Tag Archives: Musical Themes

Melodies as Symbols: The Music of Assassin’s Creed Liberation

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Photo showing Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips at work in her studio at Generations Productions. As included in the article about the music Phillips composed for the bestselling video game Assassin's Creed Liberation.

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Hello there!  I’m Winifred Phillips. As a part of my career in video game music composition, I was honored to compose the original soundtrack for the bestselling video game Assassin’s Creed Liberation.  In this article series, I’ve been talking with you about the music I composed for that awesome game.  This is the third installment in this article series.  In part one, we discussed the unique cultural heritage of the game’s protagonist.  In part two, we considered how music can bring in-game locations to life, infusing them with a sense of history and meaning.  If you’d like to catch up on the previous two articles, you can find them here:

  1. Cultural Fusion: The Music of Assassin’s Creed Liberation
  2. Time and Place: The Music of Assassin’s Creed Liberation

Before we proceed now, I’d like to digress from the topic a moment to talk about video game music in live concert.

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Time and Place: The Music of Assassin’s Creed Liberation

Posted by Winifred Phillips on

Photo of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips. This photo was taken in Phillips' music production studio, and was included in the article discussing the music of one of her projects (Assassin's Creed Liberation).

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hey, everyone!  I’m Winifred Phillips, and one of my most memorable projects as a video game composer was the original soundtrack for the video game Assassin’s Creed Liberation.  In this article series, I’m sharing my creative process for the music composition of this bestselling entry in the awesome Assassin’s Creed franchise.

This is the second installment in this article series.  In part one, we discussed the unique cultural heritage of the game’s protagonist.  As the daughter of an African slave and a French aristocrat, Aveline de Grandpré lived her life balanced between two culturally rich and highly-divergent legacies.  On the one hand, she enjoyed a life of wealth and privilege at the very top levels of society.

Image depicting the protagonist of the video game Assassin's Creed Liberation. This image is included in the article by Grammy Award-winning game composer Winifred Phillips, in which she discusses her musical score for the bestselling video game Assassin's Creed Liberation.

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The Big Index 2024: Articles for Game Music Composers

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Video game music composer Winifred Phillips, pictured here in her music studio at Generations Productions LLC. This photo is used to illustrate the Big Index, containing an organized repository of articles exploring topics of interest to game composers and game audio practitioners.

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Hey everybody! I’m video game music composer Winifred Phillips, author of the book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music. Since the publication of my book by the MIT Press, I’ve maintained a monthly series of articles designed to expand upon the content of that book and enable further exploration of related topics. Inspired by my more recent video game projects in popular franchises such as Jurassic World, Lineage, and Sackboy, these articles have delved into subjects ranging from interactivity, to music theory, to business and networking.

The sheer number of articles has necessitated the inclusion of a navigation tool, so I now include an annual “Big Index” that can assist us in finding our way through the content that’s accumulated over the years.  What follows is that index, organized by general subject matter.  New to the index are articles from the past year that have engaged in more detailed and technical discussions of music theory-related topics, with deep dives into non-diatonic construction that included atonal and polytonal composition.  I’ve also included the transcripts of my interviews with National Public Radio and the BBC that took place in 2023.

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Game Composers and the Importance of Themes: The Hook in Game Music (Pt. 1)

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This photo includes game music composer Winifred Phillips working in her production studio. Phillips is the game music composer for The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes game, developed by Random Potion for Wild River Games. Her credits include titles from 5 of the most well-known game franchises, and she is one of the foremost authorities on video game music, having presented lectures at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Society of Composers and Lyricists in NYC.

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So happy you’ve joined us!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips.  Last March, I gave a presentation at the very first online Game Developers Conference.  My talk was entitled “From Assassin’s Creed to The Dark Eye: The Importance of Themes” (I’ve included the official description of my talk at this end of this article).  This coming August, I’ll be participating as a speaker in the upcoming GDC Summer online conference.  My session this August will be a wide-ranging Ask-Me-Anything Q&A, and I’m really looking forward it!  In anticipation of that conference session, I thought it might be useful for me to share the content of my March GDC talk in a series of articles.  I’m happy to now begin a five-part article series based on my GDC 2020 presentation in March!

In my GDC 2020 presentation, I discussed musical themes, and I shared some stories about my work composing music for lots of great game projects. I’ll be sharing the same stories here.  Those projects include Assassin’s Creed Liberation (Ubisoft), God of War (Sony Interactive America), the LittleBigPlanet franchise (Sony Interactive Europe), Homefront: The Revolution (Deep Silver), Speed Racer (Warner Bros Interactive), Spore Hero (Electronic Arts), and The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (Wild River).

But before we start digging into practical examples, let’s take a quick look at one of the best and most iconic themes in the history of music for media. I’ve included a short excerpt below. Notice how we hear a melodic phrase once, then we hear it again, and it’s exactly the same as before. So the melody is saying, “hey – you liked that? Here, have another!”

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