Zelda symphony coordinators discuss how project comes together

The folks over at G33k Life recently had the pleasure to speak with the coordinators behind the Symphony of the Goddesses concerts. Within in the interview, they discuss some of their favorite video game music, favorite Zelda games, a little bit about the inspiration behind their work, and a little bit about the much anticipated The Wind Waker HD.

Read the interview after the jump!

“Kris: We are here with Jeron Moore and Chad Seiter from The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses. Who exactly are you and what are your roles in this wonderful thing?
Jeron: My name is Jeron, I’m the lead creative producer for the show.

Chad: I’m Chad Seiter, I’m the music director. I’m a composer and arranger of the music.

K: So you (Chad) decide specifically how things sound and you (Jeron) choose what songs are going to be in it?

J: We kind of make that decision together. I initially approached Chad with the project, and then we just started think-tanking the thing into existence. At that point that’s when we presented the thing to Nintendo.

K: How does one go about doing that? You just march up to NOA, knock on the door and say “Sup Reggie? We want to do a thing!”? What’s the process to even getting something like that started?

J: Well, we didn’t go to Reggie. There is a chain of command there and we have a licensing team and a brand management team that we work with and they have a direct line to NCL, Nintendo Corporate. So we went through those channels to coordinate this and worked directly with Bill Trinnen, Miyamoto’s guy. He’s very much a Zelda guru, and loves the franchise every bit as much as we do.

C: THE Zelda guru.

J: I aspire to be like him one day. So yeah, that’s kind of how it evolved.

K: How do you choose which games get priority over others? How do you decide which games get the spotlight of a proper movement, as opposed to sort of one off songs, like Gerudo Valley?

C: It was pretty obvious. A symphony is traditionally 4 movements, and really there’s 4 tent-pole Zelda games.

J: Now 5 with Skyward Sword.

C: Now 5, right. But first of all, Skyward wasn’t out yet when we got started, but also it wasn’t… it hadn’t existed long enough that we wanted to do that yet. So, we went with Ocarina of Time (OOT), Wind Waker (WW), Twilight Princess (TP), and Link to the Past (LttP), which I think are the 4 biggest ones. So, from there, we have these modules we call them, so we can rotate pieces and we can do things outside the main story like a dungeon medley or Kakariko village and stuff like that. Wind fish.

K: I saw that at the Philly show last year, and that was…

C: It’ll be back here tonight

K: Excellent! The whole concert I was thinking “Man, Ballad of the Wind Fish would be so cool” and then you did it at the end I was so excited! It’s my understanding that this show has evolved some since its inception; for example, you added a Majora’s Mask segment. It wasn’t in there at first?

J: We always wanted to do it but it just wasn’t on… we had some absolutely must do’s that we had to kind of get out of the way first, and Majora’s Mask was slated, and of course the fans really wanted it. That was the #1 requested piece after fans came to the show and didn’t get it.

C: We were also going through growing pains essentially with our new thing. You can actually have too much music. There’s union rules and stuff, so we were still kind of finding our groove in the development process.

J: We kind of know the capacity at which we can work now.

C: And how much we can get done in a rehearsal and all that.

K: I assume you guys get questions all the time asking you why you didn’t do one game over another. Has anybody ever asked you to play something from the CD-I Zelda games?

J: (Laughs) Jokingly.

K: That’s actually come up?

J: And we go on YouTube and listen to the music to check it out.

C: I went and checked. I don’t think we’ll be doing that.

K: So, everybody obviously asks you what’s your favorite Zelda game, what’s your favorite Zelda song. What would be your favorite Zelda experience? Like, personally for me, LTTP when you pull the master sword out for the first time, all the visuals and music comes together for this extraordinary game experience that’s very unique to that game and medium. Do you have a favorite Zelda experience or moment?

J: I always go back to Twilight Princess because I really love that game. And I’ve been with the franchise since its inception and I love every game in its own way. But Twilight Princess sort of rang true for me as sort of the best of all the things that technically made WW so wonderful and the world that made OOT so great, and it kind of brought all those things under one game. The biggest complaint was that it was too easy, but I still thought it was a wonderful story, and that’s what I focus on. Much like you with the master sword, I think after you spent a good portion of the first part of the game as a wolf, it was finally when you transformed and got the tunic, that was kind of the goosebump moment for me. You really felt like you were donning the clothes of old, and really about to engage in a Zelda game.

K: And you’re talking to that big… thing… and there’s all this gorgeous water in front of you, yeah.

J: And the music, and you hear that in the TP movement.

K: Excellent.

