BioShock Infinite: Scoring in the Sky, a Postmortem

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[Laughter] [Music] good afternoon everyone um my name is Gary shyan I scored BioShock Infinite I actually I scored all three of the b shck games the bck I guess is B shck 3 in a way I don't think they want to call it that

um it it's they've been fantastic games to work on uh I'm very grateful to have been involved in these in these three really really beautifully made games and uh really just been honored that they chose me and that they appreciated my music um got the gig because I did a game called Destroy All Humans and the audio director Emily Ridgeway went to work at rational games and said you got to hire Gary shyan and so they did and so it was it's been a very important U uh part of my career these these three really really beautiful games but infinite really uh was when I Bak one had its own unique style and Bak 2 also utilized the style Bosak one it was really it was a true too it was set in Rapture this city under the sea and the same period so it really made sense to to use the score or the style of the score from the original

BOS shck but when we got to bck infinite um the they everyone including myself did not want to use the material from b shck 1 and two it just did not make sense it was a completely unique game there are parallels and we'll talk a little bit about that during my presentation today but really we had a completely fresh game uh it was set in a different period 1912 in a city in the sky almost sort of the polar opposite in a way 180° and the bright everything in B and Rapture was dark and dingy and drippy and wet and everything in Bosak infinite is bright and sunny and and blazing light so it really was a different game um I had I I can't uh not mention the partners that I had in the game first of all the entire team at rational uh games Unfortunately they did close their doors but it's a great development team um Ken lean the creative director is is I call him the Steve Jobs of video games he he really uh is a a creative genius and I love

working with him Jim Bonnie was the music director and uh Patrick both was the audio director and all all those guys really did amazing things to make this to make this game this really really wonderful game and I was I am a contracted composer so they were in Boston and I was in LA basically throwing stuff over the fence and saying how how's this um when we first started originally I mean the because B sh one and two had been successful there was no no problem getting a budget for an orchestra a large Orchestra um but um and initially we thought hey this is going to be orchestral you know what what do you want want to go to London want where do we where should we go um and it was like okay well that's all cool and great but uh it didn't turn out that way a lot of things didn't turn out that way and I think for good reason and I think I'm grateful that they didn't um the the First music some of the First music I I wrote for them was uh a well I

wrote a a trailer uh I wrote the score to a trailer which was a big presentation trailer and then they had like a a a um oh like a press release confer and and it was alive and they and they showed images from the game and they wanted me to write some original music so I'm going to play a little bit of that just so that this was my initial early concept of what the score might sound like [Music]

and I don't know if any of you have noticed it but at the end you hear my

country tisp the in minor which um because this is a dystopian world and it's and it's said in this city that's very American and everything about it is is patriotic and and and yet it what it is it's a breakaway City and it is really sort of a dystopian America what would happen if everything went horribly wrong so I thought that was appropriate but um and then and then we I I I messed around with a lot of different approaches and it really wasn't until E3 there was an E3 the year before it came out and they made a presentation there and they had this AI character called Elizabeth artificial intelligence and she wasn't a she was an important character but not the central character but the Press everything written about that E3 presentation had Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth and it and it became really really uh uh s such an important part of what people were discussing on the game that it really had an influence

on on the whole creative team and they decided to elevate her character to really your partner in the game and so this artificial intelligence becomes your partner and it was at that point that I realized that she was really important and that I I ought to write a theme for her and so I I I wrote a theme but I didn't want knowing Ken LaVine Ken really responds to live performances so I said to Jim I said you know I don't really want to send this theme over to anyone I want to record it live and he goes well you know we really don't have a budget for that just to to do mockups and I go well I I'm going to come out of pocket I I really want to record this so I recorded it with one chello and one Viola we did some overdubs and so uh I I did this really really simple um um tonal triadic theme for her but it was it was a a important point in real the realization for the approach for the entire score [Music]

