For this week, we’re going to talk about something a bit simpler. Backtracking from the special and unique, to something a bit more conventional. I’m going to introduce you a musician with the finest virtual orchestra on the internet, who composes not only for companies, but for himself, and his fans right on YouTube. Introducing, The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra.
A man known to be the composer of some notable indie games, namely the ever beloved Stanley Parable and one that won the “Best Indie Game Award 2021”, Lost in Random. It goes without saying that Blake Robinson had plenty of achievements under him much due to the many contributions he had in his aforementioned, and other projects.
Of course, it is easy to write Blake Robinson off as your regular orchestra composer you can find anywhere. But the work and effort that he puts through to orchestrate pieces of music - whilst perfectly encapsulating what the original music is trying to portray, is something that is both admirable and respectable.
The sea of covers he had done are all wonderfully structured and full of energy and substance. All of them does not feel alienating, nor does it try to make its own statement. They tell the same story, but the way they are presented is spectacularly different, and that by itself is something that I think is very admirable.
That is, not talking about the Originals that he composed, which are equally worthy of giving a try!
Inevitably, you can still just listen to his library without any prior context, and just as a regular Orchestra playlist. Most of the music featured are purely instrumental, without much synthetic noises and sounds, giving the listeners a very pure orchestra experience.
Not to mention, he composed this masterpiece
From Whimsical, to Cynical, to Satirical, to Nonsensical. There is plenty of variety for one to absorb from Blake Robinson’s Synthetic Orchestra, and you are all given a front-row seat.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Le music of Blake
By doing mostly covers on his channel, one might just think that Blake is your run of the mill cover artist on YouTube. Well that might be true to some extent, but to not give him credit because of that would be a wrong move. From his original works, even from his covers you can find a sense of passion behind it that he pours into all of his works, which is commendable.
His cover works are really beautiful, this is something that I am able to say without betraying any of my beliefs. Unlike other cover artists that do orchestral music on virtually anything, Blake doesn’t fall into that trope, sure he covers songs he likes, but he only covers those that he knows will sound even better in an orchestral rendition. This is evident with his covers of Maoyu - Vaikrona, One Punch Man theme ~ballad~, Chrono Trigger memories of green and many more.
All of which are either a theme song that played during one of the most emotional scenes in their respective series, or a lite motif in One Punch Man’s case. The ballad version of the main theme from OPM is played in Episode 9, when Mumen Rider is facing off against the sea king, the ballad started playing as he refuses to stand down even after receiving a hellish beating by the sea king, that scene is something that could be called anime perfected, it is a powerful scene with a beautiful camera work and soul shaking soundtrack, Blake sees this, and he made a orchestral rendition of this track, which boosts the emotions when we listen to this, and might make people who doesn’t know about the original series intrigued to watch it, which in a sense captures the true essence of a cover.
Besides covering songs, Blake also has his original stuff going on with his career, one of his best works in my opinion would be Follow the Christmas Line from Stanley Parable. The composition of that song fits with how the game Stanley Parable is, calm, composed yet unhinged, which is backed up by the sound track's consistent yet chaotic composition. It’s something you must play through to experience. Go check his work out, really do, it’s a blast.
Attachments: