Jeremy Soule ( / s oʊ l / SOHL ) is an American musician who creates music for movies, TV shows, and video games. He has made music for more than 60 video games and over a dozen other projects during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Total Annihilation, and the Harry Potter series.
In 1994, he began working for Square after studying music privately for several years. After completing the music for Secret of Evermore in 1995, he moved to Humongous Entertainment, where he created music for children’s games and Total Annihilation, which was his first award-winning score. In 2000, he started his own music company, Soule Media, which later became Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he created DirectSong, a record label that shared digital versions of his music and the music of classical composers. DirectSong remained active until 2019.
Jeremy’s music has been performed in live concerts, such as the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Germany and the Play! A Video Game Symphony concert series. While much of his work uses orchestras, he believes he creates many different types of music. Some of his soundtracks were made with the help of his brother, Julian Soule.
Early life
Soule was born in Iowa to a father who taught music in public schools and a mother who designed graphics. He became interested in music and orchestras at age five. He started piano lessons early and became fascinated with music, even writing musical notes in the margins of his math homework. When his teachers and father noticed his talent, he began private lessons with professors from Western Illinois University when he was in sixth grade. He said he had learned as much as someone with a master's degree in composition before finishing high school, but he never officially earned a degree because he did not attend the school. He struggled with choosing between becoming a concert pianist or a composer; he decided to become a composer after realizing how hard it would be to do both.
As a child, Soule played video games and believed that music could greatly improve the experience. After finishing high school, he spent a year creating a portfolio to show what he thought video game music should sound like. He sent the recordings to LucasArts and Square. Square appreciated the portfolio, but he believes LucasArts did not listen because they had a rule against receiving unsolicited packages. Soule started working at Square in Seattle just two weeks after sending his demo tapes.
Career
Soule was asked by Square to create the music for the game Secret of Evermore. The game’s soundtrack used unusual methods, blending ambient sounds like wind and ocean waves with a soft orchestral style. When Ron Gilbert left Square to start his own company, Humongous Entertainment, and Square moved from Seattle to Los Angeles, Soule left Square to join Gilbert and compose music for the Putt-Putt children’s game series. He became the company’s third employee. Over the next three years, Soule created soundtracks for several children’s games, including titles in the Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish series.
While working at Humongous, Soule met Chris Taylor, a video game designer, and helped compose the soundtrack for Taylor’s major project, Total Annihilation. Soule convinced Taylor that using a large orchestral score would help their game stand out among other real-time strategy games with techno music. He bet a year’s salary that this approach would succeed. Gilbert noted that the first sentence of a game review praised the music. Because of software limits at the time, a full live orchestra was needed to make the music work correctly. This was the first time Soule used a live orchestra, as the orchestral tracks in Evermore had been performed by Soule and his brother, playing two instruments at a time. The soundtrack earned Soule his first award, "Best Music" from GameSpot in 1997. Over the next two years, Soule composed music for Total Annihilation’s expansion packs and other children’s games.
In February 2000, Jeremy and his brother Julian founded Soule Media, an independent music production company. The company later changed its name to Artistry Entertainment. Julian works as a sound engineer and composer for the company and has helped Jeremy on many projects, both credited and uncredited. The first major project through the company was Icewind Dale (2000), which won the "Best Music of the Year" award from both IGN and GameSpot.
In 2001, Soule composed the music for the first of five Harry Potter games he would work on between 2001 and 2005. His first game, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was nominated for an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences award for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition. Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban won and were nominated, respectively, for a British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Score in the Game Music Category. Other games he composed in 2001 included Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Azurik: Rise of Perathia. He later described Azurik as a game that was improved by its music. In 2002, Soule composed soundtracks for three top-selling role-playing games: Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights. Morrowind earned him his second Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences award nomination.
Soule was in a serious car accident in the mid-2000s. During the crash, he had a brief realization that life is precious. In an interview, he described seeing a vision of "Native American warriors." A highway patrol officer at the scene introduced him to a chief from the nearby Lummi Nation reservation who composed music. Soule said this experience inspired his later compositions.
Artistry Entertainment created soundtracks for many successful games in the 2000s, including the Guild Wars series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The Oblivion soundtrack was nominated for the 2006 BAFTA and Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards and won the MTV Video Music Awards and Official Xbox Magazine soundtrack awards. Soule also worked on another real-time strategy game by Chris Taylor in 2007, Supreme Commander.
In 2005, Jeremy and Julian Soule founded DirectSong, a company that sold downloads of compositions and works by classical composers. By 2007, the company had over one million registered customers, though not all made purchases. Soule noted that DirectSong’s traffic sometimes surpassed major record labels. He also used DirectSong to sell musical expansion packs for games like Guild Wars, which players could use in the game. He estimated that at least 10% of Guild Wars players bought the Battle Pak 1 expansion. DirectSong faced challenges with order fulfillment and customer support, leading to an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau.
