Chris Holmes Online

Sometimes genius isn’t appreciated until long past its time. Such was the the plight for legendary film director Orson Wells. His movies were often met with lukewarm critical praise and commercial failure. Yet today, the man responsible for Citizen Kane, often regarded as one of the best, if not the best, film of all time, is regarded as a genius. Entertainment Weekly ran a nice piece this week on Wells concerning his film Arkadin. Hollywood didn’t truly appreciate Wells until he was gone, and apparently Wells knew that would be his fate. EW quotes him as saying, “God, how they’ll love me when I’m dead….”

And Wells was right.

The same fate probably awaits Dream Theater, the group responsible for Octavarium.

I’ve long thought that the members of Dream Theater are the modern day equivalent of Bach, Motzart and Beethoven. They are the most theoritically knowledgeable and technically sound musicians of the modern day. Heck, they’re probably better than anyone has been for 100 years. And the music they create is unlike anything you’ve probably ever heard. It is the most complex, sophisiticated, intelligent and technicially proficient stuff to come along – ever. On top of all of that, they write great songs too.

Dream Theater released Octavarium last year (2005). When I first listened to it I thought it was good; certain songs and passages immediately vaulted to the top of my favorite list. But I didn’t see the genius behind it. I didn’t think it was anything more than another solid effort from a group of musicians who had long ago surpassed the writing and performing skills of every other modern musical act on the planet. After all, these are the guys that make the Dave Matthews Band look like 12-year-olds practicing for the state fair in their garage.

But then I ran across this website. It is nothing short of a fully detailed analysis of all the hidden nuggets, Easter Eggs if you will, embedded in the album Octavarium. And boy, are there a lot of Easter Eggs…

If you’re familiar with the Circle of Fifths then you will enjoy the theme underneath Octavarium. For those of you who don’t know a lot about music theory, let me give you a quick explanation:

An octave on the piano consists of five black keys and eight white keys. An octave begins and ends on the same note, completing a circle. It is that circle, that concept of ending where we begin, that is the basis for the album Octavarium. The numbers 5 and 8 reoccur all over the album; they are embedded everywhere.

But the Circle of Fifths isn’t the only hidden theme of the album. There are references to the Alcoholic’s Anonymous 12-step program (a theme that was started in an earlier album and is continued here) as well as references to other musical acts that have inspired/influence Dream Theater. The opening to the song Octavarium sounds eerily like the beginning of Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond, one of many intentional immitations/references. There comes a point later in the song where James LeBrea (lead singer) does an impression of Megadeath’s Dave Mustain that is so perfect in its tone and inflection that one wonders why Mustain’s band never sounded this good. Even the lyrics to the song have embedded references:

sailing on the seven seize the day tripper diem’s ready
jack the ripper owens wilson phillips and my supper’s ready
lucy in the sky with diamond dave’s not here I come to save the
day for nightmare cinema show me the way to get back home
again

Can you count the number of references in that section? Don’t cheat. Think singing that might be a problem? Listen to the track and you’ll be blown away at what Dream Theater achieves with this song.

And they aren’t done yet. A heartbeat at the end of the song These Walls beats at 58 bpm. The starting piano note to the first song of the album is F, the same note that ended the previous Dream Theater album. Not to leave the circle open, the final song on the album also begins and ends in F.

I’ve touched about 2% of the Easter Eggs.

You really have to check out the dissection to appreciate everything Dream Theater achieved with this work. Once you see it all layed out in staggeringly accurate detail it becomes clear that Octavarium is a work of sheer musical genius.

Now listen to the album. To hear the actual music is mind-blowing. How anyone could create this work is beyond me. Yet they did it. Motzart would weep with joy if he could hear this.

Seeing the dissection of Octavarium reminded me of the ending of The Sixth Sense. I thought it was a good movie, I liked Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, but I didn’t see the genius of the movie right away while I was watching it. That is, until the final moments of the film when The Twist is revealed. It was in that moment when the true genius of the film comes into focus. I saw it for the brilliant work it really was. If that ending wasn’t there it would simply have been another decent movie, but greatness would have eluded it.

