Composer Confessions: Massive, Often Painful, Lessons Learned

I have GDC voice. So, forgive that. Welcome. Cell phones, evaluations, blah, blah, blah. Okay, moving on. I we're here for the composer confessions. We clearly pre-planned the width of the table relative to the number of people for this panel. So, we're just going to dive right in. The idea with this is to explore some lessons learned in the field, you know, on the job. Things that aren't traditionally covered at things like GDC or in school programs or master classes or that kind of thing because they tend to be the thing that you would never think of until it just happens and you encounter it and then you just have to think on your feet. Unexpected sort of lessons, some of

which are kind of interesting and novel and some of which are horrible and painful. So, everyone here is speaking for themself. I just reached out to these phenomenal people and said, "Hey, if we did this thing, what would you say?" And all of them came back with really different topics that basically said, "Okay, cool. Just I'm counting on you to show up and know what you're doing." And so, if this is terrible starting 5 minutes from now, then you have only yourselves to blame. So, I'm going to go first. I'm Austin. I worked on some of these things and my confession of sorts is that it turns out we have absolutely no control over our listeners / audience / players and what they are going to take away from our music. And so, a shorter way of saying that is that we don't have the power of suggestion

that we think we do as composers. So, when we're getting started in our careers and you know, student work and that sort of thing, I think we spend a lot of time trying to really hone our craft with the goal of creating very specific emotional and visual responses. So, in other words, we aspire to a very vivid and and exact images, feelings, etc. in the minds of our listeners. And I've been guilty of this where I'll think to myself, "Because this music was written to evoke X, it therefore will forever universally evoke X. T-Rex versus the Hulk in the most universal of musical images." But really, anything in front of you. It's like this water bottle. I I was inspired by this water bottle. So, theoretically, anybody listening for the future will just form water bottles in their head. Turns out that's totally Should be obvious. This is why it's a

confession. So, as an example, on Journey, I was aspiring to, you know, by the the time you reach the end of the game, something that I would call, you know, like sweeping or soaring or if I'm feeling daring, I would want it to feel exhilarating or even spiritual. And so, this particular excerpt blah, blah. Okay, so, actual actual response. Stunning music. It really reminds me of Metal Gear Solid soundtrack. Here's to you. You should check it out. So, I did check it out. This is a real comment. So, you know,

I think we all have experienced unexpected comparisons like, you know, maybe like this or something else. But people will liken things that they hear to other things and that is often bewildering. And in this case, you know, genuinely I have no idea what the hell is going on there. Maybe maybe again, the goal was, you know, sweeping and and and you know, spiritual. And maybe to Naden, Here's to you is sweeping and spiritual and so, in that sense, maybe I succeeded. I have my doubts, but uh So, this was a recurring theme at some point. So relaxing. Austin Wintory, the Brian Eno of soundtracks. Again, I think we're hearing things differently. I really thought my goal explicitly was to be melodic, soaring, I'll say again. It turns out I'm actually being super meditative and tranquil.

I have heard the word relaxing about my music so many times and I don't think I've ever once tried to write something that was relaxing except maybe Flow. Here's another one. Love me, Jenny. Thank God I spotted one like that much later down the road because I think that's actually a compliment. I think they're actually trying to be nice and I hope that just as a defense mechanism, I'm saying they're not sort of bored out of their mind. But I don't know. They fell asleep before they could type a question mark. So, it's hard to know for sure what we're even saying. Point is, Journey was repeatedly called out as relaxing, meditative, textural, things that I really didn't say think was the goal. And the the strange thing is it wasn't people criticizing it. They were saying, "This is what I like about it." and identifying things that it explicitly was not trying to be. Uh

