Jaroslav Beck is a Czech music composer, Co-Founder and Head of Music of Beat Games s.r.o. Beck is also known for music compositions for Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch short movies, an award-winning introduction trailer StarCraft: Legacy of the Void, and various trailers for Battlefield by EA Games. In 2016 Beck founded his own company, Epic Music Productions, which was focused on creating soundtrack compositions for both the gaming and the film industry. In 2018 Beck founded Beat Games with Jan Ilavsky and Vladimir Hrincar, the company behind viral VR game Beat Saber which is the first virtual reality game to sell one million copies.
Life and career
Early life
Jaroslav was born in the town of Strakonice in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. He was first introduced to music at the age of six when he started to learn how to play a flute. He soon realized that he doesn't enjoy reproducing what someone else already composed as it gave him no freedom and he started to create his own sounds. At the age of 14 he started flying gliders. A year later, he successfully completed the training and obtained a pilot licence. This turned out to be an important step towards music since it gave him the confidence he needed and it later helped him to make the decision to leave his comfort zone and pursue music full-time. In 2003 he started to study secondary technical school in Strakonice and began to work as DJ at the same time. To follow the family tradition, he entered University of West Bohemia in 2007 and studied at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering until he quit in 2012.
Dj career
At the age of fifteen he discovered electronic music for the first time. A major step in this direction was the legendary techno festival in Roudnice nad Labem with Carl Cox as headliner. He instantly fell in love with electronic music. His first gig was a techno rave in the town of Vimperk in 2007 called “Demolition” where he performed under his own name. After Vimperk he started touring around clubs and festivals in the Czech Republic. After the “Apokalypsa” show in Brno, he changed his stage name to Jay Beck and he started to lean towards progressive house. He had the opportunity to perform in the most desired clubs in the Czech Republic alongside both Czech and foreign DJs. He has performed at Summer of Love, Mácháč, Apokalypsa, Duplex and elsewhere. During his DJ career he also produced his own electronic music, mostly Progressive and Electro House and he tried to discover his own style.
In 2012, he quit the University of West Bohemia and went to Oxford to study Audio Production at SAE Institute. In Oxford, he changed his DJ stage name to “Sqeepo” and he started leaning towards an electronic music style called “Dubstep”. During his studies at SAE, he spent most of the time in a studio composing music under his Sqeepo identity. He also composed music for a number one Slovak singer Kristína. He successfully graduated with honours from Oxford's SAE in 2014 obtaining a BSc. degree.
In 2013 he joined forces with a friend, visual effects artist Pavel Kacerle. Jaroslav created sound effects and composed original music to Pavel's demo reel for Iron Man 3 which later turned out to be a major step towards his current career. Thanks to a music he made for the demo reel, he got noticed overseas and while still in Oxford, he got his first work offer to remix music to EA Games' Battlefield Hardline trailer in 2014. After that, more work offers followed and Jaroslav began to work on trailers for both movies and games full-time. After Battlefield Hardline, he worked on Battlefield 4 Final Stand and one more Battlefield Hardline. After that he started to cooperate with Blizzard Entertainment as well, his first trailer was Heroes of the Storm in 2015 followed by where Jaroslav remixed an original StarCraft music. In 2016 he won a G.A.N.G. Award for the Best Cinematic / Cutscene Audio as a part of the team that stood behind the StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void introduction trailer. He also cooperated with Joshua Crispin a.k.a. Generdyn on music which was used for Terminator Genisys TV spot in 2015 and for TV spot. In 2016 he collaborated on music composition for Blizzard's “Overwatch” short movies and he started to collaborate with Cliff Bleszinski's company BossKey on trailers and soundtracks for a new game “LawBreakers”.
Epic Music Productions
Jaroslav founded Epic Music Productions in 2016. The company focuses on modern cinematic music production mainly for trailers and soundtracks for both the music and gaming industry. The company's speciality is production of the complete audio content for new games from soundtrack, through sound design to sound for trailers alone. Their clients are from all over the world, mainly from the USA. In the future they are planning to focus on virtual reality audio projects and also on new audio hardware development to innovate sound for soundtracks as such. Jaroslav also produced many of the tracks featured in the 2018 virtual reality rhythm game Beat Saber.
Beat Games
The company was established in early 2018 with Jan Ilavsky and Vladimir Hrincar. An indie game studio, based in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Founders of the company are creators of the hit VR game Beat Saber. The future vision of Beat Games is mainly to focus on completing Beat Saber to make it the best game which will define the starting era in VR. Moreover, make Beat Saber a cult game for the whole platform.
Beat Saber
Is a VR rhythm game, where the goal is to slash the beats which fit perfectly into precisely handcrafted music. Beat Saber has become a hit with VR users. It was released on May 1, 2018, on Steam and Oculus store and sold 100.000 copies for the first 28 days. Beat Saber is available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality Headsets, PlayStation VR and the Oculus Quest. In February 2019 Beat Games had officially sold 1 million copies across all platforms.
