Category Archives: Streaming music

BBC Sound of Gaming Interview: Winifred Phillips Discusses Game Music Composition

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Winifred Phillips, pictured in her recording studio at Generations Productions during an interview with the Sound of Gaming radio show on BBC Radio 3.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Delighted you’re here!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and earlier this month, I was honored to be interviewed for the BBC Radio 3 program Sound of Gaming, hosted by Louise Blain.  BBC Radio 3 specializes in classical music, which means that the Sound of Gaming program is especially unique among that network’s program line-up.  Focusing on exceptional musical compositions from the awesome world of video games, the Sound of Gaming show has been airing regularly since 2019, bringing classical music listeners into a whole new world of musical expression.

Photo of journalist Louise Blain, host of the radio show Sound of Gaming on BBC Radio 3, as included in the article by award-winning video game music composer Winifred Phillips.

The show’s host Louise Blain is a top video game journalist, and the co-author of the popular book Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer’s Edition.  In addition, she co-hosted the BBC Proms 2022 concert “Gaming Music at the Proms” from the famous Royal Albert Hall in London.  In each of her Sound of Gaming programs, she also includes an interview segment called “The Cutscene,” during which she interviews a game music composer whose work fits into the overall theme of the program.  Whether it’s a composer for moody stealth missions, or one who specializes in light-hearted mishaps, the conversation throws light on the musical style that’s explored in the rest of the program.  In the June 3 2023 episode, the theme was “The Extraordinary,” and focused on games that ignite the fires of the imagination.  During my interview for this program, I was delighted to discuss my music for three of my video game projects: Assassin’s Creed Liberation, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Jurassic World Primal Ops.

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Video Game Music Concerts in 2021

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Photo of video game composer Winifred Phillips, pictured standing in front of the official poster for the Assassin's Creed Symphony concert tour.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hi!  I’m videogame composer Winifred Phillips.  These are the times that try our musical souls, with live concerts enduring an avalanche of cancelations and postponements due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  For our community as game music composers and game audio pros, this means that most video game concert tours have gone silent.  As one of the composers whose work was featured in the Assassin’s Creed Symphony World Tour, I was honored to join the players onstage during the Montreal performance last year (pictured below).  It was a thrill to have my music from Assassin’s Creed Liberation performed in Berlin, Milan, and all around the world.

Photo of game music composer Winifred Phillips onstage during the Montreal performance of the Assassin's Creed Symphony worldwide concert tour.

Now, I’ve sadly watched as the coronavirus postponed the entire UK leg of the tour, with no resumption date as of yet. This fate is common to live concert events around the world.

While we all have reason to be sad about this, there is some light in the darkness.  A few touring companies and orchestras have nimbly shifted to online live-streaming events as a way to sustain their fan bases and keep enthusiasm alive through the Covid-19 pandemic.  Other video game music shows are holding things together while continuing to sell tickets, with optimistic plans to resume their in-person tours later in 2021.  As both game audio pros and game music fans, we all want to enjoy and support this music, so let’s check out what’s happening this year in the world of VGM concerts!  We’ll start by taking a look at those organizations that have moved their concerts online with live-streamed events.  After that, we’ll check out the concert tours that are still selling tickets with hopes to return to their stages sometime later this year.

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Music Game Plan: Tactics for the Video Game Composer (Part Three)

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video game music composer Winifred Phillips, working in her studio on the music of The Maw video game.Welcome to the third installment of my four-part article series on the core principles of music interactivity, including video demonstrations and supplementary supporting materials that take these abstract concepts and make them more concrete.  In Part One of this series, we took a look at a simple example demonstrating the Horizontal Re-Sequencing model of musical interactivity, as it was used in the music I composed for the Speed Racer Videogame from Warner Bros. Interactive. Part Two of this series looked at the more complex Horizontal Re-sequencing music system of the Spore Hero game from Electronic Arts.  So now let’s move on to another major music interactivity model used by video game composers – Vertical Layering.

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Music Game Plan: Tactics for the Video Game Composer (Part One)

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Video game composer Winifred Phillips, working on the music of Speed Racer the Video Game.

Interactive music is always a hot topic in the game audio community, and newcomers to game music composition can easily become confused by the structure and process of creating non-linear music for games.  To address this issue, I produced four videos that introduce aspiring video game composers to some of the most popular tactics and procedures commonly used by game audio experts in the structuring of musical interactivity for games.  Over the next four articles, I’ll be sharing these videos with you, and I’ll also be including some supplemental information and accompanying musical examples for easy reference.  Hopefully these videos can answer some of the top questions about interactive music composition.  Music interactivity can be awesome, but it can also seem very abstract and mysterious when we’re first learning about it. Let’s work together to make the process feel a bit more concrete and understandable!

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Call of Champions

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Winifred Phillips, composer of the music for the Call of Champions game

Winifred Phillips, composer for the Call of Champions game

I’m very proud and excited to announce that I composed the music for the Call of Champions video game, developed by Spacetime Studios!

Call of Champions is an awesome action game in the popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (or MOBA) genre. The game pits players against each other in exciting timed matches within a futuristic fantasy-inspired setting. The game was created by the team at Spacetime Studios, an accomplished group of top industry veterans (including developers responsible for the famous Wing Commander series and Star Wars Galaxies.)

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