Wednesday, April 26, 2006 11:48 PM CDT
Today’s recording artists turn to video games to get music out
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
CHARLESTON -- Last year’s video game “Advent Rising” offers gamers more than just a chance to blast their way through a plot scripted by popular sci-fi author Orson Scott Card.
“Advent Rising” also boasts a soaring musical score by renowned video game composer Tommy Tallarico, and features the heart-tugging ballad “Greater Lights” by singer/songwriter and Eastern Illinois University graduate Charlotte Martin.
So, naturally, the two musicians have something good to say about video games.
“It’s a whole new way of marketing music,” said Martin.
She returned to her alma mater Wednesday with Tallarico to discuss the relationship between video games and musicians -- how the latter are using the former to sidestep some of the recording industry’s corporate rigor.
Both Martin and Tallarico credit video games as an emerging means for musicians to get their music heard and establishing themselves as artists without the backing of a major record label.
“It’s become the radio of the 21st century,” Tallarico said during Wednesday’s presentation in the student union’s University Ballroom.
Martin -- a Charleston native whose father, Joe Martin, teaches music at EIU -- said she spent some frustrating years with a major label, as she was signed to a “massive record deal” only to have her album “shelved.”
But rather than wallowing in self-pity, Charlotte Martin took the initiative to create a home studio and record her own music. (She and her husband, music producer Ken Andrews, recently started their own label, Dinosaur Fight Records.)
Martin aggressively marketed her work over the Internet, and toured as much as possible.
And she found video games as a vehicle for her songs.
Following two critically-acclaimed albums recorded through a major label, Martin released her own EP CD, “Veins,” last November.
Tallarico, meanwhile, is known as the most successful video composer in the world, contributing to the music of more than 200 games over the last 15 years.
He said developing the operatic score for “Advent Rising,” released in 2005 for Microsoft Xbox, was one of his favorite projects.
“If you’re doing a sci-fi game, it doesn’t have to sound like Star Wars,” Tallarico said.
He added “emotions and visuals” of video games appeal to him as a composer because they do not have the “linear” restrictions of film or television music.
Tallarico said, “My mind can go wild, I can be, ‘What would it be like to be in that situation?’”
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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Stephen wrote on Jul 17, 2006 8:22 AM: