Who doesn’t love some music? Especially some video game music.
It’s easy to forget how integral music is to the games that we play. But the reality is, where the mechanics allow us to have fun and the story allows us to be enthralled, the music is the twine that binds the experience together. It hypes us up in the big fights, plucks at our heartstrings during the emotional moments, and those many iconic, bombastic themes that creep in at the title screen waft an air of mystery to us, filling us with intrigue at the experience we’re about to have.
Enter PlayerPiano, part of the Geek & Sundry network who brings awesome webseries featuring Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day. This new YouTube channel dedicated to using their Indiegogo funding to play the songs you want to be heard. While they drift between video games, nerd-adjacent, and classic material, PlayerPiano’s covers of video games themes are some of the best. Composer and pianist Sonya Belousova and the team of filmographers have already taken down the classic Tetris theme and Street Fighter theme with expert prowess. As part of a mini-series on the PlayerPiano channel, they are creating “On The Stop” covers, where Belousova listens to a song on YouTube, spins around in her chair, and bangs it out on the keys.
I say bangs; I should say that PlayerPiano brilliant recreates these classic tunes on their first try. They’ve already done an “On The Spot” of Nintendo themes, and now they’re taking on a wide array of iconic video games songs as requested by a funder on Indiegogo. In this video, PlayerPiano tackles the Halo, Chrono Cross, and Skyrim themes, “Aerith’s Theme” from Final Fantasy VII, and rounds it off with “Cullen’s Masterpiece” from Bioshock. There’s a little bit of cheating involved with Bioshock, PlayerPiano’s Belousova had already played the pieces as an orchestral version awhile back. And yet, despite having not seen the notes or played the piece since that concert, she is able to masterfully recall the highly complex piece. Major props earned, although extra hats off to the expertly done Halo piece.
If you like their videos, subscribe to PlayerPiano, as they’ll no doubt be releasing more of these in the future. You can also find them on their Indiegogo page where they have a variety of perks that you can donate to in order to both fund them and potentially request some songs be played.
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