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Hi all! Checking in from MD, USA!

EthanAvry

New Member
Hi everyone,

Really excited to be a part of this lovely community! A bit of background about me - started out playing piano, and then in 2013 or so was inspired by fellow composer Chris Wonfor's lovely music to open up GarageBand for the first time and give writing orchestral music a shot. Fell in love almost immediately, and as of recently I've started the process of transitioning this hobby of mine into something of a career if I can! I'm excited to see where the road may take me. Some other inspirations of mine include Jason Hayes and the rest of the amazingly talented creators of the WoW soundtrack, Ramin Djawadi, Ólafur Arnalds, and Joe Hisaishi of Studio Ghibli. I use Cubase nowadays, and particularly love the Cinematic Studio Series - I have every library released by them so far!

So I'd like to quickly ask you all - how did you get your start, who are some of your inspirations, and what are some of your favorite libraries/software? I'd also welcome you to link to some of your work, I'd love to listen and chat about it!
 
Welcome Ethan and a very nice list of composers that inspire you and nice to see a fan of the Wow composers (love them as well, specially the works of Jason Hayes for the Wow vanilla soundtrack).

I started out as a classical composer, wrote opera's, symphonies, all kinds of weird setups in modern (often atonal) writings, moved on to more commercial music around 2004 (one has to make a living after all :grin: ), worked a few years at Blizzard actually (as low level tech boy) to get some experience and then started in 2008 for myself -game audio first and nowadays I write mainly library music and working with my sound design company.
I love to work in Cubase and got too many libraries to mention, but really love everything from Eduardo Tarilonte, Jade Ethnic Orchestra is new favorite and otherwise the usual suspects such as Cinematic Studio Strings/Brass etc :)

My inspirations go from old Renaissance music such as Josquin de Prez, to Mahler, to Shostakovich, Messiaen (big fan!) to game composers such as Jason Hayes indeed, Ion Zur, Jason Graves and for film, Elfman, Zimmer, Djawadi, Williams and countless others. I also love to be inspired by David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes, The Doors etc.

Enjoy your stay here and greetings from a very tiny village in the Netherlands!
 
Hey Jaap, appreciate the warm welcome!

Completely agree, Jason Hayes set the tone of the WoW perfectly from release and set a great foundation for other composers to build upon as more and more expansions got released and the game developed further.

Also I saw Daniel James demo the Jade Orchestra, it sounds absolutely fantastic. Definitely on the wish list for me at the moment! Such an awesome variety of sounds, personally love its choir/woodwind sections!

You have some wonderful inspirations as well, I hadn't actually heard of Messiaen, but listening to his "Preludes pour piano" at the moment and loving it! Such dreamy textures and chords. His command of harmony is incredible, to think he was apparently only 21 when he composed it!

Awesome to hear you worked at Blizzard - how was that? Any stand-out memories/experiences from your time there?
 
Yeah Messiaen is amazing, his piano works are indeed outstanding and his knowledge of harmony and also rhythm was splendid. He did a fascinating work where he catalogued all the bird sounds translated into more human recognisable pitches, but my most favorite work is Quator pour la fin du temps (which translates into Quartet for the end of times) which he wrote during WW2 when he was in a nazi camp for the 4 musicians that where in that camp. You have to check out in my opinion!

And I learned so much at Blizard. I started just before Wow was launched and first thing I learned (and we all over there) was to adapt. The launch was crazy, the game turned out much more popular then expected. We lower level tech boys had to quickly adjust to do a 100 things at the same time. Fascating time to be honest and I learned to really deal with stress over there.
Most fascinating for me was when the Burning Crusade launched and I was at that time working for a while at the European office near Paris and we could go to the Champs Elysees at midnight at a FNAC (big media warehouse) to hand out some copies etc. Well, it seemed when we arrived that people where already waiting for 12 hours! to be there present at midnight to get their copy. We where with a team of 8 people over there and when we got out of the van, it felt like we where celebrities haha, the whole crowd was cheering, we had to work our way into the FNAC and we stood there till 5.30 in the morning handing out copies, giving autographs and people didn't care that I was just a tech boy, I was working there so for them I was a rockstar at the moment haha. At that moment I had a brief feeling how it must be if you are famous and I decided also that I didn't want to be famous haha

But I learned also there to be a teamplayer, to adust my goals to reality and after 3 years there I decided also that I wanted to go more my own road. A decision I never regretted.

