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Memoirs of a Videogame Music Composer
kukyfrope writes "GameDaily has conducted an in-depth interview with videogame composer Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Freedom Fighters). They discuss what it takes to be a composer, what inspires him, how he comes up with new ideas for his projects, and about the current 'generic' state of music in most games. 'I am not interested in writing music that is disposable or that doesn't touch people in some way. I try to write music I would want in the game as a gamer, so if I am happy with my music I know I am doing something right.'"
Gamespy recently had an interview with another composer, Jeremy Soule.
Danny Elfman is amazing, but his mainstay is, and always has been, movie scores. Most of the soundtracks from the Simpsons games simply ripped the music from the show. Yes, it's his music, but it isn't exactly composed with the gamer in mind. While Jesper Kyd's credits consist almost entirely of video games. I think that qualifies him as a video game music composer over Elfman.
I'm not talking about using entire measures from other pieces.
It can happen inadvertently. Every piece is going to have at least a few entire measures identical to some measure in some existing copyrighted piece; the combinatorics can't be avoided within the Western musical system. So how do I know whether I'm inadvertently using a measure from a well-known copyrighted piece? And even if I'm clearly in the right, how do I economically convince a judge of this?