In the early 2010s, Soule worked on major titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Guild Wars 2. The Skyrim soundtrack is among his most critically acclaimed works, earning a BAFTA nomination and awards from groups like the Game Audio Network Guild. Soule also composed music for two Skyrim DLC packs, Dragonborn and Dawnguard, released in 2012. The Guild Wars 2 soundtrack was released as a four-disc box set and received positive reviews. Later in 2012, Soule was replaced as lead composer on the project, with Maclaine Diemer taking over for future releases.
In March 2013, Soule launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a classical music album called The Northerner: Soule Symphony No. 1, aiming to raise $10,000. The campaign raised $121,227. The project includes vocals in Old Norse, a language Soule said inspired him after seeing similar use in a project by Malukah. Soule mentioned his company was developing new audio technology for the project. In 2016, he began accepting refunds for the unreleased symphony. A collection of sketches was released in 2017, but the full symphony was never completed. As of 2025, the project remains unreleased.
In 2014, Soule signed an exclusivity deal with Sony Online Entertainment to compose music for EverQuest Next and Landmark. EverQuest Next was canceled in 2016, and Landmark was released but shut down in 2017. In 2015, Soule and his brother Julian composed a Dota 2 music pack, which was part of the Compendium, a content pack that funded the prize pool for The International 2015 tournament. The tournament had the largest prize pool in e-sports history at the time, with over $18 million. In the following years, Soule focused on indie games.
In 2014, Julian and Jeremy Soule co-founded an audio company named Virtual Sonics. In 2016, the company partnered with Roland Corporation, and Soule
Performances
Jeremy Soule's music has been performed at many live concerts. Music from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was performed on August 20, 2003, at the first Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany. Music from Morrowind was performed at the third Symphonic Game Music Concert on August 17, 2005. Pieces from Morrowind and Oblivion are included in the international concert series Play! A Video Game Symphony. Jeremy Soule attended the world-premiere of Play! on May 27, 2006, in Chicago. Music from Oblivion was also performed at the Press Start 2007 -Symphony of Games- concerts in Japan in September 2007. The first live orchestral concert featuring Soule's music for "Skyrim" occurred on November 16, 2016, at London's Palladium theater.
Legacy
Soule's music has been included in many popular video games. In an interview, he said that about 10 million games with his music were sold in 2006.
Some of Soule's music remixes can be found on websites like OverClocked ReMix. Soule supports the community of game music arrangers. He even shared one of his own remixes on OverClocked ReMix to encourage new and younger composers. The remix, called "Squaresoft Variation," is based on the Final Fantasy VI song "Terra." Soule chose this piece because, when he first worked at Square, he spent time fixing problems in the game before starting his work on the music for Evermore.
Musical style and influences
Soule usually does not see the completed version of a game before he starts creating music for it. Because of this, he often uses music from previous games made by the same company as a guide. He believes this method helps him succeed because many of the games he works on are from studios that have made many successful games before. He finds it easier to create music for games that are very visual, such as role-playing games. He also likes to look at storyboards and concept art for the game, as he thinks they show the game's emotional purpose clearly. When making a soundtrack, the first thing he decides is the speed of the music and how much energy it should have. This choice depends on both the type of game and its artistic style. After that, Soule creates small pieces of music first to ensure they match the game's vision before working on larger themes. He usually composes all of a game's music himself, though he sometimes works with his brother.
Although many of his works use large groups of musicians, Soule does not consider this his "style" because he believes the term limits him to only one type of music. Instead, he calls himself a "music practitioner," meaning someone who creates music in many different styles. For example, he has written Japanese pop music with Jeff Miyahara. He thinks music is like a language that can be arranged in many ways if you understand its structure. He does not have a favorite type of game to compose for, but he prefers to work on games with "new ideas" made by creative people.
Soule's greatest musical influences include "Debussy's exploration of harmony," "Wagner's grand operas," and "Mozart's form and composition." While his orchestral works are similar in size to movie scores, he does not often listen to movie scores. He names John Williams as his favorite composer, and critics have called him "the John Williams of video game music." He has also been influenced by Square, which taught him about quality in the music industry, and by Nobuo Uematsu. His favorite music to listen to is British pop and rock, and his favorite video games are the ones he has written scores for, especially those made by Chris Taylor. One of his all-time favorites is The Legend of Zelda. He would like to work on games made by Shigeru Miyamoto, a Final Fantasy game, and a Metroid game in the future.