Legends can be made in a moment, or they can be made over a lifetime. They can be made through mass media, or they can be made in the underground. But something makes others stand up in reverence. Late Wednesday afternoon, Koji Kondo, the man who created the music for Mario and Yoshi and Zelda and many others, an interactive composer who is seen by gamers as George Martin and Paul and John and George and Ringo all wrapped up into one, addressed a packed house of 300 and shed a little light on the mindset that went into the creation of the first truly unique interactive scores.

The audience was outfitted with headset translations into English and Korean (Koji speaks Japanese), and two large video screens flanked the composer and his laptop. Pulling examples from the Super Mario and Zelda series, Koji broke his talk on Painting an Interactive Musical Landscape into three parts: Rhythm, Balance and Interactivity, the latter occupying the lion‘s share of the time.

The simplest move toward interactivity, he began, was by simply adding percussion to Mario when he powered up and jumped on his power-host‘s back. Next, he showed how changing an arrangement within one piece can drive the action. When Mario is on shore, a solo electric piano. He dives in the water and strings are added. He swims into the cavern and the drums and bass kick in. As the scenery changes, the music changes. Seems simple, but in the context of early game play…

Next, he used Shadow Mario as an example of changing the music with character movement. Using Dolby Surround, Koji, placed a trumpet around the field to indicate the Shadow‘s whereabouts. Or, he offered, you can have the music change randomly. Showing Zelda in a field where the music changed each time following an intro passage, then shiftiing again when combat was imminent, Koji illustrated the importance of variety built into the implementation of the original composition.

There were more examples and more fun scenes from the now-seems-almost-primitive days of early Mario. He received a prolonged standing ovation. But most importantly, the MIDI scores held up, even here in 2007. Koji was certainly limited by technology, both in the production and the playback, but his music had emotion and matched character with story. Truly an original.

Koji Kondo will be honored Thursday night with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Audio Network Guild, and he will perform Friday night at Video Games Live. We at Mix salute him.