Ep 96 - Final Fantasy Distant Worlds w/composer Arnie Roth

Outside of The Legenda of Zelda, no videogame franchise is more closely tied to music than Final Fantasy. From emotional resonance to supporting gameplay to auditory storytelling, the themes of Final Fantasy are the stuff of legends. So much so, we've been listening to live orchestral versions of these pieces for decades. 

Enter Distant Worlds, a long running orchestra series that brings the music of Final Fantasy to the greatest stages in the world. Join  series conductor and director Arnie Roth and I as we talk how Distant Worlds became a sensation, the community surrounding it and the joys of playing to packed, rapt audiences night after night. 

STARRING:

Arnie Roth
@Mustin
Ryan aka @gameswcoffee

SONG COVERS

CHOCOBO BAND - Liberi Fatali (Final Fantasy VIII) [Official Music Video] 4K by Chocobo Band - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRqiMaBwrI

Final Fantasy VII: Prelude (Harp Cover) + Pedal Harp Sheet Music by HarpistKT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZLJRVl8-HI

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Transcript

0:08

Hello and welcome to episode 96 of A Gamer Looks at 40. I'm Bill Tucker. And when I did my Legend of Zelda series back about a year and a half ago, I made a huge mistake, a glaring omission in this very long, almost six month exploration of the series. I never did an episode dedicated to music. And that's a - Big deal, music is a huge part of The Legend of Zelda. It's woven into the fabric. It's a part of the storytelling and it's one of the most iconic groups of pieces ever written for a video game. Zelda music is the definition of iconic. For this year's Final Fantasy series, I vowed to not make the same mistake twice. We will be talking about music a lot. in this series because music, like Zelda, is integral to the Final Fantasy experience and every conversation I've had so far for this podcast series regarding Final Fantasy, music has just come up. It's as if my guests know of my mistake from a year and a half ago and are not letting me repeat it. And as I work through this Final Fantasy series and get these episodes out, the order of them... It's a living thing. I don't have a huge design document. I will release these as they make sense and I am going to put the music episodes where they make sense. But this particular conversation, this episode you're about to hear, I just have to get it out now. Why? Because I am really excited about it. But before we get into the meat of the interview, let's chat with games with coffee. Now, Ryan was one of my first interviews for this podcast series. As of this recording, I think I spoke to him six months ago and he was one of the first people I reached out to when I was starting to collect interviews for Final Fantasy. And while we were talking about favorite memories of Final Fantasy, he shared the following story. One of my favorite favorite Final Fantasy memories, actually. This was roughly 2000, 2009. Yeah. If I remember correctly, yep, this was in 2009. So Distant Worlds is a concert series featuring orchestral arrangements of classic Final Fantasy music. So from basically the entire series, let's put it that way. So they had a concert up here in Toronto back in 2009. I got tickets for it and I'm like, hey bro, do you want to go with me? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. And this was back in the day when my brother was a band nerd. So he would play trombone, he played trombone, he played saxophone, he played oboe, he played... Oh wow. I feel like he dabbled a bit in trumpet, but I don't really think so. His main jam was trombone. Mr. Low Brass, okay, very good. Nice. Yeah, so yeah, his main jam was trombone. And so I know he was a Final Fantasy nerd. He was like a fan of the music just as much as I was a fan of the music. So I'm like, hey, yo, let's go together. And that became our bonding experience. Going to see this concert and yo this concert dude, we got to see we got to see Nobuo Uematsu live Wow singing the choir bits for one -way angel and we were like holy smokes wow our minds were blown at that moment he's he's there on stage that's amazing that's amazing that that is ridiculous That was my favorite memory. I wish I had a better camera. Oh, sure. Right. Imagine that. Oh, wow. That'd be amazing. That sounds really fascinating and amazing. The music of Final Fantasy and one of my other questions was going to be if you had to pick one element of the Final Fantasy experience, right? Graphics, sound, story, etc. What would you say the most load bearing element is? What is the one element that... that Final Fantasy consistently gets right. And this actually plays on the train going back to Sector 7. Just after you bomb the Mako Reactor. Sorry, Mako. Mako Reactor 1. And you're talking with Barrett on the train. And Cloud goes up and he winks out and he's like, it's like this train. It can't go anywhere except where its rails can take it. And that music is playing in the background there. And it's just like, it's such a... powerful moment for me. Sure. That was just like that was the moment where it's just like, okay, I need to play this game. Like I need to spend every waking moment in this world. So yeah, no, and I can think of I have the entire I have like virtually almost every single Final Fantasy catalog to my brain and I know exactly where it was and what I was doing during that time. I mean, I'm not going to go into semantics about that. I might I might just be I might just be straight wild in here. Yeah, but. But the music, that's just how powerful the music is in Final Fantasy. It's like you can't have a Final Fantasy without a music. And he wasn't the only one with a story. A few months later, I was chatting with audio producer and video game music remixer Mustin about the Final Fantasy series and his inspirations. And he shared the following story. I was the first person that was led in to the concert hall at the very first concert. And was it out here 2004? Yeah, I was, I was up at the front. Uematsu was hanging out up on top. There was like a balcony up there and you could just recognize his his wacky bowl cut and his big old glasses just, you know, resting his chin on folded arms, looking at all the people just milling around, waiting to hear his music. Yeah, but I was right up front. And whenever that person opened up the rope, the big fancy rope, I was like, here's my ticket. Let me go. Wow, that's awesome. Was this in Japan? No, this was at the first, I believe it was the first video game music symphony in the United States. It was at the Disney, the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles during an E3 event. And I think it was the year 2004. And I'm looking at some, the history of it. Yeah, 2005 it looks like. I Arne Roth who was... Yep. At the helm. Arne Roth was conducting. Yeah, Arne Roth was conducting. Yeah, I was there. I was there for the first thing. And I know some people really look down on the mezzanine, ironically, because it's where the poppers would be. But I sat right, I was right in the middle of that up there. And I was able to put my do the same thing as we monster did, put my arms up there, put my head down on my. my chin on my arms and just like watch it was just, it was incredible. That's amazing. That's absolutely incredible. That's so cool. I love that. You were able, you were there when the first people there and I, you know what people dunk on the mezzanine. They shouldn't. I prefer, I like mezzanine. I like first few rows of upper mezzanine for if I'm seeing a theater or play, I like being able to see the entire set and make all the, you know, and be able to take it all in as opposed to focusing on one performance if it's a play or theater. Um, But I don't care how you experience it. It's sometimes nice to be in the back, you know, and let that wall of sound hit you. Yeah, just in one shot, you know. Yeah, that's exactly. I'm glad I bought that ticket for that spot. But yeah, that was get that first ticket tear. I've got it still the ticket and let's go. That's fantastic. It's so cool. I love that. Yeah, man. And the first thing they played was that liberate for Tali. And I like I don't really love Final Fantasy eight, but man, I just. like welled up with tears, man, it was like amazing to hear an orchestra after, you know, like five years of constantly doing stuff with computers and friends and live music, like live bands, but that orchestra was just amazing. Time to meet the mastermind behind the magic. On this episode of A Gamer Looks at Forty I chat with composer Arnie Roth about Final Fantasy Distant Worlds, how the concert originated, the energy in the crowd, and the lasting impact of this world class symphonic series. Time to scan our tickets, take our seats, and watch out for the sword of that cloud cosplayer that's sitting next to us. as we dive into episode 96, Final Fantasy Distant Worlds with composer Arnie Roth. So Mr. Roth, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat about your work with Distant Worlds and some of the other work you've done. But before we get started, I'd love to hear a bit about how you first got introduced to the world of video game music. And because given your experience, that was never your first place. You've done a ton of stuff in your career. How did video game music first enter into your orbit? It's an interesting story and maybe not as, actually not as fascinating as you might think. Fair enough. I was music director and conductor of an orchestra in the Chicago area called the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra for a while, based at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago. And we would bring in... all kinds of different concerts. We had a regular subscription series. And a colleague of mine that I had worked with on other projects, and he introduced me to the fact that Japan had been doing video game concerts way back since the 1990s, late 90s, and that I might look into that. There had never been a public concert of video game music. in at that point in the United States, in North America or in Europe actually. Although a friend of mine, a colleague was working on trying to put that together in Europe. Anyhow, the short story is that as music director, I decided, okay, let's take a chance. And the item that we took a chance on was Dear Friends, Music from Final Fantasy, which is the preceding tour to... our current Distant Worlds series. This was in 2004, 2005. And that was the first time I met Nobuo Uematsu, the primary composer of Final Fantasy and worked with him extensively on that concert. The concert was at the Rosemont in February of 2005. It was the first truly public concert of Final Fantasy music. or any video game music in the United States. And it sold out very quickly. Nobuo Matsu was there attending and we became close friends and colleagues and they asked me, Square Enix and Nobuo asked me to conduct the rest of the Dear Friends concerts, which were a short -lived tour. I think it was maybe... three or four or maybe five other concerts in the United States after the Chicago concert. I did those and then they invited me to conduct a series of concerts they did in Japan called Voices, music from Final Fantasy. And I was asked to conduct that by invitation from Nobuo Matsu, who at that time was still an employee of Square Enix. And this was the first time that a non-Japanese conductor had ever conducted the music of Final Fantasy in Japan. So it was quite an honor