[INTERVIEW] How conductor Chin Sol found her niche in game soundtrack concerts

Conductor Chin Sol / Courtesy of Flasic

Pioneer of live game music concert shares her thoughts on music, business

By Park Ji-won

Poster for "StarCraft Live Concert: Encore" / Courtesy of Flasic

In August 2019, a rare live classical concert was held at the Sejong Center for The Performing Arts. Titled "StarCraft Live Concert," conducted by Chin Sol, an orchestra and a band specially formed for the concert played soundtracks works from StarCraft, Blizzard Entertainment's highly popular real-time strategy game released in 1998. They played the theme songs of the game itself and those of its three combatant groups: Terran, Protoss and Zerg.

Unlike many other concerts which have a predominantly female audience, the show's audiences were mostly men; Interpark, a ticket reservation market said more than 90 percent of the audience were men, proving the popularity of the game was predominantly among male gamers here. Concertgoers were excited about the familiar, but beautifully "classicized" game music, and have been calling for an encore concert ever since. The pandemic delayed most concerts here, but due to the rising calls, the art complex is planning to hold "encore" StarCraft concerts, Sept. 29 and 30.

Despite their popularity, live music concerts of video game soundtracks are still rare in Korea, presumably due to the preconceived notion that they would not be classical enough. But conductor Chin, who has also been a keen gamer since childhood, eyed game music as having strong thematic content for musical arrangements based on well-made storylines, or so-called "worldviews," while being familiar to many in Korea which is one of the leading gaming powerhouses in the world with a large industry ― not to mention a surplus of skilled classical musicians.

Conductor Chin Sol / Courtesy of Flasic

"The worldview of games has been simple in the past and so was its music; like the Tetris theme music. But its scale has been largely expanded since the 1970s especially for those games aimed at adults; some of which are even similar to a large-scale film. Also, as a fan of subcultures and games and a classical music major, I knew that Korea is very good at everything related to games and there are many talented classical musicians. But there were not many opportunities ― especially for the musicians," Chin Sol, conductor and CEO of Flasic, a game music platform holding game music concerts and making studio recordings of orchestral music, said during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

The 33-year-old is also serving as a conductor for the Daegu International Symphony Orchestra, the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts, and the Seoul Student Philharmonic Orchestra, and is artistic director for Artisee Mahlerian.

"As a young person, I thought I may be able to create some chances to have fun and play music by combining the two genres I love."

The beginning was simple. After majoring in classical music, especially conducting at the Korea National University of Arts and Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, Germany, she founded Flasic in 2017, and held several small concerts. And soon enough, big game companies such as Blizzard Entertainment signed a three-year contract with the start-up in 2019, to use the music and images of its games and hold related concerts. Last month, Flasic also signed a contract with game giant NCsoft which is famous for its Lineage series.

"At first, it was very difficult to make the game companies understand how a score can be made and an orchestra can play the score ― they just thought a score can be made very easily. Surprisingly, not many game companies have scores for the music in their games."

To hold a concert, one of the trickiest and most important parts is to create the score for each work. Her staff analyze game themes and come up with orchestral scores, focusing on arrangements for the pieces. It takes at least one week for the company to come up with the score for each work.

She said a lot of game music uses wind instruments and strings as they can express a sad and touching sentiment.

But it was not easy for her to build her current career as a musician and businesswoman. Even though her parents are well-known music professors and she was raised learning classical music, she didn't have good relations with her parents and was bullied at school. She often left the house and went to internet cafes to get away from the problems at home by killing time playing games.

"I was an ugly duckling in the house. I was a juvenile delinquent. I was an introvert but bossy and strong-minded. My parents concluded I could not be a conductor. But I believed in myself and was ultimately self-taught. Surprisingly, since I made up my mind, I was able to pass the university exam for the conducting major. Some may say I am one of those who was raised in an elite classical community, but I am not. I am like a lion who survived a rugged environment and flourished out of it."

As a pioneer of the music field, and one of the busiest conductors in the nation, she aims to include more subculture-based music and expand the market so that many talented musicians can make a living out of it.

"Flasic is currently working with many large companies, but we are willing to come up with original orchestral sounds with game start-ups and more subculture-based music content. The company's short-term goal is to create powerful performances to cover costs. We are going to run this company for the long-term and expand the market size so that young and talented musician can join our project … It is a job for our younger generation. While experiencing new things as an artist, I hope I could learn the traditional classics and become a pioneer of future classical music."

Conductor Chin Sol / Courtesy of Flasic