Arnie Roth Final Fantasy Conductor
Arnie Roth is indeed a renaissance man of our musical time, spanning the globe from the Irish Tenor concerts to Japanese Video Game orchestrations. His Final Fantasy Career includes the music director and conductor of “Dear Friends: music from FINAL FANTASY.” Then in 2006 Mr. Roth conducted the new “VOICES: music from FINAL FANTASY” concert in Tokyo with the Tokyo Philharmonic. As both producer and music director, Arnie Roth premiered “Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY“ in December 2007 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Sweden. The release of the “Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY CD“ recorded by Roth and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic coincided with the start of the “Distant Worlds“ 2008 world-tour. Most recently the Distant Worlds II: More Music from FINAL FANTASY, the new CD/DVD was recorded in late January, 2010 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Elmhurst College Concert Choir and Mr. Roth Conducting.
Interview conducted by MIT and posted in there blogs
The Tech had the chance to speak with Grammy award-winning conductor, composer, and music director Arnold Roth about his performance of Final Fantasy soundtracks at Boston’s Symphony Hall last Saturday as part of his Distant Worlds concert series. He reveals his connection to video game and film music, talks about the relationship to his close friend Nobuo Uematsu, the original composer of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, and explains what makes video game fans a great audience for classical music in our exclusive interview!
The Tech: What is it that you like so much about video game or film music in contrast to more standard classical pieces?
Arnie Roth: I think it is an attraction that is more general to music used in multimedia productions. I have a lot of background doing movies and film work, television work, as well as work with video games, and they share some characteristics: A good amount of video game scoring is really just underscoring the action that is on the screen. Then there is the other school of film scoring which is more along the lines of using light motives or melodies that are identified with various characters or various environments or worlds or battles and developing those in a very programmatic way. Some of my colleagues like to refer to that as the “Peter and the Wolf” technique, the idea that each character has its own theme, and therein lies some of the major differences between the various scores of composers both for film scores as well as for video game scores.
TT: Is that the approach which Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of the Final Fantasy scores, took?
AR: 25 years ago, Nobuo Uematsu made the conscious decision that the Final Fantasy characters from the very beginning were going to have their own themes and he was going to carry through those. He was a keyboard player, mostly self-taught — not classically trained. It was that decision which was just as important as anything else in the history of Final Fantasy in terms of its music. I’d like to give an example of the two different styles of composing: If you go in and watch a Star Wars movie composed by John Williams and you go and watch one of the Lord of the Rings movies composed by Howard Shore, you will recognize quite a difference between the two score. They both capture the action beautifully. Every light saber hit, every sword in Lord of the Rings is beautifully scored and compellingly written. However, I challenge you to come out of Lord of the Rings singing more than perhaps one melody, whereas in Star Wars, E.T., or Indiana Jones, or Harry Potter, which are all Williams scores, you are absolutely married to these melodies because the melodies went through the entire struggle. You can tell the entire story of the movie by the development of these melodies. The fact that Nobuo Uematsu chose that route way back then is why the music of Final Fantasy stands quite apart from most of the other video game franchises.
TT: You have conducted many different video game scores, from very advanced music which has been written for orchestras already, like the latest Elder Scrolls themes, to much more simple 16 or 8 bit music like the original scores of The Legend of Zelda or Secret of Mana. Can you tell us from a more technical perspective how far the adjustments go that you have to make?
AR: Final Fantasy and Nobuo Uematsu were some of the first video game franchises to use recorded audio tracks of orchestra and bands and vocal as soon as the format went up to 16 bit. They have had a history of putting audio and music at the forefront of the game.
We have tried very hard at Distant Worlds and within our tour and with all my dealings with Square Enix in Japan that these Final Fantasy concerts that we put on try to present scores that are very close to the way they existed in the original version of the game. We are trying to showcase the original score and use all the orchestration and subtle and light-handed arranging techniques that we can do to present faithfully the score in the form that it was heard in the original. Now when you go and listen to orchestral scores of Super Mario or Zelda, these are much more fantasies than what we are presenting with Distant Worlds. You won’t find a tremendous amount of medleys, for instance, where you see the scores strung together. We are trying to do more full song versions as much as possible. Sometimes they are four minutes long, sometimes the full song can be 12 minutes — we do the entire opera [Draco and Maria, FF VI] and that’s 12 minutes.
TT: Many people seem to have a very strong connection to video game music. Where do you think that comes from?
AR: I would actually turn that question around and ask why is it that every piece of music from every video game isn’t much more popular because after all, the player is a captive audience. They are sitting there in front of the game and they are listening to the same piece of music in many cases hundreds of hours, thousands of hours. These should all be drilled into them in a way they can’t stop singing these things, but in fact not every score of video game music is appreciated and loved as the Final Fantasy scores. The fact that you become more associated with a character and that character has an actual life and loves and emotional attachments and is stressed through battle and journey and transformations. You see the development in the character and I think that combination of the RPG aspect as well as Nobuo Uematsu’s style of writing music for Final Fantasy. Let me give you an example. When we play Aerith’s theme for Final Fantasy VII, this was an astounding thing where the character actually dies. We still have audience members crying at our concerts when we perform this live. The emotional attachment is so strong to this. If you can touch the audience this way, then you have transcended the actual video game itself.
