Home > Exclusive: Ebuch Interviewed on Twilight Symphony and Symphony of the Goddesses
We have recently interviewed Eric Buchholz from ZREO about Twilight Princess Symphony and their involvement with Symphony of the Goddesses during our latest weekly podcast recording. We have typed out the more interesting bits and pieces for you after the break.
How long has Twilight Princess Symphony been around, including the time spent under the alias, Project Marenello?
Twilight Symphony as we know it now - we didn't announce it until E3 2010. That was when we posted our announcement video that revealed the project name and stuff. Before that we had been teasing the project under the name Project Marenello. That was probably around for a year and a half before we announced it. So, to date, it's been about 4 years since it's been started. The first year and a half before we announced it - it was basically in a trial and error phase.
In percentage, how done is Twilight Symphony? 98%? 99.9%?
Most of the work is done now that we have the choir recorded and all of the arrangements are done. Now all that is left to do is to finish recording the soloist and getting them into our final mixes and just touching up spots in songs that we did a few years ago. So, to answer your question and give a percentage, I would say we are up to 90% if not higher. Even after we are done with the final mixes, we still have to go through the licensing process so it could be a few more weeks until we are done with the final tracks.
How did ZREO come to work with Symphony of the Goddesses?
Well, just to clarify, ZREO isn't affiliated with Symphony of the Goddesses at all. Jeron Moore, the producer for Twilight Symphony and Symphony of the Goddesses, he invited some of the ZREO team members to work with him and his team on the Symphony of the Goddesses project and the 25th Anniversary Symphony.
It's more the people involved with ZREO just happen to be working with the Zelda Symphony too.
What part do you play in Symphony of the Goddesses?
For me, what I've been mostly doing - last year when they were working on the music, I did a lot of the transcriptions of the original music to give to the music director Chad Seiter. He would make a list of songs that he would want me to transcribe and I would have to do them as quickly as possible just so he could get through his work in the speed that he does - he is incredibly fast.
I did transcriptions and choir parts, which I got pretty good at from Twilight Symphony. I did a mockup for one of the segments. I don't know if it's been approved by Nintendo yet but they have been working on new music to add to the show. Jeron also had me work on some of the video editing for some of the videos shown during the show and a lot of the videos that I did were only used for the Zelda 25th Symphony. One of the videos that I did that still gets used is The Wind Waker.
Who decides what tracks are played during the concerts?
A lot of that falls on Jeron and Chad, they come up with the concepts for all of the tracks and then once they put together something - they will pitch it to Nintendo over in Japan and they have the ultimate say as to whether or not a certain segment will be performed or not. You get the whole support of Nintendo - getting Nintendo's approval, when Nintendo says that something is suitable then you know you've done an outstanding job.
Do you know if a musical CD will be released after the tour ends?
Well, like all the other interviews online have said, it's something that there is a lot of demand for it from the concert goers but it's all a matter of whether Nintendo wants to do it. Nintendo, first and foremost, is a games company. They are not a record company so anything to do with music and especially selling music is something that they are hesitant in wanting to do.
You can listen to the full interview here.
About the Author:
Austin Dickson
Austin Dickson has been around the Zelda fandom for years. He started Link's Hideaway as a small personal project, which later turned into something of which he never thought possible. He enjoys writing articles, guides, walkthroughs, and developing the different Concealed Gaming network sites.
