composer

Game Music

Crowdfunder Aims to Remake Classic Commodore 64 Tunes

July 22, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this
If you’re old enough to remember playing on a Commodore 64, then this might be of some interest to you. Jeroen Tel, composer for several C64 games back in the 1980s such a Cybernoid, Myth: History in the Making and Supremacy, has decided to revisit his older compositions (alongside the production company, Maniacs of Noise) and breath new life into them with Tel Me More.

“At the age of 14-18 years old (from 1987 to 1991), I composed music for numerous famous Commodore 64 games. It’s been my dream for over 20 years to remake the most memorable of these C64 SID soundtracks in a professional way. Over the past few years I’ve been asked many times by my Facebook friends and fans when I would start a crowdfunding campaign to create an album with remakes of the best “Jeroen Tel / Maniacs of Noise” Commodore 64 game music. I’ve decided to start this musical journey now and wholeheartedly invite you to join me on this 8-bit quest!” – Joroen Tel via IndieGoGo

The campaign hopes to raise just under $39,000 dollars to create the album, which includes costs for studio time, mixing and mastering, and the design and printing of the various album formats and other swag. The album will contain a good amount of Tel’s tunes from several Commodore 64 games including:
- Robocop 3
- Cybernoid II The Revenge
- Rubicon
- Hawkeye
- Myth
- Turbo Outrun
- Supremacy
- Stormlord
- Battle Valley
- Cybernoid
- Eliminator
- Iron Lord
Much like The AMIGA Works album by Allister Brimble (something OSV will be covering also), Tel Me More hopes to revisit some classic C64 nostalgia directly from the original composer and breath new life into the music with modern technology not available when they were first composed. Through the campaign, the digital album goes for $10 with a physical copy at $20, all the way up to $100 for a limited edition vinyl for the diehard collector. Funding runs until August 10th and has halfway to go, so C64 music fans should act sooner rather than later to help bring the project to life.

Tel Me More – IndieGoGo | Facebook | Maniacs of Noise
Chip Music, Game Music, Indie Music

At A Glance: Video Game Composer Antoine Vachon

June 10, 2015 | Ryan Paquet | Comments Off on At A Glance: Video Game Composer Antoine Vachon Share this

Antoine Vachon also known as Reveirg is a Canadian composer and sound designer from Montreal, Quebec who has written the music for an indie PC game titled Chilie: The First Encounter, an app called Gentlemen…Ricochet! and Gentlemen Ricochet! Mini which is a de-make or 8-bit version of the original App with a chip tune soundtrack.

He has also composed the music to accompany an award winning act of a Magician, Marc Trudel, and recently released the soundtrack to a moutain bike film titled Cycles: A Mountain Bike Season in Flims-LAAX-Falera. I recently spent some time with his music which is an absolute pleasure to listen to.

The music from Gentlemen…Ricochet! features some jazzy and creative piano that has a wonderful swagger. The de-make 8-bit version Gentlemen Ricochet! Mini, has all the elements of a classic Gameboy title and is a very nostalgic listen. Chilie: The First Encounter makes use of the xylophone with piano and some high tones to bring out the character of the young girl featured in the game. The magician piece “Legerdemain” starts with soft piano and builds into a much more colorful melody. And the newest work, Cycles: A Mountain Bike Season in Flims-LAAX-Falera features great atmospheric synth and piano. He’s also got a pretty impressive Xenoblade Chronicles Main Theme Piano Cover on his Soundcloud page too.

All of Antoine Vachon’s music is currently available on bandcamp for “name your price” for now, I recommend checking it out as I expect we’ll see some great work by this composer in the future. Have you experienced any of Antoine’s music in these games?
Game Music, Japanese

Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake

January 21, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake Share this Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake

MAGFest 13 starts in just two days, and thus it’s time to bring Know Your MAG to it’s apex with one of the special guests of the event as well as performing DJ, Yuu Miyake!