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so that simple theme was I sent that to Ken and Ken loved I mean really loved it it really moved him and it and it became my a realization that I had that okay this is the direction for the score it's not orchestral this is a really simple score and this involves really uh really um beautifully played expressive solo instruments and uh and it somehow expressed the uh this the sadness of this world and the and expressed its um I don't know I didn't this is the thing all throughout the game they never told me how the game ended I was scoring the end of the game and didn't understand what it was exactly

cuz they were so secretive but some but I knew there was this deep mystery and so this simple music really was uh an epiphany for me and an epiphany for everyone in the game um so the realization was keep it simple um small string ensembles not orchestral um and the positive response to string live string players that Ken had and then I did something that I've never done before and it was really uh it was really worked on this I don't know if it would it would work for any of the project but what I did was I said to Jim I said look um we have all this money we're not going to spend it I want to I I I think I have a way that's going to really work for me and for Ken and for you is I want to record my demos with Live players so and he said well okay let's let's try that he was open to that so I did a couple of sessions with Live players and Ken was really digging the result when i' mock things up he wasn't digging it or understanding it when he heard it with Live players it was like yes that's it that sounds great and it was just a

realization and I've I've never had more fun than working on working in that manner it was it was just fantastic I'd write the music and then a week later we' I'd bring a string quartet in and we record for for three hours um and two weeks later I'd have and and eventually I it led me to sort of the ideal string section for the game which was 10 string players three violins three violas three cellos and one double bass and that seemed to be sort of like ideal before that I had as few as three sessions with spring quartet spring quartet and and double Bas just all sorts of different uh ensembles and all of them with really great players it was done in in La it was done AF ofm because it was grandfathered in from the old bow shock uh game and uh and it was just totally working for him and it was and it was a really interesting way to to to Really generate really cool music and really by the by by the time we were nearly I was nearly finished scoring it most of the score had been recorded and and was was done there was just an extra session or

two that had to be uh put together so there were several categories of this game uh of the music would fit into now there's also all the uh Source music I did not write the source music um Jim Bonnie hired a bunch of really talented people to do this a fantastic job on the source music really really brilliant stuff with a barbershop quartet singing Beach Boy song it's just really cool stuff and if you and if you play the game and you understand how this game is sort of unstuck in time and anything is possible because time inter interacts with it in in uh bizarre and crazy ways the understand how a beach boy song could appear in 1912 being sung by a barber shop quartet um but the scripted events scripted events uh are really essentially little vignettes little movie vignettes that are locked to time so you could score them like picture and um really the player has free agency could walk away from them and in fact if you're playing the game for the fourth time you're probably going to walk away

from all the scripted events but your first time you're definitely going to watch the scripted events because something important is happening and so most of these needed to be scored so I'm going to play this this was a um a really interesting um experiment initially and really it's it's once you get up to Columbia this city in the sky you end up in this little Grotto and then you open the door and there is Colombia and it's beautiful it's really beautiful it's like you know it's not a dark place it it at least at this point it I did not want the music to be scary at all um and and yet I didn't want the music just to be you know happy go-lucky so what I did was I combined I listened to Steven Foster songs for couple of days Steven Foster being the Great American songwriter of the 19th century and uh and maybe there's a little New World Symphony and I wrote this really simple pretty Melody with some simple chord changes uh but then underneath it I added a chromatic sort of

slithery second layer that I thought represented what potentially is going to um come at you in this city so [Music]

so and I I use I Ed the video you see here is what I compose to I just took that video and I thought it appropriate to bring that video so I just thought I'd show you this I decided because I only had 10 players and because I wasn't sure how this was going to work when I

recorded it I I thought I need to separate the tonal part from the chromatic part so here just really is just a very simple with just sustained cords Alyssa Park was the first violinist and she's just playing this really beautifully sweet solo Poco L and I decided to do very little with the accompaniment with the tonal park because I didn't think the accompaniment if I I thought if I made it busy it would be fighting the other chromatic part all right so that's that and then here's a look at the chromatic part but so this chromatic part is actually quite complex but played panimo so that it didn't fight it and but basically it's all strings I I used a little chelest as well [Music]

and I thought as I was separating them I thought maybe there's a spot and one things you realize as a composer for a video game is that you never there's no music RAR there's not always but a lot of music can get utilized in different spots so I thought okay I can deliver both these to gym and he can use this in some other spot in the game and I think he did I'm not I'm not absolutely certain of that so so that was that experiment and it really worked quite nicely that music uh won the gang award for um instrumental music of the year last year so that was all very cool um and then there was another interesting aspect to the uh to the score and that was there's these characters called the Lutes Twins and

