at it, there’s a lot of Japanese stuff represented, a lot of American stuff represented, a lot of European stuff represented, and so we can take this anywhere in the world and not have to worry about song selection or whether or not we’re going to please the crowd. So when we take the show to Japan, yeah we’re going to keep Myst in there, and yeah we’re going to keep Halo in there, even though those particular games may not have sold big in Japan. Isn’t that the point? Let’s expand the circle here. A bunch of Japanese people who went to our last show in San Jose, people from the Tokyo Game Show. People came up to me, and I asked them, “what did you think of Halo and Everquest 2?” Those aren’t big games over in Japan. They said, “Oh, we loved it, you have to leave those in when you come to Japan. I think it’s important to show our audience what you guys over there are doing. Leave in Advent Rising.” Advent Rising probably sold, I don’t know, 4 copies in Tokyo. (Laughs). But that was one of his favorite pieces. He said, “I loved the opera stuff, I’ve never heard stuff like that in a game.” So I think that’s important, so when choosing all the music, it’s a worldly basis, it’s a “what gamers are going to love” basis, some for popularity, and differences in the show. One thing our show does differently is that it’s really an emotional ride. The way I’ve structured the show, it’s not just a bunch of action tunes. It’s a slow emotional tune, then it might be a big tune, then it might be a happy tune, then it might be a Disney-esque Kingdom Hearts tune, then it might be a rockin’ tune. And then we also have the interactive segments as well, where we bring people up on stage, and they compete against each other as the orchestra is playing the music in real time, on the fly. We use games like Frogger to do something like that, and we do something with Space Invaders. We do a bunch of interactive stuff that people have never even attempted before.
JN: Definitely. It was definitely appreciated, I was at the concert. You’re making me feel guilty for not playing games like Beyond Good and Evil.
TT: You have to play Beyond Good and Evil! (Laughs).
JN: Just to give you some feedback. Going to that concert, you are looking forward to the Zeldas and Marios and Castlevanias, but some of the best tracks were from Headhunter, Beyond Good and Evil…
TT: God of War, maybe?
JN: God of War, yes, things that you weren’t really looking forward that turned out to be fantastic pieces of music that you hadn’t experienced before.
TT: Well, there you go, that says a lot, cool, thanks!
JN: I’d say mission accomplished in that case. So you choose a song. How do you go about contacting the company or the composer…?
TT: Yeah, all of that, and that’s why it took us four and a half years to get the first show off the ground. Again, we don’t just go and play the music. That’s not our mission. We could have done that five years ago. You just get the sheet music and play it with the symphony. For us, the visuals and the synchronization, and the lights, you know, video games are exciting, video games are visual, so it was really important to us that every segment has completely synchronized video from start to finish, and we tell a story. Every story has a rich storyline. Something like a Metal Gear Solid, for example, we show all of the games in the series. Something like a Zelda, we show every single Zelda game, and we even have exclusive footage that nobody has ever seen before of some of the newer games that haven’t even come out before, like Twilight Princess and Zelda, having exclusive footage from that, or Everquest, or the new Tomb Raider, or whatever. It’s getting that nostalgia feel going from the old classic stuff, but then showing people something they’ve never seen before, all while it’s completely synchronized. I think that’s really important.
JN: I think you missed out on the Zelda, the Panasonic CDi’s. (Laughs).
TT: Oh boy! No, we don’t talk about those! We don’t talk about the 2-D cartoon, snot-nosed Zelda, we stay away from those.
JN: So do you deal with these composers through an agent or through a translator?
TT: No, not at all. A lot of times because I’ve been in the industry for so long, I’ve known a lot of these people personally. We start with the publishers to see if they’re interested, and that takes a long time to get the paperwork. Again, it’s not just the music, it’s the visuals, it’s the characters, it’s the likenesses, it’s the logos, it’s marketing, it’s PR. So when we do our ads, you’ll see Master Chief on the add, or Mario, or Link, or Sonic. Just something like that takes a long time to get pushed through. But it’s important, and important for us, and important for the community and the culture of it all. Those are things that we go after a lot. Once we get approval from the publishers, then we’ll contact the composers. I’d say about 90% of all the composers in Video Games Live we knew. Because, like you mentioned earlier, AudioGANG.org is the website, but the name of the organization is Game Audio Network Guild, or GANG, as the letters spell out, and it’s a non-profit organization that I started about over five years ago. That’s where all of the video game composers and sound designers and audio people get together to share information about technology and creative elements and business elements, and we also raise the awareness not only of what we do internally with each other, but also with the publishers and the developers, and getting things like our own Grammy category. You know, that’s the kind of stuff we work on. It’s a whole huge network, so we all know each other. So, “Hey, Marty O’Donnell!” I’ve known him for ten years. “Let’s put together a great score for Halo.” It’s all a huge network. Again, it’s important that it’s video game composers who are putting this concert on. We’re not some slick concert promoters trying to make a buck off the industry, we are composers who are putting this show on. That’s very important.
