April 2013
2 posts
Helping Those in Need
As most of us know, on April 15th 2013, innocent people were seriously injured and killed when two bombs went off at the Boston marathon. Some of those who survived this senseless attack were hospitalized and are facing staggering medical costs.
Now through April 30th 11:59PM CDT, all proceeds from items purchased on my Bandcamp site will be donated to The One Fund. As Bandcamp allows people to...
Lost in You, Piano Sheet Music
Hey guys,
I’m thrilled to announce that, with generous permission from Shauna Perry at BioWare and Steve Schnur at EA, I’m releasing piano sheet music for “Lost in You” from ME3 Citadel!
I’ve gotten a ton of requests for sheet music. The fact of the matter is, it usually never exists unless a piece of music is going to be recorded with a live orchestra. Since most...
March 2013
1 post
Email Newsletter
So I’ve got myself a fancy mailing list now, which I’ll be using very infrequently. Here’s what the mailing list covers:
Announcements of new projects I’m working on.
New album releases.
Freebie announcements.
It’s got zero fluff (unlike my Twitter account—ha!), and is very low-volume, so if you’re looking for just the very basics, feel free to subscribe....
January 2013
3 posts
Hey guys, I’ve got a screencast recorded and ready to launch early next week! I’ve had quite a few requests to do this, but nothing extremely specific so this video will be fairly short (just over 10 minutes) and goes over some of my sample libs and a few general things. If you have very specific requests, please wait till the YouTube video is up and comment there. My spare time comes...
Safeguarding Your Work
I’d like to touch on a topic that people don’t often think about until it’s unfortunately too late: backups. There are three different ways of backing up data that, when used concurrently, will have you completely covered.
Local, Versioned Backups
For the Mac crowd, this usually means Time Machine. I’m not a Windows user so I’m not entirely sure, but I hear it has...
I briefly mentioned this last night, but I wanted to give it more attention as it’s something I think is really important, and is a chance for people in the video game community to help kids and teenagers who are facing the demoralizing and traumatic effects of bullying.
“Beyond the Final Boss” is an effort spearheaded by three individuals in the community. Their mission:
...
November 2012
1 post
A bit of a change of pace for today’s post! As a few of you might know, my wife Sara creates custom hand-crafted jewelry. I’ve watched her from the beginning as she started learning the art of bending metal to her will and coaxing cords into contorted configurations. She’s a perfectionist like me, so I get it when she gripes about something slightly off in one of her pieces and...
October 2012
2 posts
Hey guys, on October 25th and 26th, I’ll be participating in the Extra Life fundraiser and gaming marathon! Each day I’ll be gaming from around 9AM to 9PM CDT, and will be livestreaming as much as possible via my Stickam account. There’s also a raffle where four winners will receive autographed copies of the Red Orchestra 2 soundtrack.
See my fundraising page for more details...
I realize I’ve barely listened to any music lately other than what I’ve been working on. I’m officially taking new music suggestions! I’m picky, and most of the “mainstream” stuff bores me to death. I need interesting music, stuff with a good melody. A few bands/artists I’m into (old and new) with links to examples if you’re not familiar with them:
...
September 2012
1 post
PAX 2012 has been such a blast! I just wanted to say how great it was to meet everyone in person and have the chance to chat at least briefly during the whirlwind that is PAX. :) And a huge thanks to everyone who attended the composer panel on Saturday, it was incredibly humbling to see nearly every chair in the Kraken Theater filled!
Hope you all have safe trips back home!
August 2012
4 posts
Thanks from DB
I just wanted to share a thank-you from my friend DB, who is extremely grateful for all the donations her friends made, and of course to those of you who contributed by buying “A Hero is Born.”
Dear Friends,
Thank you all for your kind words and support at this wild time.
The tide runs high, we loosed from our moorings. “Life is not fair” now steers the ship; it is a...
Thanks so much, everyone, for your donations to help my friend DB! “A Hero is Born” has been taken down, and will be back later (much, much later) when the full album is complete.
2 tags
Composer for Conclave
Time to let the cat out of the bag and unveil the mysterious “Project C” I’ve been talking about on Twitter!
A company called 10x10 Room contracted me to write a main theme for their online tabletop RPG, Conclave. You can already play the game in existing form, though they’ve launched a Kickstarter to help raise funds to spruce up the game in major ways.
One of these ways...
Yesterday I shared a link to a donation page to help out a friend of mine, DB Cooper. Her partner, Fritz Hasenpusch, unexpectedly passed away during a hike while in Hawaii. This is a man whom DB has been friends with for thirty-five years, and they became more than friends in the last two years of his life.
I’ve already given what I’m able to, but I don’t feel it’s enough,...