It gets weirder. I played this game after I got my wisdom teeth out. It relaxed me and took my mind away from the pain because I couldn't swallow the ibuprofen pills. So, I'm like, "You're welcome." I think the culmination was when IGN rated it the number one soundtrack for studying. Again, this is not something I can have any explanation. I would not have thought sweeping and soaring is compatible with studying, but this is where I was constantly learning this lesson over and over. So, it might be something more like this. I realized I can't predict what people are going to say or what their takeaway is going to be. And the bottom line is that's okay. It's it's it better be okay. We can't control it as much as we think we can or as much as we are specifically trying to evoke very precise images and feelings and

things like that. We we just can't. One more highlight. This is from a Journey YouTube upload. "When I'm home, I want to do cooking work or cooking, I listen to BioShock. Anyone here with me?" I love just showing up. Truth is, I probably would. Big fan of BioShock. So, flash forward. I thought I'd learn this lesson after many years of the sort of incorrect compliments, I think I probably internalized that a little too much. So, when it came time to do Abzu, uh it both probably because I probably internalized some of that Journey feedback too much, but also because earnestly the game had a very, very different sort of energy to it. Very kinetic, very full of life. So, I said, "Okay, I want to be very emotionally I I accepted apparently Journey is tranquil and meditative. And now I don't want to do that. Now I want to be very melodic, very, you know, not meditative at all. Really match the kinetic energy of the game." And I don't I want to pretend that's not because of this feedback from Journey, but it probably made its way in

there a bit. So, here's an example of me not being meditative and not and trying to be more overtly melodic. Okay, blah, blah, blah. So, after getting about 50 of these, apparently it sounds exactly like Tomb Raider or Tom Raider. That's Tom Salta's pet project, I guess. Should have seen some of that coming. Although, I I I honestly had not played Tomb Raider since it came out 20 years ago. And I went back and was one of those like, "Mother I can actually hear why people are saying that." But so, after wading through all of those,

here's a review I found on Amazon. And if you if you look at the bottom, they say, "This score seems overly intellectual instead of from the heart. I find the music lines lose me as a listener in the same way. What I'm trying to say is I feel lost. I feel I get lost listening to his newer scores without being able to remember the melodies. Go back and listen to Flow or Journey and you cannot forget the tunes." So, somehow the less melodic, more meditative score is more melodic than the explicitly trying to be melodic score. Uh At least Flow's on the list which is especially bizarre and helps me try to let it go because Flow is just overtly not melodic. Anyone who says so, I just don't even know where they're coming from. And this was probably the true culmination is literal side-by-side comments. "Very disappointing. It's lacking strong musical ideas. It sounds intellectual and not from the

heart. I think that might be the same person. And then immediately below it, like, I'm crying piles of tears and all this sort of So, I'm sitting here looking at this. And it's it dawns on me that it's possible to simultaneously fail and succeed. And that was something I had never thought about before or considered possible. So, the bottom line is when getting into the creative zone and the process, the big confession was that I try to let go of the whole outside world while writing. But then as soon as the writing is done, it be I turn into this monster that's scouring the world to see if I succeeded in my goal. Did I actually create what I thought I created based on what people are saying about it? And the confession really is that there are no good comes of this. This is not a healthy practice. We can't control what people are going to think. We can't control what their takeaway would be. As

my father used to say, you would worry a lot less what other people think if you realized how infrequently they do. Actually, I said that wrong and made it sound extremely asshole-ish. You would realize you would worry a lot less what people think of you if you realized how infrequently they do. So, basically, the bottom line is we should be grateful that anyone is listening at all and extremely grateful if they like it and then just accepts everything else. I'm going to turn it over now to a legend of game music as noted composer of classics, GoldenEye 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, about 40 million others, GRANT KIRKHOPE. HELLO. YES, SO THANKS FOR THAT. THANK YOU, AUSTIN. WHAT? YES, there'll be a Thank you. There'll certainly be chance for that at you know, getting you back at later