Yuu Miyake, born in 1973, was interested in music at a young age. Listening to late-’70s anime themes and Yellow Magic Orchestra during his youth, he became acquainted with video games during a a childhood hospitalization and began visiting Japanese arcades shortly thereafter. When Yellow Magic Orchestra released the first album ever heard of video game music, Miyake knew that his love of games and music were something he wanted to pursue seriously. (source: VGMOnline)

Miyake joined Namco in the mid-’90s, gaining his first musical credit on Tekken 3. After working with Namco director Keita Takahashi on the video project “Texas 2000”, Miyake impressed the man so much that Takahashi assigned him full control as sound director over the game soundtrack for the puzzle-action game, Katamari Damacy. This is where Miyake gained critical acclaim for the creativity and unique style he blended together when composing the majority of the soundtrack for Katamari Damacy along with his team. (Which also included fellow MAGFest 13 guest, Yoshihito Yano) The catchy and quirky tunes that comprised Katamari Damacy‘s soundtrack gained several awards, including IGN’s and Gamespot’s “Soundtrack of the Year” for 2004 as well as a nomination for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition” at the 8th annual Interactive Achievement Awards in early 2005. This lead to Miyake composing for future games in the series, such as We Love Katamari released in 2005 and Me & My Katamari later that same year. Between these, he also worked on compositions for Tekken 5 and Ridge Racer.

Yuu Miyake worked on several more games for Namco, including 3 more Katamari titles, until he left the company to go freelance in 2011. While traveling Japan to give lectures and working on personal projects, he also began performing live as “Acid Eutron” alongside Towa Tei, Shinichi Osawa, Takeshi Nakatsuka and Taiji Sato. He current DJ’s across Japan whilst working on freelance projects in association with Namco Bandai, as well as teaching.

You can check out the interview Jayson Napolitano had with Yuu Miyake in 2009 for more about his life and works. His DJ set will be Saturday night starting at 11:30pm, with autograph signing earlier that morning. Check out the full schedule of events for MAGFest 13 for more details, and see you at MAG!
Featured, Game Music

Matron Maestras – Winifred Phillips (Spotlight)

December 19, 2014 | Patrick Gann | Comments Off on Matron Maestras – Winifred Phillips (Spotlight) Share this

When Brenna first unveiled OSV’s Matron Maestras series, I was over the moon. Gender politics and volatile gaming culture aside, there’s no denying that the world of game music production is dominated by men. I don’t have a full database from which to do calculations (vgmdb doesn’t allow advanced artist search with filters on artist gender and artist type, such as composer arranger performer etc). Anecdotally, however, it seems to me that the West has an even harder time of it than Japan. I can easily name a dozen women composers from Japan; I would be hard-pressed to do the same among American and European VGM composers.

In wanting to support this new article series, I felt it best to highlight the contributions of the award-winning Winifred Phillips. This is a woman who is blazing a trail in the industry, and teaching others how to do it at the same time. No, really, she wrote the book on the matter (the first English-language book on the topic I’ve yet seen). This, in my mind, makes her both a scholar and a visionary, as she is able to adapt from formulaic composition to out-of-the-box creativity as needed.

After the jump, I’ll give you some examples to show you what I mean. And you’ll also see a list of recent accolades Ms. Phillips has received, demonstrating that I’m not the only one recognizing her talent.

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Featured, Game Music

Interview with Americana Dawn’s Composer Shnabubula

December 8, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Interview with Americana Dawn’s Composer Shnabubula Share this

With the Kickstarter for the JRPG Americana Dawn by indie developers Bit-Bonton chugging along, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to get ahold of the composer for the soundtrack; Samuel “Shnabubula” Ascher-Weiss!

The artist known as Shnabubula, for those who don’t know, is an amazing pianist and chiptune artist who has produced several albums, including NES Jams, Starbound and Fading Light. He also worked on the original, much smaller Kickstarter for Americana Dawn: Civilized Folk.

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Featured, Game Music

Matron Maestras – Tomoko Sasaki (Spotlight)

December 3, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Matron Maestras – Tomoko Sasaki (Spotlight) Share this

A bit delayed due to the holiday, but we’re pushing on with our spotlights of female video game composers regardless of massive turkey feasting and subsequent food comas! (Hopefully you supplemented your coma with copious amounts of Playstation game music, as the PS1 is 20 years old as of today!)

This week I’m taking a look at another Japanese composer with significant ties to Sega’s past and an influence on it’s present: NiGHTS and Ristar composer, as well as lyricist and song writer, Tomoko Sasaki!

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Featured, Game Music

Matron Maestras – Eveline Fischer (Spotlight)

November 21, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Matron Maestras – Eveline Fischer (Spotlight) Share this

We’re continuing our spotlight on women in video game composing with one of the components of the Donkey Kong Country musical experience and beyond with Eveline Fischer! (Eveline Novakovic if you’re looking her up under her married name, but we’ll be referencing her under the name she used when composing the majority of the works we’ll be listing) We’ll also highlight some of her non-composing works, including some voice work you may not have known was her!

And what good timing too, as the DKC Mix’t Ape ’94 arrangement album just released today with much of Fischer’s work arranged by several artists! How’s that for relevance?

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