I also want to point out that the reason that I think these people want to come to concerts is that when you are playing the video game you are listening to the same piece of music played in the same tempo with the same audio compression over and over again. Nothing changes. When you come to the stage of Symphony Hall or any of our concerts, we have well over 100 musicians and performers on the stage between the orchestra of 72, plus the choir of 40 voices, plus soloists and the conductor. You are creating a huge audio landscape of sound and all the sudden the scores live and breathe: By that, I mean they might move one or two beats per minute faster than what you heard in the game because we all get a bit excited and maybe it comes to a more crushing climax because there is no audio compression on the stage. It’s an infinite palette of colors and dynamics and I think the fans really understand that.
Of course you have to start with a score that is that beautifully written and I can tell you that in every orchestra that performs these scores — including the Royal Philharmonic in London, The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Sweden, The Tokyo Philharmonic in Japan, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony in Washington — none of them looked down their nose at any of these scores. They all come up to me afterwards; they can’t believe the quality of the scores and they can’t believe the audience’s reactions at these concerts. It’s a really unique audience and listening experience because everyone in that venue is there to hear these scores. It’s 100 percent. It’s not as if you go to a classical concert, where maybe somebody is there for Beethoven and another person is there for Debussy another person is there for Stravinsky. They all know these themes really well so it’s really a beautiful experience for us the performers.
Arnie Roth Discusses “Voices” Concert
Voices – Music from Final Fantasy was a concert held in Yokohama, Japan on February 18, 2006 featuring vocal arrangements of Final Fantasy music. Based on compositions by Nobuo Uematsu, the music was performed by the Prima Vista Philharmonic Orchestra in the Pacifico Yokohoma Conference and Convention Center, conducted by Arnie Roth.
Arnie Roth Biography
A classically trained violinist, conductor, composer, producer and Grammy award-winning artist, Arnie Roth performs across a wide array of musical genres. Mr. Roth has performed with a host of artists, including Il Divo, Diana Ross, Jewel, The Three Tenors, The Irish Tenors, Charlotte Church, Josh Groban, Patrick Stewart, Branford Marsalis and Andrea Bocelli. He is also a long-time member of the Grammy award-winning group Mannheim Steamroller. Orchestras which Mr. Roth has conducted include the London Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Houston Symphony, BBC Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Joffrey Ballet Orchestra, Ravinia Festival Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, the Colorado Symphony, the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, and the Sydney Symphony. Since 2004 Arnie Roth has brought critical acclaim to the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra as music director and principal conductor showcasing artists including Michael Feinstein, Linda Eder, Art Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Wynonna Judd, Judy Collins, the Beach Boys and Johnny Mathis. Under his direction the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra appeared in a nationally broadcast PBS Special featuring The Irish Tenors.
Mr. Roth was the music director and conductor of “Dear Friends: music from FINAL FANTASY.” In 2006 Mr. Roth conducted the new “VOICES: music from FINAL FANTASY” concert in Tokyo with the Tokyo Philharmonic. He then became the principal conductor and music director of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony featuring music from blockbuster video games such as FINAL FANTASY®, World of Warcraft®, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind™ and Battlefield 1942™. Mr. Roth conducted PLAY! with many international orchestras including the National Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Singapore Symphony and the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. As both producer and music director, Arnie Roth premiered “Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY“ in December 2007 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Sweden. The release of the new “Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY CD“ recorded by Roth and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic coincided with the start of the “Distant Worlds“ 2008 world-tour.
As music director, conductor and arranger, Mr. Roth was involved in a number of PBS specials including: Charlotte Church: Enchantment – From Cardiff, Wales for Sony, The Irish Tenors: Heritage, the WTTW Soundstage shows featuring: Jewel, Peter Cetera and Symphony, An Evening with Dennis DeYoung, Lyle Lovett, Randy Newman, Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers, and WTTW’s Four Seasons in Chicago. In 2006 he was the music director and conductor for a ten part television series for RTE featuring the Irish Tenors. He appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Il Divo in 2006.
He is the producer, composer, conductor and arranger for nine of the Barbie™ Princess CGI animated films from Mattel Entertainment. Mr. Roth won the Best Score Award at the 2003 DVD Premier Awards for his score for the film Barbie™ as Rapunzel, and was nominated for an Emmy in 2007 for his original song “Shine” from the movie Barbie™ in The Twelve Dancing Princesses. 2007 also marks the premiere of Mr. Roth’s first live concert creation with Mattel. Barbie™ at the Symphony is a special film with orchestra presentation of the best-selling Barbie™ Princess movies. Music director Arnie Roth is touring the world in performances featuring great works by classical composers and Barbie™ highlights from all of the CGI animated films.
He has produced and conducted music for many films, and has produced dozens of best-selling CDs, released on American Gramaphone, JVC, Mattel, Warner Bros., Sony, Koch and Razor & Tie.
Great article, the man speaks sense about VGM.