Category BLOG

One of the most successful games in my career, and soundtracks I have ever created has been DragonVale. DragonVale has seen 25 million downloads, 750+ consecutive days in the Top 50 grossing charts, 600 million dragons hatched, and 38 thousand years of collective time spent in the game. 4.5 million monthly users currently participate in the dragon hatching mania! With statistics like these, millions of fans and a successful soundtrack on iTunes you would think enough was enough. Well, not for me. The major release of Dragonvale 2.0 provided an opportunity for me to take the music in the game to the next level.

The “Dragonvale Main Theme” and all the background music tracks have been remixed and performed using real instruments, not digital samples! Oh yeah!  This was huge undertaking and...

I have added a section to the site which contains sheet music in .pdf format for my compositions over the years. The first offering is the score for Dragonvale.

You can get to the sheet music page by using the MUSIC menu category. Or by following this link:

http://www.aubreyhodges.com/sheet-music/

Happy Downloading!

-Aubrey

A good friend of mine has a terrific kickstarter in the works and i thought you all should know. Here’s a link to the project so please take a look and support it, you will end up with a fantastic album and all sorts of other cool rewards.

Video Games Live Kickstarter Project

I recently recieved the following email and since I get these question often I thought I’d share the answers in a public post.

From:
Chad Smith

Message:
Mr. Hodges,

I’m not sure if “fan” is the right word, but I’ve certainly been an
appreciater (if that’s a word) of your work for quite a few years now.
I’m sure you probably have better things to do than shoot the breeze
with some random e-mailer, but there have been a few questions that
I’ve found myself asking every since the first time I played Doom64.
After having gladly shelled out money for your FLAC soundtrack (great
idea, by the way) I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to finally
ask these burning questions, if you would humble me with a response
(or not – I know you’re a busy guy).

I am always happy to answer que...

The inspiration for Dragonvale’s score was to reinforce the peaceful and idyllic setting of the dragon parks. To do this I needed to create a style that would be pleasant to hear and emotionally lift the player into the right mood for the game. I wanted to avoid going for an “epic” score because I was trying to make sure the audience would feel more intimately connected to their parks. Once I determined what mood and scope the pieces should be I needed to come up with an instrument arrangement that would allow me to capture that expression and emotion. When the dust had settled I chose a handful of instrument to comprise the score…the Celtic harp, flute, recorder, oboe, clarinet, tambourine, triangle and nylon (classical) guitar...

Over the years I have received a ton of fan mail with some very good (and specific) questions about my work. One such email arrived this week and it was suggested that I “blog about it” for the answer. I think it’a a brilliant idea…so thank you Laurie Kretchmar for your suggestion!  I will answer your question about instruments in Dragonvale on my next post to this blog.

-Aubrey