And how about you Ethan? Where are you hoping to go with your carreer?
 
Yeah Messiaen is amazing, his piano works are indeed outstanding and his knowledge of harmony and also rhythm was splendid. He did a fascinating work where he catalogued all the bird sounds translated into more human recognisable pitches, but my most favorite work is Quator pour la fin du temps (which translates into Quartet for the end of times) which he wrote during WW2 when he was in a nazi camp for the 4 musicians that where in that camp. You have to check out in my opinion!

I'm listening to Quator pour la fin du temps as I type this, and it's truly stunning. The harmony and the instrumentation is absolutely phenomenal, I'm almost at a lack of words to describe the sort of emotions this piece conjures... it's perhaps the most tragic piece of music I've ever heard, just imagining the circumstances in which it was written. This is definitely something I'll have to listen to a few more times to truly appreciate and let it sink in. Thank you so much for the recommendation! You've already expanded my musical palette greatly. :)

And I learned so much at Blizard. I started just before Wow was launched and first thing I learned (and we all over there) was to adapt. The launch was crazy, the game turned out much more popular then expected. We lower level tech boys had to quickly adjust to do a 100 things at the same time. Fascating time to be honest and I learned to really deal with stress over there.
Most fascinating for me was when the Burning Crusade launched and I was at that time working for a while at the European office near Paris and we could go to the Champs Elysees at midnight at a FNAC (big media warehouse) to hand out some copies etc. Well, it seemed when we arrived that people where already waiting for 12 hours! to be there present at midnight to get their copy. We where with a team of 8 people over there and when we got out of the van, it felt like we where celebrities haha, the whole crowd was cheering, we had to work our way into the FNAC and we stood there till 5.30 in the morning handing out copies, giving autographs and people didn't care that I was just a tech boy, I was working there so for them I was a rockstar at the moment haha. At that moment I had a brief feeling how it must be if you are famous and I decided also that I didn't want to be famous haha

But I learned also there to be a teamplayer, to adust my goals to reality and after 3 years there I decided also that I wanted to go more my own road. A decision I never regretted.

What an awesome story! Thank you so much for sharing. I can't imagine how shocking the game's popularity must have been from the perspective of an employee. Great to hear about how excited everyone was for the launch of Burning Crusade (perhaps the best expansion?), and I'm positive that crowd will never forget that experience of getting their copy on launch. Plus I laughed out loud a bit when I saw you reach the conclusion from that, yeah maybe you didn't want to be famous haha. As cool as an experience as it was, I imagine it might have been pretty draining doing all that until 5:30 am!

Great takeaways as well, about the emphasis of teamwork and confronting reality. I'm sure Blizzard was an excellent environment to learn these, teamwork especially. I'm also glad you never regretted your decision, it seems like you've done some truly amazing things in going your own way, with Triple Spiral as well as with your own compositional work. It's really great to see, and I really am very happy for you.

In terms of where I might want to go, it's fairly difficult to say - I'm sure what I might want might change. I think ultimately if I end up in a position working on music I enjoy making on projects I'm greatly passionate about, I'll be set! That being said, working in/around video games would be truly amazing. There are a few series that have left such monumental impressions on my life - World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls come to mind - that I would love to assist/contribute to musically if I can. I'm not sure I would call it paying it forward, but just to be a part of something that meant and means so much to me would be a dream come true. Thank you for asking!
 
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