Zackery Wilson to release SNESQUE

Posted on September 2nd, 2014

Zackery Wilson is a composer, pianist, and video game music enthusiast currently living in Austin, TX. Like so many others of similar age, Zack grew up playing the video games of yesteryear and, subsequently, latched onto their infectious soundtracks, particularly the jazz-based harmonic language of early video game music. It wasn't until fairly recently, though, that Zack became directly involved with the VGM/chiptune community, first uploading chipmusic on the now-defunct 8bitcollective back in 2011. Since his formal debut on Ubiktune last year (2013), Zack has released music on various albums, soundtracks, and compilations, while concurrently working on his dissertation [in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) at the University of Texas at Austin].

Zackery Wilson’s SNESQUE is the marriage of Super Nintendo soundfonts (i.e. collections of samples from original Super Nintendo video games) and modern-day audio production (i.e. EQ, delay, reverb, filters, etc.). For each original track, Zack adhered strictly to self imposed limitations: Each was created using only one soundfont(exclusive to each respective game), again, only taking liberties with audio production and some creative sample manipulation (i.e. pitch-shifting, time-stretching, etc.); the structure of each track limited to roughly a minute’s worth of music, looping once (in the tradition of standard video game “level” music) before fading out.

From progressive rock to jazz fusion, samba to swing, SNESQUE is a hodgepodge of musical styles, connected by the nostalgic sound of Super Nintendo video games and the familiarity of present-day audio production techniques.

SNESQUE will be released this September. Stay tuned!