date, I'm sure. Yes, yes. So, I guess mine is going to be the slightly cynical version of this talk. Austin He said I was a cynical guy, so I'm a cynical guy. Depressed most of the time. So, my talk is like learning to let go, right? So, I think that like as composers, right, we think that we know the best always and who we're working for has not got a clue and they're just completely clueless and they don't know about music and all that. We know best and they're wrong. But like I think that like I slowly realized over the years that you can't think like that. Like the minute you you hire yourself out to somebody else, then they're probably going to tell you what to do and you probably better do it or you you're probably going to get fired and they're going to get Austin to do it instead. You know, so uh So, like that's my thing about like learning to let go of that ownership that I think that you just have to be prepared to be told that it's not what they want and you really should try to do it again and no amount of arguing with them is going to make any difference. It's just going to go, I don't like it and that's it. Um so, like um

compared to my composer self I'm dressed in my composer's t-shirt. So, you know, it's like trying to convince like an Ariana Grande fan to you know, to like Pantera. It's just probably not going to happen. So, it's it's I guess I learned that well, I guess I guess a long time ago, but it still irks me to this day that I people say, Grant, I think it's Just do it again. And like I really want to say, who the you think you are? I'm way better than you. But you got to go, of course I'll do it again. Of yes, I'd love to do it again like that, you know. So, I use the analogy of like you go to a restaurant and you've been saving up for ages for this great steak that you've heard about that you really want to have. And like you go to the restaurant, you sit down, the waiter comes across and like he says to you, what you going to have, sir? I'm going to have this fantastic steak. Can't wait for it. I've waited such a long time. And he goes away to the kitchen and he comes back a bit later. He says, look, me and the lads in the kitchen have had a bit of a chat and we've decided that we think you're going to like the chicken better. It's way better. And you're like, just a minute. I ordered the steak. I want the steak. I paid for the steak. And if you don't give me I'm going to go to somewhere else that someone will give me the steak. So, I think that's that's in a nutshell what I think about

that whole kind of composers know best thing cuz we probably do, but you know, you're never going to get that past lots and lots of people. Um that was that my bit there. Yes, right. Okay. Get used to smiling. So, I you know, when they do say it's not great and you just you don't you don't want to say you want to curse a lot, you just kind of smile and say, yes, I'll quite happily do it again. It's it's no problem at all. Um you know, I do think that um it's a really valuable skill to learn. Um like I was working for um I did a movie last year uh and um I I thought I got on great with the director. It was all going really fantastically well and all the little demos that I did on the scenes he loved and loved and loved and sent me emails, it's you nailed it. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I was thinking, oh yeah, I've done great here, you know, I'm really it's it's fantastic. So, we got to the I got invited to the mix thing at the big fancy mix stage, Atmos nonsense, all that stuff, you know. And um it started it it started to go, oh, it's too dark. Oh, it's dark. It's gone so dark. Everything's dark. Every The music's dark. The movie's dark. We've

got to change it. You know, we've got to change all of it. And like I was thinking, we just spent money recording the orchestra. It was all live orchestra. Yeah, you've got to change I want some fiddle. I need some fiddle in it. Jolly fiddle. Like, you know, really Celtic I was thinking, what the you know, there's nothing you didn't say anything about the fiddle, you know, when when we were writing it in the first place. And why do you want a bleepy fiddle in it now? Where am I going to get that from? I've got a mixed media with the orchestra. How am I going to do that? Like it was irrelevant. I couldn't say any of that. I just said, God, I love that fiddle. I'm going to go and get one right now. I'm going to slot it in there. You're not even going to notice it's different with the media and the orchestra. It's going to be perfect. I'm doing it. Like, you know, even though you want to go, Jesus Christ, man. Couldn't you have thought of that last year when we were pretty well doing it, you know, like why did you have to say it right now in the mix stage when everyone's sat there going, oh God, he's got a fiddle. Where's his fiddle? He needs You know, it's like that, right? So, I think that you have to get used to just letting go. And instead of going, what the booger are you talking about? I'd love to do that fiddle thing. I can't wait.

