Raise the noise floor
A while back Video Games Live Volume 1 managed to elbow its way onto foobar2000. The Halo and Warcraft suites were pleasant surprises, but I would still be content if the only thing that was on the CD was the amalgamation of Civ IV's Coronation and Baba Yetu, even if someone probably took the two tracks from the game's OST and just spliced them together.
At any rate, I didn't think to mention it, but this post jogged my memory, because I suddenly remembered why the Halo and Warcraft suites sounded way better than I remembered when I heard them live: There was no crowd.
I'm sure that cheering and screaming have a place in a concert. Just not, you know, during the actual performance. Doing so will not actually raise the roof, but you can hazard a guess as to what it will raise based on this entry's title. And I say this having sat in the fourth row. The fourth row.
Sure, cheering is encouraged, the orchestra are PRO and it won't break their concentration, but…
Let's put it this way. You cheering during a performance of video game music will not create the moment. Save it for open air raves and U2 concerts [YouTube].
Two points I want to make. The first requires me putting on the Classical hat and looking up the etymology of the word "audience." Apparently the term is related to listening. As a member of the audience, I expect to listen to something. Listen to what? Certainly not some vapid gushing fan. If I wanted vapid gushing I could go to the mall, or read a blog, at a cost of much less.
Second, I object to what fans cheer at:
Name of a game? Cheer.
Name of the piece? Cheer.
A popular section comes up during a suite? Cheer.
Master Chief appears on the screen? Cheer.
Voice of Cortana? Squeal like little school kids. Oh, and cheer harder.
Granted, the first two things were generally said by Tommy Tallarico to work the crowd, and man was it an easy crowd. But that's not saying that the latter three aren't; all examples are essentially cheering triggered by recognition. Recognition is easy, people recognize things non-stop over the course of a day and it's not a big deal. But put a bunch of fans together and suddenly recognition becomes a platform with which to demonstrate to the world your herdlike mentality.
And by the way recognition is vocalized, what a herd it is.
I suspect this is also what happens whenever more than two fans get together to, well, fanboy/fangirl over pretty much anything. The conversation is actually a thinly veiled quiz, with each correct answer a cause for voices of ever higher pitch and volume, and maybe the occasional highfive. Do we highfive our computer every time it manages to read something from storage? No, with one exception: when the drive is failing and we're desperately trying to salvage what we can.
Maybe this is just the price of breaking the ice, but so what if it is? If we were to celebrate every time a TCP handshake was successful, it would be Confederation Independence Day, every day, and while that would be pretty sweet, the number of smog alerts would probably more than double.
These screen caps depict audiences that are the antithesis of the subject matter of this entry. Just wanted to make sure there was no confusion. If Utada Hikaru decided to shout, "Everyone, listen to my song!" they really would.
P.S.
It's a well known fact that the only person who has ever sung Baba Yetu's solo correctly is the singer from the game's original soundtrack. Everyone else has been terrible, no offense. Well, yes offense. Giving Baba Yetu the opera treatment hasn't worked, and never will.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that they really did just splice Coronation into Baba Yetu. The arrangement and choral balance used for the live performance is so much richer, so much more powerful.