Tim Follin - Thoughts On Video Game Music

Thoughts On Video Game Music

Follin's methodology of music was that music is "basically an unconscious experience" that does not and should not "engage your intellect." Rather, Follin believed game music was "more of a sort of atmospheric thing" and had "always written music to be part of something else," intending for the video game (or other media the music is composed for) to provide the image or scene of context.

Within his personal experience, Follin always found the hardest part of creating music to be the concept phase, saying "I probably tear my hair out more over arrangement than over anything else." The easiest part was the execution of the solidified concepts.

Follin felt the idea of computer music was "a silly one to begin with," as soundchips from the earliest platforms (e.g. ZX Spectrum) were only meant to produce sound effects. As early as 1994, Follin expressed his desire to move away from scoring video games and transition to films, stating that he preferred never to work with chip-generated music again along with his hopes that the games industry would not move backwards from the emerging standard of CD audio. Whether dealing with the audio limitations of older consoles or a game's narrow style guidelines when composing for modern soundtracks, Follin regarded the challenge of creating music within constraints to be an interesting part of working in video game music.

As a video game composer, Follin believed the necessities of being proficient in many genres and creating music on demand often confused the general public, who are used to acts that produce one style of music. He observed that "musicians generally aren't rewarded for being heterogeneous."

During his game music career, Follin never had the mood or interest to join any demoscene groups. Though Follin knew few fellow video game composers, he highly respected Richard Jacques for the amount of work put into his music.