Niamh’s chomping at the 8-bit

Paul McElwee talks to the Tyrone woman who is becoming one of the leading video-game composers in the world

A quote accredited to an (as yet) unknown source describes music as ‘M-usic, U-nlocks, S-elf-expression, I-ntelligence, C-reativity’, suggesting that the art of music making is something which unlocks the creative urge in all of us.

A Strabane woman, who began her own journey with sound and melody while at school, has taken the acronym to heart, and as such, has set herself on course to become one of the leading video-game composers in the world.

Niamh Houston AKA ‘Chipzel’ learned her trade as a teenager, making electronic music, known as Chiptune as a hobby on, of all things, a Nintendo Gameboy.

Niamh explains, “I went to school in St Anne’s in Strabane and Lumen Christie in Derry. While there, I began making melodies on a Gameboy, developing and honing my own sounds.

“I’ve always been a gamer and always had a creative side and knew I was destined for a creative path, veering towards art or creative design. I never thought that it would be in music.”

I bet you’re now thinking, ‘how in under God can you make music on a Gameboy?’ I know I was.

So, how do you do it Niamh?

“I used, and still do to this day, a programme called Little Sound DJ or ‘LSDJ’ for short. Once the programme is loaded into a cartridge it’s quite simple; just use the buttons and control directions to turn knobs, make sounds and craft whatever music you want to from scratch.

When I began it was very unique, accessible and cool – very ‘future punk’. I realised, after finding a website called ‘8-bit collective’ there was a whole underground, sub-culture of chiptune which set me on my journey.

“There’s a freedom to it, recycling old stuff to go along with your own compositions, which I truly love. You don’t need to be overtly technical on things but a lot of patience is required. I was determined though, and was blown away about what I could do with it and how it inspired me.”

Studies

After studying electronic music production in Liverpool’s John Moore’s University, Niamh turned her hobby into a career. And it didn’t take long before she was noticed.

“While at uni, just 19-years-old, as I was just beginning my second year, my music got featured in an indie game called ‘Super Hexagon’, a fast-paced  game in which the player controls a triangle on a hexagonal grid in the centre while walls come from the edges of the screen.

Its creator, Terry Kavanagh, had heard my music at a big New York show called ‘Bit Festival’ which no longer exists. I was lucky enough to hit the scene just as indie games were on the rise and got invited to the festival to perform and I’ve since been all over the world playing different festivals.

“The indie game scene was on the peak of popularity; it was a time when creatives were all on the same trajectory, creating their own thing outside of what gamers would call ‘Triple A’ titles such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Halo’ and ‘Fallout’. We never took ourselves too seriously; we took the work serious, but not ourselves!”

Super Hexagon gave Niamh the recognition she wanted and after graduating (with a first no less), she found herself in demand, receiving requests to write music from all over which, she admits was ‘extremely exciting and absolutely terrifying’.

Niamh admits that being freelance is ‘scary’ at times with a lack of stability. There is subsequent pressure to ‘remind people that she exists’ through the realms of social media, putting content out there which she finds somewhat counterproductive.

“It’s all well and good putting so much into the content you put out there, but it can lead to forgetting about the thing you’re meant to be doing. Twitter used to be my preferred medium to do that, but when Elon Musk took over with his ‘blue tick’ verification, I left.

“I am active on Instagram, but honestly, don’t have the patience for a lot of it,” she admits.

Lightning rod

Super Hexagon was a lightning rod moment for Niamh, hitting the scene at exactly the right time which meant that finding work wasn’t hard. One huge success for Niamh has been ‘Dicey Dungeons’ (not connected to the beloved Strabane watering hole) where Niamh worked alongside a team of people providing the music and all the sound effects.

Describing the game, Niamh says, “It’s a wacky, card-and-dice game-show setting where contestants are turned into dice, and Lady Luck the host. Different cards have different abilities required to defeat enemies on various floors. I got a large amount of freedom when creating the soundtrack, using French House music, jazz and game show excerpts to bring the unique sound to life.

“It’s my favourite work.”

Work on various other titles followed, such as ‘Crypt of the Necrodancer’ and Legend of Zelda title ‘Cadence of Hyrule’. And while Niamh enjoyed working on the Zelda title for Japanese giant Nintendo, she admits to feeling more ‘at home’ in the indie world.

“There’s a lot of pressure to get the game out for a specific launch date, but you get looked after better in the indie world with more creative freedom, allowing me to keep most of the musical rights to my work. ”

In the world of composition, all manner of styles can be employed to get the desired effect, so how does Niamh decide what’s best for a project?

“I find it easiest for people to send me reference points. One of the biggest pros (and cons) of being a ‘person for hire’ is that people don’t usually know what they want.

“ On the one hand, they’re happy to relinquish creative control to you but on the other you’re left feeling like ‘just give me a jumping off point!’Generally, the type of project is a clue. For instance, if its sci-fi then the brief is big synth swells and cinematic drums, fantasy is something a bit more elegiac.

“It’s about getting to the heartstrings of the project.”

Niamh admits there have been times where she’s not really enjoyed working on projects because of ‘people who care more about money than creativity’, but thankfully they have been few and far between.

So what does the future hold?

“I’ll soon be scoring a table top game and playing the Pax Festival in Boston. Outside of that, who knows. I just like playing music and being creative.”