Hi There My name is Mike Bridge, and I am new to gamedev.net! Ive joined in the search (as many of you will be too) for possible music related work in the game industry. This post is just to show, anyone who is interested my web site! www.acid-empire.com I am a post-grad musician/composer specializing in orchestral, and contemporary music that emphasizes the emotional aspect of visual content. Examples of my work are on my site. Thanks for reading Mike

hey mike,

welcome to gamedev.

this is a great community and i'm sure you'll find opportunity here. your music sounded great and i look forward to hearing what else you come up with in the future.

regards,
keith

No need for the one-liner, who are your influences?

i'll take a stab at this, though not sure it's intended for me. oh, but maybe it is.

lately, as for game music, i've been listening to two people primarily, chris rickwood and sean beeson. i'm not sure why them, just people i've found. i particularly like their compositions and sense use of orchestration. i also like the sound of there music, which to me is, although traditional instrumentation, still a very digital sound, for lack of a better word.

i think rickwood's music tends to be more serious, while beeson's more playful.

as for other influences, tons. too many to list, for now.

and your infulences are?

im influenced by pretty much everything i listen to!

I currently work in a world music record label which is bringing out a new inspiration for middle and far eastern music. My favourite game composer however is Jeremy Soule. I think the music he creates is amazing, even before i heard of him coincidentially all of the games he wrote music on were among my favourites! I first heard of him on the game Guild Wars, his themes are fantastic! you should check him out, he did the Elder scrolls games too.

Should I now?

I'm familiar with Soule's work but not particularly fond of it. Outside of a few exceptions, he will often convey character through harmonic development and not melodic development and will usually just run a motif over and over in different modes or key changes.

This is especially clear on his Guild Wars work which, I suppose, is arguably fitting since GW is an MMO with settings that have a lot of character but aren't too dynamic.

Melodic development is rare for him, I think, which is why I am always surprised when he's hired to write for games based on films where John Williams was the composer. I suppose Williams has already paved the melodic development pathway on those licenses.

I like Soule when he's good but I am not big on him sometimes--sometimes it feels like he didn't give it 100%... I guess that bothers me when he's working at the scale he does.

It might actually be the reason why he is so popular. His works are repetitive in the themes, making his works very recognizable. I agree that harmonic development is key to a truly unique and moving piece of music but his success shows that the majority of "none muzos" respond to something simple to understand. Its just another kind of writing i guess, the amount of variables in this line of work is mind-boggling.