Matt Uelmen
Encyclopedia
Matt Uelmen (ˈoʊlmɨn; born July 31, 1972) is an American video game music composer
and sound designer. He is best known for his work in Blizzard Entertainment's
Diablo series, which was recognized with the inaugural Excellence in Audio award by the IGDA
in 2001. He also worked as a sound designer for the real-time strategy game StarCraft
, and worked on the massively multiplayer
game World of Warcraft
s expansion World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
in 2007. This game was his last before his departure from Blizzard Entertainment
. Since 2009, Matt Uelmen has worked as a member of the Runic Games
team, as composer and sound designer for the Torchlight
games.
area of Greater Los Angeles
, Uelmen began taking piano lessons at age six from his tutor, Lenee Bilski, who provided him with a strong theoretical foundation. At 13 years old, he moved with his family to San Jose, California
, where he completed high school
. During this time, Uelmen was self-taught, mostly influenced by jazz
, classic rock
, and classical music, especially Liszt
and Debussy while he was in high school, and Miles Davis
, Jimi Hendrix
and Tom Waits
later on. He later diversified his instruments to include the flute
, guitar
, keyboard
and percussion.
He studied at Georgetown University
from 1989 to 1993, where he earned the Mary Catherine Mita Prize for his thesis Cannibal Culture, Technology and American music in 1993. During college, he was also a keyboardist in a six-member bar band, where he acquired practical experience and learned about "arrangement, interaction and economy". He began working in video game music in 1994, when he was hired by Condor. His first notable work in this period was on the game Justice League Task Force
for Sunsoft, released in 1995 for the Sega Genesis.
acquired Condor, which was renamed into Blizzard North
. On November 30, 1996, Blizzard released their first game of the company's successful series, Diablo
. His work in Diablo was so well received that Uelmen was loaned to Blizzard's StarCraft
team (but stayed in Redwood City), where he did sound design; that game was released two years after Diablo, in 1998.
On June 29, 2000, Blizzard launched the second game of the Diablo series, Diablo II
. In 2001, Uelmen, who composed the Diablo II Soundtrack
, and cinematic soundtrack composers Jason Hayes, Glenn Stafford and Andrea Pessino won the International Game Developers Association
award for Excellence in Audio for their work on Diablo II. Continuing his work in the Diablo series, on June 29, 2001, Blizzard launched what would be believed to be the last game of the series, the expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
. In an interview with Gamasutra
, Uelmen was asked about his time at Blizzard between 2001 and 2005. When asked whether he had worked on the earlier version of Diablo III
prior to the shutdown of Blizzard North, he responded, "I guess at this point I can say, yes, more or less. Blizzard has always had a number of projects, though, that may or may not see the light of day. Some of those have been talked about, but there definitely was more than one thing going on development-wise at the time."
From 2005 to 2007, Uelmen created some of the sound and music for Blizzard's popular MMORPG
, World of Warcraft
s expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
; his work represents the majority of the music in the new area of the game, Outland. He is one of about ten composers who have contributed to World of Warcraft. After his departure from Blizzard, his work was used as the basis for some of the tracks in the Blizzard Entertainment and Eminence Symphony Orchestra
collaboration, Echoes of War
(2008).
, which includes several former Blizzard North
and Flagship Studios
employees. He composed the score for their 2009 game, Torchlight
and served as sound designer. As of 2011 he continues to work at Runic, which is currently developing Torchlight II
.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and sound designer. He is best known for his work in Blizzard Entertainment's
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
Diablo series, which was recognized with the inaugural Excellence in Audio award by the IGDA
International Game Developers Association
International Game Developers Association is the professional society for over 10,000 video and computer game developers worldwide.It is incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization....
in 2001. He also worked as a sound designer for the real-time strategy game StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
, and worked on the massively multiplayer
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
game World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
s expansion World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, often referred to as TBC or BC, is the first expansion pack for the MMORPG World of Warcraft...
in 2007. This game was his last before his departure from Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
. Since 2009, Matt Uelmen has worked as a member of the Runic Games
Runic Games
Runic Games is a Seattle-based American computer game company formed by Travis Baldree , Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer , Peter Hu, and the Flagship Studios Seattle team responsible for Mythos. It is a subsidiary of Perfect World Co., Ltd...
team, as composer and sound designer for the Torchlight
Torchlight
Torchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World, released for Windows in October 2009. The fantasy-themed game is set in the fictional town of Torchlight and the expansive caverns and dungeons nearby, which adventurers explore to collect valuable...
games.
