game

“GLASYS (Gil Assayas) is a pianist, synthesist, producer and vocalist who melds many genres and influences including Electronic Music, Alternative Rock, Jazz, Classical and Video Game Music,” (from Glasys’ site). “This album (Tugging on My Heartchips) is mainly inspired by the Gameboy games from my childhood. As a kid, the only gaming console I had was the original gray Gameboy, which I spent countless hours playing.

Some of those games had incredible soundtracks (Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge are two examples) and I’d often turn on my Gameboy just to listen to the music! No joke, some of those themes would make me tear up. I tried to capture those magical, nostalgic feelings in this 7-track album.”

After starting with a theme in an A dorian scale, the same passage is repeated in C# dorian at 0:59 on “Back to Reality” (2023). At 1:39, a bridge falls gradually downward, leading us back to A dorian at 1:54; the pattern repeats from there. Throughout the video, the virtual and the real world fight for prominence, until the timbre shifts from electronic keyboards to acoustic piano at 3:19, visiting the same territory with more expression and rubato. However, the digital world seems to get the last word as the end fade brings a subtly deflating tonality (4:20).

If you enjoy turn-based strategy video games, then you are likely familiar with the Civilization franchise, and if you played Civilization IV, then you may have spent a significant amount of time staring on the main menu screen, enraptured by today’s tune and forgetting entirely that you’d settled down to conquer the digital world. American composer Christopher Tin‘s composition “Baba Yetu” arranges a Swahili translation of The Lord’s Prayer into a masterful piece for choir and orchestra.

The tune won the 2011 Grammy award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists — the first ever piece of video game music to win. Just as impressive, it’s featured on an album which itself won the 2011 Grammy for “Best Classical Crossover Album”: while the piece debuted with the game in 2005, Tin also released a recording of it on his first album, Calling All Dawns, in 2011.

Tin begins the song with a rousing call and response in G major. The voices gradually build and merge into a modulation to D major, which begins at 1:00. 20 seconds later, the chorale drops away, and the tonal center begins to shift until the voices triumphantly return and modulate squarely to E major while proclaiming “Ufalme wako ufike utakalo. Lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni, Amin.” (Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. On earth, as it is in heaven, Amen). With the verse finished, tonal certainty once again fades, until at the 2:25 mark the final chorus brings us back to G major to finish out the tune. I hope you enjoy this moving arrangement, along with the visual accompaniment of some truly high-definition 2005 video game graphics!