Um Yeah. Oh, yeah, here's here's another great one. Like marketing always knows best. So, like do you like in dev things, right? The dev team usually pretty separate to the marketing, like completely separate. So, you know, get used to the fact that you're probably not going to get to write the trailer, right? And I've had this argument a a few times and I always lose. I thought maybe won once um where, you know, you're going to say, wouldn't it be nice to have some of the themes from the game in the trailer? And the kind of marketing guy kind of goes, And why is that? Well, because you know, it's you've got themes from the game in the trailer. Yeah, but it's not a known IP. No one knows the themes, right? So, what's the point of that? So, you kind of you lose the argument by going, if it's Star Wars, you're probably going to want to going to want to hear the themes from Star Wars in the trailer. But when it's X game that no one's heard of before, who gives a right? Like we don't you know, we don't want to hear those themes because I've got this trailer piece that I've used 55 billion times before that I can give to my video editors right now. They can cut to the exact this generic Hey, you know, that right? So, like we've all heard it a million times, right? So, but yeah, the marketing guy

knows the piece. He's used it a bazillion times. The give it to the editors. They're going to just going to get on with it, right? And like no amount of you saying, but it wouldn't it be great with because it's easy for him, right? He doesn't have to wait for you to write the piece for the guys to cut the video to the piece you've written and maybe get it recorded by somebody. He can just give him this generic thing that he's used a billion times. Like I was actually in a project where the final trailer before the before the release of the game was this piece of music that he used lots of times after arguing lots of times and losing. And then he just literally a month later, there was a trailer for the next game that we're doing and in it was the exact same trailer piece that was on the one that we did. Like I was just like, you know. Why would you do that? But no one gives a No one really cares, right? It's not like no one's going to go, oh, I did that trailer piece was great and that trailer piece is bad. It's just a trailer, right? And you know, people spend lots and lots of money writing these gigantic pieces with like a 50 billion piece orchestra and a massive choir. You're never going to beat win that battle. So, you just have to go, Mr. Marketing, of course. Whatever you like to do. Let's just do that thing.

So, it's just getting used to that letting go of like the ownership cuz if you are a hired contracting person, just like hiring a pool guy or a gardener or a mechanic to do that job for you, that's what they're doing, right? They're hiring you to do that job and you may not get a look in on any of that stuff, right? It just could be taken away from you. And like you'll save yourself a lot of heartache if you get used to kind of going, all right, fair enough. Cuz I got really stressed about it a lot of times and fought over it and lost every bleepy time. So, that's Mr. Marketing guy. But that's not the way I wrote it. So, another example, the movie I did last time, like wrote the music, did the demo, he loved it, thought it was great. And then you go away and like a lot of times composers don't even get invited to the mix part, right? It could just be that you've done your job, you're you've been paid, goodbye, and you'll see it when it comes out in the in the theater, right? But I did turn up to I did get invited to the to mix thing. So, I did find that the producer guy decided that he thought this piece would go better there and he cut the end and put it at the start and then took a bit from the end and put it in the middle to link it together. And you're like, but that's

not the way I wrote it, right? Like, you know, I did that piece to to hit the beats here, hit that slap in the face, hit that gunshot. Like it's all just gone to cuz it's not there anymore, you know. And but nobody will love it. And you just there's no fight against that. You you're wasting your time going, but like I wrote the piece like that and so what? We like it like this. That's it, right? And you just you're done. There's no way you're going to win that that war. So, it's just getting used to let go of all that. And it is hard, right? I'm particularly bad at letting go of it. So, I'm kind of telling myself as I'm telling you guys, too. But I just think that it's a it's it's the just cuz you're a contract guy, right? You are just been you've been hired out and that's it. You just got to take it. You might not even get a look in on on this stuff. So, that's my thing about that. Yes, the boss is always right. So, like, you know, yeah, again, this movie I did last year. It's not a bad experience, right? I did have a good experience generally speaking. But I was in we're in the bleepy screening and Mr. head dude who was in in you know financing like Chinese guy and finance finance the entire thing Mr. Billionaire whatever he is. Like he spent most of the time arguing about where his name came in the

