Music Discussions

Many people think of Gen Con as just being about role-playing games, but there are many other types of games represented as well as anime, science fiction, and even music. I have attended Gen Con for the last two years and each year there have been two groups, a pianist / keyboardist, and many other solo musicians.

The two groups were diverse so there was a variety to listen to and in different locations so that they were not competing to be heard over each other. One of the groups was positioned outside of the main entrance to the sales floor and had a harp. The other group was in the registration hallway and consisted of string instruments and vocals.

Some of the conference rooms at the Westin hotel (which is attached to the conference center) had lectures, anime episodes being shown, and a manga library. Outside of these rooms was a grand piano and an electronic keyboard. I have seen two people playing these instruments (not at the same time) and both performed well.

The "Queen of Geeks" competition featured music as one of the entrant’s talent competition perfomances. The warm-up was even an audience participation sing-a-long with the words from Nine Inch Nails’ "Head Like a Hole" and the music from "This Old Man" or the Barney theme song. They are the same tune, so I am not sure which she was going for, but either way it was pretty funny.

Several of the booths on the sales floor were selling sci-fi, anime, and other soundtrack albums. Not only was I not aware that there was enough music in anime series and movies to produce soundtrack albums from many of the shows listed, but I also did not realize that there was enough demand for these albums to allow multiple booths to compete. I realize that many series change there opening and closing themes every season, so shows like "Bleach" that have been on 12 seasons would have enough music to fill a CD or two, but many series only run for a handful of episodes. To have most of a booth dedicated to selling these albums is truly astounding.

Finally, I wanted to mention probably the geekiest thing that I have ever seen at Gen Con (keep in mind that geeky would be a good thing in this context). Someone was playing the music from "Ocarina of Time" on an ocarina. The only thing that would have been cooler would be if he was one of the 5 or 6 people that was dressed like Link.

For more about Gen Con, please check out my new role-playing blog: Role-playing Discussions.