Composer and orchestrator Jim Fowler talks about his hopes for an increasingly interactive future for games music, the joys of live instruments on soundtracks and the movement for more VGM on national radio. By Thomas Quillfeldt As an art form within an art form, video game music has come a long way...
Writer Jack Gosling brings us up to the modern day with the conclusion of his brief history of VGM. If you haven't already, check out "Part 1: From ‘bip!’ to ‘bwomp!’" By Jack Gosling As the gaming world moves on from its humble musical beginnings, the limitations of technology and...
By Thomas Quillfeldt 2017’s Record Store Day came and went (don’t forget, fantastic independent record stores exist for the other 364 days of the year too!) and the Internet erupted in a geyser of vinyl love. We spotted a few releases that looked particularly tasty in terms of presentation—here’s a...
Rare-alumni Grant Kirkhope, Steve Burke and David Wise talk us through some of their favourite tunes from Yooka-Laylee. By Thomas Quillfeldt Is it 2017, or really 1997 in disguise? The colourful 3D platformers of the late 90’s and early 00’s, so full of character, are back in a big bad...
Writer Jack Gosling takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the history of video game music, from the 70s to the early 00s. By Jack Gosling Since the pixelated days of Pong and Space Invaders, video games have always strived to be on the cutting edge of technology. Not a month...
We went to Wapping to gawp at great games. By Thomas Quillfeldt Every year, EGX Rezzed comes to London—the smaller, indie-focused sister event to the giant UK games convention, EGX. Held at Tobacco Dock in the district of Wapping (yes, it’s a real place, pronounced ‘whopping’), it’s a gathering of...
Grammy-winning engineer Sean Magee on the mastering process, the gear and the age-old ‘analogue versus digital’ debate. By Thomas Quillfeldt Creating a release-worthy professional music recording is a bit like baking a cake. The composer or artist gathers as high quality ingredients as possible (song ideas, players etc.), they might...
By Thomas Quillfeldt The sun is here again! (Depending on where and when you're reading this...) Time to put down the pad, open the front door, walk outside and soak up some vitamin D… Alternatively, you could catch some virtual god rays — gorgeous-looking modern games tend to do a...
This is part of a blog series “Why we ♥ video game music”: – ‘Nostalgia’ – ‘The background soundtrack to our lives’ – 'Scratching the vinyl itch' By Thomas Quillfeldt Those of us enamoured with video game music beyond its initial, functional purpose love it for several reasons: feelings of...
We picked out some of the bounciest, brightest and most bonkers pieces of game music from the classic era of 3D character platformers. By Thomas Quillfeldt 3D platformers are bouncing back in a big way! (I look forward to reading that sentence in 10 years’ time and cringing.) The genre...
By Thomas Quillfeldt As we’ve been exploring in our blog series, ‘Why we ♥ video game music’, game soundtracks can come to mean an awful lot to people, not least because they become wrapped up with memories and emotions of specific gaming moments. We asked some of the most passionate...
Tune by tune, we break down the structure of Roger Wanamo's Final Fantasy VI Symphonic Poem—an epic struggle between our heroine, Terra, and the villainous Kefka. By Thomas Quillfeldt Conceived as a set of orchestral concert suites, first performed in 2013, Final Symphony is based on the music of video game...
This is part of a blog series “Why we ♥ video game music”: – ‘Nostalgia’ – 'The feels' – 'Scratching the vinyl itch' By Thomas Quillfeldt There are reasons other than nostalgia that video game music enjoys fans beyond the act of playing games themselves: in the era of portable,...
By Thomas Quillfeldt How to depict an infinite universe? It’s a question that has tested developer Hello Games in creating 2016’s much talked about sci-fi exploration and survival game, No Man’s Sky. The largely generative in-game soundtrack draws its music cues from an album—Sheffield rock band 65daysofstatic's No Man’s Sky: Music for an Infinite...
