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Welcome to WillowTree Audioworks,
online home of award-winning composer Ian
Dorsch.
September
20, 2011
- I can finally
announce that I worked on the "Stranded" music
for Gears
of War 3! I sang on a couple of
tracks, and also provided some sampling and
Kontakt instrument design. This is a
real thrill for me--not only is it my first
credit on a AAA game, but I am a long time fan
of both Epic and the Gears franchise. My
wife Joy also sang on a few tracks, and it was
a treat to work with her on this as
well. Huge thanks and kudos to composer
Lance
Hayes for bringing us on
board.
August
25, 2011
- As the forces of
the nerd
world converge on PAX this weekend, I've found
time to post another
couple of demos! First is one that I
worked up for fun, a dreamy,
post rock-ish kind of thing: As
In a
Dream. The second is a track from
last summer that I remixed
with a new monitoring setup and some new gear,
the theme from
Involution Studios' The Digital Life
podcast. It's some chewy
8-string hard rock goodness: TDL
Gunslinger
Theme. Enjoy, and I look forward
to hopefully
seeing some of you at PAX!
August
17, 2011
- Brief update
time!
The PAX Prime schedule is up, and the panel in
which I'm involved is on
Sunday the 28th at 4 pm in the Serpent
Theater. Come by and say
hi, or heckle us. "Play some Skynyrd"
pretty much never gets old,
as far as I am concerned. Also, I've
received permission from the
devs to put up some theme
music that I wrote for an unannounced
indie game. I hope to
be able to share more about that soon, but in
the meantime feel free to
download and enjoy!
August
1, 2011
- Summer has
apparently
finally started here in Western Washington
State! Now that the
sun is shining and everyone here is
temporarily finished slouching
around in a continuous state of seasonal
depression, it seems like a
good time for an update!
- I've written a new
theme
song for The
Escapist's
podcast series. It's a quirky mix
of old school
rock and electronic, and I really enjoyed
blundering about in the style.
- As usual, I've
been
involved in a number of unannounced projects
that I'm very much looking
forward to sharing. In the meantime,
I'll be up in Seattle at PAX Prime
at the end of August, and
will be speaking at one of the panels.
I'll provide more info
once I've got it, but if you're planning to
come to PAX and would like
to hook up, feel free to drop me a line via my
contact page, Facebook
or Twitter.
- And finally, my
good
friend Jeff Moses and I have been up to our
usual shenanigans with our
joke metal band, Kranky
Babies. If you've ever been
curious to hear a metal song
explaining the concept of the binary
large
object (BLOB) now
is
your chance.
March
1, 2011
- I'll be rolling
out some
fresh demos over the coming weeks beginning
with this morsel of dark
hybrid orchestral lovin': We
Ride
By Night. Enjoy!
January
25, 2011
- 2011?! How
did this
happen? Inconceivable! I guess
that means it's time for an
update. There is much to report!
I'll break this stuff out
into bullet points so it's not an
impenetratable battle station of text:
- At the end of last
summer, I wrote a bunch of music for some very
cool guys at Involution
Studios, who were
starting up a podcast on digital design and
technology. That
podcast is The
Digital Life,
and this week I had the opportunity to
participate in their round table
discussion on music and technology. The
other guests were Dr.
Cecil Adderly, chair of Berklee School of
Music's music ed department,
and Marty Beller, composer and drummer for
They Might be Giants.
It was an honor to be included in a discussion
with those guys.
If you have a chance, it's worth checking out
the show when it goes
live.
- I scored a promo
for a
very cool-looking post-apocalyptic film out of
Dubai called EKON.
- I wrote some
exclusive
tracks for a production music library called Premiumbeat.com,
including some
awesomely fist-pumping metal. If you're
looking to license some
royalty free music, check out my
page over
there.
- I won a couple of
sample
libraries in the Heavyocity
contest. Check those guys out, their
stuff is sick.
- I'm sure there is
something I'm forgetting. I'm writing a
new bit for The Escapist
this week, Werkpilot is in production on a new
short, Airborn is moving
forward, and I have some very exciting
unannounced stuff coming up
soon. Also, I am actually using my Twitter
account and
updating my Facebook
musician page, so give that stuff a look!
September
28, 2010
- I've updated my
Demos
page with a couple of tracks. The first
is the soundtrack for Werkpilot's
haunting short film Echoes,
and the second is a
modern hybrid orchestral action track called Welcome
to the Raft. A contest over at
Heavyocity got me thinking
about the way I used to write eight or ten
years ago, when all of my
good orchestral samples lived in a couple of
SR/JV expansion cards in
my trusty Roland XP-50. It's an
incredibly primitive way to work
compared to today's world of vast multi-DVD
orchestral sample
libraries, but by writing to the samples and
really knowing the library
inside and out, it was still possible to get good results.
With
that in mind, I wrote and recorded Welcome to
the Raft using only
the instruments in the Native Instruments
Kontakt 4 factory library and
a little bit of the free Kore Player and
Reaktor 5.5 factory
libs. It was undeniably a frustrating
exercise because of the
limitations of the factory libraries, and
because Reaktor and Kore
Player do not always play well with a 64-bit
DAW. But in a
significant way it was also a liberating
experience, because of the
freedom from the option paralysis of a
bewildering array of different
synths and sample libraries. At any
rate, I emerged from the
experience with a fresh appreciation for the
Kontakt factory library!
September
14, 2010
- My friends at Werkpilot
have released Echoes,
a beautiful animated short
for which I provided the soundtrack.
August
2, 2010
- I hope you all are
having
a wonderful summer, and seeing more of the sun
than we are seeing out
on the Washington Coast. Stupid ocean,
full of stupid
moisture! At any rate, it's been a
productive summer so far, and
another new tidbit of Airborn in-game music is
available for download here.
The
CD project is underway as well, and I look
forward to posting some
demos in the near future. Be sure to
swing by my Facebook
music page
for (relatively) frequent updates!
June
28, 2010
March
29, 2010
- It's been a while
since I
posted about Airborn! We've recently won
1st place for best art
in Phase 4 of Epic's Make
Something
Unreal Contest, and are now in full
swing on our
standalone UDK demo. We'll hopefully
have some very exciting news
to reveal soon, but in the meantime here
is a new in-game track for your
enjoyment. WARNING: it's possibly
the most cheerful little piece of music I've
ever written.
February
22, 2010
- The GWJOST EP is
ready
for download
in both wav and 320kbps mp3 formats. The
EP is freely
downloadable, but if you would like to make a
donation you are welcome
to do so via the Paypal link on the download
page. As I've
mentioned, I am in full swing on a CD project,
and donations will
primarily go toward production expenses.
Regarding the content of
the EP: it's mostly blatant fan service for
listeners of the Gamers
With Jobs podcasts over the years. All
of the material was
written for either GWJ Radio or the GWJ
Conference Call, and it's
appeared in one form or another on those
podcasts. Much of it has
been available via my demos page, but this is
the first time that the
extended version of the new Conference Call
Theme will be made
available, and it's also the first time that
I'm offering high quality
versions of these tracks. Because much
of this material doesn't
make a lot of sense without context, I've
included notes on each track
in the PDF liner notes included in the
download.
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