JN: A very specific question or example… how did you get Steve Vai involved in the concert?
TT: Steve Vai is a good friend of mine. Also, of course, he did the guitar work for Halo 2. So it was me and Marty O’Donnell, who composed the Halo music and had no idea Steve Vai was going to be there. I kept it from him as a secret, again, I know Steve well. We serve on a couple of different boards together. In fact, I’m on the board of governors for NARAS, which is the Grammy Awards, and Steve is as well. We also have a mutual friend with Dweezil Zappa, he grew up around Dweezil. So I said, wow, this is great. And again, it’s not some, “Let’s get some Hollywood person to play over.” No. The only reason I did it was because Steve Vai actually played on the game. Now, unfortunately we had a bit of a technical glitch there at the end, where basically, what happened is we have about three hours to rehearse the entire show with the orchestra, so we don’t have a lot of time with the orchestra. As you can imagine, with the lasers and lights and video and all of these technical things, and this was our first show ever, so what happened is, and we never got a chance to rehearse with Steve Vai, so he came in, he started playing, but the engineer back at the board, who is a great, by the way, engineer, Mike Keating, who has been Sting’s live mixer, and if you can imagine all of the different notes he had. We have over 120 musicians up on the stage that night with the choir. He has every channel going, you know, and the exact point that Steve Vai came in, because it wasn’t rehearsed, he didn’t have the levels up. But he quickly got them up, and Steve Vai came in right at the end. We are remedying this, and this is going to be an exclusive right here, right now. We’re going back to the Bowl this year. September 21st, 2006, we’re going to see the return of the biggest VG concert in the world, and we’re going to break our record from last year. We had 11,000 plus, making it the biggest. This year, we’re already on track, tickets just went on sale, and we’re already on track to smash our record from last year. So come be a part of history at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s our biggest and best show. But my exclusive is this: Steve Vai is coming back and we’re going to make sure that he plays on the entire damn song this time so we don’t have to worry about him just coming in at the end. We want him on the entire song, and Steve is really looking forward to coming back and kicking some butt.
JN: Well definitely I’ll be there, and I think we’ll all be looking forward to it. Now, the question a lot of gamers are asking, or video game music fans are asking right now is, “Where is the VGL CD?”
TT: Well, we’re doing a CD and a DVD.
JN: Oh, wow.
TT: Yeah, for sure. We’ve been recording all of our shows from the beginning. We’ve been getting our best mixes and the best things. But again, for us, we would have done it yesterday, we would have done it the day after the first show, but it’s a matter of getting all of the rights. It’s tough. It’s difficult asking Sega to be on the same CD as Mario, to be on the same CD as Halo, to be on the same CD as Metal Gear Solid. That is a very tough thing that really nobody has ever done before. Nobody has ever come out with a greatest hits of all of the different companies, all on one, that has been approved by companies. There’s a lot of fan stuff, obviously, which is all amazing and great, but to actually have an official one come out, for the first time, we will be the first ones to do it. We have the recordings. We’re waiting. We’re doing some shows, for example, we’re going to Brazil, for example. And 45,000 people are estimated to be at our one show. So wouldn’t that be a great show to record? It’s very difficult to record at the Hollywood Bowl because of the union and because it’s so expensive. I would have loved to have done a DVD at the Hollywood Bowl, right? Let’s put it this way, Sting doesn’t do Hollywood Bowl DVDs. It is a very prestigious, it’s the most famous stage in the whole world, and to be able to do a DVD is going to cost a lot, a lot of licensing money and union fees and a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, we probably won’t be doing a recording from the Hollywood Bowl within the next couple years, but we are going to come out with a DVD and a CD soundtrack, and we’re shooting for the end of this year.
JN: Great. I was going to say, “Are we going to have to wait a couple of years for this?”