they are sort of in on the joke they really kind of know what's happening throughout all these different permutations of time and interactions and and so they're sort of talking in what appears to be nonsense all the time which only makes sense when you get to the end of the game and you realize that they know what all the different possibilities and that really in this alternative world there's like millions or perhaps an infinite thus the term infinite possibilities of how this things can turn out and uh and in the end it does you know the booker the booker character which you play uh the solution is that he has to die and that can that's the only way to end it from from being a tragic story but here's the test twins they well at least Tango invented the technology that allows the city giant Quantum particles suspended in SpaceTime at a fixed height so not giant balloons but the thing is

my book said they disappeared several years ago right I going to tell you you didn't but I don't you sure that's right something tells me they're not exactly what they appear I was going to have to no subjunctive that's not subjunctive I don't think the syntax little bit of a seem to be up your minds sometimes exactly would be if we didn't how you suppos see the test twins are in all these different places that you cross you don't it doesn't make any sense until you understand that they're just completely unstuck in time and can do whatever the hell they want um and then finally I thought it was interesting this is the one spot in the game where the the music to in BioShock Infinite actually was similar to the original score uh because you end up in

Rapture if you've played the game you know you end up briefly uh in the city of rapture because Elizabeth has this power to open terrorist literally tear she can open a tear in time you can and when in danger you can kind of dive through it and they end up actually in Rapture and they take a ride in the bisphere which is this submarine so I I wrote a cue that kind of sounded like Rapture music you know from my original score all [Music] [Applause] [Music]

and you notice this open fifth sound which is something used in the theme became sort of an orur mortique throughout the score god the Stars come on come on it's this way come on [Music] are you going to open it it's good damn it I thought once we were here I could fully so that or Motif gets used throughout the game because to me it sort of represented the infinite there's something magical about a fifth it's in relationship to the overtone series so that that that Tina figure literally appears in a lot lot of cues throughout the game um and and work quite nicely as

as Ty together it's a simple simple technique but it just worked really beautifully um and then I I wrote they needed some mood music they needed some ambient music so I decided that I would write some use some extended techniques and write some alator uh for this and I thought I'd show you just a few of the cues and these I handed off to to to a Jim and said just use these wherever you need some mood just you know whatever and this is all done with small string ensembles and and and if you think you need and and one lesson here is if you think you need a large string Ensemble to do extended techniques you really don't you with a lot can be done with a string quartet [Music]

just simple chords using quone duning just move on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's just creating some mood well I think this this the last

one and as this moves along they get more and more Out Of Tune quarter tone [Music] wise the isation [Applause] gets but it was very effective and very helpful so Combat music became a really interesting struggle in this game because even though ID found this idea and that everyone seemed really pleased with was which was to use these small string ensembles there still was the feeling that Combat music has to have large resources that we had to have an orchestra to really play Combat to really make that work um and so I'm going to play I I did a few combat here

and it was really the controversy was apparently raging in in Boston um little known to the rest of the country about whether this Combat music had to be orchestral or not and and people were sort of like fighting uh Ken on it Ken was feeling that the orchestral wasn't working so I'm I'm going play here's here's a orchestral cue with some I know the the video is very fuzzy but this is what I was writing to [Music] these are just samples cuz we didn't have work we before this [Music] [Applause] [Music]

so I'm all right so I think I mean that's there's nothing wrong with that piece of combat music for this chaotic combat sequences that were common in BioShock But Ken was feeling that it was not unique enough and one of the I remember from when I first started working on the original Bioshock Emily called me said okay she goes here's the direction for the score it can't sound like any other film Game or TB score ever heard before a little intimidating okay well sort of this is the same direction okay can't sound like any film TV or game show before so um I started experimenting around with small

ensembles what can be done combat wise with small ensembles and I think it became actually very interesting technique so here's here's a combat cu [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the sort of generic footage that they gave you to Scorch it so this is not pict [Music] a

all right so the end of that all right you get the idea all right so it's very but it really worked great in the game

it really worked great it really helped create this sense of things are completely out of control this is really it really facilitated what we wanted to accomplish in this game in terms of the combat music and there's several different genres of this but essentially what I did was I I've created this really uh repetitive uh percussion uh atinado figures and and I just kept them going I just just Relentless they're just Relentless and then over that uh added these figures these uh aloric figures sometimes rhythmic figures using the strings and I'm going to show you how how I accomplished that and I played most we we did bring in a percussionist one day but I played much of the percussion and I didn't quantize it either I kept it very ragged because my my thinking on it was like like a drum circle at Venice Beach if any you ever been to Venice Beach uh it's like a bunch of guys smoking dope playing drums okay and it and and it's

