The Rise of Luminist: From Jingles to Game Soundtracks

Mason Vera Paine

Award-winning producer and video game music composer Luminist has recently released his new album, Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree Original Soundtrack. The album accompanies the Wildboy Studios game Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree, which was first released in 2019 alongside the launch of Apple Arcade. Luminist's work has already been recognized with a New Zealand Game Award in the Excellence in Audio category for the soundtracks he produced for the game. Check out my latest conversation with him as he speaks about his career and how he got into video game music composition. For the latest on Luminist visit: Twitter.com/Luministmusic https://75dc83.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5.-Luminist-VG-Music-Composer.mp3 Like Mason on Facebook at: Facebook.com/MasonVeraPaine and follow on Twitter at: Twitter.com/MasonVeraPaine. Interested in being a guest on the show or wish to send pitches contact us at: [e-mail] Mason Vera Paine Show: Transcription [00:00] - Announcer: Mason Vera Paine. [00:01] - Mason Paine: Sydney, Australia's own Luminist has left his Mark in the world of gaming as an ambient and synthetic wave producer. Now, Luminist joins me to speak about his latest project and how he got into being a video game composer. Thanks for joining me, Luminist. [00:15] - Luminist: Oh, thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure. [00:16] - Mason Paine: So tell me, how did you get your start in music? [00:19] – Luminist: As a kid, I was in a choir with my primary school. We had a choir that was part of the Cathedral in Sydney in Town Hall, where I'm from, Sydney, Australia. And the Cathedral choir was part of our school at St Andrews Cathedral. I had an education there for about five or six years as a kid learning choir and church music and developed from there, really. [00:44] - Mason Paine: Did they teach you any sheet music, like how to read it? [00:47] – Luminist: Yeah, absolutely. I got a great education in that. These days, I'm a little bit rusty. I don't really practice that music very much anymore, though it'd be nice to return to it. But yeah, we did study that definitely. [1:01] - Mason Paine: I'm a little curious, how did you go from being in a choir to where you are now? [1:08] – Luminist: Yeah, it's a strange journey, I guess. I started that and church music was my first education. That was definitely a huge influence on the music that I appreciate and like in terms of the sound of it. It's quite beautiful, moving, harmonically rich music. Then as I got to a teenager, I started listening to bands like the Strokes, and I was like, Oh, I want a guitar. I want to learn how to play that. So I got into rock music a little bit. And then late teen, I started to do session vocals for a company that did advertising jingles. So I was singing on those things. And then eventually they were like, Oh, do you want to have a go at writing one? So I was like, Yeah, cool. Let's give it a try. And so I did that. And my music got chosen for one of the advertisements they were working on. And it went from there. I started working freelance with that company for quite a few years. I moved to London in the UK when I was 20 years old and just wrote music for jingles and discovered synthesizers and got into electronic music from there. [2:13] – Luminist: And that's where I'm at these days. I'm definitely more in the electronic music world and not so much singing anymore. Although I'd like to return to that a little bit, it's not really part of the music I make these days. [2:26] - Mason Paine: I love that you did jingles. I actually know a lot of people who do jingles did you do as a side gig, just a way to make some money. Yeah. And it's funny. I'm curious, you wrote it. Did you produce any of it, too? Did you do everything or was it just like, hey, vocals? And then I went into writing it. [2:46] – Luminist: With jingle stuff,