Several months ago before E3 2012, Jack Wall called me up and asked if I could help him score some music for his project Black Ops 2, which had fallen under a tight deadline to get a build completed with music prior to E3. So fast forward to now, and I’m happy to announce that I wrote the Multiplayer Menu music (“Adrenaline” and “Spiderbot” on the soundtrack) as well as some other general music which can be heard in the multiplayer game. The game is currently up for a Spike VGA award for Best Original Score, and I’m very happy/blessed to have worked on such a high profile project!

Back in 2009/2010 when I was working with Wall of Sound on BioWare’s epic Sci-Fi action/RPG Mass Effect 2, there were a number of tracks that came about to various degrees of completion.  Since Jack Wall was the lead composer, everything went by him first and then he’d provide feedback and then if it passed his approval, it was submitted to BioWare.  Thus, I ended up with a handful of tracks that either didn’t quite fit the tone of what I wrote them for, or otherwise were merely just rough sketches of ideas.  Some of these are ideas that I never even ran by Jack because it turned out that I was needed to work on other things or else maybe I just felt that they weren’t necessarily worth pursuing at the time.

At any rate, now that Mass Effect 3 is out, I felt it was time to unbury them from the lonely recesses of my hard drive and dust them off and share them with the Mass Effect fans of the world (or anyone else who likes electronic/orchestral music with a 80′s/sci-fi twist).  And thus, the album Legacy exists.  The fantastic artwork you see above was done by my friend and highly gifted artist Jessie “axl99″ Lam.  A few people have asked me what these tracks were specifically written for.  It’s been a while, and as I said, some were merely idea sketches, but I’ll do my best to provide a basic explanation here:

Concerning the flagship track of the album, “Shepard of the Galaxy“, there’s a bit of a story behind it I suppose, seeing as it’s the only track that wasn’t actually “unused” music written for Mass Effect 2 music, but is rather a tribute arrangement of the music of the entire Trilogy.  Back when I found out that Wall of Sound would not be returning to score Mass Effect 3, naturally I was sad to hear the news for several reasons.  I love the series, for one, and was honored to be a part of it.  I really enjoyed writing this style of music, where you have the liberty to alternate between or combine various styles of music like ambient, synth-driven, 80′s-esque, and epic cinematic/orchestral.  I felt that it was a fun way to write, not necessarily being restricted to the confines of any single style or genre–it allowed for more room for creativity and expressiveness.  Further, working with Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, and David Kates was a true honor.  I consider them all great friends and each was a mentor and a source of inspiration to me while working on the game.  And finally, seeing as the series is so amazing and widely recognized as such (despite some recent feedback about the endings, which I don’t quite agree with–I thought the ending, while not *exactly* what I hoped for, was in fact appropriate and acceptable) I was naturally disappointed to not continue on in such a series.

To be brutally honest, I did not feel like I was up to the task of writing music for Mass Effect 2.  I honestly didn’t feel like I had the skill to write music that would be heard as on-par with the rest of the guys on the Wall of Sound team.  I was extremely nervous/intimidated when I was brought on board.  One of the first tracks I heard after Jack hired me was one of Sam’s combat themes for the Legion acquisition level.  As soon as I heard it, I remember saying out loud “I don’t know if I can do this…”  Apparently I was able to harness that desire to succeed, because I’ve been blessed to receive (both directly and indirectly) a number of kind remarks commenting on how effective and emotionally gratifying the music I wrote was.  I think the pinnacle of the music I scored is probably “The Normandy Reborn“, and when I see people remark things like “I cried when I heard this piece and saw the SR-2″ I am deeply moved every time.  I constantly hear many of the cues I wrote used by BioWare in promotional videos, video casts, reviews, and trailers, which tells me they must be pretty happy with what I gave them. :)  Despite most people not knowing who I am, because the soundtracks for ME2 only mention Jack’s name (we’re not sure why or how that happened, especially since ME1 and ME3 don’t have that oversight), I’m still highly pleased to see such kind remarks about the music I wrote.

So with that tangent out of the way, I noticed that after it was announced that Wall of Sound would not return for ME3 that there were a huge number of people who voiced sadness/disappointment at discovering this news.   A lot of fans really wanted Jack Wall to finish the trilogy.  I had an idea that maybe it might be cool if we at Wall of Sound put together a nice little tribute track for the series as both a thanks to BioWare for the opportunity to work on their fine game, and also a fan service of sorts to all the people who said such kind encouragement towards us as we stepped down from finishing the series.  Jack thought it was a great idea, but in the end he was too busy with other projects, as was Sam.  As someone who has roots in OverClocked ReMix (ocremix.org) I have a long history of remixing/rearranging amazing video game music–it’s just a thing I like to do (and in a way, it’s part of how I even became friends with Jack to begin with), so I figured I’d just give it a shot myself.   Thus, I took what I thought were the most iconic pieces of the series and did my best to merge them into one story-recapping musical experience.  ”Shepard of the Galaxy” consists of “Suicide Mission” (ME2, Jack Wall), “Illusive Man” (ME2, Jack Wall), “Uncharted Worlds” (ME1 – 3, Sam Hulick), “Mass Effect Theme (Shepard’s Theme)” (ME1, Jack Wall & Sam Hulick), “Saren’s Theme” (ME1, Jack Wall), “Collectors’ Theme” (ME2, Jack Wall), “Humans are Disappearing” (ME2, Jack Wall), “Leaving Earth” (ME3, Clint Mansell), and “Victory” (ME1, Sam Hulick).  I really wanted to work “Vigil” from ME1 in there, but in the end, I just ran out of time and I couldn’t quite figure out where to put it.

