Chance Thomas | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 7, 1961 San Gabriel, California |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, author, entrepreneur |
| Website | www |
Chance Thomas is an American composer, author, and entrepreneur. As a composer, he creates original music for animation, video games, movies, television, and virtual reality. His music has received critical acclaim and commercial success, including an Oscar, an Emmy, and billions of dollars in sales worldwide. [1] [2]
Chance is best known for scoring video games like DOTA 2, The Lord of the Rings Online and James Cameron’s Avatar . [3] He also scored Columbia Pictures’ The ChubbChubbs! , which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, and the TV film Lost Treasure Hunt, which was nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards. [4]
Chance is the author of the university textbook Composing Music for Games: The Art, Technology and Business of Video Game Scoring. The book was released in 2016 by CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis Publishing imprint. [5] As an entrepreneur, Chance founded "HUGEST" sound in 1998 and sold it in 2016 to a large and diversified entertainment conglomerate, R Legacy Entertainment. He now serves as VP of Music and Creative Development for HUGEsound Post Production. [6]
His projects have won major awards, including an Oscar, Emmy, IGN, Telly, Aurora and several G.A.N.G. awards. He is considered the father of game music Grammy eligibility and was honored in 2013 with the Game Audio Network Guild's Recognition Award. [7]
Throughout high school, Thomas formed and played in progressive rock bands until he was called to serve a mission in northern Italy for the LDS Church. When he returned home in 1982, he met his bride-to-be, Pamela, at a single's ward family home evening. [8] Thomas worked at UPS, putting his music on hold while pursuing a business degree at Central Oklahoma State University. While in rehab due to a torn shoulder, a friend informed him of a job as an entertainer at a pizza restaurant. Thomas got the job, which paid more than UPS. [8] After two and a half years in Oklahoma, he received a transfer scholarship to finish his business degree at Brigham Young University in Utah. Shortly after his transfer, he switched his scholarship to the music school and eventually graduated with a bachelor's degree in music. [8]
Chance Thomas began his professional career as a performer, singing and playing piano as well as keyboard at ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains and on cruise ships in the Caribbean. [9] In 1991, he opened a small music production company and studio in Salt Lake City, Utah, called byChance Productions and began creating music for ad agencies and corporate clients. He made several orchestral scores for public service announcements produced by non-profits like The Salvation Army, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and The United Way. [10]
He emerged into the video game industry in 1996. At the time, Sierra Online was looking for a full-time composer, and Chance moved back to California to take the job. This opportunity allowed him to write music for Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire, creating one of the first orchestral video game scores in history. [11] In the late 1990s, Chance led a successful movement which brought game music into the Grammy Awards. The Quest for Glory soundtrack was a factor in the Academy creating three new categories — Best Score, Best Song and Best Soundtrack for Film, Television and Other Visual Media. [8]
Chance was also an innovator in video games. He led the design and implementation of one of the world's first successful adaptive music systems based on digital audio streams (1997). [12] He also pioneered new techniques for composing game music, including ambient set matrices (1996) and interactive scoring maps (2001). [5] When Sierra Online closed the doors of its California studio in 1998, Chance opened HUGEsound, located just outside Yosemite National Park. Projects scored during that time included the Oscar-winning film, The ChubbChubbs! , and games like Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Lord of the Rings Online.
In 2007, Chance relocated HUGEsound to Utah and continued to compose for high-profile game titles like Avatar: the Game , Heroes of Might and Magic , and DOTA 2.
Chance Thomas' Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) scores are among his most acclaimed and documented work so far. He based the instrumental palettes, vocal ranges, stylistic tendencies and emotional conjuring of many pieces on direct references/inferences scattered throughout the text. [13] On June 16, 2017, Thomas released The Lord of the Rings Online: 10th Anniversary Commemorative Soundtrack through HUGEsound Records. The album contains tracks from 2007 to 2017.
In 1998, Chance launched HUGEsound in Oakhurst, California as a full-service audio development company to service clients in film and gaming. HUGEsound provided sound design, foley, original music scoring and song production for The ChubbChubbs!, among other projects, for nearly 20 years. In September 2016, Chance sold HUGEsound to R Legacy Entertainment, a privately held umbrella corporation containing a diversified portfolio of entertainment companies in Nashville, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City. [6]
In February 2017, HUGEsound Post Production was opened as a 16,000 square foot recording and production facility. It offered a variety of post-production services in picture, music, and sound. [6]
Chance has served in volunteer capacities for community councils, universities, churches, food banks and industry organizations throughout his career. In 1994, he launched the annual Wasatch Front Frozen Turkey Hunt for the Utah Food Bank. In 1998, he helped organize the Music and Sound award review committees for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and led those committees for 2 years. [14] In 2002, he helped found the Game Audio Network Guild and served on its board of directors for 15 years. [15] In 2007, he joined the Advisory Board for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). [16] He has served on Advisory Boards for the Musicians Institute, Brigham Young University and Full Sail University.