TT: No, absolutely not. It’s going to be in 2006.
JN: Okay, and for the last question regarding the concerts and the show you put on, let’s say I can only go to one show this year. Why VGL over any other show?
TT: Well, the deal is this. We have been doing this the longest. We have all of the best music. We have all of the publishers. We are the video game industry putting this on. But the biggest difference in the other concerts that are out there, especially Play!, you know, I think Play! is the only other concert in North America that’s kinda trying to ride on our coattails here a little bit. Their ticket prices are $125. So here’s the deal, the industry is putting this on. My goal is to get as many people turned on to VG music as possible. So you know what we do? We figure out how much the show is going to cost us to put on each night, and we make the tickets as low as we can to adjust to that number. We don’t care if we make money. We’re doing this for the love of it. We’re doing this for the industry, to get the music out there. And you know what? In a couple of years, if this thing builds and grows, then sure, the money will come after, right? But our goal isn’t to make money off of this thing. Our goal is to get as much music out there. We’re composers putting this on. So when you went to our Hollywood Bowl show last year, you could buy a ticket for $1. One dollar! If you go to our Hollywood Bowl show this year, they’re already sold out, but there were $3 tickets. If you wanna go up with $3? That’s what I’m talking about. It’s about the industry. Another thing that Play! does is that they charge for their meet and greet. So you have to buy a $125 ticket in order to go backstage? I mean, look, we have a whole festival of activities at our show. We have costume contests like no one has. We have gaming competitions like Guitar Hero that no one has. We have playable interactive demos. We have the history of arcades. Every show is a little different, it’s always different, but we always have these festival atmospheres. We also have the biggest and best meet and greets in the whole world. Last year we had Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid, we had Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog. We had Nolan Bushnell, the guy who created Atari and Pong. We had everyone from Toby Gard who created Tomb Raider, to the Warcraft team, when we played Seattle, we had the entire Halo team there. Every night, via satellite, we get joined by Koji Kondo, Michelle Ansel, Hideo Kojima, Yuji Naka, every single night, they come in and say a few words to the audience over the video screen. So there’s the meet and greet. We don’t charge for this. Our goal isn’t to charge $125 for a ticket. Our ticket prices, again, they start at a dollar in some places, most places start at $20, and they go $35, $45, and $55. We’re also the only ones that synchronize video and lights, and we mic the entire orchestra for the best sound. We have the most professional orchestras out there, the most professional venues, the most professional sound and lighting people in the world are working on this show. The synchronization is something that’s really interesting because it’s so difficult to pull off. That’s why nobody else does this. Even when John Williams does a film thing, it’s not synchronized. This was something that was important to us because no one has ever done it before. You get completely synchronized video with the lights. It’s a brand new experience. Plus the interactive segments, nobody does those. So you get all of these extra things, and we’re half price? I mean, to answer your question, there’s a bunch of answers for you. There’s about a hundred answers for you. Again, our show appeals to everyone, we’re not trying to do a show where people come in tuxedos and listen to a symphony, just a symphony of music. We combine the electronics. We combine the live kind of action and excitement that video games have to offer. We don’t want it to be a highbrow, golf-clap kind of experience. We want it to be action, and adventure, and power, and emotion, and stunning visuals. It’s like the excitement of a rock show, mixed with the power and emotion of a symphony, with a live, interactive video game all going on at once. That’s VGL, and that’s something that no one else ever does… and we’re half the price.
JN: I’m definitely looking forward to the return to Hollywood Bowl, so I urge all of the listeners to go and buy their tickets now before they sell out, because it’s going to be a hot show.
PART 2: Creative Process
JN: I’m going to talk more about your music. So, the creative process. You’re a very busy guy, you’ve involved with a lot of things. I’m sure you’re busy all of the time. Take us through a typical day in the life of Tommy Tallarico.
TT: Holy crap, are you kidding me? (Laughs) Alright, oh my god, this is going to take a lot out of me.
JN: What do you have for breakfast, when do you go to the bathroom…?
TT: I don’t eat much, I don’t go to the bathroom much, and I don’t sleep much, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I usually wake up about six in the morning, and that’s when I try to catch up on all of the emails from the previous couple days.
JN: You’ve very good at that by the way, you do answer your emails.