at the time. I did that and then Nobu and I and Square Enix worked on the concept of a global touring production that could bring the music of Final Fantasy around the world to major capitals around the world. And that was... the launch of Distant Worlds music from Final Fantasy in 2007. And here we are, 16 plus years later. We celebrated our 15th anniversary of Distant Worlds, and along with the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy, we continue to have these coordinated anniversaries every five years. It's very nice, easier to remember. Absolutely. So that was really the start. And it was only simply because I made the, you might say arbitrary or educated decision as a music director and conductor to say, yes, I want to try this. It's never been done in North America. And one thing led to another from that point. That's excellent. And that's, I really, that speaks to a real leap of faith too, because you were trying something that had not been tried before in North America. Successful in Japan, of course, but not here. For sure, yeah. I mean, was there any concern? I mean, obviously, your first Dear Friends was a smaller run, like you said, but was there any concern? Was there a nervousness about it? And honestly, what about the video game music just inspired you to say yes to that? Yeah, no question that in the early days, a lot of people didn't believe. Here was the main thinking back then. they, from a lot of orchestras and presenters in North America and around the world, they felt that it hadn't been proven that a concert of video game music could stand on its own as a ticket to be bought for entertainment independent of, let's say, a convention or some other driving force. And that was really the concern by most of... the orchestras and presenters that we ran up against or were talking to. We had to get past that. In the early days of Distant Worlds, there certainly was reticence. And you could look at the number of concerts that we do each year, starting at 2007 and all the way through today, and see this tremendous increase in number of concerts. just from distant worlds, but of course we're involved with many other productions as well. But it's when one sees and when we saw the reaction of the audience, first of all, the quick sellout, of course, but the reaction of the audience in the concerts themselves was absolutely amazing. Here you have an audience that is uber respectful. to the actual live performance. They want to hear every note that's being performed. So you can hear a pin drop and you're talking about four or 5 ,000 people at many of these concerts. But the reverse is true too. They're the best of a rock audience or a pop audience. You know, those audiences tend to be very, a bit more raucous. They're singing along with their artists. They're walking up and down the aisles, dancing and buying. a hot dog or a beer or whatever during the concert. None of that happens in a Final Fantasy concert. Everyone gets into their seats and they listen very intently. But they react like a rock or a pop audience to every one of the scores that we play, this huge standing ovations and over the top applause. So it's like the best classical audience in terms of the respect and listening and the best of the rock and pop. audience aspects of the honest reaction to this. And part of the reason is that you're talking about a wonderful kind of community. This is a community where they're all there for the same reason. They want to hear the music of Final Fantasy. Not every video game falls into that category where there's as much reverence, not just for the gameplay, but for the actual music compositions. Certainly that's... been a hallmark of Final Fantasy from the very beginning, from 1987 onward. So it's a rather unique IP, let's put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And that sound, I've never seen one personally. I've always wanted to. Next time you come around Austin. We were there. If you were to get through down the Austin area. were there. Why weren't you there? I know you were there. I know. There was conflicts. I have two children. I blame all things on the two kids, but I'm desperate to see it. Final Fantasy to me personally is a very near and dear franchise to my heart. And it's funny how you say the community really embraces it because I am doing dozens and dozens of interviews for this podcast series and I'm about to embark on in March. I cannot get through one conversation without bringing up music. My guests, and they just bring it up themselves to the point where I already know. There will be a music episode. It's so integral to the experience. It depends on the game, obviously. There's a lot of the single shooter kind of games where they have a wonderful anthem or main theme, but a lot of the gameplay music is not all that interesting. Let's put it that way. Percussion loops, various other things. Final Fantasy is different that way. It's a role -playing game, first of all. Every character gets its own theme. You know, Nobuo Uematsu, right from the very beginning, employed a thing that we like to refer to as a Peter and the Wolf style of composition. Every character got its own main theme. And every battle and every environment, you know, city or land or world, every romantic relationship. And so when you have... the development of the plot in the game, these musical themes are still weaving themselves along with the plot. Another example of this I like to use is Nobuo Uematsu was called by Time Magazine as the, he was called the John Williams of video game music, and with good reason, music composition. He, His primary goal in writing, it seems to me, and he's told me as much, it's all about melody first and structure. Not everyone uses that as a first step. Many