not necessarily quantized and I thought that um I thought that that would be really effective here that it's almost like just a bunch of guys getting their nerve up to go kill a bunch of other guys and so and I thought that that kind of worked so it was just me just playing this stuff in unquantized every now and then I'd be so out of i' nudge a note a little bit so so that was also part of of the approach on it so so what I did was I wrote tons of little short alator intense moments and I'm going to show you a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] few Just Nails on chalkboard type of cues you know [Music]

and then there's another example using basically just taking all these little bits of uh alator and sort of just massaging them together and making them work and overlapping them in any ways that Bel created to me [Music] so it's really it's like really grading but it really worked wonders in combat cuz it just it just created this sense of complete chaos and it's frightening and that was really what they wanted to achieve and it was all done really using these small string ensembles it really and and I so I learned something I I was fighting for the uh orchestral Combat music um of course I like to have an orchestra to record with too so maybe there was a bit of selfishness there but really I really felt that you can't have

combat without an orchestra you know uh in this context but I was wrong and Ken was right and and it is a lesson to be learned that very often your creative Partners the people you're working with they they know your game their game better than you know their game um you are you are a partner and sometimes you have some good ideas and and they'll totally recognize it when you come up with them but sometimes they know something well they weren't telling me how the game ended either so uh but um they they knew something and Ken in particular is this just brilliant guy and he just is very intuitive he can't say Well it needs to be aliat toic with small string ensembles and a ragged percussion track he can't say that but because he doesn't have that musical knowledge but he can he'll tell you when he doesn't like something and so it it really pushed me to to uh create create these sorts of um and these are just and the interesting thing another thing that I learned was you would think if you

doubled it it would make it more intense how many thinks it gets more intense when you double it well it doesn't it gets less intense because it takes it takes all the jagged edges as of and it because they're all going to be you know flamming with one another and uh and so really it was a single pass that was the most effective and I would double these and I was and we we listen back and go whoa it it it doesn't sound as intense it's like really not driving anymore so you know it became clear that um these this these instruments play with the sort of dry intensity like in your face and a single pass was much more effective than just doubling or tripling I mean I could have taken out 10 strings and made him 30 but it wasn't effective [Music]

just write words like scream on top of track and then let them tell you know scream so got a couple more violent intense [Music] [Applause] so just just really annoying stuff okay the more annoying the better and the players were a little annoyed by it too at times but but it really just worked so well I think um so here's another then there was another uh well let me see this play a little bit just a little bit of some of those techniques you can hear some of the stuff you just heard and me just sort of creating a montage out of it and uh and using them and doubling them and and literally taking the audio

Dro putting it into my DAW and just moving it around until it it made sense to me all right and then there was another type of combat Q which was really uh sort of written out sort of through composed and really is it it involved using um uh just sort of like violent uh um string atinado so here's [Music] again though with these repetitive drum Ben Beach Stones drums I actually thought of going to Ben Beach to see if I could get them I [Music] thought temp better of that iidea I got my ass [Music]

it can also said something because I I mean uh the composer of me wants these types of cues to be sort to to change and to do to to um you know Jerry Goldsmith was one of my great teachers I I didn't teach study with him privately or anything but just listening to his music and when he did C he would just like all of a sudden go to something quite different and then do something else But Ken said Ken didn't want that he really wanted what I'd call like musical meatloaf like wherever you cut it it's kind of the same it's here or there sort of you know uh so uh and and it and he was right because he really felt like if the if this music is C is is changing too much it's going to sound like you're catching things and he didn't want that he again he knew his game and he pushed me to do some really brilliant things I think and then there was just the final is just just layered combat because there's times there were times in the

game when uh the character would be fighting these you know game characters and and he would duck Booker would duck away you know kind of get away from it so basically just cross fade to a less intense version of the same track and there are three layers there's active passive and then what Jim called turtling like literally a turtle getting in a shell so here's just some example here here would be the active there was a lot of combat [Music] mus and so then here would be uh the passive version much less intense it's it's completely ins sink uh Tempo wise but basically is so you can easily Crossfade

