The Symphony Meets The Video Game

Composers Are Writing Music For A New Audience: Video Gamers

(CBS)  It might be the last place you'd think, but video games are the new haven for concert music. As CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports, video games are becoming a new medium for exposing kids to a musical genre they might not otherwise experience.

Andy Brick is an award-winning composer, influenced by the classics, who is now writing and orchestrating music for video game players. He is exposing millions of young people to symphonic-style music that they probably would never listen to any other way. He takes his inspiration from mythical scenes given to him by video game developers.

"Kids just love this stuff, and I like it, too. It's great music. It's really engaging music," says Brick.

If you're a kid, or have a kid, you might recognize the theme song from the game "Final Fantasy." It is actually an Andy Brick arrangement, played by a Czech orchestra.

There was a time when video game music was about as sophisticated as video game graphics: which is to say, not very. But now, the video game industry is a $25 billion-a-year business, which means there's plenty of money for plenty of musicians, who are as happy to have their work heard in this new forum as they are in concert halls.

The music from Super Mario Brothers is now considered a time-tested classic in the video game music world. Brick didn't write it, but he says he knows it by heart.

"I like the opening," Brick says.

He's hoping he can write something that will stand the test of time, and be as popular in the virtual world as it is in the cultural one.