As I enjoy the contrasts that Medleys provide and don't really like one song formations, (Though Zip Gun Bop was awesome...) I asked whether or not they would let us perform one if the students choreographed it on their own time. They replied that they had been trying to get us to choreograph something for awhile (Which is true, now that I think of it...) and that it would be awesome if we did.
Trying to hit three birds with one stone, I undertook the task. The first bird being that I have had a thesis for a long time that the best place to look for a song that inspires emotion is a video game. While I cannot say that they inspire more or less than an independent score or a score from a movie, an epic medley that comes purely from video games could be a great start to that thesis.
Aside from that, and the fact that I enjoy medleys immensely, my real dream in relation to ballroom dance is to teach ballroom and perhaps even formation someday. While I have an opportunity to teach this next year, I think a successful medley would solidify my chances of doing so on a regular basis, and even one contributed medley would probably be used for at least five years if it was good enough to be handed down to the jr. team.
So, I am recording my thoughts here. Both for the paper I want to write on video game soundtracks, and just because I will go crazy from listening to all this music if I don't. (So far I have listened to about 75 tracks, which I'm sure comes to at least 4 hours of music...)
My thoughts thus far are as follows:
As I look through all these soundtracks, I find that the master composers had a climax for each of their songs, yet the songs still fit the goings-on of the setting you were in. I'm finding that while a lot of these tracks accent the story and emotion of the scene, it is a steady emotion. There are no climaxes, no rises and falls in the score and subsequently, the emotion caused by it.
I am also suspicious that the tracks I found to be 'epic' tend to be glorified in my mind by the fact that I played that scene and had some strong emotion attached to the setting. Most of the comments I read that say the track was 'epic' seem to be false in my opinion, and they always seem to reference what was happening in the game at the time.
