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My Interview with Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth

On March 1st, I had the privilege of sitting down for an interview with Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth at the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert in Chicago.

This was my first opportunity to have a conversation with Mr. Uematsu, the genius composer behind the Final Fantasy series, who inspired my musical career and shaped the direction of my entire life. Mr. Roth, the conductor of the Chicagoland Pops, has taken charge of a new revolution in videogame music by bringing it to the orchestra, where it can now be enjoyed by both hardcore fans and mainstream audiences everywhere. Both Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth are heroes in the videogame music industry, and receiving the privilege of sitting down with both of them for a 45 minute discussion was the greatest honor.

In preparation for the interview, I collaborated with my dear friend Tim Maxwell, who owns and operates the Square Enix music fansite “SquareSound” (www.Squaresound.com). Together, Tim and I prepared a series of questions to ask Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth in English. We were told that Mr. Uematsu would have a translator present, so we did not prepare any of our questions in Japanese.

Tim and I flew into Chicago the day before the interview and met up in the airport. We were also joined my childhood friend Laura Stephens (http://lauraneato.deviantart.com), who lives in the area and devoted her weekend to helping us get around the city.

As we headed outside to catch a chocobo to the nearest inn, we were approached by a large man wearing a black suit and a wry smile, offering us a “discount” ride to our destination. At that moment, I heard a familiar tune play over the airport’s PA system. Tim and I immediately moved to the front row, Laura took the back row, and we broke out into turn-based combat. Fortunately, Tim took the heavy damage while I held down L1 R1 and escaped unscathed.

... ... ...

I’m really sorry about that last paragraph, I couldn’t help myself. Now back to the story!

Okay, so we had dinner and went back to the hotel to run through the interview. We had all of our questions written and printed out in advance so that we would be well prepared for the next day. We got up early Saturday morning and met up at the hotel where the interview was scheduled to take place. The camera crew was on time and ready to go. Everything was looking fantastic.

At approximately 1:00pm, Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth arrived for the interview. Tim and I made our greetings, and we were super-excited to get started. But something was missing…

“I’m so sorry, but will Mr. Uematsu’s translator be arriving shortly?”

Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth replied “Oh, we were told that you would be providing the translator.”

I exchanged a nervous glance with Tim. There had been a miscommunication, and there would be no translator at this interview. I felt my heart skip a few beats. At that moment, I felt very fortunate that I had spent the last eight years of my life studying Japanese, but with no time to prepare the proper translations, I was forced to speak on the fly.

Despite numerous grammatical errors and an overall lack of polish in presentation, I was able to deliver all of the questions in a way that Mr. Uematsu could understand, and I was able to successfully translate for my friend Tim so that he could also speak with Mr. Uematsu directly. I explained to Mr. Uematsu that I had not prepared to conduct the interview in Japanese, but he was so encouraging and really took an active role in providing great, detailed answers to all of our questions. He is such a kind, humble, respectful, wonderful human being. It’s an honor just to have been in his presence.

That night, Tim, Laura, and I attended the Distant Worlds concert. The highlight of the concert for me was the live performance of the FFVI Opera (yes, I cried, please don’t laugh at me >.<). While sitting in the audience and hearing that performance, I started to get ideas about how to arrange the opera for piano. If enough people would be interested in hearing that, I will create the arrangement and perform in it concert next year…

After the concert, we all waited together until the crowd had cleared out, and we were the only ones left in the theatre. We said our final goodbyes to Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth, took some great pictures together, and parted ways.

The videotaped interview with Mr. Uematsu and Mr. Roth will be available for free on PianoSquall.com and SquareSound.com in just a few weeks, along with a new album of pictures from the concert. I’ll follow up with another post as soon as everything is up and ready to enjoy!

My second grandmother is dead

I got one of those phone calls this afternoon. You know what I’m talking about…one of those calls where you pick up and hear your family member on the other line speaking in a slow, sad voice. Your blood pressure drops right away because already know what they’re going to say.

My last living grandmother died today.

This was nothing at all like the slow, degenerative multiple sclerosis that destroyed my nanny Betty. This was a sudden tragedy, and no one ever saw it coming…

It all started a few months ago. My grandmother went into the hospital for a hip replacement surgery, and the doctors incidentally noticed that she had a leaking heart valve in the x-rays. The surgeon told her that without an urgent open heart surgery, she could die suddenly.

My grandmother went in for the heart surgery last month, and everything seemed to be going smoothly, until we learned that she had developed a postoperative infection.

