Hoping to make your holiday shopping a bit easier, I’ve compiled all the records and merch that I’ve put out this year into one blog entry. Any soundtrack geek on your ‘Nice’ list will dig this stuff. And geeks on your ‘Naughty’ list as well! 🙂
T-SHIRTS:
I’m thrilled to announce that Sparks & Shadows has released t-shirts of my iconic “Bear McCreary: Thirteen Notes” design. Originally unveiled during my 2009 “Music of Battlestar Galactica” tours, these notes are in the frakkin’ ship! 🙂 Fans have been asking for shirts for years and thanks to the good folks at S&S, its finally happening!
CLICK HERE TO ORDER. Shirts are available for $21.98, in a wide variety of sizes and colors, and they ship internationally.
My second “Defiance” album is available now on iTunes, Amazon and other digital retailers! This record contains songs and score from the SyFy television series, and acts as a companion piece to the videogame album released in April.
The “Defiance” television soundtrack is unlike any other record I’ve ever released, because it includes a substantial number of songs in addition to my score. This is not one of those annoying “music-inspired-by” cash-grabs that became so frustratingly popular starting in the 1990’s. I produced or co-produced every song to tell us something specific about the Votan / Human culture in Defiance. I arranged this record to flow seamlessly between songs and score and to provide the listener with a musical guide to this alien, yet familiar, world.
The songs tell us about the culture, while the score cues follow the narrative arc of our main characters. Fans who have already picked up my “Defiance” Videogame Soundtrack will immediately hear the thematic and sonic connections. Where the game score emphasized propulsive action, the television score emphasizes character and melody much more. But, they are two sides of the same coin. Listeners need to hear both records to get a true feeling for the franchise.
“Defiance” is a science fiction epic that sprawls across two mediums: an MMO video game from Trion Worlds that debuted earlier this month (see my previous blog entry), and a series on SyFy that premiered last night. Both the game and the series take place in the same fictional universe: a future Earth that has been invaded and terraformed by a group of alien races collectively known as the Votan. By writing and supervising music for both the game and the series, I was honored to be among the core group of creative individuals involved intimately in both mediums.
I was initially tasked with all the normal duties required of a composer. I wrote adaptive music for the video game, and dramatic background score for the series. I had to ensure that each version had its own unique characteristics, suited to its needs, but also that musical threads united the franchise. Heavy synths and ethnic soloists played a key role in defining the sound of “Defiance,” but the cinematic quality came from working with a string orchestra. Tonight’s video blog is a fly-on-the-wall look at my sessions for the first two episodes:
In addition to typical composer duties, however, I was asked to contribute a wealth of source music (music that is actually heard by characters within the story – for example, a song on the radio). I was asked to help bring the alien cultures to life by developing a distinct musical heritage for each. I fashioned Votan instrumentation and lyrics into a variety of popular songs and ceremonial pieces. I wrote pieces for street musicians that float through open-air marketplaces. I produced alien classical music, jingles, jazz, rock-anthems and torch songs. (more…)
This month brings us the long-awaited rollout of the groundbreaking multimedia science fiction epic “Defiance.” Developed from the beginning as both a SyFy television series and an immersive videogame from Trion Worlds, “Defiance” marks the first attempt to debut a franchise of this scale in two unique formats.
The game and the series take place in a future Earth, terraformed by invading alien races known as the Votan. Themes of exploration, racial tension and frontier life have been transplanted from the western genre and fit perfectly in this strange new vision of our world. The game and series share principal characters, visual effects, production design and story arcs. They also have one other important characteristic in common: the original score. (more…)
