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Featured, Game Music, Indie Music, Interviews, Music Production
INTERVIEW: Composer Lena Raine talks Celeste Soundtrack & working in Game Audio
Celeste is a recently released indie game from Matt Makes Games that is available on multiple platforms. The game has been getting a lot of attention for its stunning visual design, and challenging gameplay. More important to us here at OSV is the game’s soundtrack. The music was composed by Lena Raine (aka Lena Chappelle, and Kuraine), and who has been working as a composer for over 11 years.
She recently took some time to talk to us about her musical background, her inspirations, and her experience working in game audio. Read on for our full interview.
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Featured, Game Music
Community Question: Does your pet like game music?
My dog who you see pictured above has specific tastes when it comes to game music. He loves orchestral scores, and absolutely hates anything that contains natural sounds, or odd percussion. He’s right at home with Gareth Coker’s score to Ori and the Blind Forest, and adores Joe Hisaishi’s score to Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.
Looking at the opposite side of things, when he was a puppy I couldn’t even play Skyrim as the sounds of the birds drove him nuts. As does one of my favorite tracks from Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack “Skyrim Atmospheres”. He also used to howl at anything that resembled a pan flute, I am happy to report he’s gotten over that.
I also used to have a little zebra finch who used to make ‘pew pew’ laser chirps to chiptunes.
So I ask you, does your pet enjoy game music or react in different ways? If you’ve got a game music savvy animal please tell us all about it.
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Featured, Game Music
OSVOSTOTY 2017: Community Question Edition
Now that Brenna, Ryan, and myself have had our say on the year in game music, we want to hear from you the OSV community. Let us know in the comments what are your favorite game soundtracks and arrangement albums of 2017?
For just a quick cursory reminder some of 2017’s most major mainstream and indie titles include Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Night in the Woods, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, NieR: Automata, Persona 5, Prey, Mages of Mystralia, Tekken 7, Splatoon 2, Pyre, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Observer, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Tacoma, Steamworld Dig 2, Cuphead, Super Mario Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed Origin. That’s just a super small sampling. If you’re really dedicated to making the most informed choices, check out Wikipedia’s full list of 2017 video game releases and get back to us… sometime in 2018.
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Featured, Game Music, Indie Music
OSVOSTOTY 2017: Ryan’s Picks
2017 flew by and was a very memorable year for game music, much like 2016! Personally, I am a huge film score fan, and have a deep appreciation for video game soundtracks that feature an orchestral sound. Not surprising my choice for game soundtrack of the year checked that box, as did the remaining choices on my list of runners up, and honorable mentions – except for one chip tune arrangement album. What I love about Original Sound Version’s OSVOSTOTY is that each of our contributors have different gaming experiences each year, and unique tastes in music.
Read on to see what I picked for my favorite game soundtracks of 2017.
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Featured, Game Music
OSVOSTOTY 2017: Shawn’s Picks
And here I thought this was a hard post to write last year! I honestly didn’t hear much original game music in 2017 that lit me up. A few songs from a few different soundtracks got some love but not much of it stuck with me. On the other hand, choosing just three arrangement albums has been much harder to nail down. That’s the territory I cover the most here on OSV and I found quite a few favorite new albums throughout the year. So click on in to watch me navigate a flaming crash-dive through my 2017 in game music!
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Chip Music, Featured, Game Music
OSVOSTOTY 2017: Brenna’s Picks
It’s that time of year again, where we recollect on all of the things we saw, listened to or experienced in the past 365 days. The year 2017 had a ridiculous amount of good game releases and an equally good amount of good game soundtracks. As with our previous year-end wrap-ups, we’ll be going through our top picks for game soundtracks and game arrangement albums for 2017 and highlighting what we thought stood out the most among what we managed to get our hands on. I personally didn’t get to play through a ton of games this year (Sorry, NieR Automata and Super Mario Odyssey won’t be on my list), but I’ll list what I thought stood out from what I did play.
Without further ado;
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Experimental, Featured, Game Music, Japanese
Hands on with the Final Fantasy XV Moonlit Melodies App
December 5, 2017 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Hands on with the Final Fantasy XV Moonlit Melodies App Share this
Here’s a real oddity of our modern digital times: Square Enix has released a free app on PlayStation 4 in Japan that includes a live performance of the Piano Collections – Final Fantasy XV: Moonlit Melodies album, but it’s only fully functional for PlayStation Plus subscribers, and it will disappear after March 1st, 2018.
This is much more elaborate than the other soundtrack apps that have been released on the PlayStation Store so far. The 3gb download opens with a 3D interface, an original theme song, and a “daily login” unlock system. Basically, each day you load it up a sample of another song is unlocked for non-PlayStation Plus subscribers. If you are a subscriber the entire concert is available immediately and on the final day you’ll unlock a PlayStation 4 Home Screen theme. A small gift for your patience.
The Moonlit Melodies album was released in February but the live performance on this app comes from a concert held in Osaka on June 2nd that was produced by the game’s composer, Yoko Shimomura. I was expecting the songs to be accompanied by a simple slideshow of screenshots but you actually get direct video from the concert. It’s a well edited, multi-angle production with subtle lighting and projection effects that runs for about 40 minutes. Another bonus is an exclusive interview with Shimomura where she talks about choosing the venue, her love of the piano, the importance of concert settings, and more. Bonus bonus, it has English subtitles!
But once again, the whole thing will become inaccessible on March 1st, 2018, presumably leading up to a longer Blu-ray release of the full performance. Since it’s such an ethereal experience — Japan only, digital only, and soon to be shut down — I thought I’d record a video to show it off to those that don’t have the time or means to access it. You can check it out above or on OSV’s rejuvenated YouTube channel.FYI: If you want to try it out for yourself you’ll first need a Japanese PlayStation Network account. Once you’ve got that set up you can download the app via this link. I can confirm, if you subscribe to PlayStation Plus on your main account and load up the app you’ll have instant access to the full concert and interview video. There’s no need to sign up for PS+ in Japanese. Convenient!
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