Early life and work
Growing up in the South BaySouth Bay, Los Angeles
The South Bay is a region of the southwest peninsula of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The name stems from its geographic features stretching along the southern shores of Santa Monica Bay which forms its western border.The picture at right uses the broadest definition of the...
area of Greater Los Angeles
Greater Los Angeles Area
The Greater Los Angeles Area, or the Southland, is a term used for the Combined Statistical Area sprawled over five counties in the southern part of California, namely Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County, Riverside County and Ventura County...
, Uelmen began taking piano lessons at age six from his tutor, Lenee Bilski, who provided him with a strong theoretical foundation. At 13 years old, he moved with his family to San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
, where he completed high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
. During this time, Uelmen was self-taught, mostly influenced by jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, classic rock
Classic rock
Classic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on the hard rock genre that peaked in popularity in the...
, and classical music, especially Liszt
Liszt
Liszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...
and Debussy while he was in high school, and Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
, Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
and Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
later on. He later diversified his instruments to include the flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
and percussion.
He studied at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
from 1989 to 1993, where he earned the Mary Catherine Mita Prize for his thesis Cannibal Culture, Technology and American music in 1993. During college, he was also a keyboardist in a six-member bar band, where he acquired practical experience and learned about "arrangement, interaction and economy". He began working in video game music in 1994, when he was hired by Condor. His first notable work in this period was on the game Justice League Task Force
Justice League Task Force (video game)
Justice League Task Force is a Super NES and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis tournament fighting game developed by Sunsoft and published by Acclaim in 1995. The Mega Drive version was co-developed by Condor, Inc...
for Sunsoft, released in 1995 for the Sega Genesis.
Blizzard Entertainment
In March 1996, Blizzard EntertainmentBlizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
acquired Condor, which was renamed into Blizzard North
Blizzard North
Blizzard North was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for the Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, and then moved a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine .-History:Blizzard North was originally an independent...
. On November 30, 1996, Blizzard released their first game of the company's successful series, Diablo
Diablo (video game)
Diablo is a dark fantasy-themed action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31, 1996....
. His work in Diablo was so well received that Uelmen was loaned to Blizzard's StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
team (but stayed in Redwood City), where he did sound design; that game was released two years after Diablo, in 1998.
On June 29, 2000, Blizzard launched the second game of the Diablo series, Diablo II
Diablo II
Diablo II is a dark fantasy/horror-themed hack and slash, with elements of the role playing game and dungeon crawl genres. It was released for Windows and Mac OS in 2000 by Blizzard Entertainment, and was developed by Blizzard North. It is a direct sequel to the 1996 hit PC game, Diablo.Diablo II...
. In 2001, Uelmen, who composed the Diablo II Soundtrack
Diablo II Soundtrack
Diablo II Soundtrack is the soundtrack of video game music from Diablo II . It features music composed by Matt Uelmen for the game. It was released on June 30, 2000 as part of the Diablo II Collector's Edition, and later on iTunes.-Track listing:...
, and cinematic soundtrack composers Jason Hayes, Glenn Stafford and Andrea Pessino won the International Game Developers Association
International Game Developers Association
International Game Developers Association is the professional society for over 10,000 video and computer game developers worldwide.It is incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization....
award for Excellence in Audio for their work on Diablo II. Continuing his work in the Diablo series, on June 29, 2001, Blizzard launched what would be believed to be the last game of the series, the expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is an expansion pack for the hack and slash action role-playing game Diablo II...
