Looking Through the Myst - by Chris McCarvill

My imagination is inspired by unlikely sources. The 90’s were a depressive time for me in terms of music. Pop music had turned grunge virtually overnight. Grunge and pop-punk represented a return to simple, dangerous rock and roll, which I liked, but it depressed me at it’s obvious lack of musical finesse and general negative view. I had so much fun playing intensely complicated bass parts, I had spent years refining my skills, learning building blocks of all types to be able to express whatever emotion I felt. I went into the 90’s as a musician idealistically, positively, and it was the exact opposite of what the world of pop music wanted.

This isn’t to say I hated all 90’s music. I found sparkling fragments interspersed throughout the dark. “In the meantime” by Spacehog, “Save yourself” by Stabbing Westward, and “Subterranean homesick alien” by Radiohead remain amongst my favorite songs, all products of the 90’s, yet they all have in common an killer melodic hook, artistic production and creative musicianship. I guess I like what I like.

However, the 90’s brought about an interesting change in our culture that often gets overshadowed by all the music, fashion and art changes going on. It was the dawn of the personal computer. In the mid-nineties, pretty much everyone in my area got a computer and got on the internet. As much as I was interested and hopeful about the internet and computers in general, I was scared that music, especially live music, would start to become less and less important. Why would people want to go out to concerts when they could stay home and watch any concert they wanted, broadcast right to your living room?

Obviously I was proved wrong, in fact quite the opposite, music has become even more important to people. How many people do you know that have an ipod earbud implanted in their head for x amount of hours a day? Look at concert sales, live concerts are still growing and blossoming. Now more than ever I rely on computers to further my own music career. But let me get back to the “dark age” of the 90’s.

With all these outer negative influences, I cocooned in the 90’s. I worked on my own kind of music in my home studio, teaching myself classical orchestration, teaching myself to sequence and program music to a level I never thought I could. I discovered Danny Elfman, and discovered I had quite a taste for the whole goth movement, at least dark symphonic material. But as much as I enjoyed wearing a vampire costume and creating dark and twisty soundscapes, goth is really not who I am. It took a videogame, or really a series of them to wake me up, give me hope, and to help me find creative inspiration for music and art in the future.

I am not a gamer. I never have been. Know that “bicycle race” song by Queen? That’s me. I’m happy doing music and artwork all the time with the occasional adrenaline rush or mountain adventure thrown in for good measure. I was beaten down pretty good by pop culture in the 90’s, and along comes Myst. I was new to the whole idea of having my own computer again. Having the internet. Eager to explore. My wife brought home a game called Myst that her brother (a mensa) really liked. We were instantly captivated by it. Wikipedia explains the gist of Myst better than I can, so here you go:

Myst's gameplay is unusual among adventuring computer games in several ways. The player is provided with very little backstory at the beginning of the game, and no obvious goals or objectives are laid out. This means that players must simply begin to explore. There are no obvious enemies, no physical violence, and no threat of "dying" at any point, although it is possible to reach a few "losing" endings. There is no time limit to complete the game. The game unfolds at its own pace and is solved through a combination of patience, observation, and logical thinking.

This game felt designed specifically for me. Once I could get my wife to actually let me play it, I got sucked in. In Myst you solve puzzles, mainly of the geographic or mechanical type that cause changes in your environment, but you don’t always know how or why until you’ve solved a few and then you can see the bigger picture. Myst was also meant to be immersive. Again, here’s Wikipedia to explain:

The sensation of total immersion in virtual reality (VR) can be so described: "You lose your critical distance to the experience and get emotionally involved. It could be not only a game you are a part of, but any kind of experience. ... You feel as if it is very real but know it is not."

Which is basically what happens if you get drawn into a great book or movie, but here, in a computer game, you control the outcome, and explore consequences in a non-harmful way. Fascinating. I found myself playing it for hours, then thinking about it all day until I played it again. I’d have to fight my wife to use the computer. We immediately discovered that we play in opposite ways. She enjoys the game for solving it’s problems. I enjoy it for it’s graphics, it’s music, it’s sense of place. I like solving the problems, and marveling at the genius behind them, but I’m just as happy wandering around exploring and listening to the digital cicadas.

I remember solving the original Myst and almost being let down. It was like finishing a good book. I didn’t want it to end. Then the mothership landed. Riven.

Riven was the sequel to Myst, and Riven no longer looked like a silly, coarse, polygon-based videogame. Riven looked real. Riven sounded real, and had a mysterious soundtrack that drew me in even further. The game no longer looked like a game. It had rust, dirt, dust, and startlingly realistic sound effects. I got completely immersed, and whenever my wife played it, I would read the guidebook on how to play it I was so enthused.

Never before had I seen a videogame that appeared to look and sound like a big budget movie, but one you could control the outcome of, one you could get lost exploring in.

Riven probably remains my favorite of the Myst series visually. I think it inspired me the most, even if the later games in the series have better gameplay, better puzzles and real time 3-d. Riven just hit me at the right time. So many times I had wandered and explored whether mountain climbing or bike riding, and found interesting things, like reservoir controls, or a view across the mountains showing several white towers that I’d never seen before. Riven managed to take a whole slew of similar things and write them into a captivating (and very difficult) game.

I found myself trying to discover the visual language of Riven and Myst. It started to manifest itself in my artwork, in that I’d say to myself that this piece looks kind of like Riven, or from the world of Riven. It entered my visual vocabulary.

I took my time solving Riven, mainly because I didn’t want it to end again.

I saw the trailer for Myst 3 Exile online one day. Obviously the Myst franchise had succeeded quite well, as this was no ordinary trailer. Yes, as expected, the graphics looked great, the storyline further unraveled, but the music really reached out and grabbed me this time.

I’m not stupid. I can hear what’s going on most of the time with music. This was not a small undertaking made by a part time musician in his bedroom. The trailer, which you can find by clicking the link below featured some big changes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAShllUlEK0&feature=related

Looks cool, huh? Did you listen to it? That’s what got me. Killer sound effects, full symphony orchestra, full male and female choir. That is not cheap or easy to do. That takes the combined talents of several creative factors. At the helm is Jack Wall, the composer. I got online and bought the soundtrack immediately.

Jack fused not only digital sound effects with symphonic work, but he also incorporated many of the musical cues of Myst and Riven. Plus he added a really cool sense of rhythm which shows a worldly appreciation for music. It’s world symphonic fusion or something. It was new and different, and contained so many of the things I liked about music it appeared like a new sunrise, dawning on my dark musical horizon.

So once again, I delved into Myst 3. I loved hearing my wife playing it in the background. The music and sounds were and are sublime. It’s one of those things that hit my life in the right place and right time. You can easily see it’s influence on my own website. It’s also been an influence on my own music. Check out Venus Supercharger.

www.myspace.com/venussupercharger

I would have to say that the band Yes and the videogame series Myst are my biggest musical influences. I’ve enjoyed playing Myst 3, Myst 4 and I spent the whole Dokken tour last summer playing Myst 5 on my laptop w/ studio headphones while we rolled across the country on the tour bus. I just got Myst Uru and after this article, I plan on getting into it today.

So, I have to thank Rand and Robyn Miller for putting into the world a creative and inspiring vision without compromising their ideals, and without stooping to shock value, porn or violence. The series of Myst games rank among my favorite movies and/or albums. They’ve influenced me that much.