Issue #9 / February 2025

When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Video Game Composer… Hey friends, family, colleagues, musicians and music-lovers! How have you been? As for me, I’ve been pretty busy. In fact, I’ve been so busy with music that I’ve decided to reduce the number of newsletters that I publish to four quarterly newsletters instead of six. The next one will be in May. You can still find out what I’m up to by visiting my website, my YouTube channel, or by emailing me.

What’s Been Going On?

So what’s been going on? In the last few months, I’ve been working on more orchestral music and released a collection of pieces based on characters with collaborator HydroGene. I also participated in the creation of a fake video game soundtrack alongside dozens of composers. I spent some time with professional video game composer Joel Corelitz (Halo Infinite, Death Stranding) studying synthesis, sound design and electronic music. A game developer found my music and hired me to write the soundtrack to his upcoming video game, Shadow Maiden. I released my sixth album, A Chiptune Galaxy, and I found out that it was used in a commercial video game available on Steam (coincidentally, the game developer lives in my city!). I acquired some fantastic virtual instrument libraries (Musio 1, Nucleus Orchestral Core) to complete my studio during the Black Friday Sale. And finally, to my great joy, the National Arts Center Orchestra gave its very first Final Fantasy concert which was an absolute delight.

New Website

Thanks to my very talented friend Rick Poulin, I have a new website : https://francoisgerinlajoie.com/. It will make it easy for game developers to decide if they want to hire me for their next video game, and for music lovers to browse my catalog of music. Visit my website and let me know what you think!

Exclusive Content For Subscribers

I made this unabridged YouTube video of some of the more recent fantasy chiptune music from my channel. It originally served as a trailer for a free asset pack released on itch.io earlier this fall. It’s not available to the public on my channel, but I’m making it available to you right here. Happy listening!

What’s Next?

For now, my main focus is electronic music. I really want to get my chops up in sound design and synths in order to be able to write the best video game sci-fi music I can when the occasion arises. Listen to what I’ve composed so far. In the next few months, my attention will also be turning towards classical guitar. I will be performing a few times at the Festival Guitare Alla Grande at the end of February, and I’m preparing for my level 9 Royal Conservatory of Music examination which will happen in May or June. We’ll, that’s about it! Game Over... Until the Next Score!