. In an interview with Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
, Uelmen was asked about his time at Blizzard between 2001 and 2005. When asked whether he had worked on the earlier version of Diablo III
Diablo III
Diablo III is an upcoming dark fantasy/horror-themed action role-playing game in development by Blizzard, making it the third installment in the Diablo franchise...
prior to the shutdown of Blizzard North, he responded, "I guess at this point I can say, yes, more or less. Blizzard has always had a number of projects, though, that may or may not see the light of day. Some of those have been talked about, but there definitely was more than one thing going on development-wise at the time."
From 2005 to 2007, Uelmen created some of the sound and music for Blizzard's popular MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
, World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
s expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, often referred to as TBC or BC, is the first expansion pack for the MMORPG World of Warcraft...
; his work represents the majority of the music in the new area of the game, Outland. He is one of about ten composers who have contributed to World of Warcraft. After his departure from Blizzard, his work was used as the basis for some of the tracks in the Blizzard Entertainment and Eminence Symphony Orchestra
Eminence Symphony Orchestra
- Piano Stories :Alexey Yemtsov performed the first Piano Stories concert on 15 April, at Verbrugghen Hall. Featuring work from Studio Ghibli, Yoko Kanno and Shirō Sagisu, Piano Stories marked the beginning of a series of concerts celebrating piano scores from a selection of anime and gaming...
collaboration, Echoes of War
Echoes of War
Echoes of War is a Blizzard Entertainment-produced orchestral version of the music from their three most popular video game series, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo...
(2008).
Runic Games
In 2009, Uelmen joined the newly formed Runic GamesRunic Games
Runic Games is a Seattle-based American computer game company formed by Travis Baldree , Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer , Peter Hu, and the Flagship Studios Seattle team responsible for Mythos. It is a subsidiary of Perfect World Co., Ltd...
, which includes several former Blizzard North
Blizzard North
Blizzard North was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for the Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, and then moved a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine .-History:Blizzard North was originally an independent...
and Flagship Studios
Flagship Studios
Flagship Studios was a computer game company founded by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik, the original developers of Diablo and former high level Blizzard North executives...
employees. He composed the score for their 2009 game, Torchlight
Torchlight
Torchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World, released for Windows in October 2009. The fantasy-themed game is set in the fictional town of Torchlight and the expansive caverns and dungeons nearby, which adventurers explore to collect valuable...
and served as sound designer. As of 2011 he continues to work at Runic, which is currently developing Torchlight II
Torchlight II
Torchlight II is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World. It is the sequel to Runic's 2009 ARPG, Torchlight, and features peer-to-peer multiplayer support and extended modding capabilities. A release for Mac OS is planned for some time after the...
.
Works
- TorchlightTorchlightTorchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World, released for Windows in October 2009. The fantasy-themed game is set in the fictional town of Torchlight and the expansive caverns and dungeons nearby, which adventurers explore to collect valuable...
(2009), Runic GamesRunic GamesRunic Games is a Seattle-based American computer game company formed by Travis Baldree , Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer , Peter Hu, and the Flagship Studios Seattle team responsible for Mythos. It is a subsidiary of Perfect World Co., Ltd... - World of Warcraft: The Burning CrusadeWorld of Warcraft: The Burning CrusadeWorld of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, often referred to as TBC or BC, is the first expansion pack for the MMORPG World of Warcraft...
(2007), Blizzard Entertainment - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (2001), Blizzard Entertainment
- Diablo II (2000), Blizzard Entertainment
- StarCraftStarCraftStarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
(1998), Blizzard Entertainment - DiabloDiablo (video game)Diablo is a dark fantasy-themed action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31, 1996....
(1997), Blizzard Entertainment - Justice League Task ForceJustice League Task Force (video game)Justice League Task Force is a Super NES and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis tournament fighting game developed by Sunsoft and published by Acclaim in 1995. The Mega Drive version was co-developed by Condor, Inc...
(1995), Acclaim Entertainment, Inc.