Jeremy Soule facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Jeremy Soule
Soule in 2010
Background information
Born	(1975-12-19) December 19, 1975 (age 49) Keokuk, Iowa, U.S.
Genres	Orchestral classical ambient
Occupation(s)	Composer arranger symphonist
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1994–2019
Labels	DirectSong (2005–19) Materia Collective (2017–19)

Jeremy Soule (born December 19, 1975) is an American composer. He creates music for movies, TV shows, and especially video games. He has written music for more than 60 games, including famous ones like The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Total Annihilation, and the Harry Potter games.

Jeremy started working at Square in 1994 after studying music on his own. After finishing the music for Secret of Evermore in 1995, he joined Humongous Entertainment. There, he composed for children's games and Total Annihilation, which won him his first award. In 2000, he started his own music company, Soule Media, later called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he created DirectSong, a record label that sold digital versions of his music and classical music. DirectSong was active until 2019.

Soule's music has been played in live concerts, like the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Germany and the international Play! A Video Game Symphony series. While much of his music sounds like an orchestra, he sees himself as someone who creates many types of music. His brother, Julian Soule, has helped him with many soundtracks.

Jeremy Soule's Early Life and Music Journey

Jeremy Soule was born in 1975 in Keokuk, Iowa. His dad was a music teacher, and his mom was a graphic designer. He became interested in music and orchestras when he was only five years old. Jeremy started piano lessons early and loved music so much that he would write music notes in his math homework.

When his teachers and father saw his talent, he began taking private lessons with university professors in sixth grade. He says he learned as much as someone with a master's degree in composition before finishing high school. He wanted to be both a concert pianist and a composer, but he chose to be a composer because it was too hard to do both.

As a child, Soule believed that video games could be much better with great music. After high school, he spent a year creating a collection of music to show what he thought game music should sound like. He sent his music to LucasArts and Square. Square really liked his music, and he started working for them in Seattle just two weeks later.

Jeremy Soule's Career Highlights

Starting Out in the 1990s

At Square, Jeremy Soule was asked to create the music for Secret of Evermore. The game's music was unique, mixing background sounds like wind and ocean waves with calm orchestral music. When Ron Gilbert from LucasArts started his own company, Humongous Entertainment, Soule left Square to compose for Gilbert's children's game series, Putt-Putt. He was the third person hired at Humongous. For the next three years, Soule wrote music for many children's games, including the Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish series.

While at Humongous, Soule met game designer Chris Taylor. He agreed to compose music for Taylor's big project, Total Annihilation. Soule convinced Taylor that an orchestral score would make their game stand out from other real-time strategy games that used techno music. He even bet a year's salary that it would be a success! The game's first review mentioned the music, proving Soule right. This soundtrack earned Soule his first award: "Best Music" of 1997 from GameSpot. He then spent two years creating music for the game's expansion packs and more children's games.

Success in the 2000s

In February 2000, Jeremy and his brother, Julian, started Soule Media, an independent music company. It's now called Artistry Entertainment. Julian works as a sound engineer and composer, helping Jeremy with many projects. Their first big project was Icewind Dale in 2000, which won "best music of the year" awards from IGN and GameSpot.

In 2001, Soule began working on the Harry Potter game series. He composed music for five Harry Potter games between 2001 and 2005. His first game, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was nominated for an award. Chamber of Secrets won an award, and Prisoner of Azkaban was nominated for another. He also composed for Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Azurik: Rise of Perathia that year. He later said that Azurik was a bad game made better by its good music. In 2002, he created music for three popular role-playing games: Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights. Morrowind earned him another award nomination.

In the mid-2000s, Soule was in a car accident. This experience made him realize how precious life is and inspired his music.

Artistry Entertainment created music for many successful games during the rest of the decade. These included the Guild Wars series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The Oblivion soundtrack won several awards. It was nominated for awards in 2006 and won the MTV Video Music Awards and Official Xbox Magazine soundtrack awards. Soule also worked on another of Chris Taylor's real-time strategy games, Supreme Commander, in 2007.

In 2005, Jeremy and Julian Soule started DirectSong. This company sold music downloads without special copy protection, including their own compositions and works by classical composers. By 2007, the company had over a million registered customers. Soule also used DirectSong to sell extra music for games like Guild Wars, which players could use in the game. He estimated that at least 10% of Guild Wars players bought his music pack, Battle Pak 1.

