Just about a year ago, when I hosted the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM) at the University of Michigan, I made a presentation about video game piano transcriptions. I titled the talk "There's no question you'll be popular after performing these in front of your friends: the pedagogy and performance of piano transcriptions of video game music." The title is a line from the beginning of a Zelda collection and I thought that was perfect. In this presentation, I discuss the variety of piano material and how the game audio is adapted to work well in a linear format for live performances. In doing this presentation, I also became the first person to perform on a traditional instrument live at NACVGM, though others before me had made music on game systems.
As I say at the end of the talk, I was planning to have a studio of pianists to have lessons and study video game piano music with me in the coming year. That's this academic year, and I'm in the midst of that research. Although it's a lot of extra work to have five piano students and a studio class on top of my normal teaching schedule, I've learned a lot and am hoping in upcoming years to publish about my experience, my students' experience, and about the repertoire. My hope is that if more teachers of piano knew about this material, they would incorporate it into their teaching. One outcome that's already clear to me is that this sort of material will attract students who would not otherwise be interested in studying piano.
The year is going so well. I have a variety of students to help explore the repertoire from a beginner who had never had piano lessons before (though he could read music as a violinist) to a student who could easily have been a piano major if he'd desired it to a doctoral student who helps me with researching the pedagogy of these collections and other aspects like how to program a piano recital of all video game music. My studio had our first concert at the University of Michigan Museum of Art a few weeks ago as a midway project and Peter Smith took some great pictures from the event, including this one of the studio just after we finished.
As far as I know, this is the first collegiate studio of pianists working on video game music. Pretty cool! Although only one of them, the DMA student, is planning to go into the profession, I'm delighted to have inspired the others to revisit their piano playing and hope they'll stay with it through life.
There are some other upcoming events that are exciting too. Video Game Pianist, Dr. Martin Leung, will be coming in about 10 days to give lessons to my students, and speak to the piano majors at U-M as well as other students about his career and how the internet has changed the modern musician's career. He's also playing a concert and I'll be joining him for a few duets he's arranged-- they're hard!
This concert is free and open to the public if you're in the Michigan area.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2375425089412635/
https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/events/event/?id=12185
We have an end of semester recital planned as well, April 13th. So it's a busy few months. Meanwhile, my students are keeping journals about their practice and work and have formal interviews that I'll be able to study through as I'm working on publications I hope will come out of this year.
Since I started this project, I learned of another pianist who is doing research in this area, from Tarleton State University, Dr. Leslie Spotz. She gave a recital after a sabbatical researching video game piano transcriptions the day after my studio recital at the UMMA. So cool to realize you're not alone in interests and what you're researching!
That said, I bet there are more folks out there in a similar case. Do you use video game music in your studio teaching? I'd love to hear about it if so, and especially if you're a pianist. What works well? What doesn't? How long have you done it? I welcome any comments or chance to connect about this.
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