Distant Worlds: Nobuo Uematsu & The Music of Final Fantasy
When you think of video game music, the first thing that comes to mind might be something like this:
The 8-bit beeps and bloops of your classic video games. It serves much of the same purpose as any other soundtrack — to evoke the emotions that only video games are capable of doing. Whether that’s nostalgic joy, exhilaration for advancing in the game, or maddening frustration for not being able to conquer a certain obstacle, video game music play a vital part in the lives of many a gamer.
For fans of the Final Fantasy franchise, the classic video game series has managed to take that passion for music one step further: to the orchestra pit.
The music from the Final Fantasy games will be coming to the Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in Houston on Saturday, July 23rd, and the Myerson Symphony Hall in Dallas on September 2nd, as a part of the long-running Distant Worlds concert series. The symphony world tour had humble beginnings, starting as a single Final Fantasy concert held in Japan in 2002. After a six-city tour of Final Fantasy music was met with a huge success in Japan, Play! A Video Game Symphony director Arnie Roth brought the unique phenomenon to the States, with a concert tour entitled Dear Friends: Music From Final Fantasy, in 2005.
The tour’s current incarnation — Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy — first premiered in Stockholm, Sweden in 2007, to high acclaim. Since then, the tour has traveled around the world, playing regularly in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
The music of Distant Worlds, and many of the Final Fantasy games from which they were derived, was first composed by Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu — considered one of the greatest video game composers of all time. Born in Kochi, Japan in 1959, Uematsu was self-taught in piano, and derived much of his inspiration from world-renowned musician Elton John. He played in various bands, and even composed music for television commercials, until he was discovered at a local pub by an employee at Square Co., a well-known video game company, in the mid-1980s.
At first, Uematsu was hired to help with some of the company’s video game tracks. Then, Uematsu met acclaimed video game director Hironobu Sakaguchi, who was working on what would amount to his last-ditch effort in the gaming industry — namely, re-invigorating the fantasy RPG genre, with a turn-based, role-playing game named Final Fantasy. He tabbed Uematsu with the game’s soundtrack. And the rest, as they say, is video game history.
Uematsu’s music in the Final Fantasy series is unique to the video game-themed genre, in general. After all, despite the composer’s technological limitations when creating, and presenting, his music for the original Final Fantasy — early gaming systems were limited to low-grade music formats like MIDI — Uematsu still managed to make quality, memorable themes.
For example, one of the main themes of the original game — one that drones when the player is on the “World Map” screen — has a classical melody and orchestral-like arrangement that, even with its MIDI instruments, is quite impressive:
Uematsu continued his Final Fantasy music career well into the 21st century, and gained levels of acclaim with the timeless tracks he contributed to the video game series. His status as a video game composer was the main reason Distant Worlds centered its repertoire around Uematsu’s catalogue, in the first place. His evolution from the first of the Final Fantasy games to later iterations — ones where more advanced video game technology were used — allowed him to create more bombastic, epic anthems to the soundtrack.
For example, Uematsu composed the opening track to Final Fantasy VII, “Opening-Bombing Mission”, using advanced MIDI tracks and the ability to use instruments like brass, timpani and strings — each with their own distinct sound — to create an epic opening, to go along with the game’s opening cinematic, depicting its main character, Cloud Strife, aiding an eco-terrorist group bomb the main station of an energy conglomerate, in an effort to save the planet that said company is siphoning energy from:
In cooperation with Uematsu, Distant Worlds was able to duplicate the bombast of the original track, with the advantage of real instruments, and the kind of touch that only a symphonic orchestra could bring to such an epic track:
The same could be said about the main battle theme of Final Fantasy VIII, “Don’t Be Afraid” — played during the turn-based battles that had become synonymous with the games. Taken in 5/4 time, the track features heavy militaristic tones — much like the bomb raids depicted in the game series’ previous iteration:
The instrumental authenticity added to the track by Distant Worlds brings a level of ferocity and valor that wasn’t necessarily possible with the original. You can almost picture an epic fight in a superhero movie while listening to it — the orchestra only adds to the track:
Then there is the unique track, “One Winged Angel”, from Final Fantasy VII — unique in the sense that it was the first track in the video game series to use spoken lyrics. It was reportedly difficult for the producers to insert the track — created in 1997 — into the game. Uematsu has gone on record calling “One Winged Angel” as an “experimental track”, and received inspiration for the song from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. The track is used in the game’s final battle against main antagonist Safer∙Sephiroth, a powerful super soldier on the brink of insanity:
The use of a real-world orchestra adds to the drama that the song was supposed to evoke. Moreover, the use of a real-life chorus adds to the song’s intended grandiosity:
Judging from just these three tracks, Uematsu had a knack for music on an epic scale. It was part of the reason his music is so memorable, and is still beloved by the video game community to this day.