composers are building an environment or an atmosphere or a mood, but with Nobu, he's very kind of, I hesitate to use the word old school, but, but. very traditional in that he really respects the sanctity of the melody first. And he has this weird knack for coming up with unbelievably memorable melodies that just will not go away over many, many years. And then, of course, the series brings these melodies back in with new arrangements later in the series. So you're talking about players getting so ingrained with these certain melodies over not just one game, but... over 10 years, 20 years. So, you know, it's really, it's that combination of an RPG game and this style of composition that has made the music so important and actually stands on its own from the game. You know, a lot of orchestras and presenters would say, well, does this music belong on the concert stage? And certain video games, maybe the answer might be, well, maybe not. but certainly the music of Final Fantasy. And there are many others as well that certainly belong on the concert stage. And we have done it in all the famous stages in the world, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Davies Hall in San Francisco, you know, Chicago Symphony Center, you name it. It's been in all the basic, not basic, the most famous. concert halls and it certainly deserves to be there. The way this music is crafted and a lot of it starts with the template that Nobuo Matsu created. Absolutely. And I think the music of Final Fantasy is, especially the early days, in the early days of the 8 -bit and the 16 -bit games, those early days, the music carried so much weight because it had to do so much. You didn't have the graphics, you didn't have the animations. you know, when two characters are conversing via dialogue boxes, that music is telling the player how they are feeling. And it's such a load -bearing aspect of Final Fantasy. So it's... was going to say, yeah, that's your... You're hitting a very important point. And he had to do this with just 8 -bit data capability, which means that all... They weren't recording orchestras or vocals or anything. The most remarkable, some of the most remarkable stuff in Final Fantasy 6, which is still before they were able to, they were still using 8 -bit data. He had 40 something minutes of opera in Final Fantasy 6. I mean, you know, you have Celis on the parapet of a castle looking up at the stars and the moon and singing. And you have a dialogue bubble that comes up with a little musical note next to it. and it has the lyrics of what she's singing. And what you hear is this kind of, you know, computer chip. You know, you're hearing the aria that she's singing with the bones of the harmony underneath it. Now we play the opera as a full symphonic piece with three soloists, you know, Prince Rouse and Draco and Maria. And it's just an amazing thing how well. that early stuff translated itself into full orchestra scores and what he was able to do, you know, back then. I've said it a number of times with other guests, it's literally a miracle. Like it feels like something that shouldn't be possible but obviously was. Do you know what's better than an orchestra seat at a distant world concert? Being one of my fantastic patrons! Okay, not that good, let's not get crazy here. Still pretty neat. And I want to thank those wonderful people who support the show financially with our quick patron break. Starting with Terry Knair, Games with Coffee, BT Gobbles, Julian of the Stage Select Podcast, Seth Sergel, Tim Knowles, the Let's Play Princess, Greg Seward of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, and the one and only, fabulous debonair and always charming, Pete Harney. If you would like to join these wonderful people in your financial support of the show, go to patreon .com forward slash a gamer looks at 40 -4 -0. Check out the tiers, and if anything at all strikes your fancy, sign up today. When you were selecting the pieces for Distant Worlds, what was the process for that? Because again, there's so much music in Final Fantasy. Do the different performances have different set lists or is it usually the consistent across the whole thing? How do you guys do that part? No, the most joyous part about this is that we have over 165 scores in our Distant Worlds Final Fantasy Library. And... We are changing things all the time. It's one of the great joys that I have as producer and music director of Distant Worlds that I get to look at all of the factors. I mean, every city that we go to, I consider, have we played there before? What did we play last time? What are the new releases that have come out? What are the, how many? rehearsals do we have with the orchestra and chorus? Do we have any soloists coming out? All of these things and more go into each of the decisions about what we're going to perform at every concert. I have a lot of latitude from Square Enix for a lot of the Distant Worlds concerts for choosing the repertoire, but we also confer with them. I mean, I'm literally, you know, working with Square Enix specific divisions. Square Enix every week of the year. You know, we either have conference calls, certainly emails every day, but I'm working with them all the time and with the individual composers of the series. For instance, we just announced and we're going to do a series of concerts with Masayoshi Soken, the composer of 14, of course, and of the new Final Fantasy 16. We... He's been very difficult to be available to come out to our Distant Worlds concerts as a guest. Finally, we have a couple of dates that he's coming out to in Carnegie Hall, June 22nd, and in Seattle, Ben Arroyo Concert Hall, July 6th and 7th. And that's going to be a very different concert. We're actually going to premiere scores