Bear McCreary’s first (and second) foray into scoring for games came with his recent work on the Dark Void titles. While Dark Void received generally mediocre reviews the soundtrack for the title (and the accompanying 8bit version on Dark Void Zero) really raised the bar for game music. Now it seems that games may become a permanent part of McCreary’s career with his recently announced involvement in Zipper Interactive’s SOCOM 4.
“SOCOM 4 may be a sequel, but musically, it’s a franchise re-boot,” says McCreary. ” You won’t hear patriotic soaring horn lines, or military marches. Instead, the exotic location and international band of characters are represented by ethnic percussion, virtuosic Asian stringed and woodwind instruments, and the spectacular, other-worldly tones of the gamelan. And like all my other projects, these instruments are recorded live and performed by some of the best musicians in the world.”
Clocking in at eight hours of music, the score for SOCOM 4 sure is an ambitious one. Over the next several days recording of the music will be taking place at Skywalker Sound in preparation for the game’s release later this year.
[via Bear's Battlestar Galactica Blog]
It seems the first Final Fantasy XIII record released earlier this year met with some sort of success to precipitate a second foray into vinyl albums of Final Fantasy music. This new offering is titled W/F: Music from Final Fantasy -Gentle Reveries- and focuses on orchestral and vocal selections hand-picked by composer Masashi Hamauzu. As with the first, this record will be limited to preorders placed through the Japanese Square Enix e-Store from now through June 16 with the album shipping on June 30.
Adriasang is reporting that concurrent with this announcement Square Enix has also revealed a second print run in the works for the original W/F: Music from Final Fantasy. There is no word on availability yet.
Lacking a turntable of my own has left me out of the loop for many of the recent vinyl game soundtrack releases but I have to admit that may be changing in the near future. In addition to a warm analogue sound I’m becoming increasingly tempted by the idea of making music listening more of an activity rather than background noise. I’ve been told that the imperfections of an album and even the fact that you have to flip it every several songs fosters more involvement in the music. What are your thoughts?
Here’s the song list:
SIDE A
- Final Fantasy XIII Prelude
- Saber’s Edge
- Sera’s Theme/Overseas Version
- Fighting Fate
SIDE B
- March of the Dreadnoughts
- Sulyya Springs
- The Yaschas Massif
- Will to fight
I’m a sucker for all the musical creations of Yoko Shimomura so my day is made knowing that Capcom has announced plans for a soundtrack to the RPG Last Ranker of which Shimomura is responsible. The 41-track double CD will also include a 12-page full color booklet with commentary on the music by the composer herself. Available July 28th, it looks like you’ll have to hit up your favorite importer to get the album fresh off the press.
[via adriasang]
You may have noticed the recent gaping hole in updates on this site and wondered what happened to your favorite internet webpage in the whole wide world. Well, sometimes real life intrudes on our digital fun and that is exactly the case here. I have recently come into possession of a really boring regular job to help pay my bills and have also assumed a role as the Director of Marketing for a new orchestral concert group forming in the Los Angeles area. With these new developments comes increased demand on my time which ultimately affects this website which is my pride and joy.
So I’m extending an opportunity for fans of game music to join me in my crusade of covering this aspect of the game industry in awesome and stellar fashion. Join me and together we will rule the blogoverse. I’m looking for a few cool people who are super reliable to join me in posting news, writing reviews, talking about classic songs and soundtracks, and whatever else we love about game music. I am also looking to depart from my primarily news-driven approach to incorporate other elements of being a game music fan and would be open to any further ideas from those interested. There is not pay for helping out but there IS a good chance I can toss some free soundtracks your way.
What are the requirements?
- A passion for game music
- Impeccable grammar
- An engaging writing style
- A strong music background. A classical art music background is a huge plus but not required
If you are interested send a message of greeting and a few samples to gametunes [at] gmail [dot] com and we can see if working together will be just what we were made for. Thanks for reading!
