Name: Meet the Hans Zimmer of Video Game Music
Uploaded: 2025-07-25T17:07:22.000Z
Duration: 8 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Can you recognise the game from its soundtrack?

That's right, you fans of World of Warcraft.

But who makes the soundtrack for video games?

They are, of course, written and recorded just like a movie soundtrack.

Tunes which take you straight to the planet of Azeroth.

Some of them born from this musical mind.

I get to work on lots of different types of music, but no matter what I do in life, I will always, always, always come back to the game music.

Eimear Noon is known as the Irish Queen of Game Music.

An award-winning composer, conductor, record producer and trailblazer for female maestros worldwide.

Not only was she the first woman to conduct the Oscars, but she is the creator of some of the most iconic video game scores of all time.

We're talking Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, so we're not messing around here.

And she's going to tell us the secret of how to compose really great game music.

First of all, we immerse ourselves in the world.

Because if you live there, you're going to make it sound right.

A really good example is World of Warcraft.

There's the bones, which is an Irish percussion instrument.

Then there's the Hebrew shofar, which is a call to battle.

And when I was recording The High Priestess, every singer I brought in sounded too nice.

She goes, And the trumpets have this Really, really dissonant.

It almost sounds like they're firing shots in the notes.

All of those things we use to immerse the audience.

Does it use lots of woodwinds and bright strings and pizzicati, like a Hyrule, like a Zelda?

Or is it a dark guitar, lead, electronic, cello, something like that for bloodlines?

That makes a very big difference to the harmonic language and melodic language we use.

When I'm asked by younger composers what to do, I always say, Well, mine who you are, everything about you that makes you unique.

Where I'm from, which is Ireland, doesn't mean that I'm writing traditional Irish music, but something about the culture and the mythology.

I can dip into that when I need to, to create a score.

We have a lot of living history, and our myths and legends and lore, it's all over gaming.

Legend of Zelda, three goddesses with three different powers.

Why do I choose to compose and conduct video game music?

Growing up, I loved music that could paint a picture and tell a story.

Like Wittersturm, where you hear the tremolandi basses and it's terrifying.

As a child, there was so much room for imagination, and I'd listen to this music.

Later on, when I got to understand that you could work in the medium of film and video games, where you got images to work with, I was in.

Married to her musical partner, Craig Garfinkel, here's what it looks like for the pair to write the chilling score to Vampire the Masquerade, Bloodlines 2.

Talking about bringing up the woodwinds here into the upper register.

Not, oh, I intellectualise about music, therefore I feel something.

Writing is one thing, but the music's got to move from the computer to the orchestra somehow.

Well, it's a baton, but you get the point.

It is always such a pleasure to be with the Royal Philharmonic.

My number one job is to make sure that the nuts and bolts are in place, and then you take that to the next level.

It's only when we play them that they're brought back to life.

You get this feedback loop of energy, and you're in the middle of it.

I'm going to hold that last chord forever and a half.

Ima has wielded dozens of batons on stages around the world.

But today, she's showing us the one she won't leave home without.

These are made for me in upstate New York by a wonderful man called Phil Agulia of Pagu Batons.

My baton case says, Wake the Winds, as a tribute to the most famous baton of all time, and that is the Wind Waker from The Legend of Zelda.

They're all weighted, especially for me, so they don't balance there the way most do.

Mine are slightly different, so they tip forward so that they glide.

This one Phil created for me for the Oscars.

If you can see, Oscar is right there himself.

And, of course, I have to have one that's pink.

Thanks to the Irish Queen of Gaming, a whole world of music opens up from the orchestra to your console.

It makes me feel really proud when we create something that touches the players in a way that lingers after they go away from the game.

When you're on stage performing something live and it brings the audience together who may have experienced something on their own, that brings the feels and brings memories that are positive, that's huge, that's full circle, that is the zenith.