When Nobuo Uematsu took the stage this past weeked at MAG Fest X, you could feel the anticipation in the room. Stage One, which had been pretty well populated for other performances throughout the weekend, was more packed than ever. As he raised his hands over his head to greet the audience, the cheers that went up came pouring forth in a cascading torrent of sound. For me, this was a moment to remember: a little over twenty years after the fact, I was about to see a performance from a man who had made a deep, lasting impact on my life.
At twelve years old, I was already long since steeped in the world of video games. Hand in hand with that, the sounds of those games were also intimately woven into my memory. Someone only needed to hum the first note of the Mario or Zelda themes, and they would instantly flood to mind. I could whistle through the entire soundtracks of Mega Man 2 and 3, and then switch over to a stirring rendition of the first stage of Contra.
The music was an essential part of the gaming experience, but not something I had ever given much thought to beyond that. It was what it was, and the best of it was worth hearing over and over and over. That all changed in 1991 when a friend of mine loaned me Final Fantasy IV for the SNES.
From the moment the first strains of the Prelude came flowing from my television, it was obvious that there was something different about this game. The more I played, the more that feeling was crystallized. Here, suddenly, was music that meant something. This was not a game with simple repeating tunes for each level; this was a game with an honest-to-goodness score. With the improved sound capabilities of the SNES, here was a game that moved beyond the (still fantastic) chip tones of the NES, and was using it to make music that was intertwined with the game itself, and not simply background decoration.
Final Fantasy IV was an amazing game for many reasons, and changed many of my expectations of what games could be. The music, though, worked its way even deeper into my mind. The dream of making games was already one I aspired to, but suddenly I wanted to know how I could create music that could make those games something even greater. While I had taken piano lessons when I was younger, my musical knowledge was minimal, at best. Yet, armed with what little I knew, I would sit at the family piano and work on plunking out the songs from the game. I started very simply, picking out the bass line of the theme from the Tower of Bab-il. Once I had that down, I started working on the melody.
Unfortunately, I was still not a very good piano player, so getting them both out at once was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately for me, I soon discovered MIDI composers for the computer that let me work with sheet music directly, and a whole new world opened up. I would fiddle around, experimenting with different chords, not really having any sort of sense of how music was actually supposed to be composed. Over the next few years, Uematsu scored even more amazing games, such as Final Fantasy VI and (parts of) Chrono Trigger, and his music remained enthralling to me. Even if I couldn’t write my own with any sort of success, I would get the sheet music of his when I could and try to figure out what exactly it was that he was doing.
When I went to college, one of the first classes I took my freshman year was Introduction to Music Theory. Now, at last, I was learning the secret code that explained how those notes could come together into something wonderful. Through my music classes, I was convinced to start singing, and joined a local choral group. From that, I ended up in the school’s Early Music Consort, where I ended up getting the opportunity to sing renaissance Christmas carols at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. I learned how to play a few instruments and had some jam sessions with a few Japanese exchange students, which in turn led to them convincing me to study abroad in Japan for a while. There, another exchange student hooked me up with some friends of hers who were looking for somebody who spoke English and could sing to head up their Smashing Pumpkins cover band.
If you are expecting this to be the part of the story where I reveal that we were discovered by a Japanese record label, and I became rich and famous, you would be incorrect. We only ever had one performance, and it was in the basement of the university student center. I came home from Japan, finished up with a minor in Music, and did not seek out stardom. The memories that I have of those times, however, remain with me always.
So while Nobuo Uematsu did not pick me up from the streets or turn me from a life of crime, the impact he had on my life is undeniable. I still, to this day, enjoy sitting down and working on a musical composition just for fun. I will always cherish the experiences I had because of the time I spent studying music – experiences I probably would not have had otherwise.
No matter where you may stand on the “games are art” debate, there is no denying that they can have an impact on our lives. Just as books or films can change our view of the world, games are equally as capable of opening our eyes to new thoughts, or setting us down unexpected paths in life. As I looked around at the hundreds of people gathered in Stage One that night, looking up at a man who was a hero to me, I knew that I was not alone in that. As Tim Lydon, guitarist for Year 200X said in his introduction to the Earthbound Papas, Nobuo Uematsu is “the man who wrote the soundtrack to our childhoods,” and for one glorious night, we were all there to cheer him on together.
