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2025-08-22T08:44:00+01:00
Violist Nick Revel shares how his love of video video games impressed his newest undertaking of etudes and fantasy storytelling, which culminates in a brand new authentic soundtrack recording
Revel picture: Ryan Scherb
Uncover extra Featured Stories like this in The Strad Playing Hub
I beloved taking part in video video games as a child. My favourites had been story-based role-playing video games (RPGs) like Chrono Set off, Ultimate Fantasy IV, V, and VI, Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3, and The Legend of Zelda: A Hyperlink to the Previous for the Tremendous Nintendo Leisure System (SNES). These video games flled me with a way of curiosity and marvel as I ventured via fantastical worlds, every save level marking hard-won progress.
Nonetheless, I didn’t realise till maturity how deeply they trusted music to captivate the participant—or how profoundly these soundtracks would form my very own compositional voice.
With the assistance of my vivid creativeness, these melodies smoothed out clunky 90s graphics, rhythm-energised motion sequences, and harmony-filled plot holes, dropping me proper into the center of the story. Regardless of the technical limits of early recreation audio, these themes are among the many most coated and organized items in online game historical past.
Full-orchestra excursions rejoice the works of Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu, Hiroki Kikuta, and Koji Kondo, usually organized by the very individuals who grew up taking part in these video games. After I decide up one in every of them in the present day, I’m immediately transported again to countless summers with my cousin Jan, exploring new worlds, grinding for expertise, and leveling up.
Quick ahead to now: I like composing (shoutout to De Snakes Composer Group!) and have 4 albums’ price of music. When it’s flowing, the method feels so much like taking part in video video games—stuffed with exploration and discovery. However it could additionally really feel overwhelming until I’ve an anchor level.
To assist information my course of, I can enable vivid imagery to seem in my thoughts once I hear sound. Even when the music isn’t formally programmatic, I usually comply with and translate these psychological photographs into music as if I’m scoring a silent flm, and writing for precise visuals or narratives makes the method much more thrilling.
Enter The Hero Levels—25 Fantasy Etudes to Slay Evil. Drafted whereas feverish and delirious at 13,000 toes on the Ecuadorian Chimborazo volcano in 2023, it’s a nine-book sequence for violin, viola, and cello in three diffculty ranges—Story, Noble, and Legend. Throughout 25 etudes and matching audio play-along recordings, gamers step into the function of the hero in an authentic fantasy journey.
Every etude connects on to a scene within the story, difficult gamers with technical passages, prolonged methods, improvisation, and concept work. The books mix three components—music, story, and audio—accessible by way of QR code. All variations share the identical story, art work, and recordings, making them good for ’multiplayer’ mode. Designed for learners at any stage, The Hero Ranges turns follow drudgery into an imaginative quest.
The story, advised within the second particular person, is central to the undertaking. It’s a traditional hero’s journey, starting in your peaceable, acquainted house of Amberglade. By the tip of the primary of six chapters, you’ve already embarked in your first quest, confronted an sudden boss battle, witnessed the terrifying type of Void, your final adversary, and been warped via time and house to Anchorstone Harbor, a far-away place utterly unknown to you.
There, you meet Arlith, your mentor and information via this extraordinary world. Alongside the best way, you accumulate puzzle items, like a path of crumbs, that slowly reveal the true origins of your mentor, your long-lost dad and mom, and the opposite primary characters. Your closing trial sends you again into the supernatural Void Realm, the place you have to confront and finish the vengeful spirit of Void.
In creating this world, I drew upon the marvel and exploration I felt as a child taking part in video games—one I hope gamers will share—in an exciting convergence of composing, storytelling, pedagogy, and audio manufacturing. A part of growing the undertaking was recording demo performances of every etude so gamers may hear the solo half in context. This meant I needed to significantly practise my very own music.
In etude 21, Dance Battle—a fearsome duel with a vampire flled with gothic melodic traces, organ leads, and complex drum equipment beats—I thoughtfully practised the complicated shifting and string crossings away from the audio play-along. As soon as I’d mastered the technical challenges, the payoff was replaying the extent over and over, experimenting with articulation, dynamics, vibrato, and pacing to provide the music a really electrical vibe.
As soon as once more, identical to in gaming, I used to be dropped into the scene, in a position to savor the temper as I explored the contours of my very own sound. I’d by no means skilled that type of narrative reference to Mazas or Kreutzer etudes, even after hours of follow. It wasn’t simply in regards to the sense of earned progress—I used to be contained in the story, my viola performing as the sport controller.
I used to be contained in the story, my viola performing as the sport controller
Within the closing section of the undertaking, I repurposed the demo play-throughs into The Hero Ranges Authentic Soundtrack (Imaginary Animals, 2025), reimagined with 31 polished mixes and album-friendly preparations. That is the soundtrack to The Hero Ranges—A Fantasy Novella, which options the identical comedian e-book–fashion panels and story from the etude books, with ’take heed to’ prompts all through. On this culminating growth, my intention was to shift the main target towards the music, utilizing the story as its supporting body.
I’m desperate to see how listeners will join with this format in a world the place CDs are historic relics and devoted listening time is a uncommon luxurious.
As the numerous arcs of this undertaking unfolded, piece by piece, logical and ordered on reflection, I felt free and impressed as I did discovering the fantastical worlds in my favorite video video games. By weaving story and music collectively, I hope to rekindle that very same sense of artistic exploration in anybody who embarks on the Hero Ranges, whether or not as a pupil studying the etudes or as a listener stress-free at house with the novella in hand and the music drawing them into their very own magical world of dragons and heroes.
The video is an excerpt from observe 5, Olde Baeworth’s Tavern from the album.
The Hero Levels Original Soundtrack shall be launched on 29 August 2025 on Imaginary Animals.
Watch: Violin x gaming: Esther Abrami performs music from Final Fantasy XV
Hear: The Strad Podcast #76: Violist Nick Revel on practising scales
Uncover extra Featured Stories like this in The Strad Playing Hub
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