credits rather than like anything about the movie. He wanted to make sure that yes I'm I know that the credits the guy who comes last is the most important man. So I must be that big discussion went on and he made some passing comment about some music somewhere um that um was I can't remember the comment it was so flippant but the entire entourage around him shat themselves instantly. Oh my god rip it out he doesn't like it Mr. Dude our rats. So the whole thing gets it gets ripped out right in front of you. Yeah that's so he needs to sit there he's probably forgotten already what he's talked about but you know music has just been chucked into the into the bin and that's that's just gone right cuz he made us some kind of passing bizarre comment that no one understood but felt like just take it out right now with no it's it's off it's off and it's like that. So and yet again you've just got no say over it. You you soon realize in the picking order composers don't come very high. Like this is there's a whole mountain of people sat above you producers and all that nonsense above you who have got way more say than you have and they all themselves when the kid guy blinks right? So there's all that kind of you know

sitting in your little cave writing your music it's all nice and introverted and you're all sort of there it's all great. You need to take one step out of there you're in that land of real world where everyone's got an opinion and your opinion matters for nothing right a lot of the time. So that's another lesson that I learned very recently that you know you just not you just have to let go of it. There's no point crying about it or punching the director on the way out like which I was inclined to do. You know so it's a thing that I think you just have to kind of get used to the further you kind of go down the path of becoming a more of a established contracting composer. It's not as if there's anything else right? And of course you're happy about it right? So like you know so the gist of my segment here I guess is like let go of everything. You know you've written your music and sometimes you might get a say in the the end of it but a lot of the time you might just pass it off and never see it again as you see it in the finished product. And it might not be how you intended it to be. And you know I have to say that my my experience of writing music for 20 21 years has been pretty good. I've most I've got most of my way most of the time

but there are going to be events where you're just not going to win that battle and it's like you have to be prepared to say not get upset about it. And like I have got upset tons of times but I don't know I just think you have it's going to be the best lesson learned I think is to be able to say all right. I wrote it you sort of liked it it's in more or less how I wanted it wanted it to be and you know that thing you wrote that fits perfectly when the person sees it maybe in the movie theater or the game they don't know what you what you wrote in the first place. So what they see is what ended up being there and they don't don't know if you what what you wrote is better or not. So you just have to kind of accept the fact that that's it and you've you've lost that battle and get on with the next thing and just you know. So that's that's it about my little bit. All right that's all right. That's uplifting. We'll do uh we'll do closed captions uh for translating all that as well. Uh next major badass multi-instrumentalist composer Will Roget the second Esquire

of Deacons Hit Bournemouthshire uh known from uh work at LucasArts and The Old Republic to Tomb Raider and Temple of Osiris and recently a new The Distant Light. Cool so Star Wars: The Old Republic was my first AAA score and a big turning point in how I write for the orchestra. In this talk I'll cover some of the fundamental mistakes I made in my early approach to orchestration how I learned from them and how I've applied this knowledge to all my writing since then. I'd written several indie game scores before working at Lucas but The Old Republic was the first time I had a AAA score and my first time writing for live orchestra. We had a very tight deadline and so uh it was also my first time writing extensively for Star Wars. So there was a lot of pressure to get the John Williams sound right.

I used high quality samples for the mock-ups and my cues were approved. So conceptually the music worked well but I never had the experience of going from mock-up to live orchestra and I had no idea of the headaches that these cues would cause. I wrote for the sound not for the players and so I was in for a rude awakening. We had four other composers and a ton of music to get through in a short time. Some of my cues were played effortlessly with musicians reading beautifully on their first try but others easy pieces left them confused and grumpy and dissatisfied. So here's a few reasons why. My first problem was writing parts with awkward entrances and needlessly unnatural rhythms. Players would have to count several measures of rest before oddly timed entrances with no obvious backing and this led to very unconfident performances and unnecessary retakes. I had some cues like you see here.