File this squarely in the “massive conjecture” corner of the news. An awesome reader sent over a link to this article which claims “a reliable source has informed us that id are (sic) attempting to sign on Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor as sound engineer for the project.” A brief recap of Reznor’s game involvement ensues covering his score for the original Quake and aborted attachment to Doom 3. I think the possibility of his creation of the Doom 4 soundtrack sounds nice for nostalgia’s sake but not being a NIN fans it really doesn’t go any further than that. Further information on the game is not expected until QuakeCon 2010 so stay tuned for any confirmation or denial.
Thanks Alan!
A remastering project of the original music of Fallout and Fallout 2 has been completed today and the result made available for free to fans worldwide. Mark Morgan was the composer for these titles and it was under his lead that this project came to fruition. The 170 MB file is available as a free download at Aural Network where you can also preview four of the tracks before making the commitment.
[via No Mutants Allowed]
Derek Yu and friends are hard at work porting the hit indie game Spelunky to XBLA and throwing in a bunch of goodies during the process. Some of the upgrades we can expect include high-resolution hand-drawn graphics, achievements (really, who would have guessed?), new game modes, and a brand-spankin’ new soundtrack by Phlogiston (Eirik Suhrke). Work on the music has been in progress over the last several months and recently the composer has posted a downloadable sample medley of some of the songs we can expect to see when the game ships.
“Basically, I wanted the soundtrack to be a mix of retro-sounding videogame music and more modern-sounding music utilizing actual instruments,” explains Suhrke. “I guess I imagined it would sound like a mixture of FM-based music (arcade, SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, 80’s music), sample/tracker based music (Amiga / 90’s demoscene) and just regular pop/rock (70’s/80’s/90’s). Hopefully you guys can tell me if it came through or not.”
While we wait for the Spelunky release later this year you can give the original PC title a try for free and dream of how great the XBLA version will be.
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Jesper Kyd has returned to the past with his follow-up score to the 2007 hit, Assassin’s Creed. Spanning epic proportions, the 35-track double-disc album plunges the listener into a soundscape that, except for almost arbitrary track separation, can work very well as an unbroken experience from beginning to end. Heavily influenced by minimalist aesthetics, the Assassin’s Creed II soundtrack is a thing of beauty and magnificent production values that doesn’t really give much to the listener besides a collection of “nice” sounds.
Minimalism as an artistic direction is defined by a return to the fundamental foundation of the art form, in this case music. Pioneered by composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, minimalism is largely characterized by slow harmonic changes, sparseness of texture, repetition of musical elements, and lack of strong musical direction. Not all of these parameters must be in place to define a piece in this style, but many of them, out of necessity, work together to maintain interest in a musical work.
Kyd’s atmosphere defining soundtrack works within this vein of thinking. Repetition is the prominent musical element throughout the album. Many layers are in constant flux with each other, entering and exiting the soundscape seamlessly. Almost as an offset to this unstylistic approach, Kyd has pared back the harmonic motion, what typically provides forward impetus, almost to a standstill. The majority of the tracks present are based squarely on a D minor chord. That’s it. There is very little departure from this underlying chord. Occasionally a very standard progression is introduced for a brief time in an effort to promote variety, but shortly after the music settles complacently back on familiar sonority.
[click to continue…]
Stemage of Metroid Metal has revealed he is working on the soundtrack of the upcoming Alpha Squad by Dragon Divide Studios for release later this summer. The soundtrack will release alongside the game but for now fans can listen to snippets of three songs in a streaming sample on the Stemage Bandcamp page. It sounds like it’s going to be awesome!
Reprising his role as composer of Lost Planet released in 2007, Jamie Christopherson is again the force behind the score of its sequel which is set to release this coming week. Besides his work on the Lost Planet franchise you may be familiar with his sound from titles such as Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams and Stranglehold.
No other earth-shattering information is present regarding his work on this newest game title but ScoringSessions.com has some great photos up from the orchestral recordings done at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. It seems the session was held late last year with the Hollywood Studio Symphony conducted by the composer himself. Thirty minutes of live orchestra were recorded to complete the seventy minutes of total new music provided by Christopherson. We’ll have to wait to hear what the end result is but let’s hope it will be a stellar soundtrack.
Head over to Scoring Sessions to check out the thirty-four awesome shots of the recording.