C: Mine’s a little more simple. Mine’s LTTP too, which was my first Zelda game.

J: Running up against the bookshelf?

C: I never figured that out. I never got past that part.

J:  What? (laughter)

K: It’s the best game ever! I got to level 2!

C: I got to this bookshelf, I didn’t know what to do. (laughter). No, I wouldn’t say it was any specific part of LttP, so much as, I was very young when it came out, and I got it a little later than everyone else, and I had never played the first one on the NES. I had seen it played, and I have since gone and played through it, but just as I got started. First coming out of Link’s uncle’s house, and it was raining, and suddenly there was a lot of stuff to do, just right there. Bushes to whack, well later on I suppose, but you know “I have this entire world I can adventure through” It just blew my mind that it was so massive, and every screen had little things to find all over the place. It was such a cool experience. We always joke that it was the first Zelda game, because we were young, that we were smart enough to play. So that’s why it’s my favorite.

J: Somehow, I don’t know how, but I stumbled through the first 2 games, and I do not know how. Because I go back and try to play them and they are brutal.

C: I honestly don’t understand how people intuitively figured out the first one. I had to have a guide to get through it.

J: I think I called Nintendo Power hotline. I’m pretty sure I did.

C: I was pretty lost. There was no way I would ever have figured that out without a guide. Now when I play, you know recently I mean, I had always played it, but now I’ve actually PLAYED it. Now I see all those little things, and now I see how this is coming together, but when I was a kid I didn’t see any of this. I would say ‘There’s the dock, I know I’m going to need something to be using this dock,’ but I didn’t know what or when.

K: When you’re coming up with the arrangements for these things, how do you decide what instruments to use? You mentioned LttP earlier. When those sanctuary doors open, you can very clearly tell what was intended to represent brass, strings, etc. But when you go back to something like Link’s Awakening for example, or the first 2 Zelda games, how do you determine which instrument is going to represent what chip sound?

C: Instinctually, I think the sounds were based on real sounds. They don’t sound like those things all the time, but there was always some… the way that the intonation of the synth always kind of represented, the FM synthesis always represented some sort of, oh that’s sort of flutey sounding. In the way that a church organ, those massive pipes, they’ve got these reeds they pull, and that starts emulating other instruments, and that big church organ sound is when they’re all open, but you can close those and you can start to get sounds that start to sound like an oboe, and then this sounds a little more like a flute, and this sounds a bit more like a bassoon, they have the valves so you can control them, and I think that in the same way, that’s the way that FM synthesis works with sine waves and everything. But aside from that, I also think it’s, as a composer, I have a lot of devices that I use. I call them devices, at least. Things that I like to do in my music, and so I think it’s also taking that music, and plugging it into my template, of how I would do things. Like Ballad of the Wind Fish is a very different arrangement than it ever appears in the game, and it was never really fully harmonized, not in its entirety, so that I had a lot of liberty with, for example. Say this will be a really lovely flute solo, and things like that. It’s kind of organic the way it develops. You just kind of hear it in your head, and move along.

K: Do you find that you have more freedom in something like that? I mean, there seems to be intent as far as what the sounds are, but to choose which instruments are going to be what, do you feel you have more freedom to expand on those as opposed to later games where those intentions are more obvious and fully realized?

C: Definitely. When it starts to get into the more realistic sounds, sometimes those arrangements are harder to do because those arrangements, you kind of want to use it in a more traditional way, the way that Koji Kondo or any of the guys at Nintendo used the sound chips to say that ‘okay, that’s a trumpet.’ So you run into problems like, this was massively simplified so the hardware could play it and suddenly it’s not really going over to the orchestra so well. Or this interval here is not really playable by a real trumpet or something like that. It’s more problem solving when it gets into the more full things, whereas it’s more conceptual on the 8-bit melodies.

K: Related to that, we were talking about the different takes on things, when I’ve seen the show before, you’ve taken some liberties, but they’re all very recognizable. One that really stuck out to me the first time I saw it was your version of Gerudo Valley, which is drastically different from the original version in the game. The original is very upbeat, and this one is more like…

C: The gates of hell are opening

K: Yeah. How did you get to that from there, and are there any other Zelda songs you’d like to give that sort of reimagining to?

C: I’m a big fan of this composer named John Adams. He’s a very minimalist composer. Lots of rhythms and just weird interesting textures. And I was kind of feeling John Adams-y the day I did that. I wrote that in one day, that arrangement. But, I remember I was kind of feeling it and I wanted this kind of rhythmic pulse, I know it normally has this Spanish guitar kind of thing, has this kind of Spanish vibe, and you know, budget affects it too, because we don’t have the budget, well we didn’t want to have a guitar player in every city because that’s a wild card. You never know what you’re going to get, and I’m not a big fan of putting smaller more intimate instruments in a big room, so I was like “what do I do with this?” and it was pretty easy at that point to say “I’m just going to take it out of that world and put it in this new kind of setting.” Just kind of plug and play.