back and forth between that trap and the the other combat the full active version a simple technique but it it it worked well here and then turtling in in the turtling I added some tension strings because the percussion is almost gone everything is almost gone so I just felt it needed some kind of tension so I actually added this extra ex ra layer of tension strings but again totally in sync with the other with the other two cues so you could easily ramp it up to the full active within a a bar and you're you're there so so um a couple things that I that I would recommend in sort of like closing here and before I take some questions from you guys um I I've always tried when when possible

to to suggest um music that that I just somehow intuitively feel it would be useful for the game just I I just have some sense that hey this this Quee and and thus the Elizabeth Q which was um sort of a realization that hey this team has found the center of this game now through the Elizabeth character now I have to write some music for it and that was an epiphany for myself in terms of finding the style for the game and also in terms of Ken really going yes yes this is it this is the this is the style for this and and there was another queue I did that um was called ad which is a literally originally I was thinking well maybe I need to write a Booker theme so I wrote this and there they like this music a lot but they at first they had nowhere to put and then Jim says I found a spot for it so he ended up using it in this moment where uh uh you find out really how Elizabeth gets unstuck in time because she's going the it's it's complex it's not worth going to it but

but if if you play the game you know it's just really complex uh set of circumstances where it it you know uh it only makes sense actually when you go to Wikipedia and [Music] read no I I I I'm kidding it it does it does make sense but it is it's complex it's like really complex and really I had to read online like oh okay I see now it's all it all totally makes sense because it's it's it's a really I mean one of the the things that that irrational is really was is and has been really good at is this story you know and so they created a very complex story but I just thought I'd sort of uh play the ad theme which is originally the booker theme [Music] n

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uh this morning I told a story um of of something I read years ago that's always stuck with me and it's always helped me and it was something that Stravinsky Igor Stravinsky said and he said that um and he and he wrote at the piano he that's that's where he he didn't you know he didn't have any samples so he wrote at the piano and and uh he said if you if you point to the piano and say start writing is I don't know where to start I just I I have no idea it's infinite no pun intended uh but if you play two notes I can start composing immediately and so uh and that that always struck me as really critical and something that we need to think about is whether any any kind of creative aspect of uh of games or any anything really it's like get started find your two notes find something and then take that and then uh see where that leads you and

so this is really how I found my two notes in this game and um and it was fantastic experience I I received the ba for this score which was incredible I wish I'd gone to London I didn't unfortunately uh because I I didn't I didn't know if I'd win or not and just and I was actually the end of that week I was heading up to Seattle to record uh a shadow uh um um the moror game so um in any event it's it's been all three of the games I I don't know if they'll make another BOS shck I hope they do but um I'm not I'm kind of think Ken has has gone on to a different different stories to tell so in any event if you have questions I'm happy to take some questions from you guys um and uh thank you great presentation thank you

um with the smaller Ensemble uh you mentioned earlier that it can be uh int or not intimidating but it can be preferable to use a large Orchestra for Combat music um I thought so I thought right uh was part of that uh in part of that transition uh in the way of thinking influenced by uh in the games like Bioshock where you have so many different sound effects considerations with the vigors or PL plasmids all the different weapon sounds uh I found that uh or when I was playing infinite I thought that the music really cut through uh a tremendous amount because of the the less that was going on uh in terms of uh not as many tambers getting buried by a gunshot Etc do you do you think that that uh I I I do think that that worked I certainly I wasn't conscious of that because I was sending music to to Jim and Jim was implementing and going yeah this is working or if there was a problem with it okay it's working up to here you need to f it and he' tell me why and it and it is sort of like the contractor's dilemma I mean you

you aren't in house uh you're sort of uh you know doing the best you can from afar but the there is an advantage to being in-house as well but uh yeah I do think that that definitely was very effective in in helping that but again I mean it's just always be open to a paradigm shift that's another thing that I I just keep telling myself because no matter how certain you are of this is the way something ought to be done you need to be open to the possibility that something that you completely different I mean mer said Gustaf mer said I in his late 50s is I always the student he's always learning something new so I learned something new in this and I learned it from the development team who especially Ken who just kept pushing until he got what he wanted and then I'm like yes this is freaking awesome this is great so great thank you sure that was a great presentation thanks for for sharing with us uh my my question is when you're writing this alator music that is so

