Introductions

As part of an early new year's resolution, I have decided to join the world of blogging. My interests lie mostly in illustration and music. The latter will be the prominent subject of this page, though there will be additional links with animations that should tie in nicely with what I would like to write about. I am a big fan of Japanese Games and Movies, especially their scores.

I usually find myself listening to scores before actually seeing their original context. I have been collecting soundtracks since 2000, and I have found the music to be incredibly inspiring to work to in my professional practice. Though my own images may not be directly tied to the subjects that the scores were created for, I have found that I finally want to share my interests online.

This year has been a really exciting year for VGM; Skyrim and Aerith's Theme [by Jeremy Soule and Nobuo Uematsu respectively] both received places in the Classic FM Hall of Fame. I believe Aerith's Theme reached as high as number 16 in the chart.

The end of the year is seeing much in the popularity of VGM, with copious concerts that included Distant Worlds -the 25th Anniversery of Final Fantasy- celebrations at the Royal Albert Hall on November 2nd, and Grammy Award nominations for Austin Wintory's fantastic score from Journey.

In my recent perusing over social media, fans are fighting for the genre to fit into the same vein as film music - to feature on Classic FM more frequently as an art form. As far as a listening experience goes with video game music, in its modern technologies, is not so dissimilar to film music. Several years ago, orchestral scores for games were few. Symphonic arrange albums have been produced in Japan since the late 80s. My passion for music is down to such names as Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda and Motoi Sakuraba [just to name a few in no particular order]. Their styles have introduced me to other genres and artists whom I would never have discovered otherwise.

I want to be able to cover multiple aspects of VGM, especially in orchestral genres, though I am very open to techno, jazz and rock. I will say that my education of music theory is currently a bit thin. I used to play the piano and violin as a child, but lacking any sense of rhythm found my strengths in art instead. VGM inspires my original works, even if I have not played the original game. So results can usually be based purely on emotions felt whislt engaging the piece rather than completely knowing what the piece was intended for.

Here they may also be the possibility for album reviews, though again I admit they may not be my strongest aspect. This page is purely for fun and I would kindly ask my readers to please forgive my lack of knowledge in musical theory and terminology, if such circumstances arise in my posts.

So that is all I have to write for this introduction. I will be posting soon about my recent musical endeavours and hope that you enjoy what I have to share.

N.B. No downloads will be provided from this blog. All music and imagery belong to their original creators