The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, one of America’s largest university presses, has published A Composer’s Guide to Game Music by Winifred Phillips. As an award-winning composer of video game music, Phillips provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Among those praising Phillips’s book is celebrated film/game composer Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek, Narnia, Kingdom of Heaven, Metal Gear Solid series), who described A Composer’s Guide to Game Music as “not just compulsory bedside reading for budding games composers, but a fine achievement in itself. Bravo!” Renowned video game director David Jaffe (God of War, the Twisted Metal series) described Phillips’s book as “an important, deep, and rare exploration of video game music by one of the medium’s smartest and most talented voices.”
Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, one of the most important qualifications for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. “It’s very important to have an enduring passion for games,” Phillips writes. “With the right spark of enthusiasm, the process of writing music for games can be positively exhilarating.”
A Composer’s Guide to Game Music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press offers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music for a new medium.
Amazon Page: http://amzn.com/0262026643
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