intensely uh uh you know emotional and dependent on the performance how do you cope with not knowing exactly how it's going to sound until you get to the studio well I mean you you have to do a study of aloric music you have to have some sense of how it's going to sound if if you've never written anything aloric or you haven't studied the scores of the great Al to composers then you are are you may in fact kind of make some mistakes and find yourself with um unsatisfactory results so I felt fairly confident that what I'd written was going to be effective and then and then you're there you talk to the players and you adjust if something's not working you just go okay can just just let's try that down a fifth you know let's because it's just not quite working in that register or can you can you give that anymore at one point I G I asked that and then one of the base play broke his bow and he just he just left

um he was so piss you know he was doing cenal and I'm and I'm just thinking you know I mean you should use a pencil for that or a piece of wood but in any event uh so yeah you adjust on on the scene and so uh but you but I think you need to do some study of it so that you are confident that you're not wasting your time but in this in this context we had the money so if anything really didn't work there was lot of stuff that end up on The Cutting Room flooor that just didn't quite work but we had uh the the uh you know we knew we were on the right direction so if every single aloric little uh vignette was not useful then so be it it's that's okay too hi Gary congratulations on a great achievement thank you thank you very much actually following up on the elator element um a lot of us would face uh the con the actual predicament of having to

have the music reviewed before going to the studio to record it so we would face the issue of having to try and mock up these this is the fix Hest moning ensembles yeah but obviously but like to have even before you go to the studio to have uh the game director hear your music beforehand how do you mock oh well yes that that is a challenge if you haven't I mean I now have a whole library of stuff that I can sort of draw on to to use as placeholders until it gets replaced um but you know you can you literally could go anywhere in in the uh literature and take Snippets of music and use it as placeholder say it's this is kind of what I want to achieve so I would say as long as it doesn't end up in the game I think that's a perfectly cool thing to do as or or and they're also like symphobia and other libraries do have uh you know pre-rendered uh aliot toric tracks problem with those is that so many of

them have been heard a lot on television and used incessantly so I try not to use them uh even though some of them are quite good because it just they just feel worn out so you know and and by the way you can take traditional samples and you can do things with them uh detune them and and do some really creative things with them so and if you just can bring in one player bring in one player bring in bring in a violinist and then overdub and create some effects you know yeah just it wouldn't sound even close to how effective that is when you actually have those musicians together and they're like they're playing their instrument that way right but but you you look you're going to have you have to wing it to some extent you know so so you have to uh experiment and you have to really you know try to find and maybe maybe the answer is to find some things from the from that pre-existing tracks and say this is going to get replaced by something similar okay thank you sure uh so one of the most effective

elements of Bioshock infinance music for me uh was at the the ending flourish uh at uh when combat is over and all the enemies have been defeated and I thought you might get into this but you actually didn't uh so I was just curious was that your idea was that something you talked with Ken and Jim about like how did that particular uh flourish at the end of combat come about wait say what in which que the the ending you know when you all the enemies are defeated and there's throw that dissonant like uh I'm not I'm right yeah yeah it's it's this very effective just I'm not a musician so I just like hear it just for me it was an incredibly effective notion that okay combat is ended this like period of intensity has ended and now you're safe um uh so I mean do you uh do you recall what at that point in the game or in that point in combat I you know you'd have to play play that for me so that I I recall exactly what what they requested there um but I mean in that

case would that been that something that they requested then or yes they would have requested that and Jim asked sometimes he asked for Stingers that he ended up using in different spots that I wasn't even aware of yeah so I I created I had a like literally probably spend an hour just doing stingers and I wrote tons and tons and tons of them and then you know we recorded them and and then just here use them any way you want okay well it was very effective nonetheless thanks thank you hi um during the combat music um I found a lot of it when I was personally playing that a lot of the percussive elements um and even um the strings in the way that they would interact with each other uh sounded quite a bit like alarms was that a conscious decision or was that just sort of a happy accident that you know it sort of sounded like an old firebell from that era or like the the old crank Sirens that were on on fire trucks at that point that just it it the the choices made felt like they

were conscious as opposed to just like oh great that worked well I I don't I wasn't thinking about that and I didn't actually use any old alarms I certainly had some metal percussion instruments that possibly you know were what you were thinking of when you heard those and I would you know have them banging away it would probably just me playing although one day I did bring in a percussionist and I had him play all day and it was that was a great experience but it just it turned out that I had I have a lot of percussion and the percussion was working and by the way we really were fighting against uh not wanting to have the big hanimish drums we wanted small drums and smaller instruments just like that some human being might actually be playing in in the real world again back to my Venice speach sort of analogy but we wanted like they didn't need to be these giant as a matter of fact those were too cinematic and too and and Ken actually would reject those so we went with smaller instruments

