Julie Elven

Julie Elven is a soundtrack vocalist, musician and composer based in Munich, Germany.

She's a singer for the Star Citizen First Light soundtrack by Pedro Macedo Camacho.

Vocalization
She sings in a style called vocalization. It means not actually singing lyrics but using the voice like an instrument, For instance, she mainly sings on the vowel “aa” the whole time. But vocalizations can also be different syllables or combinations of consonants and vowels. Vocalizing has become her signature singing style. Also, on some other projects– she sings, for example, in some fantasy languages that can be created, like in World of Warcraft or some indie games. Or she can also sing with real lyrics.

Career
When she was growing up, she learned to play the piano and violin, composed and arranged original pieces and sang in choirs, even in a teen emo rock band as well as soloistically at school concerts. At age 20, she bought recording equipment began recording her own compositions, she would record herself on the piano and record violin lines over it, like a string section, and then her voice and uploaded them to Soundcloud.

One of the people who followed her was Ivan Torrent, a composer in the epic music genre. He asked her to sing on one of his tracks, which got quite popular in the epic music kind of world.

From then on, his colleagues started asking her if she could sing on their music as well. At first, she sang on a few film scores and production music. Later on, she crossed over to video game soundtracks because of recommendations.

The first game I sang on was a cinematic for Total War: Attilla, on composer Ian Livingstone’s music. Around the same time, composer Joris de Man, from the Horizon Zero Dawn music team asked Ian for a vocalist recommendation. He wanted someone who had a more specifically breathy voice. Ian recommended her, and that is how she ended up singing Aloy’s Theme in Horizon.

She performed “Promise of the West,” which was the reveal trailer theme for Horizon Forbidden West, Joris de Man’s composition, at the Game Awards in Los Angeles in 2021. She performed it with film music legends, Lorne Balfe and Pedro Eustache, and the whole Game Awards orchestra. The livestream was seen by over 85 million people.

She has contributed studio vocals as a soloist to major themes in The Legend of Vox Machina, Horizon Forbidden West, Horizon Zero Dawn, League of Legends, BBC Universe, PBS Nova, World of Warcraft - Legion, Hearthstone, Honor of Kings, Star Citizen, RuneScape, multiple Blizzard Entertainment projects, Tomb Raider - The Dark Angel album project, and more.

As an orchestral soloist, Julie has been featured with James Newton Howard, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Game Awards Orchestra 2021, the North Netherlands Orchestra, the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Vienna and the Málaga Symphony Orchestra as well as various ensembles and bands.

Julie frequently features as a soloist on non-media music related albums and projects, spanning different genres from pop, electronic, ambient to progressive, rock and metal styles.

When she doesn't sing, Julie composes and songwrites for the game and soundtrack projects she is working on, and composes original acoustic cinematic music which she records with her piano, violin and voice. She has a focus on games however she doesn’t just sing on triple-A games, but also indie games and everything in between. She also sings on TV and film scores, documentaries, and more.

Quote

 * "I think music has always had that function in games, to bring emotion across. In previous decades maybe the music–the ways that music was implemented were a bit more limited by the technical aspects. But when you remember something like the Tetris theme, it’s still very emotional when you hear it. It evokes emotion. Or the Mario theme. All kinds of music. It was always there to amplify the emotion of games."
 * "I’ve always adored the incredible beauty of video game scores such as Skyrim, the Assassin’s Creed franchise, The Witcher 3, Journey, etc. To be honest, my own focus on video game music manifested itself along the way, and I am so glad that my career took this direction."

Trivia

 * She studied medical speech and language therapy, and she still works as a voice therapist in a practice in that field.
 * She's a synaesthete, which means that her brain connects certain colors with musical notes or keys, and even numbers.