TT: I try, but it just gets overwhelming. We get 600-700 emails every day, and they’re not all Viagra ads or refinancing for mortgage. I mean, half of them are. No, no. (Laughs) They’re all serious emails. So answering emails in the morning. About 7-8AM is when I start making my international calls. You know, calling all of the different places we might be traveling to, like the UK, or Australia, or Japan, or Korea, or Brazil. That’s regarding Video Games Live, all of that stuff. But then, I have four different companies that I help to operate. One being VGL, one being GANG, the non-profit organization, and then of course my TV shows that we film. We do about 4-5 days a month. I’ll fly out, we’ll try to knock out about 6-7 shows at a time. We film them up in Vancouver. And then there’s Tommy Tallarico studios of course, which, we work on a bunch of different projects. That’s kind of the cool thing. It’s totally overwhelming, but honestly, I only sleep about 4 hours a day. So I work 20 hours a day, seven days a week. But I love it. I’m not complaining. I love, love what I do, so it’s not considered work to me at all. I’m very passionate about everything, and the cool thing is about having so much on your plate is that you can shift from day to day or hour to hour, so, when you say to me, tell me what a typical day is like? There’s never a typical day. And it’s never the same day twice. There’s always a lot of different things. Maybe one day I’ll focus on VGL. The next day it might be a little GANG stuff or another project I’m working on. It’s all of that. From 6 in the morning, and I usually go to bed around 2 or 3 in the morning.
JN: So most of the audio projects you’re doing these days, are they calling for sound effects, sound production, or soundtracks?
TT: That’s a great question. Because I’ve been so focused on VGL lately that I haven’t been taking on too many music projects because music takes up a lot of time. Now, I’ve had a team of sound designers and implementations for over twelve years now, and they understand everything there is. So we do a lot of sound design stuff so that I can do stuff, they can do stuff, put it all in the game, go back and forth. And again, I’ll spend maybe 2-3 days maybe a week in between other things, working on sound design or implementation stuff, but I’m only taking on one music project at a time now, whereas in the past, before VGL, I could do 5-6 different music projects at a time and switch it up like that. Now we’re working on Pac-Man World Rally which we’re just finishing up now. We did Jaws before that with the music. Then before that was Advent Rising, which I spent almost three years working on. From a sound design standpoint, And 1 Streetball, we did Exteel with NCsoft. Pac-Man World Rally of course. So yeah, there’s a bunch of things that we’re even working on now that I oversee from just a production stand point.
JN: When soundtrack work does come in, do you field out what you want to do?
TT: Yeah, when stuff for original music comes in, it depends on the style. Sometimes I’ll work with talented musicians. It’s never just one guy. I’ll bring up Sting again, because I mentioned him earlier. When Sting does an album, it’s never just him doing every single thing. It’s a team of people. It’s an engineer, a drummer, a bass player. So it’s the same thing for any style of music you do. So if I’m doing orchestral music, there’s orchestrators, arrangers, copyists, engineers, conductors, contractors, people to set up the studio, the pro-tools people (sirens in the background), sorry the cops are coming for me. (Laughs)
JN: You mean you don’t do it all yourself? (Laughs)
TT: No, no! So it’s all about having a really talented group of people around you. Pac-Man World Rally is a great example. For that game, we took the Pac-Man themes and did them in a whole bunch of different styles and genres. For example, we wanted a really cool rock ‘n’ roll one for the first level, or for the menu screen, so me and Dweezil Zappa did a rock tune, kinda a rock/techno thing, with all live players and instruments. Then we did a Spanish Flamenco guitar one in which I used a different band to do that and to record that. And then there was some orchestral stuff. So, it’s always a big group of people, and I always like to surround myself with as many talented people as I can because it makes my job easier in the end.
JN: That leads into my next question. The creative process, I mean, musicians are not always inspired to go write, and when it’s your job, and you need to do something on a deadline, how do you deal with that if you don’t feel like writing at the time?
TT: It’s interesting because video games are so much different from film and television in that respect. We don’t have a lot of major deadlines. A film, it’s post-production. When the film’s done, you have two weeks to write all of the music or you’re screwed, right? For video games, because they take so long to create, two to two and a half years sometimes, we’re always involved from the beginning. It really gives us a chance to be creative when we want to be creative. So me, personally, I’ve never felt that pressure that, “Oh my god, I have to write something, oh my god, I have to write something.” I think that’s cool about composing in the video game industry, that’s one of the big benefits, is that you don’t have to worry about that massive, post-production, crunch-time deadline.