This is real by the way this is not made up. Some cues were instruments that just had very inconsequential parts writing half the piece just to play only a short passage. Again this is because I focused only on the sound and not on the performance or the players. And I had some generally dissatisfying parts as well which which sounded great in samples but didn't work when played live. In this instance as you see the harp just plays a single tremolo throughout the whole cue and it was a great texture for the ice planet Hoth but in practice it was very boring and very static and honestly just unacceptable to give to a professional player who'd studied their whole life. And speaking of harp so harpists play accidentals via pedals that transpose all notes of a kind. Here I tried a harmonic shift between two hexatonic modes which is a very Star Wars-y technique but unfortunately this

required six pedal changes at once and yeah. Most harpists only have two feet so it was actually impossible to play. Yeah. And lastly I had some cues that I just simply didn't proofread closely enough when I got them back from our orchestration team. One piece had incorrect dynamics at the end turning an ambient piece unexpectedly violent. And another just had very glitched rhythms where you know we had to fix it at the podium which is a huge time waste. I learned from these mistakes and studied other scores with a focus on performance. Before my next score for a Star Wars: First Assault I developed strategies to make sure that the parts were playable sight readable and enjoyable. Here's some of those techniques. The first principle I followed was to just make sure everyone has at least

something interesting to do in each cue. Previously I might have allowed a harp part to be nothing but glisses for an entire cue but in this example I made sure that they had some melodic doubling to keep things interesting. Avoid writing awkward entrances at all costs. These again can lead to unconfident performances. If you need a rhythmic elements and a neat trick to try is write it in 4/4 but use couplets or syncopation. Here the strings have scattered entrances but it's easy to count in 4/4 especially with the harp doubling. Make sure brass isn't being abused with constant fortissimo. Horns especially need time to rest particularly if you need them to make a big entrance later on. So in this example from Lara Croft actually I removed them from the texture at measure eight using a trombone to support the trumpet so that the horns can come in full force later on.

Try writing in fun challenges that sound more difficult than they actually are showcasing the players' versatility. A good habit is to study instrumental etudes to get to know what's guaranteed to be mastered by a professional. For example these wind runs and arpeggio arpeggiandos for violas. Try using cues to provide alternate textural options. When recording you can easily adjust dynamics or tacit instruments but you can't really add new parts. Using cues allows you to thicken the textures if necessary. For example expanding a solo to a full section. You should take into account not just the performance but also the venue. For Star Wars: First Assault we were at Abbey Road which is big enough to seat an entire orchestra in two different configurations. We had two factions in the game so we recorded Imperial music in portrait and Rebel music in landscape. So to wrap things up the most important thing is to talk to musicians about any

questionable parts. Ideally befriend someone from every section and get their feedback for whatever you're not comfortable with before it hits the copyist. Their input is invaluable. And as a final note I also found that keeping reality and player psychology in mind helps with sampled orchestral cues too. Write interesting parts for both foreground and background keeping in mind live player limitations and the sampled cue will always sound more realistic. Thanks. So probably all of us uh saw Mick win GDC yesterday. So, I don't really need to say anything. So, Mick Gordon.

Where in this did you find that room? My name is Mick Gordon. And I have no idea what you're talking about. The first developer came to me and said, "We want some music, you see. It needs to be modern, catchy, groovy, and cool." No problem, I said. I know exactly what to do. So, I went to my studio and I worked all night on a dubstep song. Wubs from left to right. I emailed them back with the finished track. I made a dubstep track for you. I look forward to your feedback. "No, no, no." They said, "This is not the music we wanted. You misread. It was chiptune music we wanted. Modern, catchy, groovy, and cool. That's was what we wanted from you." The sec- The second developer came to me and said, "We want some music, you see. It needs to be have squa- needs to have square waves, have noise, and be retro, too." No problem, I said. I know exactly what to do.

