This week’s music selection is the main theme from the freshly-released iOS/Android game Wizard Ops Tactics.

The original Wizard Ops game was a frenetic action-shooter, whereas the successor is a turn-based tactical game. It features the characters and visuals, but completely different gameplay. This raised an interesting question: how to keep a sense of musical continuity between such different experiences?

This cue tackles that problem by reprising the original Wizard Ops theme (which you can hear in full sorcerous glory here) in a more stately, marchlike arrangement. It’s preceded by a slightly mysterious theme that’s unique to the Tactics universe, and recurs throughout the score.

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	Wizard Ops Tactics

This week’s selection is victory music from the video game Empire Earth 2. Said strategy game gives you the ability to play as one of several nationalities; this particular passage plays upon completion of the Korean campaign. While the other nations’ victory music cues are more martial and brassy, I thought that the “land of the morning calm” deserved something more lyrical and serene.

As with most of the music in that game, performance credit goes to the Budapest Film Orchestra.

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	Land of the Morning Calm

One instrument that doesn’t get enough credit is viola, which despite having a lovely distinct* tone is typically buried in the inner voices of an orchestral texture. Sound aside, violists are so grateful for the limelight than writing for them is unusually gratifying. I remember one session where I’d written a solo for the principal viola, and between takes hearing a lone voice shout, “Thank you!”

In this week’s moody suspense cue, I gave first foreground melody to the violas and put the violins on support duty with a high keening pedal. The flavor of the tune is a little more subtle and mysterious than if I’d assigned it to violins or celli.

* (And to my imagination, kind of dark orange.)

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	The Audit

This week’s selection comes from the just-announced game Wizard Ops Tactics. (If this rings a bell, you may recall my score for the game’s spiritual predecessor, Wizard Ops: Chapter One.)

This particular music plays while one buys weapon upgrades from a strangely homey shop. As with the prior game’s music, there’s a balance between brass-and-drums militarism and low string lines which represent the titular wizards’ grumpy countenances.

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	Wizardly Armaments

This week’s music selection is an elegiac passage for strings, flute, and harp. Get the hanky.

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	A Heartfelt Speech

This week’s music selection is some 40s-esque big band jazz, originally written for a poker video game. We recorded with a dynamite horn and rhythm section, including some longtime musical collaborators.

The march of music technology has frequently left the studio drummer by the wayside, and I’m just as guilty as the next composer of laying down fake drum tracks via keyboard in the name of a project’s budget. Recordings like these remind me that there is no substitute for the musicianship of a real drummer!

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	Poker Night

Written for a visually lush Audubon documentary, this cue blends Native American flute and percussion with orchestral strings. The scene itself draws a visual analogy between a tribal dance and the animal – in this case, a sage grouse – that inspired it.

Film music often is called upon to evoke the sense of a culture through its indigenous music, while packaging it for Western sensibilities. There’s a delicate balance involved in suggesting a culture without caricaturing it. (Imagine the crashing gong that might herald an “Asian” character in a 1980s-era film.) My rule of thumb is that if ethnic music sounds like music, rather than a sound effect, then it’s more likely to succeed as tasteful commentary.

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	Sage Dance