JN: Okay, so you’ve been doing this for 16 years, since the Nintendo days.
TT: Yes.
JN: The NES.
TT: Yeah!
JN: You’ve seen a lot of technological changes.
TT: That’s damn true!
JN: So, is the learning curve high? How much of the hardware are you actually having to learn?
TT: It’s always great to learn the hardware. And that was one of the things that, way back when in the early 90s, that was always my strength and how I made a name for myself back then was to learn the hardware, whether it was the Genesis or the Super Nintendo, and really just tweek it out as much as you can to get it to sound as good as you can. Games like Earthworm Jim, or Global Gladiators, or Cool Spot, or Aladdin. It was fun and challenging at the same time, because when I did a game like Earthworm Jim, we used so many different samples in the music. That was the first time people had heard so many samples and sound effects, and it was fun, and it was challenging. But then in the mid-90s, as CD-ROM hit, and now you could start to use live instruments, and CD-ROM with a storage capacity. Then it became all about the music and the production quality and things like that. It’s always great to have the technical chops. It’s different these days, but it’s still just as technical. For example, now we might be doing sixteen different audio streams in 5.1 all going at once, and we’re cross-fading between live music passages and things like that. There’s always that technology there, it’s really what differentiates us from film and television.
JN: I’m going to end this segment now. That takes us through the creative process. You had your big chance, so why wasn’t Color a Dinosaur included at VGL?
TT: Dude! I have a 75-piece rendition, orchestra, of Color a Dinosaur, and I had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing the… just kidding!
(Everyone laughs)
TT: Color a Dinosaur. That’s an interesting story, actually. If you want to get a laugh, go onto Tallarico.com, and I have a projects section. There’s a story about Color a Dinosaur. Eventually, I’m going to fill in all 250 of those games. Every one is going to have a story. I started with Color a Dinosaur because it was so damn funny. It was the first game I ever did on the NES. Basically, they forgot about putting sound in the game. Jeez, oversight, that’s how horrible it was back then. I remember it like it was yesterday. A guy walks into my office and says, “We don’t have any time, we don’t have any money, we don’t have any space in the cartridge, but we need to put some kind of sound on this. Oh, by the way, there’s no sound driver either, so just figure out how it makes sound, and we have to ship it to Nintendo tomorrow in FedEx.” So I’m scrambling, I stayed up all night. I threw together like, two 30 second looping songs, which are actually on my website as well, and a bunch of crappy sounds, and it was a horrible game. It’s funny as hell, and it makes for a great story. Color a Dinosaur. I used to call it Color a Herpie-saur, actually. If you want to know the funny thing, I don’t know if you’ve played the game on the PSP, Gottlieb Pinball. It’s like a pinball museum. The dude who did that game was the lead programmer, Jay Obernolte, who did Color a Dinosaur, oddly enough. People always ask, joking around, what’s the worst game you’ve worked on? I always say Color a Dinosaur for sure. It was an awful game. It was like Mario Paint, except take away all of the fun, and you can’t save any of your pictures.
JN: Additionally, there were gaps in the pictures you could color in.
TT: Oh yeah. It was horrible. So it would look like you colored outside of the lines. You couldn’t even color it nice. The funny thing is this, do you know that Color a Dinosaur, if you can get a Color a Dinosaur in the shrink-wrap, and there’s actually a Nintendo, NES price guide… it’s $80, I swear to God, I’ve seen it and it goes for big bucks on eBay. (Laughs)
JN: You do mention at the end of that profile that you would like to someday orchestrate Color a Dinosaur. You missed it!
TT: Yeah, no, that’s a complete falsehood. “Ladies and gentlemen, wait we’ve just finished Halo and Mario, but we have an encore, Color a Dinosaur!”
JN: (hums Color a Dinosaur)
TT: You know, it scares me that you can actually hum that. (Laughs) So it mustn’t be all that bad.
JN: Very memorable!
TT: Just like Mario! Mario is the most memorable thing, and it was just a bunch of bleeps and bloops back then. That just goes to show how important melody and memory is. Hey, Koji Kondo, genius that he is, was doing that stuff over 17-18 years ago, making these great scores that twenty years later we’re still humming. So, you know, that’s talent.
JN: Definitely. Please plug your website for both you and VGL so listeners can go there.
