The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra, also known simply as The Synthetic Orchestra, is the pseudonym for a British

video game music Video game music (VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to t ...

composer and orchestrator Blake Robinson, who has developed a substantial following on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, primarily for his orchestrations, recreations and remixes of popular video game music.

Career

YouTube

Robinson frequently releases orchestrations of popular video game music on YouTube. His channel features titles from a large variety of genres and various eras of gaming history from ''Alex Kidd in Miracle World'' on the Sega Master System to ''Alan Wake'' on the Xbox 360. He is also known to play live streams every Sunday starting at 6:00 P.M. GMT. The songs included in his playlist includes most of the songs on his channel, plus a few exclusive songs, only featured in his live streams.

Games development

Robinson began a career in the games development and worked as a tools programmer and web developer for companies such as

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

and

Realtime Worlds Realtime Worlds Ltd. (formerly Rage Games (Scotland) Limited and Real Time Worlds Ltd.) was a British video game developer based in Dundee. The studio was formed in February 2000 when Rage Software hired David Jones to lead its Scottish opera ...

. As music became a bigger interest in his life, he turned his focus to making a career of it, leaving the industry and becoming a freelance music software developer and composer. While he is no longer a full-time games developer, Robinson still spends his free time designing and developing independent video games.

Composing

Robinson is a keen user of

Image-Line Image-Line Software (commonly known as simply Image-Line) is a Belgium, Belgian software company best known for its digital audio workstation program FL Studio and related audio plugins such as Sytrus and Harmor. Image-Line was founded in 1994. In ...

FL Studio FL Studio (known as FruityLoops before 2003) is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by the Belgian company Image-Line. It features a graphical user interface with a pattern-based music sequencer. It is available in four different ...

and is listed as a power-user on their website. He frequently posts tutorials and walk-through videos on his primary and secondary

channels and is known to go into great depth about the processes and tools he uses to create his music. Robinson has also extended his influence outside of YouTube, releasing several albums of original music composed by himself.

Sample development

Robinson's primary career is audio software development. He is currently a core part of the

Spitfire Audio Spitfire Audio is an English technology company based in London that creates virtual instrument sample libraries used for music production. The company was founded in 2007 by professional composers Christian Henson and Paul Thomson. Products ...

development team, a collection of composers and engineers that create sample libraries for the

Kontakt Kontakt may refer to: * ''Kontakt'' (film), a 2005 Macedonian film directed by Sergej Stanojkovski * ''Kontakt'' (magazine), a Norwegian political magazine (1947–1954) * Kontakt (software), a music sampler * Kontakt-series explosive reactive ar ...

sampler by Native Instruments and for their standalone sampling engine available in VST/AU/AAX formats.

In popular culture

''The Stanley Parable'' appeared during the third season of ''

House of Cards A house of cards (also known as a card tower or card castle) is a structure created by stacking playing cards on top of each other, often in the shape of a pyramid. "House of cards" is also an expression that dates back to 1645 meaning a struc ...

'', where President Frank Underwood is being shown the game by a novelist and video game reviewer who is writing his biography, with the puzzling nature of the game used as a metaphor for the current politics in the show's fiction. Robinson's music from the soundtrack accompanied the scene.

Discography

* ''The Synthetic Orchestra: Originals Volume 1'' (2012) * ''Super Metroid: Ridley's Theme Orchestra'' (2012) * ''The BIOSHOCK Song: Instrumental Version'' (2012) * ''Pixel Hero and the creation of Dr Mindframe'' (2012) * ''Pirates of New Horizons'' (2012) * ''Chrono Trigger: The Last Day of the World Orchestra'' (2012) * ''Dexter For Orchestra EP'' (2012) * ''Uncharted: Drake's Theme Orchestra'' (2012) * ''Final Fantasy IV: Main Theme Orchestra'' (2012) * ''Video Game Orchestrations Vol 1'' (2012) * ''An unhealthy obsession'' (2012) * ''NumNumNumNum Touch my Body'' (2013) * ''The Synthetic Orchestra: Originals Volume 2'' (2013) * ''Super Metroid Symphony'' (2013) * ''Video Game Orchestrations Vol 2'' (2013) * ''NUKEM: Duke 3D Remixes'' (2013) * ''Banjo-Kazooie Symphony'' (2013) * ''Chrono Trigger Symphony: Volume 1'' (2013) * ''Chrono Trigger Symphony: Volume 2'' (2013) * ''Bits of Music from The Stanley Parable'' (2013) * ''Chrono Trigger Symphony: Volume 3'' (2014) * ''Mystery Match: The Soundtrack'' (2014) * ''Crafty Candy: The Soundtrack'' (2015) * ''Portal Knights'' (2016) * ''Portal Knights Volume 2'' (2017) * ''Portal Knights Volume 3'' (2019) * ''Portal Knights Volume 4'' (2020) * ''Lost In Random Volume 1'' (2021) * ''Lost In Random Volume 2'' (2021) * ''Lost In Random Complete Edition'' (2021)

Video game credits

* ''Crafty Candy'': Composer * ''Mystery Match'': Composer * ''

Terraria ''Terraria'' ( ) is a 2011 action-adventure sandbox game developed by Re-Logic and published by 505 Games. The game features exploration, combat, crafting, building, and mining inside a procedurally generated 2D computer graphics, 2D world. ...

'': Console Trailer Composer * ''

The Stanley Parable ''The Stanley Parable'' is a 2013 story-based video game designed and written by developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh (game designer), William Pugh. The game carries themes such as choice in video games, the relationship between a game cre ...

'': Composer * ''Pirates of New Horizons'': Composer * '' Portal Knights'': Composer * '' Lost in Random'': Composer

Awards

*Robinson is the composer of the soundtrack for Lost in Random, which won "Best Indie Game" at the 2021 Gamescom awards and was nominated for Tribeca's 2021 inaugural Games Award. *Robinson scored the soundtrack for Portal Knights, which won "Best Online Game" at the 2016 German Game Developer Awards. *In 2014 Robinson was announced as an IGF finalist in the category of "Excellence in Audio" for ''

''. *Robinson was the lead composer for the multi-BAFTA nominated ''

''.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Blake, Synthetic English classical music groups Living people Video game music cover bands Year of birth missing (living people)