Into the Earth | Into the Sky

For the past month or so I have been collaborating with a local choreographer Karen Brown and her co-run dance company Weaving Dance on writing the music for an upcoming performance - just one week away! I've been working very hard on this, trying new things and experimenting, all with a rather limited schedule due to full-time work. I think it has come together extremely well, especially having visited a rehearsal yesterday to observe how it all tied together with the dance.

The piece finds its origins in the theme of the concert it is being performed in, titled "Rooted". Similar to the piece I wrote last year, Observations of Nature, it deals with reflecting on the non-human aspects of the world (in this case, trees) and how we relate to them in our daily lives.

The dance, prior to the music existing, began when Karen came across a photography collection of trees in various seasons, some of which highlighted with a thin fabric background or foreground. It used the lighting of the day and silhouettes of trees to create a very interesting look at the subject.

The idea of using fabric and silhouettes gave Karen the idea to incorporate similar elements into her piece, utilizing a parachute and her dancers in various tree-like shapes either in front or behind it. The idea of people-as-trees continued on into various other elements of the dance, with various solos as an introspective look at individuals' reflections.

With the music, I attempted to capture similar elements with a limited instrumentation and attention to the narrative subtext. I had previously written a series of pieces based on trees for my Junior Recital in college (Dreamer's Path), using a combination of live players, songs and recorded sounds to create an atmospheric and dream-like experience. With approaching this accompaniment, I wanted to firmly ground the music in reality.

For this new perspective, I drifted away from my usual emphasis on orchestral and synth-based instrumentation and to something more akin to a current alt. rock band. Using sample-based instruments, I attempted to create something of a mini-concept-album with recurring thematic elements and a constant set of 'players'.

If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend you come check out the final result. The choreographer and dancers have worked extremely hard on pulling this thing off and I have nothing but respect for their efforts. They really are the stars in this production, so hats off to them! All necessary information and tickets can be found on their website.

If you're not in the area, feel free to check out the music below. I also have each 'track' labeled. On my website I'll be releasing it as separate mp3s, but it really is a through-composed piece and is best listened to in one sitting. The total runtime is 16:11.

Into the Earth
Into the Sky

• Rooted (0:00 - 2:44)
• Cherry Blossom (2:44 - 6:17)
• Willow in Sway (6:17 - 7:50)
• Autumn Rain (7:50 - 12:22)
• Frigid Ascent (12:22 - 16:11)

Screw Formality

I don't think I can keep a regular schedule with this, so instead I'm going to just be updating it when I can and without some convoluted format. The new format is, while not exclusive to the three topics I initially set up, still following them primarily. In other words, it won't be anything drastically different, just  without the expectations involved with a weekly three-pronged endeavor.

To those reading this on FauxSheezy, hi! Sbob coerced me into cross-posting onto their neat little community blog, so I'm obliging.

So, Portal. I'm going to just be rather blunt and say that it's already infiltrated my top five games of all time. Something I would never have imagined a 3 hour game to do. But sometimes a game just comes along that totally upends the metaphorical coffee table of convention so hard that you begin to reconsider the gaming experience.

Let's get some questions out of the way: Do we need 60-70 hour long epic adventures to create a masterwork of a game from a storyline's point of view? No. Is it necessary to have tons of main characters with predictable flaws and an inevitable death of a female to keep interest in plot development? Nope. Does the entire world, every nuance, every bit of symbolism need to be explored in all its facets to wring the last drop of satisfaction out of a mythos? Nada. Lastly, must a game take itself serious to not only have interesting dialogue but also a satisfying story thread? Hell no.

The setup for Portal is simple. You're a test subject being spoken to by a computer and put through cleverly paced tutorials in order to be prepared for the meat of the adventure. My sheer transparency of its mechanics, the fact that it is very clearly a puzzle game even to you as the in-game protagonist, creates a scenario that plays out exceedingly well in how it develops.

What we're beginning to see in gaming is the emergence of what is the "short story" in the literary world. The goal of a short story isn't to immerse yourself in a fully realized world and ongoing strife, but rather to present a transformation.  Between the beginning and the end, something happens. Something changes. The art of the craft is presenting it in a convincing, natural, and ultimately satisfying way.

Portal nails this, through its masterful use of a singular narrative voice, its interactions, and its conclusion: something simply too awesome to mention, for fear that all would be spoiled once  a hapless reader comes across its discussion here.

Other games have also nailed this for me. ICO is one of mention, and uses even less dialogue to convey its messages. The atmosphere is closed, confined, even uses puzzles as its primary gameplay mechanic, and despite its wordless nature still emanates an emotionally stirring experience. It does things in a much more introverted nature than Portal's all-out hilarity, but the same guts are still there. The characters undergo a transformation, and you can't help but be pulled along.

In a somewhat related games-as-art perspective, another game occupying my time has been Everyday Shooter: something that takes yet another art's medium and shows how it can be made into an interactive format. In this game's case, the art is the music album.

In 2002 (2001 in Japan), the world (or at least those that paid attention to the game) was shook by the release of Rez, a game that was one of the first successful attempts at melding music and gameplay together into a complete package. While the game's soundtrack was primarily trance music, the experience was certainly one that hadn't been successfully duplicated since.

Saying this may be blasphemous to Rez fans, but I think that Everyday Shooter pulls it off even better. As great an experience Rez was, I believe it was limited by its overall goal. An immersive saturation of the senses, for a fledgling project, couldn't push difficulty or create an overly complex structure. Such a first impression might lead people to believe that the medium had no value beyond the game mechanics due to the difficulty hindering the enjoyment of said experience.

In that way, Everyday Shooter has a lot to be thankful for in the simple fact that it came later. The game is damned challenging, yet the failures don't begin to occur until an ample flavor of what's to come has seeped into the experiential taste buds. Because of this, the game not only succeeds as interactive art, but as an excellently-designed game.

There's much more to ramble about, but I'll save the suspense of waiting for a new blog post and lend a few two(ish)-liners about recent happenings:

• Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is an excellent update to one of my favorite games of all time, leaving the awesome sauce intact and bolstering its weaknesses (namely, its translation and cutscenes). The new dialogue is leagues above the original (on par with other Ivalice titles such as Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII), and the new cutscenes not only have amazing art direction but solid voice acting to boot.
• The soundtrack to FFVII: Crisis Core surprised me in several ways: Takeharu Ishimoto (formerly of my It's a Wonderful World OST hatred) can actually write beautiful music, he is an extremely talented writer of chamber music (the string quartet pieces in CC are excellent), and can play one metal guitar. Additionally, Kazuhiko Toyama provides some beautiful orchestrations. Lesson learned: Keep Ishimoto away from techno and synths, and he can do no wrong.
• Radiohead's new (and amusingly controversial) album, In Rainbows, blows my mind. It's always amazing to me how simplicity can be such a useful ally to a band that constantly evolves with each new song. Also, I paid £1 for it. Experimental!

My final word of the day is: Website revamp! It's been a long time in the working, and I'm extremely glad to push it live. The only issue so far is that it does not comply with Internet Explorer's shoddy handling of CSS. If anyone could give me some pointers on how to make it work for that abortion of a browser, I'd be much obliged. For now, however, it works perfectly on Firefox, Opera and Safari. If you're still using IE, do yourself a favor and make the switch. Oh, and I will be changing the blog's layout soon to comply with the new design. There shall be more horizontal room! It's about time. This column was getting claustrophobic.