![]() Thankfully, indie composers have picked up the slack, often outclassing their bigger budget peers. This approach has yielded some unforgettable music, yet there’s a fatigue and lack of inspiration beginning to set in. “Games require you to think holistically and to think about music as a part of a greater whole, and how that comes into play,” he says.“The order in which the music is experienced can also be quite non-linear and on that same note there are a lot of possibilities for creating unique interactions with music and sound that are foreign to the album format.”Mainstream game soundtracks have, for the most, imitated the orchestral styling of film. Doing so has brought more sharply into focus the differences between regular music composition and game music composition. “It’s a shame,” comments Vreeland on not just the cancellation itself but also of the unfortunate circumstances in which the entire debacle occurred.When it comes to music, games of course aren’t Vreeland’s only interests, having already released a number of standalone albums. ![]() Vreeland was set to reprise his role as composer but Fish no longer wanted to work in an industry that was so openly hostile and antagonistic towards him. We were lucky.”Not so lucky was the follow up to Fez, which was cancelled earlier this year only several months after having been revealed. could hear it and give feedback, if any, but we were generally on the same wavelength. I put new material into the game regularly, so Phil and co. We were in step from the beginning and generally things worked out very well. For Vreeland, the experience of working with Fish was very much a positive one. Fez was primarily designed and created by Phil Fish, a divisive figure known for his outspokenness. Speaking of its genesis, Vreeland says, “It’s definitely inspired by old-school game music, and has a lot of the same timbres, but without the various limitations that go along with it.“I tried to contemporize the notion of writing a retro game soundtrack by generally trying to bypass game music tropes, and focus more on approaching the music as if it were part of a cinematic experience.” He certainly succeeded in this goal, with the score shattering barriers for chiptune, the result of a beautifully powerful weaving of the ambient and active. It was such a fun experience that after that I knew I wanted to get more involved.”All of this experience was building towards Fez, a milestone that would not only be a career-defining moment for Vreeland, but also a hugely important release in the evolution of video game music in general. ![]() “I posted some of my music on a fantasy wrestling forum when I was a teenager and the CEO of a mobile software company contacted me to write some general MIDI music for their games. I used to sneak down there and play the drums, which just happens to be a very indiscreet activity.”His passion for the medium led to him attending Berklee College of Music, after which he joined the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Singaporean government designed to explore potential new directions for video games.It was during this scheme that Vreeland scored his first formal soundtracks, although his initial venture had actually occurred years earlier when he was a teenager. “My mother and step-father were involved in the music ministry at our church, and used to have band practices in the basement. He’s best known for scoring the critically acclaimed 2012 puzzle platformer Fez, for which he won the admiration of both fans and peers alike, with a genre-breaking soundtrack that’s arguably one of the greatest of this, or any, console generation.Like many musicians, music was introduced to Vreeland from a young age. Chiptune maestro Disasterpeace talks to Niall Gosker about scoring the masterful soundtrack to indie hit Fez and what’s coming nextRich Vreeland, or Disasterpeace as he’s more commonly known, is part of an ever-growing group of extremely talented composers working in the indie games scene. ![]()
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