TT: Sure. Absolutely. Tallarico.com is there. It’s literally a complete history. If you’re into game music at all, or if you have any questions, I have a message board that’s really popular. It’s a really great gaming community that people check out. For VGL, it’s videogameslive.com, and we’re playing all over the world in 2006. Some of our shows coming up are Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Toronto, Montreal, of course, the Hollywood Bowl once again. Some of the different countries we’re going to are Brazil, and Tokyo, and Korea, and obviously over in Europe, and Australia we’re going to get some shows in as well. You can go there and see a bunch of trailers, and footage of the show. Sign up on the mailing list because we actually send out special trailers that nobody else can see, special music and songs, and all of the deals and first-hand information even before the tickets go on sale so everyone on the mailing list always gets the best seats. We also offer special things where people on our mailing lists can come down to our rehearsals they day of the show, get programs, meet everyone backstage, again, it’s all about the community for us, and spreading the word.
PART 3: VG Remixing Community
JN: We’re going to move into the third segment here. It’s going to be more about the video game remixing community, some of the projects you’ve been involved in, some of the projects some of the other people here have been involved in, and I just wanted to thank you right now for talking to us about your career and the concert series.
TT: Hey, you guys kick ass. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. If people like you didn’t exist, then people like me would have nobody to create for. So you guys, and the fact that you are so knowledgeable about all of this stuff, it just warms all of our hearts in the game industry. The thing to understand for so, so long, people in the games industry, composers and stuff, never got any respect at all. Never got any kudos from the publishers or the developers, we were always the last thing. We were the bastard step-child of the gaming industry, and that’s why we formed GANG. The interesting thing is that so many people follow game musicians. They don’t follow game artists, they don’t necessarily follow game programmers. Designers, yes, but you know, musicians and composers are the only other aspect of gaming where people are legitimately interested in what their past works are, what they’re working on now, and it’s because of people like you and the communities you’re creating. You should see all of us, the composers, when we get together and talk about, “Wow, did you see so-and-so remixed a song?” “What, are you kidding?” “Yeah! And one high school did a marching band version of Halo.” We pass around the MP3s. It really flatters us to no end. The whole community. It really means so much to us. Things like OCremix, they mean so much to the community, and it’s unbelievable.
JN: Yes, and as I previously mentioned, we have here someone known online by the handle of Mazedude.
Mazedude (MD): Hi!
JN: And…
Mike Tallarico: Mike Tallarico.
JN: Mike Tallarico!
TT: What the hell is he doing here?
JN: I guess you guys are brothers!
Mike Tallarico: Sometimes.
JN: Well, there you go. And we have two other remixing celebrities here, if they want to make their way over here.
TT: Hey, remixing celebrities, get up, come here!
JN: We have Dale North and Mustin!
Mustin (M): Let’s do it over at a restaurant because I’m famished!
JN: Tommy has to go! Let’s just talk about these two things real quick.
TT: Okay.
JN: Tell us, Mazedude claims you spawned the concept of the American Tribute Album? Is that correct?
MD: Well, there were three of us, actually. Two years ago at the GANG afterparty, talking about…
TT: Why isn’t there any American albums?
MD: The Japanese guys get all of the kudos.
TT: And they’re well earned. I mean, Nobuo Uematsu, the greatest VG composer in the world.
MD: I mean, Tommy has been doing this for years and years and years, and there’s no Tommy tribute. It’s the same thing for Jack Wall and newcomers like Jeremy Soule and all those guys like Robert Prince.
TT: Yeah, Clint Bajakian, the Lucas Arts guy! And Marty O’Donnell. There are just as many great US composers as there are Japanese composers. I think it’s because over in Japan they caught on first. The community of, “Wow, this game music is good.”
MD: Well, they were doing concerts way before we were.
TT: 1991 was the first game music concert. So yeah, we’re about 15 years behind over here. (Laughs). But that’s okay, we’re catching up. Because of albums like [Mazedude’s American Tribute Album], we’re catching up, and it’s really cool. People like Mustin playing Earthworm Jim live all over the country with the OneUps, that’s the kind of stuff that’s going to help promote American composers in game music.
JN: What was your specific role in the American Tribute Album?
TT: Oh, I financed the whole thing! (Laughs) No, no!
MD: Wait a minute!
JN: Song selection and roles?
