Jeremy Soule - Musical Style and Influences

Musical Style and Influences

Soule rarely gets to see the game he is composing the soundtrack for in any sort of completed state before he begins work; as a result he bases many of his musical decisions on the company's previous games. He credits his success with this strategy to the fact that many of the games he works on come from studios that have created several successful games in the past. He finds it much easier to compose a soundtrack to a game that is very visual in nature, such as a role-playing game. He also likes to see the storyboards and concept art for the game, as he considers them a good provider of "pure emotional intent" for the game. When composing a soundtrack, the first thing that he decides is the tempo and the amount of energy the music will have; this decision is as much based on the genre of the game as it is the artistic style of the game. After that, Soule starts composing smaller tracks in the soundtrack, to make sure that they match up with the vision of the game before he starts on the major themes. Soule tries to compose all of a game's soundtrack himself rather than in a team, though he sometimes collaborates with his brother.

Although many of his works are orchestral in nature, Soule has denied that it is his "style", as he feels that the term boxes him in to only creating one type of music. He prefers to call himself a "music practitioner", or someone who creates music in general rather than just one type of music as he is capable of many styles, such as Japanese pop, which he has written along with Jeff Miyahara. Soule considers music to be like a language, which can be arranged in many different ways if you understand the structure. He does not have a favorite genre of game to compose for, preferring instead to compose for "ambitious" games by people with "new ideas".

Soule's greatest musical influences are "Debussy's exploration of harmony", "Wagner's grand operas", and "Mozart's form and composition". While many of his orchestral works are based on movie scores in terms of scope, he does not often listen to movie scores, though he names his favorite composer as John Williams. The influence has been noted by critics, who have termed Soule "the John Williams of video game music". Among video game music influences, he has cited Square for providing him "with the education for what quality means to this business" and Nobuo Uematsu in particular. His favorite style of music to listen to is British pop and rock music, while his favorite video games are the ones that he has written scores to, especially the ones made by Chris Taylor, though one of his all-time favorites is The Legend of Zelda. He has said that the games he would most like to work on that he has not already are ones by Shigeru Miyamoto, a Final Fantasy game, and a Metroid game.