smaller drums and and sometimes we would uh Jim would record some drum and send it to me goes I think this is really cool and i' go okay and I'd make a whole sample Library out of it and would use it and and and they were pretty they were pretty simple sounding it might just be a TomTom like an basic TomTom like from uh Indian tomtom or something like that but there was just something cool about that that just was very effective we just again we just upset the apple cart and and went in a direction that was quite different and and I thought it was very effective thank you sure hi uh very early on in the the combat in the game uh there's a sequence of events as uh Booker is firing firing his pistol first it's just a shot and then it's a shot with a piano stab and then the third shot is with like orchestral or string layers uh how did that come about I think it's brilliant it it invokes fear at first and then empowerment uh that's I mean that's

probably Jim Bonnie just taking my material and using it in really creative cool ways yeah it seemed to cross between being music and and sound design and implementing yeah he he he was I mean that's the cool thing about having a full-time music director like like Nathan you know those they can focus totally on the music and and think about it sometimes for a year or two so very creative Solutions like that can be can be um can be found and you know he was he was asking for a lot of different things for me some of which I didn't even know how exactly they'd get used and didn't know until I saw them in use so cool thanks sure hey first off I want to thank you for composing lighter than air it's fantastic uh my question is one of inspiration I guess um in sort of some unfair comparisons um uh the combat music is like that of Johnny Greenwood and for me especially it's sort of you know that There Will Be Blood score

where that oil DK is burning down and sort of I've seen that compared in a few articles and I know that Mr LaVine is a huge film head so in terms of inspiration do you ever look at anything like that or do you try to keep everything that's been done before I I like that score for Let There Be Blood um I was I I was writing aloric music before that score existed certainly so I it was it wasn't a um it wasn't an epiphany for me to hear that score but I thought it was very effective I I I love that score for that Johnny Greenwood score very cool thanks hi Gary um it's sort of similar to his question but I was curious for either the alator elements or the more tonal string writing did you look to any classical pieces for inspiration to uh well I listened to a lot of Steven Foster for the the um for the uh the one q that I and I and also um um um the New World Symphony because I

thought that had a very Americana vibe to it and and also Charles IES oh okay as well because I thought I mean Charles Ives really wrote a lot of really cool Americana music so those were also Inspirations for me that's great thank you sure thanks for this sure um you know regarding the whole montage of aloric uh these little alator pieces and you mentioned putting them together in different ways did you ever um um did you ever have them or uh the music system actually sort of splice them in a random fashion or were they always uh you sort of placing them together in in the way that sounded best no I I I really picked I picked them out very specifically for their effectiveness I I don't think a music system would have put them together in a in a creative way I mean it's possible that they could if you program the hell out of it you might find some really cool way to do that but

um I that was not what was done in this case it was really me just overlapping and just finding something that just really felt chaotic and crazy and and effective awesome thanks sure hi hi uh first of all thank you very much for the music of Bioshock it's fantastic um so when you approached infinite did you really want it to and I I know there was a level in infinite that actually had Rapture in it but did you approach it sort of wanting it to feel like an extension of the bi Universe like did you want it to have music similar enough to the first one that it was relatable or did you sort of want it to be its own new thing no I really it needed to be and I wanted it to be a completely fresh and unique score because it's in a other than that one queue where you actually end up in Rapture uh it really as far as I was concerned and it certainly as far as the entire team and a rational it needed to have its own unique sound it really did thank you sure hey just a more quick question so I

noticed you got you know a lot of crazy sounds out of the strings so were there any things that just kind of like came up in the studio just unplanned that he's kind of kept in because he liked it what said that again like I know you said you planned out a lot of the bizarre string Parts yeah I was asking if there's anything that like just kind of came up that you didn't playing that you really liked and just kind of kept yeah you get surprises all that when you're recording live instruments especially stuff like this you do get surprises and then you say hey whatever you just did do that again that was very cool yeah and and and that is the beauty of working with uh real musicians uh I I love that part of it because you never know what they're going to come up with you never know how they're going to take your music and and do some really cool uh unique thing that you did not expect and and and I want that from the players the Live players that that I work with um I want them to experiment and to try things and uh I I you know that's that's the best that's that's the most fun

part thank you sure all right well thank you all thanks for coming