So, I went to my studio and I worked all night on chiptune music. Bit crushing from left to right. I emailed them back with the finished track. I made chiptunes for you. I look forward to your feedback. "No, no, no." They said, "This is not the music we wanted, you egghead. Sine waves, noise, and retro, too. It was heavy metal we wanted from you." The third developer came to me and said, "We want some music, you see. It needs to be aggressive, fast, and hair-raising, too." No problem, I said. I know exactly what to do. So, I went to my studio and I shredded all night. Nine-string guitars panned left and right. I finished the track and emailed them back. I made some metal for you. I look forward to your feedback.

"No, no, no." They said, "This is not the music we wanted, you knucklehead. Aggressive, fast, and hair-raising, too. Something like Bach is what we wanted from you." The fourth developer came Well, hang on. Sorry. The fourth developer came to me and said, "We want some music, you see. It needs to be bespoke, baroque, and counterpoint, too." No problem, I said. I know exactly what to do. So, I went to the organ and I played all night doing my best Bach impression. Semicuavers left to right. I emailed them back with the finished track. I made some organ music for you. I look forward to your feedback. "No, no, no." They said, "This is not the music we wanted. You're dead." They didn't really say that. It's just

the best picture I could find. "Bespoke, baroque, and have counterpoint, too. We wanted a full orchestra from you, not just an organ, you fool." The fifth developer came to me and said, "We want some music, you see. It needs to be epic, massive, and guttural, too." No problem, I said. I know exactly what to do. So, I looked at my budget, and my budget was tight. But, I recorded the orchestra anyway. A hundred-piece from left to right. I emailed them back with the finished track. Here is the orchestra. I look forward to your feedback. "No, no, no." They said, "This is not the music we wanted, Epic, massive, and guttural, too. It is dubstep we wanted from you." Despair set in. Rejection after

rejection. I was failing in my ability to interpret direction. Developers were giving me the best direction that they could. And I was frustrating them because I completely misunderstood. You see, a composer-client relationship is a relationship, all right. Without proper communication, it ends up in a fight. Without a shared common creative language, you're completely alien to each other. You're not able to tell when you're wrong or when you're right. But, if you get to know each other, you'll understand each other. And you'll be able to combine your might. When they say jump, you'll already know how high. The two of you will become partners in crime. So, get to know each other really well. Become a great team. And when it comes to music time, you're going to succeed.

So, get to know your clients, be friends, and share a joke. That is the key to success, my friends. That's all, folks. I had no idea that was going to happen. That was awesome. Uh the the king of indies, Hyper Light Drifter, Fez, and 40,000 others, Rich Vreeland, aka Disasterpiece. Hey, guys. So, uh my talk is called Curveballs. I often find uh the beginning of a project to be the most exciting period. There's a sense that anything is possible. Which has often propelled me down many avenues in search of the thing.

Along the way, Murphy's law, that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, kicks in. And I rarely end up where I intended. Sometimes projects turn out worse. But, often in my experience, they turn out different. Or better. During the course of my work on a thing, there tends to be a psychological transition from an exciting beginning of boundless possibility to a starker, more responsible reality. You bring an idea out of the ether and give it life. It gradually frames itself. And the edges come into view. And increasingly, the thing, as I've so lovingly called it, solidifies. This process is a necessary part of the work. And it's a part of life, too, right? We have little choice but to persist through the unending number of curveballs thrown our way. Starting with being born. And so, we do our best to adapt.

The curveballs often take us down paths we would never take. Or could have never imagined. They open doors for us that would otherwise remain closed. And they lead us to new conclusions. They change us. In my opinion, this malleable process is often necessary to complete a work. Regardless of whether we see or believe in it at the time. I find that only in the days that follow can I truly begin to comprehend its meaning. When starting work on a new project, I often set off in the first direction that sparks my curiosity. I try to keep the utilitarian needs of a video game in mind. But, if I'm staring down a new idea, I seize it as an exciting challenge. This tendency of mine perpetuates a myth I can't help but tell myself time and time again.