K: Well, it sounds great.

C: I’m glad you like it.

K: Is there another classic franchise that you guys can think of that you would want to give this kind of treatment to? Like Smash Bros for example, is this amalgamation of Nintendo things and they always go way out of their way to get all these different musicians to give their specific takes on that music. Would you guys ever consider making this a full-on Nintendo thing instead of just Zelda, or are there any other classic franchises that you would like to take, not that you could, but in perfect world, deserve this kind of treatment, from a musical standpoint?

C: Well, Final Fantasy, but that’s already a thing. Distant Worlds already exists. Castlevania would be super fun to do. We’re both big Mega Man fans. It’s tough, because you’ve also got to think of it from…I mean could we do it? Yes. We could do it tomorrow. But could we sell it? That’s kind of the limiting factor in it. Not that these franchises aren’t amazing, and not that they don’t have huge fan-bases, but you have to, it has to be sustainable. And Zelda is pretty much the #1 choice for that.

K: You definitely chose the right franchise there. You guys have heard of Duck Tales Remastered?

J&C: Yes.

K: Given the opportunity to work on something like that. I don’t know if you have heard any of the new music arrangements.

C: My friend Jake did them. Jake and I go way back.

K: Well, you tell him he’s doing a fantastic job.

C: I will

K: What little I’ve heard, that’s what I’m more excited for than anything. That new version of the Amazon stage, his version has been stuck in my head for days now. It’s phenomenal. Let’s say you got the opportunity to do a modern remake of a classic game, and be in those shoes, what game would you choose?

J: You know, we had a dream of actually and going in and fully rescoring WW for WWHD, but that didn’t work out. So we weren’t able to make the music HD, but it’s still pretty good as is so. I don’t know, Chad?

C: Some would say Mega Man, but that’s already been done that way, and I didn’t really like it too much. This is a tough question. To be honest. I’m more of an old school guy. I like the past, and I like history, and I don’t, I’d rather see something done differently than just remade. So, I don’t know, I don’t really think I have a good answer for that. I like them, it’s like these guys made it, and now they exist in the world, it’s a part of art, and a part of history, and let’s let that be.

J: Jake for instance, he has as rare talent being able to take all those classic things and revamp them.

C: I think on this show, the melodies are the same, but one thing I feel like I get a lot of flack for is he didn’t do something different with it. I don’t know what’s up with that.

J: He stayed too faithful

C: They say I stayed too faithful, and I completely disagree with that. This isn’t me, this is the original.

J: It’s not really ours to fly off the handle with.

C: It’s not my business to be doing that. Do things go into different textures and settings? Absolutely, and is that something that I do, yes. But I do it in a way that doesn’t change the nature of the piece from its original concept. Melodically and stuff.

J: Foundationally, what we always wanted to do in the forefront is be highly respectful of the original material, and not interpret it too crazily, because we pass this on to Kondo-san’s desk, and he’s going to check it out. We don’t want him to be flipping through it and be like what did they do? You know? Of which I was very nervous about.

K: I’ll bet

J: He’s a very meticulous guy, and very thorough.

C: Everything goes through a strict approval process with him and the other folks at Nintendo and we get notes back on everything, and they’re really thorough. Like if I got one of the melodies wrong, because some of these we’re taking it down by ear, and we don’t’ always catch everything correctly. There’ll be a huge markup on how to correctly do it and stuff like that. He’s caught things that I would have never ever seen.

J: Which has been a nice learning process.

C: And now I think we know how he likes it. And when we did our Second Quest thing, we didn’t get many notes, because I knew how to please him, how to make him happy. That being said, I’ve gotten away with a lot of stuff where I think he’s allowed me to add my own voice with Gerudo Valley and Wind Fish. Where I feel I more or less got away with murder with that one.

J: But at the end of the day, all you had was the melody, there really wasn’t much more than a melody, so it was really a blank slate to do with what we wanted. With Wind Fish, from just a narrative standpoint, texturally and harmonically, Chad wanted to really tell the emotional story of the game through just that theme, and that was kind of our one time Link’s Awakening piece in season one, of course we got to go and do the full gamut in second quest so…

K: How do you guys choose the videos that go with the arrangements?

J: That kind of falls under my rough.

K: You put the thief thing in Link’s Awakening, that was great.