TT: No, it was really funny. Mazedude came up to me and asked what songs would you like to see remixed and all of that? I said, well jeez, there’s this Global Gladiators stuff, because I get a bunch of different emails from people over the last decade, or 15 years, asking if I have a CD version of this song, something from Earthworm Jim, or Global Gladiators, or from Cool Spot, or do you have the old MIDI file, so I can kind of tell and gauge which songs people enjoyed the most or remembered the most, so I passed that info on. I said, “Hey, if you’re going to do a remix of Global Gladiators, let’s do the first level, MC Rock, because everyone always asks me about that.”
MD: Wasn’t it also the first game you won an award for as well?
TT: It was. The very first game in 1991.
MD: So it’s significant. When I write a remix, it’s like a multiple tribute. I’m not just making stuff for the fans. I’m trying to make a tribute to the composer as well, and make something they’ll appreciate as well. The fan will appreciate it, and the fan who doesn’t even know the game will enjoy it.
TT: I tell you what, I go on OCremix, and the level of talent there… it’s funny, you know, the composers, you don’t think we see it or talk about it, but we do all of the time. I’ve been involved in conversations like, “Yeah, um, this remix is like 10 times better than the crap I originally wrote.” It’s just so modern and so cool. Back then we just had 4 tracks or 6 voice FM synthesis for the Gensis or whatever.
MD: It’s not exactly a fair comparison.
TT: Well, but these cats are coming up. I’ve heard some Earthworm Jim stuff, and I was like, “Damn, if I’m working on another Earthworm Jim game, I’m going to use this stuff, save me some time and money. I’ll just contract this guy!”
MD: We’d be happy to, yeah!
JN: And that’s the next question. I heard a rumor about an EWJ project?
TT: There is a rumor about an EWJ project! I think I started it, actually. No, right now, at E3, currently at the Atari booth, they are showing a version of EWJ on the PSP. The original team got together and after 12-13 years made a pact with each other and said that someday we’re all going to get back together and make another EWJ game, damn it. A lot of us on the team started to get together and have meetings, and then unfortunately, Atari ran into a little financial difficulty, which is kind of well-known, and decided they were going to do the EWJ game without us, on the PSP. So there you go. They are doing another EWJ game, and they had access to the entire team, or a lot of the original team members, including Doug Tenaple, myself, and David Perry and all that. They decided that budget mattered more than the actual game, and so they’re putting out a PSP version that as of now doesn’t have any of us involved in it. Who knows, that may change. I will make this promise, someday there will be another EWJ game with the original team members doing it. Who knows, we might even be contracted for this one. As it stands now, none of us are involved.
JN: Well, how about just an album being released separately from the game?
TT: That’s a horrible idea! No, no, in fact, it’s coming out soon! (Laughs) EWJ was such a fun project to me. We’ve just gotten so many requests and responses. It’s always something I thought about. I looked at the work that the remix community does, and I met a guy, Mustin, from the OneUps, who I’ve known for about 4-5 years now, and I was always impressed with the quality of his work with all the Square stuff and the remixing stuff he did, so we talked about producing an EWJ album together. He’s big in the remix community and knows a lot of people, so we put something up on the OCremix. I put a thread in a forum and said, “Hey, anyone who wants to remix some Jim stuff, we’re talking about doing an album, and wouldn’t it be great if we had some of the fan community put some songs of their own on the album?” So we’re going to have 5-6 tracks done from the remix community, plus all of the best stuff from EWJ 1 and 2 in CD format with live instruments and things like that. Some of those originally came out on the Sega CD or the PC or the Saturn over in Europe, so a lot of this music has never been heard in this quality format. We’re going back and remixing some songs, plus we’re going to master it and everything. Mustin and I are working on that, and we’re about two weeks from completion. This is actually an exclusive because this is the first time we’ve talked about it. We expect… when do you think it’s going to be out, Mustin?
JN: Say something instead of walking around!
M: Umm…
TT: I’m thinking probably beginning to the middle of June. Right during the summer time. It’s called the Earthworm Jim Anthology. [Mustin] had a lot to do with it, in fact, he has a tune on there. You remixed the Hell tune, right?
M: Yeah, the OneUps did “What the Heck?”
TT: “What the Heck?” Exactly. See, he knows these songs better than I do. So we have the OneUps to do a great rendition. Mazedude is on there as well doing something from EWJ… what the hell was it?
TT: That’s it. “Glow Worm Jim.”
