Elaine Li

Age:  20
Hometowns:  Pasadena, CA and Coral Springs, FL
Studying:  Musical Performance (Violin) and English
Instruments:  Violin and Piano
Video Games:  Tetris, Super Puzzle Fighter 2, Ikaruga, and Super Smash Brothers
Musical Influences:  Bach, Beethoven, David Oistrakh, Midori, Gil Shaham, hundreds of other classical composers and performers...Muse, the random inventive band here and there, Natalie MacMaster, Miles Davis, Hikaru Utada, The Brilliant Green, Maaya Sakamoto, Shiina Ringo, and Yoko Kanno. There will be more influences the more I learn, though, so this list is really incomplete...

How I Started Playing:
As far as I can remember, one day, my mother drove me to a violin teacher and handed me a violin. I have no recollection of ever having expressed desire to play violin, but according to my mother, I had.

Asian Parents Syndrome and Classical Music:
My parents didn't pressure me into playing the instrument, but they pressured me to focus and dedicate myself towards the instrument. Playing an instrument is not an easy task. Anyone can read notes, but understanding the instrument and music takes a lot of time. When I was younger, I didn't particularly want to practice or care about my violin. I was too inexperienced to recognize the difficulty of musical achievement without practicing. However, my parents knew this and would pressure me to try to reach a goal - usually a competition - but didn't expect me to be any sort of wunderkind. To them, the violin was more about learning the values of learning and the instrument than learning the instrument itself.

How I Joined the Band:
The band was Dave's brainchild. I met the members of Select Start in early 2005 and helped them out until Rob had to leave for med school. At that point, the band asked me to join, and I accepted. I was really lucky to have met the band. During my junior year of high school, I started to play out a few tunes on the piano or on my violin. Another video game music fan friend - a percussionist - and I were tried to get together a group of people to perform, incidentally enough, "Time's Scar" from ChronoCross for whatever opportunity might arise. I spent the majority of my independent AP Music Theory study arranging the piece, but there were never as many people interested as needed, so the idea sadly died with that. I did a few other small video game music collaborations with some fellow fans in school just for fun, but never publicly.

A Typical Select Start Performance:
Typical performances garner some really awesome reactions. Audience sizes depend on venue and publicity a lot of times. It's made up of all sorts of people, but I think mostly people who have played the games that we play the music of are attracted to hear the music. The pieces seem to bring back memories for them. There's always lots of cheering when we play pieces like Mario or Tetris. Personally, I like it when the audience participates in the music such as clapping along or dancing to the music or sometimes even singing.

Video Game Music As High Art:
I think video game music is on the same musical level as movie scores, but it's definitely not as recognized. Video game music is undeniably starting to make a name as something of an art form, but only time can tell when it will reach a level of public appreciation as widespread as movie music.

Other Game Bands:
Everyone is playing their interpretation of the music. With bands like The Advantage or the Minibosses where it's a rock style base, all the arrangements can sound the same, but they've got differences in their sound. There's this relatively unknown band called Ulu that did an absolutely fantastic jazz cover of the Mario Overworld theme in I think it was New York. We tried to add a little fiddling flavor in "Eternal Wind." Then there's all that adapting that Kiki and Dave have to handle with instrumentation to make up for lack of percussion and brass which end up sometimes as big Chopin-esque motifs in the piano. All of this in video game music! That you can make so many different variations on the same general musical idea is just ridiculously fascinating.

Trend Towards Video Game Bands:
I think there's something of a "roots" movement going on with video games, and that's bringing about video game cover bands who want, and want their audience, to remember those days when you were so excited to get that final alien in 'Invaders'. A lot of emerging bands are about that reconnection and nostalgia. It's like the music connects you to the game. In addition to this, video game music is just getting better and better. I wouldn't say it's exactly "emerging", but with the growing popularity of video games, there are certainly more and more people that want to play the music as much as they want to play the game. That way, they'll really have played EVERYTHING about the game.

Video Game Music Quiz Score:
Either a 65 or an 80. I've got a miserable memory....