videogame

Wataru Hokoyama: “Afrika” (2008)

Jul 25

Wataru Hokoyama gained international recognition last year with his overwhelming score for the PS3 game Afrika, which sees players take the role of a wildlife photographer in the African plains. Hokoyama delivered an impressive score—full of bustling rhythms and grand arching themes—which was recorded by a 104-piece set up of the Hollywood Studio Symphony. It’s spectacular, to say the least—Hokoyama wrote, orchestrated and conducted the 35-minute score himself. Not bad for a 34-year-old. Hokoyama studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Cleveland Institute of Music, before taking the one-year Scoring for Motion Picture and Television program at the University of Southern California.

But what I really wanted to share was his website. On it, Hokoyama has an array of concert pieces (every bit as good as Afrika), with audio and the full score for each (this is a bit of a rarity for composers.) For anyone looking to learn more about orchestration, extended techniques, proper notation—this is a gold mine of information (Halloween Dance features some particularly strange percussion effects at the outset.) Once you start listening to a piece, it’s hard to stop because it’s simply so good. The full scores are available as PDF files, and the audio is available to be streamed from the same page. Keep up the great work, Wataru!

More:

See Wataru Hokoyama’s website
Watch Hokoyama record Afrika’s main titles
Read an interview at Music4Games
Read a review of the official soundtrack

Tags: hollywood studio symphony, videogame

Want more? World of Goo sheet music now available

Apr 25

Posted by Trevor in Music | No Comments

So, as if World of Goo’s creator releasing the soundtrack for free wasn’t good enough, now we have Sebastian Wolff to thank for creating a full piano arrangement for every track! Yay free stuff!!

Tags: piano, videogame

Free soundtrack, anyone…?

Jan 30

Posted by Trevor in Music | No Comments

For the videogame-savvy, those familiar with the smash hit World of Goo will appreciate the release of the complete in-game soundtrack. It’s remarkable how Gabler, one of the two people involved in the game’s production, found time to create such a diverse soundtrack. Most of the pieces average over three minutes in length, and the quality of the mix is generally very good. It’s worth mentioning that it’s suited to the game incredibly well, infusing it with a degree of eerie quirkiness that plays off the game’s visuals. This is yet another example of how limiting the number of people involved in the creative process leads to an overall higher degree of uniformity (see previous post.)

Kyle Gabler: World of Goo Soundtrack

Tags: videogame

Isaac Shephard: “Before Dawn”, Music Catch (2008)

Nov 16

Posted by Trevor in Analysis | 1 Comment

muscatch So there is this great game called Music Catch that came out on the internet a while ago. It’s pretty much your average flash game, except for the fact that so many people were taken with the in-game music. It turns out that this song is called “Before Dawn”, written by Isaac Shepard, who himself authored the Music Catch game.

So what makes this game so successful? The music, of course. Countless other Flash-games have you doing all kinds of mindless tasks, from keeping a bouncing ball in the air, or in this case, moving the cursor to “catch” the right colour symbols. But what sets this one apart is its incorporation of music that aligns precisely with the game’s intent—giving the player a moment to step back and relax from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Consequently, this game turned out as good as it did because one person had one clear idea of what they wanted to happen. Indeed, this type of synergistic relationship is desirable in any combination of the arts, not only in music for games and movies but also theatre and drama. This game wouldn’t have been the same it was diluted in a collaborative effort.

Now, shortly after I started transcribing this—having no idea it was so popular—I peeked onto the web to see if anyone had done it already. Lo and behold, Shepard himself has released the sheet music, and the album on the iTunes Store. I grabbed a copy of the score and posted it below, just in case anything happens to the site. And, in the spirit of anti-pirating, I’ll post only a short segment below, but you can hear the full version in the online game. That and more can be found on Shepard’s site, www.IsaacShepard.com.

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Right click and save as to view the entire PDF.

Tags: piano, videogame

Martin O’Donnell: “Finish the Fight”, Halo 3 (2007)

Oct 12

Posted by Trevor in Analysis | No Comments

Originally written as music for the Halo 3 announcement trailer, the piece gets its name from a quote from the previous installment of the videogame franchise:

“Master Chief, you mind telling me what you’re doing in that ship?”

“Sir, finishing this fight.”

O’Donnell went above and beyond expectations and produced a rousing medley on the Halo theme, adding a new fanfare quite unlike his other music for the series. Instead of mixing live audio with synth mockups, O’Donnell opted for a live 60-piece orchestra and 24-voice choir (see ‘Making Of’ documentary). Fans ate it up, and the trailer was well recieved at its first showing in E3 2006.

What’s striking about this piece is its simplicity. That and the fact that O’Donnell’s handwritten original and orchestrated version are available for download from the soundtrack’s website, www.halo3ost.com. The entire 2′28″ work takes up two pages of handwritten short score. That’s incredible. In what I consider to be O’Donnell’s best entry in the series, that shows that before he even thought of orchestrating, he started with a simple main idea, and continually refined it until it stood up as a concrete piece. Way to go, Marty.

Below are two pages from each version of O’Donnell’s score.

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Draft

Final

If you’re following along, this audio excerpt starts at bar 13 of both scores. Again, even thought the orchestrated version looks enormously more complicated than the original, remember that the short score contained everything that mattered.

On rare occasions, sometimes when working on a main idea for a long time, the rest of the piece literally takes care of itself all of a sudden. Those are beautiful moments, which again, come all too infrequently. I think something like this happened on “Finish the Fight”. Take a look at the last bars of page four of the orchestral score, at the runs. Sure, they look complicated. But they’re really just scales that lead to each note in the rising line that O’Donnell had in the short score. See? Everything was there! Simple, refined ideas! It’s a beautiful thing!