Chance speaks regularly at universities, colleges and professional conferences on the art, craft, tech, and business of music scoring. [17] [18] He has spoken at the University of Southern California, University of Michigan, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Oklahoma City University, Berklee College of Music, Full Sail University, Musicians Institute, VRDC, FMX Animation Conference, GameSoundCon and the Game Developers Conference, among many others. [19] Chance won the Ace of Spades Award from GDC in 2010, given to the speaker with the highest rated talk of the entire conference. [20]
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In 2016 CRC Press released Chance's textbook, Composing Music for Games: The Art, Technology and Business of Video Game Scoring. The text is a guidebook for launching and maintaining a career as a video game composer. The book includes sections about scoring principles, specific styles for video game music, and several project assignments and simulations. [5]
The lists below show some of Thomas' most notable work in various scoring categories:
| Year | Title | Company |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 | The Bachelorette | ABC |
| 2006 | Hometown Heroes | PBS |
| 2009 | Pawn Stars | History Channel Lifetime |
| 2010 | Swamp Men | National Geographic Wild |
| 2013 | Nathan For You | Hulu |
| 2014 | Lost Treasure Hunt | American Public Television |
| Year | Title | Company |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Rigoletto | Feature Films For Families |
| 2002 | The ChubbChubbs! | Columbia Pictures |
| 2007 | Inspire: The Chicago Spire Art Film | Imageworks |
| 2013 | The Life Of Christ | LDS Films |
| 2016 | Driven In Detroit | LDS Films |
| 2013 | The Reason Behind Christmas | LDS Films |
| 2017 | Tales of a Time Traveler | Evans and Sutherland |
| Year | Title | Company |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Curse Of The Serpent's Eye | The VOID |
Koji Kondo is a Japanese music composer, pianist, and sound director for the video game company Nintendo. He was best known for his many contributions to the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series of video games, among others produced by the company. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984, becoming the first person hired by them to specialize in video game music. His work in the Mario and Zelda series have been cited as the most memorable in video games, such as the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme.
Video game music (VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to the style of music known as chiptune, which became the sound of the first video games.
Basil Konstantine Poledouris was an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film and television scores, best known for his long-running collaborations with directors John Milius and Paul Verhoeven. Among his works are scores for the films Conan the Barbarian (1982), Red Dawn (1984), Iron Eagle (1986), RoboCop (1987), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Free Willy (1993), Starship Troopers (1997) and Les Misérables (1998).
Jeremy Soule is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
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Tim Larkin is a composer and sound designer for Valve, and previously the audio director for Cyan, best known for the Myst series of computer games. In Cyan, he worked as a sound designer for Riven, and as a composer for realMyst, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Myst V: End of Ages.
Ramin Djawadi is an Iranian-German film score composer, conductor, and record producer. He is known for his scores for the HBO series Game of Thrones, for which he was nominated for Grammy Awards in 2018 and 2020. He is also the composer for the HBO Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon (2022–present). He has scored films such as Clash of the Titans, Pacific Rim, Warcraft, A Wrinkle in Time, Iron Man and Eternals, television series including Prison Break, Person of Interest, Jack Ryan, and Westworld, and video games such as Medal of Honor, Gears of War 4, and Gears 5. He won two consecutive Emmy Awards for Game of Thrones, in 2018 for the episode "The Dragon and the Wolf" and in 2019 for "The Long Night".
Inon Zur is an Israeli-American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 80 video games, which include Dragon Age, EverQuest, Fallout, Prince of Persia, Star Trek, the Syberia series, and Starfield. He's received numerous nominations—including three BAFTAs—and has won a number of awards, which include: an Emmy Award and two Game Audio Network Guild Awards, the first in 2004 for Best Original Instrumental Track for Men of Valor and another in 2009 for Best Interactive Score for Crysis. Received two Hollywood Music in Media Awards in 2009 for Best Original Song for Dragon Age: Origins and in 2019 for Best Original Score/Song for The Elder Scrolls: Blades.
Tetsuya Shibata is a Japanese video game music composer and sound director. He is credited for over twenty musical scores produced for Capcom's video game releases including the Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry series, as well those in the Darkstalkers, Power Stone and Resident Evil Outbreak series. His later works with the company involved organizing orchestral recordings for Resident Evil 5 and Monster Hunter Tri. In 2009, Shibata left Capcom and began his own music studio, known as Unique Note, with colleague Yoshino Aoki.
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