J: There’s some things you just can’t mess with. He hates it when I make the audience laugh. (laughs) Because people wind up laughing over the music, there’s really these emotional tender moments.

C: It’s not that I mind them laughing, it’s more when they laugh!

J: It’s an uphill battle for me, but at the end of the day, I think getting, there’s a lot of humor in Zelda games, and I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that and incorporate it into the presentation and press those nostalgic buttons because those are the moments. Because you want to feel good, and kind of go back to those games.

K: Has this done anything as far as, obviously you’ve reached gamers with this stuff, but have you gotten any feedback from people who just like the symphony? Is there any audience who don’t really know the games, who are being introduced thorough this medium?

C: Yeah, from my perspective, I’m a composer, and other than arrangements, I do original music. As a composer, it’s tough to build your career and get ahead, and this has been a good project that people have had a lot of eyes on, and doing a full tour like this is not an easy thing. It’s a lot of work and we’ve gotten a lot of positive attention from our peers in a good way. That helps us build our careers and what we want to do next.

K: Favorite video game song. Doesn’t have to be Zelda.

C: Dr. Wily’s Castle, Mega Man 2

J: Not going the Zelda route, Bloody Tears. I’m a Castlevania guy too.

C: Some Final Fantasy stuff. Terra’s theme is one of my favorites.

J: He did a beautiful arrangement that got included in the Balance and Ruin OC Remix album that’s out.

C: I had recorded it with a 120-piece orchestra over in Slovakia.

K: I’m gonna have to download that. Speaking of which, is there any chance Symphony of the Goddesses is going to be put on a CD, or something I can buy? Besides the one that came with Skyward sword?

C: It would be great to do something, because what you got on that CD was 2 movements, but we did in fact record the whole thing, and unfortunately the business side of that is a lot rougher. The music business is pretty tough and there’s a lot of rules, and so it’s not something we’ve overcome yet, but we would like to at one point. It is something on our minds that we’d like to do. It’s also tough to fund something like that because orchestras aren’t cheap.

K: I would very gladly pay for the Link’s Awakening movement to listen to whenever I want. Okay, you always use the actual Wind Waker when conducting the WW movement, why isn’t there the getting-an-item fanfare when she pulls it out of the box?

C: (laughs) Yeah.

J: We just never…

C: Technically the box does play that, but there’s no microphone.

J: I don’t know.

C: We had originally incorporated that melody in our 25th anniversary shows, so we did actually technically use it at some point, but we never carried that over

J: The real reason is that we brought the WW in after the fact, after we had launched the show. It was just an idea that kind of evolved and felt right and I don’t think we started doing that until maybe about 10 or 12 shows in, and so at that point, everyone was so,
I think it might actually be sensory overload for the audience, everyone’s so excited to see the Wind Waker I don’t know that you would even hear the orchestra.

C: You can hear this collective gasp from everybody from the stage, you can here this collective “that, that’s it!”

J: That’s kind of the real answer.

C: But we tried to intellectualize it.

K: Alright. Last question. Koji Kondo or Hip Tanaka?

J: Gosh, how do you even pit those 2 against each other? You can’t.

C: You gotta say Kondo because Super Mario. How do you—

J: —but I mean, Tanaka is kind of the John Adams of the video game composers.

C: But Super Mario. There’s not a single person in the world that doesn’t know that.

J: Kondo basically did the Star Wars and Star Trek of video games in terms of music. Between Mario and Zelda, he pretty much put the gauntlet down. So,

K: I feel the same way. I mean you know the answer, but you don’t want to say it because it’s Tanaka, you know?

C: I think that, everyone’s had their contributions, Uematsu of course and so many others, but I think you can’t beat the Super Mario theme as one of the most recognizable and memorable themes ever written.

J: You gotta think about it, when weighing those choices, Kondo’s music has stood the test of time, and is by far permeated and penetrated our pop culture. I mean, you could play a Metroid game for anybody and they may not necessarily know where that came from, but Mario, my grandmother knows what Mario is.

K: Outstanding. Well thank you guys very much. Thank you for giving me this opportunity, it was an honor to speak to you guys. You’re doing an amazing thing with all this.

J: We appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.

The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses is currently in its second tour, appropriately titled “Second Quest” which contains new segments as well as old favorites from the first run.”

It is interesting to receive a brief look into the minds of some of these people. No matter where they go or what they do, they will always be Zelda fans. Video game music has always been one of the most memorable parts of any game I have ever touched. What did you think of this interview? What’s your favorite song from the Zelda series? Let us know in the comment section below!

Source: G33k Life