Listening to Octavarium without being aware of the nuggets is like watching the first 90 minutes of The Sixth Sense. It’s good, but you can’t appreciate the greatness of it without knowing all the details. Only after you know The Rest Of The Story does the genius of the work come into focus.

Octavarium probably won’t be appreciated by the mainstream music culture while the members of Dream Theater are alive. Only prog-geeks like myself will have much respect and admiration for it. But this is an album, and more specifically a song, that music historians will point to, debate and dissect for decades, if not centuries. There is no doubt in my mind that Octavarium is a landmark in the history of music. It’s like the Beatles White Album, or Beethoven’s Fifth. It’s just that special.

Enjoy the Easter Egg hunt.

When I first started playing PC games (about 15 years ago) there was a game called Betrayal at Krondor. It was a game based on a book by Raymond E. Feist, a fantasy author of some renown. It was also my introduction into the world of Fantasy gaming. Up to that point I’d never played a fantasy game or even sat down at a table and ventured with friends in an imaginary Dungeons and Dragons world. It was a completely new experience for me.

Compared to other games released around the same time Betrayal at Krondor was a technological step backwards. It wasn’t nearly as graphically inspiring as other contemporary games. But it had a charm and magic to it that I later learned were wholly unique to the world of fantasy roleplaying games. It was a game based around characters and story instead of shooting things. I found the whole experience to be wildly entertaining and would frequently find myself staring at the computer screen in the early hours of the morning after a long night of game play wondering where the time had gone.

My only real complaint with Betrayal at Krondor was the game world itself. It was a completely flat world with sharp “mountains” that blocked passage, forcing the character along the game’s roadways. These “mountains” were merely triangles pointed skyward, the most rudimentary of geometric objects. This sort of design was necessary because computers in that day and age didn’t have the power to create photo-realistic worlds.

Betrayal at Krondor (1993)

I loved playing Betrayal at Krondor because of the story, character development and combat, but in my mind I always yearned for the future of gaming, hoping that one day processing power, graphics development and programming prowess would bring me a more realistic world.

That day has arrived.

Yesterday I picked up Oblivion, the fourth title in the Elder Scrolls saga. I’ve played the previous installments, Daggerfall and Morrowind, and really enjoyed them. But like their predecessors before them, those titles had a flat world with triangle “mountains” in the way. Oh, Morrowind looked real enough – it was by far the best looking game I’ve seen when it came out. And the landscape was not “flat” either. But the mountain ranges in Morrowind were simply updated copies of the impassable triangles from 1993. You couldn’t actually climb over most of them.

Oblivion has changed that.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

What you see in the screenshot above doesn’t just look like a mountain range you might find in Idaho, Washington or Oregon, but it behaves like one too. You can actually ‘hike’ your character up and down every ridge you see. It is utterly amazing.

I spent about four hours playing Oblivion yesterday. The first couple of hours are spend underground in some catacombs, and indeed a vast majority of the gameplay takes place in various well-designed and awesome-looking dungeons. But what blew me away immediately was my exit from the catacombs and the sheer breathtaking beauty of the outside world. The province of Cyrodiil, where Oblivion takes place, is amazing to behold. Never before have a seen a game world this realistic. I’ve spent a good portion of my life bowhunting and attending archery tournaments in various locations throughout Idaho and Washington. I never thought I’d ever see a game that could come close to mimicking the sort of outdoor environments that I am accustom to seeing in the real world. But finally I have.

Oblivion has raised the bar for all games that must now follow it. And not only graphically, but in other areas. However, I’ll save those commeents for another post, otherwise this one will become far too long to read. For now, I’m just basking in the beauty of the game world itself and slowly plodding along, taking it all in. I’ve never seen anything like this. It is a crowning achievement in video game design.