JN: Fantastic track. Best track on the American Tribute Album.
[Jack Wall, composer of Myst, co-creator of VGL enters]
TT: Hey, look, it’s Jack Wall! Jack Wall just walked up the stairs.
All: Hey!
JN: Say hello, Jack Wall!
TT: We’re talking about VGL. Come here Jack. They already asked us all the difference between VGL and Play!
Jack Wall (JW): What’s Play!?
MD: It’s what you do when you have a game in front of you. You play it.
JN: Or when you have an interactive show in front of you.
TT: Exactly! Jack is the conductor of all the VGL things. And Jack, why don’t you talk quickly about how you sync everything, everything is completely synchronized I’ve been telling these people.
MD: Electronics, and drums, symphony, and choir, that’s hard.
TT: And the click track, tell them how you do it.
JW: Yeah, we have a click track that all of the musicians listen to, and we pre-programmed all of the music, the non-orchestral elements and the synthesizers to go along with what the musicians are playing. In some cases, we’ll have the electronic percussion playing live instead of having it come off of tape, as it were. We synchronize it like that so all the videos are in sync with the music, and it’s a really exciting show to look at. You have a light show that’s in sync with the music, you have the video in sync with the music, and then you have the music. We have this amazing sound engineer who just kind of mixes it like a rock show.
JN: Tommy mentioned him earlier.
[Gerard Marino, composer of God of War enters]
TT: Oh my god, look at this! Gerard Marino just walked in, the composer of God of War, say hello!
Gerard Morino (GM): Oh, how are you doing? I guess an interview is going on here.
TT: We’re doing an interview, come and sit down. So now… uh oh, [Mustin] is getting all fan-boy on him. (Laughs) Mustin has tears in his eyes. Gerard, sit down. Sit down, have a seat here.
GM: Alright.
TT: Gerard, tell us… wait, I feel like I’m conducting this interview now, I’ve completely stolen your thunder.
JN: No! I totally want you guys to just talk. It will be awesome and everyone will love it.
TT: So, we have the composer of God of War. Now you’ve been to every single VGL show, correct?
GM: Thus far, yes.
TT: And tell us about the feeling. The fan reaction to God of War, the meet and greet afterwards. You feel the love, right?
GM: Yeah, definitely. And it’s just a great thing to have your music played live by an orchestra for lots of people. You know, you work in your vacuum, in your little darkened studio, or whatever, and you hope people dig it, but to actually be there and see people digging it…
M: Luckily music is still written by people.
GM: Yeah, still!
TT: You know, has anyone done a remix of God of War yet, like a techno remix?
M: I started on it!
TT: Oh, Mustin started on it!
GM: I’d like to hear that. Somebody did a heavy-metal version at the GANG awards.
TT: A heavy-metal version. That was my surprise to you. Oh my god, look, it’s Marty O’Donnel! No, I’m just kidding. (Everyone laughs) The composer of Halo, oh my god! Every thirty seconds, oh look, it’s Nobuo Uematsu! (Everyone laughs) C’mon. Oh, you have Koji Kondo with you, come on in! We’re having a party here.
JN: I actually saw Koji Kondo at [E3].
TT: You saw Koji Kondo at the show?
JN: He was in the Wii booth showing off the conductor game.
TT: Oh really!
JN: He was standing on a rotating platform, conducting.
TT: Oh my god, the fans must have been going crazy.
JN: Nobody knew who he was. I knew who he was because I knew what he looked like.
TT: Wow, really? Who would think that you’d see him there?
JN: It was very exciting.
TT: There he is, Koji Kondo.
JN: Waiving his Wii around.
TT: Waiving his wii-wii.
JN: And I have it on film!
TT: And you got it on camera. Well, there you go. How’s that for an interview? You got triple teamed at the end.
JN: Well, definitely, it’s an honor to be in the presence of all three of you at the same time.
TT: Oh, stop now.
MD: Three? And this guy too. Four, five, six…
JN: Forget you guys!
M: Let’s get some raviolis.
MD: Let’s get some food, yeah.
TT: Cool, I guess that wraps it up. Hey, ravioli. Me and Gerard are Italian, so we’ll be all over that ravioli.
JN: So, that concludes this interview. Thank you everyone for contributing.
TT: Alright!
JW: No problem!
GM: It was a pleasure!
TT: Rock on! © Copyright 1999-2005 by EntDepot.com |
