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Profile of a Game Composer

Posted by Zonk on from the music-for-a-snowstorm dept.

MikeT writes "If you have played a game made by Blizzard in the last five years you've heard Jason Hayes' work, from Starcraft, Diablo II, to Warcraft III. His latest position at Blizzard was lead composer on World of Warcraft. Hayes recently left the software company and decided to venture out on his own in the form of Music By Jason Hayes. FileFront profiles his trials and tribulations and his future aspirations."

19 comments

  1. My favourite composer... by ActionJesus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe slightly offtopic, but Im a huge fan of the works of Richard Joseph.

    He's made such great music on the amiga such as Gods, Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine and more. I even have some of the music from these games ripped into mp3 format.

    1. Re:My favourite composer... by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Interesting

      To continue the slightly offtopic theme, I'm a fan of Jeremy Soule, who did music for (among others) Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and my personal favorite, TES3: Morrowind.

    2. Re:My favourite composer... by Richie1984 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To continue the slightly offtopic theme even further, I have to commend Nobuo Uematsu for his work on the Final Fantasy X soundtrack. Now there's a guy who knows how to make a good rock song!

      --
      I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
    3. Re:My favourite composer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but the last truly great soundtrack he wrote was for Final Fantasy VI.

      But I guess it's hard to write a truly epic score for trash like Final Fantasy VII-X.

    4. Re:My favourite composer... by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · · Score: 1

      Don't forget Total Annihilation. One of the classics as far as computer game music; I still listen to it from time to time.

    5. Re:My favourite composer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree that Uematsu peaked before FF7 (as did all of FF as a whole, in every single way), but his battle themes for FF7 were pretty damn good.

      FF5 was his masterpiece, even though the normal battle theme seemed a little too short and repetitive.

    6. Re:My favourite composer... by wheany · · Score: 1

      Laguna's battle theme in FF8 was the best evah!

    7. Re:My favourite composer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because everyone loves crappy 80s synth music when fighting monsters.

      Some day people are going to realize that Nobuo Uematsu sucks and that none of the Final Fantasy music has ever been any good. If you want to hear good music related to Final Fantasy, try the Final Fantasy Tatics soundtrack. Too bad they ditched it for Final Fantasy Tatics Advanced, and it also won't be used for Final Fantasy XII, the single-player version of Final Fantasy XI, a crappy game in and of itself.

    8. Re:My favourite composer... by wheany · · Score: 1

      Because everyone loves crappy 80s synth music when fighting monsters.

      Maybe not everyone, but apparently I and my friends do.

    9. Re:My favourite composer... by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 1

      my vote goes for Timothy Steven Clark, who did the music for Tribes 2 and its predecessors, Tribes, Starsiege and Earthsiege, as well as Aces Over Europe and a bunch of others.

      --
      The World's Worst Webcomic!
  2. morituri te salutant by F�an�ro · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seems like this was one of the guys who made the music for the starcraft broodwar intro "morituri te salutant".
    One of my favorite songs, so anything he makes just has to be good :)

    you can get it from blizzard btw: bwintro.zip
    More songs from blizzard here

    1. Re:morituri te salutant by andfarm · · Score: 1

      Where did you get the name "morituri te salutant"? I can't seem to find a reference to it anywhere.

      --

      TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.

    2. Re:morituri te salutant by F�an�ro · · Score: 2, Informative

      The name is just from my flaky memory.
      Usenet seems to confirm it, but I think i got it from somewhere else

      IIRC the song starts with "Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant".
      But maybe it does not have an official name at all.

    3. Re:morituri te salutant by andfarm · · Score: 1

      Oh, ok. Thought you meant the title screen music.

      --

      TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.

  3. Re:Boring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anonymous Coward on 21:57 - Wake me up when the next article gets posted.

    The next article: Posted by michael on 18:35

    You really need to learn to type faster.

  4. Transition to composing movie soundtracks by dolphin558 · · Score: 1

    There are a few game composers who I want to see working on soundtracks for films. Joel McNeely(Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire) would have been my replacement if John Williams croaked. I desperately would like to see Koji Kondo(Mario,Zelda) and Nubuo Uematsu(Final Fantasy series) making movie soundtracks. Fortunately there is the case of the Spielberg prodigy Michael Giacchino who scored the Medal of Honor series. He has done work on tv shows such as Alias and Lost and composed the soundtrack for Pixar's Invincibles. He will score the next Mission Impossible film with Tom Cruise.

    1. Re:Transition to composing movie soundtracks by ChibiOne · · Score: 1

      composed the soundtrack for Pixar's Invincibles.
      That would be "The Incredibles" :)
      BTW, I think he also was responsible for the music of a Jurassic Park game, though I don't know which one. And I agree, he is a great composer. His work on the MOH games is fantastic.

  5. Proper props by jsorbie · · Score: 0

    I could be mistaken, but according to Blizzard the Diablo II music was composed by Matt Uelmen. It's a fabulous soundtrack done with all manner of uncommon instruments.