Musical Style and Influences
Although many of his works are orchestral, Jack Wall has worked in a wide variety of styles, including "heavy metal meets orchestral" and "tribal percussion". For Jade Empire, he focused on using Chinese instruments and Taiko drums. When writing a video game score, Wall prefers a collaborative approach with the game designers to creating the music, as he feels that the "tug back and forth of ideas" makes the music stronger. He notes, however, that he has to be flexible, and willing to create his own vision for the music. As part of this, he prefers to be able to see illustrations and game design documents before beginning, as they provide insight into the feel of the game so that his music can mesh in with it. He also believes that a good video game music composer needs to have a lot of technical sound production skill to be successful. Wall has said that the Myst and Mass Effect soundtracks are his favorites that he has created. Wall stated that he was primarily interested in scoring games that are "interesting", and that his main concern was creating something original. Although he has worked with live orchestras and synthetic orchestras, Wall recommends that game developers use a live one, despite the expense, as he feels they add a much more dynamic sound to the music and allow the composer more freedom than synthesizer samples.
Read more about this topic: Jack Wall (composer)
Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or influences:
“Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)