Composing music for tabletop games seemed the next logical step. He knew he could do better, and he’d already dipped his toes in the water, writing the theme tune for Cthulhu-and-gaming-obsessed channel YogRadio. It was too easy to recognize certain tunes, and be taken out of the experience. He’d played a lot of Call of Cthulhu over the years, and the group he played with used whatever music it could scavenge as mood enhancement but using known soundtracks became a distraction. That’s how he ended up providing soundtracks for most of Pelgrane Press’ tabletop RPGs, from 13th Age through to The Esoterrorists. These days he scratches the itch as Loremaster in a weekly One Ring game. Semple started with Fighting Fantasy, the choose your own adventure series, before moving on to the delights of Red Box Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, Champions, Golden Heroes, and of course, Cthulhu. Gaming, like orchestral composition, is an old obsession. “It’s not an industry for shrinking violets.” He knew he needed to take risks to progress, and it also helped him make more contacts, which in turn meant more work. If you can’t go and talk to people, if you’re not someone who makes friends easily, I don’t know how you’re going to make the connections needed to get the work.” He started taking on challenges outside his comfort zone, like the down-tempo soundtrack for independent film Jen. Semple knew he had to make his own chances, and started reaching out, using contacts made during his years as a semi-professional musician, looking for jobs. “To be absolutely blunt,” he says, “When you get to thirty five, you don’t want to spend your night out getting paid, like, fifty pounds, if you’re lucky, out in some dive.” It didn’t help that, in England, venues are few and far between, unless you live in London. Great timing, he admits, as the glamor was wearing thin. He realized he didn’t have to stumble from gig to gig anymore he could be John Williams. He spent a long time on that road, playing semi-professionally, but when, in 2006, he set up a small studio for recording, Semple discovered the joys of virtual instruments. He never gave up on music, but there was a bit of a gap between the eight-year-old’s orchestral obsession and his next musical fixation, at age 18: rock guitar. If brightened is the right descriptor for something as moody as, say, Dust and Mirrors, his Night’s Black Agents soundtrack, or as space-opera foreboding as the TimeWatch theme. He’s written music for films and short subjects, for CD Projekt’s Witcher – his favorite action RPG title – and his background music scores has brightened tabletop games the world over. In his off hours he’s an exceptionally talented musician. By day, he’s a IT guy, with an MSc from Reading Uni’s Cybernetics department in his pocket. Semple’s one of those people who seems to stumble from opportunity to opportunity. Nothing would beat that! Apart from the sheer, pants-wetting terror of trying to follow John Williams, everything else about that would be magic!” When I ask him what his dream musical commission would be, there’s no hesitation. “I would have jumped at the chance to score orchestral music, right then,” he says, and it’s a space opera romance that’s continued to this day. It was John Williams’ score that opened his mind to bigger things. But for him, it wasn’t about the on-screen heroics. Way back in 1977, when he was an eight year old kid, he sat in the cinema, enraptured. Musician and tabletop RPG composer James Semple is one of the many whose imagination was snared by George Lucas very early on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |