Interview With Jeremy Soule

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(Originally posted by Mollusken)

Jeremy Soule is the man who composed the award winning music for Icewind Dale 1, and he has also composed music for several other famous computer games and movies. The german site Yiya has asked him a few questions.

Which is the primary/fundamental difference between compositions of soundtracks for computer games, soundtracks for movies, or concert works?

Games are just about the hardest medium to score as they are often 3-D, nonlinear and fairly unpredictable. Movies are easy by comparison. In fact, I write about twice as fast when I'm writing for a movie as I do for ingame music. Concert works are a luxury for most composers to produce. I personally love the idea of creating music for music's sake. However, I find it difficult to find the time to produce works for orchestra halls. So many other composers, including John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, have this dilemma as well.

Your list of top-class game soundtracks is just impressive: Giants, Icewind Dale and currently the music of the Harry Potter game are amongst others the best one in orchestral computer soundtracks. How do you select your projects?

In general, I want to make sure that any project I'm involved with has a number of good attributes including great people, a first-rate design and scheduling serendipity.

How do you get your musical "mood" for the game, when do you get your inspiration, do you get a kind of script before? Is there some sort of prescription concerning the style of the soundtrack, be it a complete orchestra, electronics or choirs?

I compose from visuals. Other things are important too, but for me, what the game looks like influences how it sounds. How I arrive at the music differs for each project, but I greatly enjoy seeing the marriage of music and visuals.

You can read the whole interview at Yiya. If you don't understand german you may have to click the link to the English version at the top of the page.