Recent Work in the 2010s

Soule worked on several big games in the early 2010s, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Guild Wars 2. The Skyrim soundtrack is one of his most praised works. It received a BAFTA nomination and many other awards. Soule also composed music for two of Skyrim's official expansions, Dawnguard and Dragonborn, both released in 2012. The Guild Wars 2 soundtrack was released as a four-disc set and was very popular. Later that year, Maclaine Diemer took over as the main composer for Guild Wars 2 expansions.

In March 2013, Soule started a Kickstarter project to fund a classical music album called The Northerner: Soule Symphony No. 1. He asked for $10,000 but raised over $121,000. The project was planned to feature singing in Old Norse. Soule mentioned that his company was developing new audio technology for this project. He started offering refunds for the unreleased symphony in 2016. An album of music ideas was released in 2017, but the full symphony has not been released as of 2025.

In 2014, Soule also signed a deal with Sony Online Entertainment to compose music for EverQuest Next and Landmark. EverQuest Next was canceled in March 2016. Landmark was released but closed down in February 2017. In 2015, Soule and his brother Julian composed a music pack for Dota 2. This soundtrack was part of a digital content pack that helped fund the prize pool for The International 2015 tournament. This tournament had the largest prize pool in e-sports history at the time, over $18 million. In the next few years, he mainly worked on smaller, independent games.

In 2014, Julian and Jeremy Soule started an audio company called Virtual Sonics. In 2016, the company partnered with Roland Corporation, and Soule became a co-director. Virtual Sonics created digital instruments for Roland Cloud, which launched in 2018.

Live Performances of Jeremy Soule's Music

Jeremy Soule's music has been performed in many live concerts. His music from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was played on August 20, 2003, at the first Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany. Music from Morrowind was performed at the third Symphonic Game Music Concert on August 17, 2005. Parts of his music from Morrowind and Oblivion are played in the international concert series Play! A Video Game Symphony. Jeremy Soule attended the first Play! concert on May 27, 2006, in Chicago. Music from Oblivion was also played at the Press Start 2007 -Symphony of Games- concerts in Japan in September 2007. The first live orchestral concert just for Soule's music from "Skyrim" happened on November 16, 2016, at London's Palladium theater.

Jeremy Soule's Impact on Music

Soule's music has been in many best-selling games. He once guessed that about 10 million games with his music were sold in 2006 alone.

You can find remixes of Soule's work on websites like OverClocked ReMix. Soule supports the community that rearranges game music. He even submitted his own arrangement to OverClocked ReMix to encourage younger composers. His track, "Squaresoft Variation", is a remix of the Final Fantasy VI song "Terra". Soule chose this song because he spent time fixing the game when he first started at Square before working on Evermore.

Jeremy Soule's Musical Style and Inspirations

Soule often starts composing music for a game before it's fully finished. So, he often bases his music choices on the company's past games. He believes this works because many games he works on come from studios that have made successful games before. He finds it easier to compose for games that are very visual, like role-playing games. He also likes to see the storyboards and concept art for a game, as they give him a good idea of the game's "pure emotional intent."

When he starts a soundtrack, he first decides the speed and energy of the music. This decision depends on the game's type and its art style. After that, Soule starts composing smaller music tracks to make sure they fit the game's vision before he works on the main themes. Soule tries to compose all of a game's music himself, but he sometimes works with his brother.

Even though many of his works sound like an orchestra, Soule says that's not his only "style." He feels that calling it his "style" would limit him to only one type of music. He prefers to call himself a "music practitioner," meaning someone who creates music in general. He can create many styles, like Japanese pop, which he has written with Jeff Miyahara. Soule thinks music is like a language that can be put together in many ways if you understand its structure. He doesn't have a favorite game type to compose for. Instead, he prefers to work on "ambitious" games by people with "new ideas."

Soule's biggest musical inspirations are "Debussy's exploration of harmony," "Wagner's grand operas," and "Mozart's form and composition." While many of his orchestral works are as grand as movie scores, he doesn't often listen to movie scores. However, he names his favorite composer as John Williams. Critics have even called Soule "the John Williams of video game music." Among video game music influences, he has mentioned Square for teaching him "what quality means to this business" and Nobuo Uematsu in particular. His favorite music to listen to is British pop and rock music. His favorite video games are the ones he has written music for, especially those made by Chris Taylor. 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 hasn't already are ones by Shigeru Miyamoto, a Final Fantasy game, and a Metroid game.

Jeremy Soule's Works

Video Games

Film and Television

Albums

• The Northerner Diaries (2017)

Theater

• Storyeum (2000)
• Ecstasy (2003)

Awards and Recognition

See also

In Spanish: Jeremy Soule para niños