Pablo Vega's music from the video game "AI War: Fleet Command" is for sale on iTunes.
To see a sample from the "AI War: Fleet Command" trailer, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr_oSOSTfbA
BY BETH VELLIQUETTE
bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 918-1042
CHAPEL HILL -- As a kid in fifth grade, Pablo Vega would listen to his sister taking piano lessons, and when she was done he'd walk over to the piano and play the piece.
"My mom said I would just walk in and play what she was playing from ear," Vega said. "I would listen to the radio and try to copy what I heard."
Vega, 23, had a natural talent for playing the piano, but he hated taking piano lessons. It just wasn't any fun playing scales, holding his hands just so and learning pieces that didn't interest him, so he usually quit after a few classes.
"I was stubborn," said Vega, who was born in Peru and moved to North Carolina with his family when he was 6.
Nevertheless, music -- singing, playing and composing -- became his passion. As a student at Chapel Hill High School, he tried out for West Side Story.
"I never really sang ever before," he said. "I didn't know what level it would be. As soon as I got into it, I thought, 'Wow, this is really great!' "
"From then on, all I wanted to do was music," he said.
Every chance he got, he tried out for the high school musicals, winning bigger and better roles. He also joined the concert chorus and chamber singers and tried out for the 2003 N.C. Senior and Middle School Honors Chorus. He was named the second highest scoring tenor in the state.
A student from East Chapel Hill High School who would later become one of his best friends, Anoop Desai, received the exact same score but placed fifth.
As his senior project, Vega composed and produced with some of his friends a show called "The Ballad of Bobby Niles." That's when he first began to learn how to put sounds from various instruments together into a composition.
"By this point, I knew I wanted to do music," he said. "I knew I wanted to write music."
Vega chose to go to school at UNC and received a small scholarship in the vocal program.
He joined the Clef Hangers, one of UNC's a cappella groups, the chamber choir and the men's glee club. Although he took some voice classes, he also began to study composition with Stephen Anderson and Allen Anderson, "two of the most brilliant composers I've ever heard," Vega said.
In Vega's senior year, Stephen Anderson sought and won a grant to open up an electro-acoustic lab, where Vega began to learn how to incorporate electronic music into his compositions. After he graduated in the spring of 2009, he took out a loan to buy a system called Pro Tools so he could continue his composition work at home.
He spent days, weeks and months just playing around with the system to learn what he could do with it. Then he got a call from a guy named Chris Park, who lives in Cary.
Park, 26, had created a 2D video game for his company Arcen Games that he called "AI War: Fleet Command," and he needed music to accompany it. Park's sister, who knew Vega from UNC, recommended her brother give him a call. Park did, and the two have been working together ever since.
Vega created a score for the game that has a sense of the military combined with the sweeping and soaring sounds of a full orchestra.
"Music can be used a lot of different ways in video games for emotional impact and setting the mood," Park said. "He's got a couple of different moods. Some is exciting, the war game feel of it, and there's also more calm music that basically makes it so people don't completely flip out."
The game is now on the market and getting good reviews.
"People started noticing the game," Vega said. "We started getting a small following, and it started doing really well."
They recently received the good news that Steam, one of the world's largest distributors of games, will begin distributing it on its Web site, steampowered.com, this month.
Both Park, who works in IT, and Vega, a case manager at a law firm, are hoping the game becomes a best seller. If it does, that would allow both of them to quit their day jobs and work full time developing and scoring video games.
Vega's dream is to be a full-time composer, writing scores for video games, commercials, TV and films.
But in the meantime, he's got a couple of other things on his plate. He was recently hired to play a role in a children's TV pilot being filmed in the Triangle area called, "The Rusty Bucket Kids Club."
He's also the musical director for a concert that his friend Anoop Desai, who finished sixth on American Idol, is performing at the N.C. State Fair on Thursday night at Dorton Arena.