At any rate, my hope is that when people hear the music, they can quickly and quietly reflect on the amazing experiences that they had throughout the Mass Effect trilogy.  To me, the game was all about the journey.  I cherish it, and I hope that the music only helps with that for all of you.

I want to thank my friends at Extra Credits for their amazing pimpage of Legacy, as well as Kotaku, Destructoid, and of course BioWare.  Even though I’ve sadly never had the chance to meet him, I want to thank Casey Hudson for his vision on making the Mass Effect series what it is, as well as every single person who poured their heart into the series.  And naturally, huge thanks to my friends Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, David Kates, and Brian DiDomenico.  We made a great team, and I cherish the opportunity we had to work together on this project.  Commander Shepard lives on in the music.

Thanks especially to you, yes you, the one who is reading this.  Your support is priceless to me, I can’t convey that enough.  I hold you each in the highest regard.  

-Jimmy

Happy 2012!  Been a while since I’ve shared any news with you, and I’m sorry for the hiatus, but hopefully you’ve already seen via Twitter or Facebook that I’ve put out two new albums, Contingency and Big Giant Christmas EP on bandcamp since Impostor Nostalgia.  But moving on, I’m proud to announce that I’ve been working on some music for the upcoming (at the time of my writing this) iOS casual game Puzzlejuice, by Asher Vollmer!  In all honesty, I haven’t been this excited for a project I’ve worked on probably since Mass Effect 2.  While they’re totally different games on totally different platforms intended for totally different players (most likely), I can say that this game is the cream of the crop of casual games.  Here’s a couple screenshots:

It’s basically a mix of Tetris, Boggle, and maybe Bejeweled is probably the best way I can describe it.  But it so well combines those elements, the experience is truly as enjoyable as a casual game is meant to be!  Greg Wohlwend aka aeiowu, the talent behind the art said very well

the idea behind Puzzlejuice is to give you three things to think about, which ends up being one too many

and rightly so.  I spent hours and hours of my life playing Popcap’s Bookworm back in the day, and this is like that with the urgency of Tetris driving the game and setting the pace VERY nicely, to ensure that I don’t lose track of an entire day playing the game (as I’ve been known to do often).  The music is will be available on bandcamp the day the game is released, on Thursday, January 19th 2012.

Asher is a super great/talented guy who’s put together a truly fantastic and well-polished game, and hopefully you’ll dig the music as well.  While it may not be as melodically-driven as some of my other work, it was still a ton of fun to write.  Thanks for reading, listening, and continuing to support my work!

-Jimmy

Impostor Nostalgia is available on:

To listen/purchase, click any of the images above!

Physical CDs can currently be purchased from bandcamp.

Hear some of the tracks below:

Press:

Featuring:

More importantly than my album though, is the story behind this preview track that I would like to share with you.  For the full story, please just watch the following video:

So in summary, my sister just donated one of her kidneys to her husband last week (kinda sweet right?), and in an effort to help them pay for the (very high) cost of the surgery, I’m donating the proceeds of this song to them.  It may not seem like much, but please consider purchasing the track and helping a good cause.  They’re good people, and simply buying the track or passing the video along to your friends really does invoke my deepest gratitude.  Thanks so much for your help, as well as your friendship and support of my music.  My most sincere love and thanks to you all. :]

To purchase the track, please click the following link, or click the “On Bandcamp” menu drop under “Music” at the top of this page.

http://biggiantcircles.bandcamp.com/track/you-can-have-mine

Some very cool news, our score for Mass Effect 2 received a BAFTA Nomination for Best Original Score!  For a full list of the video game nominees and winners, click here.

This post is actually a little late, but I was recently involved in the free fan-produced video game music arrangement album, Heroes vs. Villains!  Challenged by the legendary video game music arranger and Bad Dude Mazedude, I took on the theme of s3xy Super Metroid heroine Samus Aran on the OCR side.  There’s tons of amazing music on this album, and I did mention it’s free right?

CLICK HERE FOR A PREVIEW

Wait, are you still here?  Go download it now! :)

For the third straight year, Jimmy is participating with several other fantastic composers in the Songs for the Cure album for the Cancer Drive project in an effort to raise money for the American Cancer Society.  Please click here for more info and to donate to this great cause today.

Virtual Instrument virtuoso Spectrasonics has done a Pro News feature about Wall of Sound’s use of their products in the score of Mass Effect 2.  What an honor! Click the image to check it out!

I actually missed the release of this, but I’m especially proud of this final bonus soundtrack of previously unreleased music from the game.  Why?  Because on this particular album, I worked on 9 of the 14, including personal favorites like “Infiltration” and “The Long Walk”.   So that’s now an extra 14 tracks, clocking it at over 33 minutes of new music. I believe that makes the entire ME2 Soundtrack collection well over 3 hours of solid listening enjoyment! :)  Pick yours up today from Amazon Mp3, iTunes, or Rhapsody!