The last month has been a nightmare for me and my family as my grandmother’s condition continued to deteriorate. She was put on a ventilator and a dialysis machine 24/7 because she could no longer breath on her own and her kidneys had failed.

A few days ago, when it had become apparant that my grandmother would never recover from this, the doctors reduced her sedative so that we could finally talk to her. We explained the situation, and she responded by trying to rip out the breathing tube so that she would die. The doctors put her back under sedation.

Before undergoing this surgery, my grandmother expressed her wishes in the form of a living will. If she did not recover from this operation, she did not wish to spend the last years of her life hooked up to machines.

Today, my family has been forced to make an extremely painful decision. We honored my grandmother’s last wishes and withdrew life support. On Thursday, I will be flying home to South Florida for the funeral and Shivah.

The Sword of Truth

I very rarely come across a fellow Sword of Truth fan. Most people just smile and nod when I go off on a rant about how incredible this series is. But let me tell you, if you haven’t checked out The Sword of Truth yet, go to a bookstore today and pick up “Wizard’s First Rule”. That’s book 1 in the series, and it’s the second best book I’ve ever read in my life—second only to “Faith of the Fallen”, which is book 6 of the same series.

I’m starting on book 9 now, and I’m way behind. Book 10 is already out, I need to catch up! And I’m 12 hours into Blue Dragon already, so this weekend is going to be major fantasy overload. I need to pick up some oreos and milanos to keep me company.

Oh, have you heard the main theme to Blue Dragon yet? Wow…

Game Developer's Conference

I am attending the Game Developer’s Conference Audio Track in San Francisco this week! I am particularly looking forward to the game music lecture by the legendary Koji Kondo. I am also very happy that my dear friend Michael Huang has been nominated for an award for his excellent soundtrack to the PC game Professor Fizzwizzle. We will head up to the ceremony later this week to hear the results.

Xenosaga III and My Physical Activity for the Year

I love Xenosaga III. I’m about thirty hours into the game and completely addicted. The plot is amazing, the characters are amazing, and they keep throwing new twists at you. For me, the coolest part of all is that I get to hear my dear friend Richard Epcar, the voice of Ziggy.

After non-stop Xenosaga this weekend, my friend Ron suggested that I go outside and do some physical activity (don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either). He’s a runner, and while I was sitting on my ass all weekend, he was running a seven mile race in San Francisco. (He’s sweating and exhausted, I’m eating oreos and playing RPGs in the air conditioning, you tell me who’s winning at life here…). I decided I would drive to San Francisco and meet him at the finish line.

When I got there, of course all the roads were blocked off for the race, so I had to find parking like a mile away. I left the car and started walking towards the running people, which looked like specs in the distance. When I finally got up there, I saw a cheerleader on the side of the road yelling “come on guys, only 100 meters to go!” Now, I’m no expert on the metric system, but 100 of anything sounds pretty damn long to me. So I give a sigh and start heading back to the car, when suddenly I think to myself, “Mike, this is your chance to prove to yourself and the rest of the world that RPG-obsessed nerds can be athletes too.” I turned around and jumped into the race.

My finishing time was about three minutes. Not bad for a seven mile race I must say (I left out the minor details). I celebrated my new found athleticism with more oreos and another three hours of Xenosaga.

Back from E3

I had an amazing time at E3 this year. Electronic Arts had an exceptional showing with titles such as Command and Conquer 3, Battle for Middle Earth II on Xbox 360, and Spore. I spent a good portion of the show helping out at the EA booth.

I also spent several hours at Square-Enix and saw the future of Final Fantasy! For the first time, the original FFIII will be available in North America (it was a great game, great music, definitely buy it). We also saw two new titles based on the FF7 plotline: Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core. I imported Dirge of Cerberus a few months ago and found the plot very exciting, but the gameplay itself is third-person shooter (which I’m horrible at) rather than turn-based combat. The highlight of the demo was FFXIII for the PS3—The video showed one female lead character that uses a gun and magic. The setting was futuristic, and there was a quick demonstration of real-time combat. There will also be two additional titles based on the FFXIII world—FFXIII Versus for PS3 and FFXIII Agito for mobile.

The final highlight of the convention was the Nintendo Wii demonstration, which featured a variety of titles ranging from Ping-Pong and Tennis to Zelda. The console is extremely innovative—to hit a tennis ball, you swing the controller like a racket. If you swing late, the ball goes out wide. In Zelda, if you want to shoot and arrow, you pull back the controller and fire just like you’re drawing a real bow and arrow. All of the Wii titles featured this kind of very creative gameplay.

Those were the highlights for me, but there was so much to see that three days really wasn’t enough!