from Final Fantasy 16 for the first time. Wow. And... a lot of scores from 14 of his as well. So it's going to be a very unique Distant Worlds concert with four scores from 16 and four scores from 14. And Masayoshi Shokun attending, Amanda Aken, one of the singers that he has used quite a bit in Final Fantasy XIV and XVI, will be singing live with us as well. That sounds sensational. Yeah, it's going to be a very special concert. But... What we're trying to do as we go on in our years with Distant Worlds is developing some of the Distant Worlds concerts to be a little bit more thematically shaped. So the programs, our original calling was to present as much of the entire series, Final Fantasy series, as possible given the number of minutes that we're limited to in the concerts. So we tried to represent something from the entire series of the major Roman numerals. We really don't have time to do the offshoot games as much as we'd love to, but there's just no time. Right. Yeah. But in alternative to that, trying to do things that are a little bit more thematic. So we may favor one or two of the games a little more heavily. Square Enix is allowing us to do that a little bit more often. And these concerts coming up in June and July are a good example of that. There will be many others and we're developing them as we speak. Again, I love the fact that you have this tapestry of music to pick from. That has to be so exciting to be able to just select, to have just this 165 pieces. That is absolutely incredible. Yeah, it's really gratifying to be able to have this huge, breath -large library. And it's increasing literally every month. We're getting new arrangements all the time with the release of 16, with the release of new versions of 14. And then if we bring out a particular composer, sometimes we'll ask for some new scores as well. So it's great. It's really, really remarkable. And... Sometimes it's driven by the anniversary concerts, you know, where those are a little bit more unique. We did a whole series of new scores really arranged and led by Nobuo Uematsu himself. The entire first half of the 35th anniversary concert series were new scores from Final Fantasy I through VI. And... a new medley, battle medley from one through six that he, again, he oversaw all those new arrangements. So those are all brand new. So you can imagine we just finished that series and immediately launched into more distant worlds. And we have other video game series going on. I mean, Nier is one of the games that is going on right now as we speak, as a matter of fact. I conducted last week Vancouver Symphony, we did near and Eric is doing just did near two concerts in Berlin. He's about to do London this week and Barcelona and then next week, Paris. And we have more near concerts coming up in Atlanta or Orlando. So there's a huge following for that game as well, which is really fun and gratifying to work on. with Yoko Taro and Keiichi Okabe, the composer and director of those games. And we have more. We did Final Fantasy VII Remake, of course, the first chapter of the remake of VII. And we're looking forward to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which should be, it's coming out February 29th. And you can count on concerts based on that as well. So exciting. Again, like you said, every month it sounds like there's something new and that's that's how exciting. How was it? How is it working with Umatsu and a legend in the video game world and really musically as well? How was it? How is it working with him as a partnership? Oh, it's been fabulous. Really great. He's one of the most humble people that you'll ever meet as well. He has very strong ideas. Let's see. maybe ideas is not the right, he has very strong style templates that he uses for himself. And those are baked in for many, many years. He and I share a lot of influences, musical influences. It was really shocking the very first time I met him. He knew way more about me than I did about him. It was really shocking. I mean, he turned to me the first time I met him and he said, Oh yeah, I know, you worked with the Irish tenors, you worked with Manheim Stiemiller, you worked with Mattel movies, he knew my entire background prior to my even conducting one rehearsal. But what's key for that is that he shares a lot of that. He has a fascination for Celtic music. His heroes in terms of classical music are very much about melody and structure. Tchaikovsky, Brahms. Prokofiev, you know, very, very traditional kinds of composition. And he writes this way. And so he and I were, I'll never forget one of the first dear friends that I was doing with him in San Francisco. We were coming back from a rehearsal and I was sitting in the seat behind him and I said to him, you know, we just had rehearsed all kinds of... Classics like one -winged angel and I said every no Busan every time I hear one-winged angel What I hear is Jimi Hendrix purple haze You know the beginning bomb bomb bomb bomb, you know, and and he turned around he looked and he says that's it You know that was one of his influences All this classic rock, you know, he loves Elton John he loves it. I he and I used to have these these debates of trying to stump each other about little known rock groups that you would never think he would have heard of. Crazy things like Moby Grape and Quicksilver Messenger Service and all kinds of things that I knew and he knew about every single one of them. He could even name all of their important songs that were so popular. So I mean, he's a big listener of music. which is key for anyone. My advice to anyone is make sure that you know every genre of music that you can swallow and listen to. Get well versed in the background of all these things and the music theory and composition involved in those. Because if you want to be a composer of any of these things, of video games, movies, you're going to be called on to write things in all these different styles. and you really have to get very familiar with all of them, whether you love them or hate them, you really have to be well-versed in how to translate all of that. That makes perfect sense, absolutely. Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. With our last couple of minutes, and again, thank you so much for taking the time. I do want to make sure... Sure. I know you're incredibly busy, so again, thanks again. I just want share with you a quick anecdote. One of my guests, he goes by Mustin. He's a video game, he creates video game remixes and such. He was first in line at the very first Distant Worlds performance in the US. I believe it was in LA. Is that correct? Well, there was one in LA in 2004, which was also Dear Friends. And that one was, it was right around E3, which was still going, obviously, at that point. And one of the problems with that one is it was just one performance at Walt Disney. So more than half of the audience were you know, industry people from E3. So it wasn't, you know, in terms of it being public, it wasn't that public really, but yes, that did happen. Yeah, so he was first in line and he was standing and he told me the story and he's like, and he remembered you were conducting it and he still has the ticket and he still has this ticket stub. So when you hear something like that and this series has heavily influenced him as an artist. So when you hear stories like that of people who have been affected by distant worlds and by the work you've been doing with Umatsu and just bringing this amazing music to a wider audience, how does that make you feel when you kind of think about that? Oh yeah, it's tremendously gratifying. I mean, it's, I think it's, first of all, I think you need to attend as an audience member, some of these concerts to see the sense of community that's there. The most amazing thing is that I can conduct this music. In Austin, I can conduct it in Singapore, in Sydney, Australia, in London, in Tokyo, or in New York, Carnegie Hall. And it's the same community reaction to each one of these compositions. The most beloved scores are pretty unanimous around the world. And to see this kind of embracing community is... really rewarding and all the comments that we get from VIP meet and greet lines and things like that. And we're constantly getting input from people that, you know, the music has been such an important part of their life. It's gotten them through some very difficult times. And hearing the music live, of course, brings this to another dimension. You know, just very quickly, I would point out that when they're listening and when they're playing the game, They're hearing the same recording of the music over and over again using the same compression, the same tempo, the same performance looped, right? So they're hearing that over and over again. Now put it on the concert hall stage in a concert setting. Now the music can actually breathe the way the composer is really intended. So you really can get without any compression, you get a pianissimo very quiet and oh, you know, overwhelming fortissimo from the orchestra, loud crashes and cadences, and you're able to let the music speed up and slow down in a more organic, natural fashion, the way the composers designed it. And it brings the hearing of these and the enjoyment of these themes to yet another level. So the live music experience is very different in many ways from the... from the game. They have to compress these things so that you're not reaching for the volume every time while you're playing the game. Right. Exactly. So in a real pragmatic way. So it makes the live performances all that much more magical. So yeah, it's very rewarding. And look, as a conductor, composer, as a producer, if somebody comes to you and says, you're going to be able to conduct. the music in all the major capitals in the world, Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, with the greatest orchestras, greatest choruses, and the greatest audience in the world, as a musician, there is nothing higher that I can aspire to than that. So I'm riding high right now. I love it. It's a wonderful, wonderful peak to a long career and - We're planning more and more over the next five years, so it's really very rewarding. Once again I'd like to thank Mr. Roth and his entire team at Distant Worlds for helping set up the interview and have a chat with me about this amazing series of orchestral music that's frankly really important to me and important to generations of Final Fantasy fans. I cannot wait for this to roll back through Austin or who knows maybe I'll take a trip to New York and see something at Carnegie Hall. That would be an absolute treat. But this is going to happen sooner than later. And thank you for checking out this edition of A Gamer Looks at 40. We are at the very beginning of our exploration of the Final Fantasy series. This is going to go on for at least a few months. So if you dig Final Fantasy, this is where you need to be. And if you don't like Final Fantasy, there are 90 something other episodes dedicated to series and franchises and games of every type and stripe. Go to a GamerLooks at 4040 .com for a full list of episodes as well as full series lists including our Tales from the Bargain Bin series, the Earthbound series from last year, and the two years ago Legend of Zelda series, a one -stop shop for a playlist of all of those old episodes so you can just binge them like you would do so on Netflix or your streaming platform of choice. Thanks again for checking out the show and until next time please be kind to yourselves. and each other.