July 2012
2 posts
Anonymous asked: Hi Sam, I'm Aristotle Omissis on Twitter. As per your instructions, I'll repost my question for you here: "Hi Sam! Are you aware of the Loudness War? Does it exist in the gaming industry as well? What are your thoughts about it?" - Looking forward to your answer!
Anonymous asked: I study music at a small state college in Massachusetts. I'm considering transferring to another school that offers a program in composition, since that's what I really feel driven towards. Game music in particular. Do you feel like that job is something studying music is essential for? Would a potential employer want to see a degree in composition, or are they more likely to hire...
March 2012
1 post
1 tag
Google Translate Easter Egg
This is pretty much amazing.
Go to Google Translate.
Choose German as the source language (left pulldown menu).
Paste this text exactly: pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk
Click the speaker icon in the same box you pasted the text into.
Feel free to “customize” the text above. ;)
You’re welcome.
February 2012
5 posts
2 tags
A Path of Inspiration
I had sort of a strange start with my interest in video game music. I missed the whole NES and SNES bandwagon, admittedly. This explains why, when someone asks me “hey, how about that killer tune from Mega Man?!” I just draw a blank. I did get opportunities to play games on these systems several times, but I never owned a modern console till the PS1 (I did own a ColecoVision, though,...
Anonymous asked: Is there any free basic synth programs you could recommend?
Detailed breakdown of where my music is in the Mass Effect 3 Demo, for those curious (don’t read if you don’t want to hear anything about the game till it’s out):
Main menu
Opening cinematic
Earth: Walk & talk scene with Vega/Anderson
Earth: Courtroom scene after walk & talk
Earth: Combat
People have asked who did the lovely character creation screen music. That...
ciaranreynolds asked: What Synth program do you use to create your music
Anonymous asked: In regards to ME3 soundtrack, how do you go about composing for a game with multiple composers? Does BioWare give you all an outline of what they want? Are you free to change things up as you see fit? Do they give you set pieces to compose, ie you do level 1,2 and 3 someone else gets 4,5,6? Do you play three levels you compose for before you write the music? I could actually go on with questions...
December 2011
2 posts
I’m proud to announce that I’m working with scoring mixer John Rodd on Mass Effect 3! I’ve worked with John before on Red Orchestra 2. His previous work includes Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and many more.
John will be EQ’ing my stuff and making all the instruments play nice with each other, and...
1 tag
Hey folks, if you’re interested in some new music from Sascha, Cris, Christopher and myself (while you patiently wait for the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack), you may wanna check out a benefit album we recently contributed to:
https://www.sweetrelief.org/novuminitium/
You’ll also find music from a bunch of other game composers. Preview the full tracks on Bandcamp! (disregard the bit about...
November 2011
1 post
Red Orchestra 2 Lyrics
Storm Clouds over Stalingrad:
Полчища темные громят дом родной но будем здесь стоять здесь насмерть стоять
The dark horde is ravaging our homeland But we will stand here Stand here to the death
So Far from Home:
Der Heimat so fern Dem Feinde so nah Das Schicksal eines Soldaten
Dem Tode trotzend ziehen wir ins Gefecht wo Ruhm und Ehre uns erwarten
So far from home So close to the enemy The...
October 2011
1 post
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to...”
– Steve Jobs
September 2011
17 posts
4 tags
“The musical score in RO2 is so masterfully composed that it alters how an FPS...”
– MMOMFG
4 tags
“It also needs to be said that Red Orchestra 2 has a surprisingly beautiful...”
– Game Rant
4 tags
“Sam Hulick, co-composer of Mass Effect 1 & 2, did an excellent job once...”
– MeriStation
vanessad asked: Did you watch the Emmys last night?
4 tags
“The musical score itself is also impressive, composed entirely by Sam Hulick,...”
– GAMElitist
2 tags
Back home in Chicago. What a blast the party was! A big thanks to Tripwire for flying both me and my girlfriend out there to celebrate the release of Red Orchestra 2! Good people, good food, and the drinks.. let’s just say I’m still feeling a little foggy-headed. ;) Whew.
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to...”
– Robert Hughes
2 tags
A Favorite Game of Mine
Funny name for a game, but trust me when I say Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a turn-based dungeon-crawling RPG with a ton of depth and complexity to it. Lots of races and backgrounds to choose from, a huge list of skills and cool spells (such as extracting potions from corpses and then using an evaporate spell to throw the potion at enemies, exploding on contact?!). Plus, the game gets...
1 tag
Anonymous asked: Do you actually play vidya games?
1 tag
I'm on Tumblr!
A little too often I’ve found myself trying to tweet things that Twitter just doesn’t have room for. And I don’t really have time to hassle with a full blown WordPress blog, so I’ve set up a Tumblr account. Brief and to the point! Plus, there’s a handy Q&A link on the left where you can ask more official questions if you’d like (I think I’m going to...