This will work. Right? Before I know it, I might be neck deep in an esoteric cobweb of systems. Or sinking large units of time into something wonderful. Or wonderfully inappropriate. I'm guilty of occasionally forgetting that when working on a project with real-world restraints, my ideas have to be grounded in that same reality. So, I spent a few years creating music and sound for a game called Hyper Light Drifter. During this time, I had a dream that I would write long, artfully composed pieces of music. They would move effortlessly from idea to idea. All while All while evoking the perfect expression every step of the way. I wanted to write these songs at the piano and notate them completely before even thinking about the electronic production or how they would be even be

implemented in a video game. Here, I had created a set of goals for myself, which is often something I do during a project. But, this time, they ended up not suiting me or the project at all. Uh fir- first off, I hated using software notation. Uh and I wasted a lot of time inefficiently grumbling my way through it. Second, the piano pieces I'd written with all their shifts in tempo, energy, and tone were very hard to translate to electronic sound. They were kind of uh glued to the the sound of the piano. I underestimated the difficulty of recreating the essence of a performance from a completely different context. I've transferred pieces to new instruments before and thinking this was no different, or assuming, I took it for granted. Lastly, the compositional style was not nearly agile enough to keep up with

contextual changes during gameplay. For example, the player would move into a new area and start doing a new thing. And the music would be off somewhere else expressing some other idea. It was really hard to find that, by the way. I was surprised. It seems obvious looking back, but at the time I thought I could pull it off. The path I had chosen proved to be a long, brambly one with a big dead end sign. It was emotionally tough to put so much time and effort into an unsuccessful direction and it took a while to pick myself up and set out again. I only stumbled into the right solution when I was thrown a curveball. The developer decided to create a demo and I suddenly needed to drop what I was doing and write music for a very large vertical slice of the game in a very short period of time. Granted, it was a curveball I was aware of, but due to poor planning, it crept

up on me in a way that I think still serves the purpose of this talk. Feeling urgency, I had to forego my agenda and just write something. Anything. And and put it in the game. This simple process yielded the best results and changed the trajectory of the project for me. And so I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes I am too precious about my work. I tend to inflate the importance of ideas I've devised before they've ever proven themselves to work. And sometimes it's hard for me to let go of those expectations and move forward. Towards the end of Hyper Light Drifter, as the pressure really started to mount and I was struggling creatively, I picked up a mantra. Broad strokes. Painting with broad strokes has often

been counterintuitive for me and it still is. The rabbit hole is my favorite pitfall, pun intended. But, by prototyping my work in practice, not in a vacuum, and saving detail-oriented decisions for later, I've started to save lots of time. The curveballs are frequent now, but they are more useful than ever. Thank you. Finally, a titan of our industry, The Order, Tomb Raider, Dead Space, etc., etc., etc. Jason Graves. I hope you guys are having as much fun as we are up here cuz honestly, we didn't know what anybody was going to be

talking about. So, how many composers have we got out there? Hands up. All right, how many of you folks are basically terrified of failing all the time? Hands up. Yeah. My name is Jason Graves and uh I'm addicted to attempting to fail. This is composer confessions and my confession is um I really love to push boundaries and I don't feel like I'm really doing that if I'm not on the precipice of getting fired. You know, like how far can I go with what they're talking about, with what they want. Oh my gosh, that's still up there. All right. Prepare Now, there's been some really nice presentations so far, but I I mean, Austin saved the the best graphics interface and everything for last.

So, I'm going to talk about a couple of different games from a franchise called Dead Space and a lot of this is probably unknown because it was all behind the scenes stuff, but I'm going to give a couple of examples and then I'm going to talk about why I love the idea of setting setting yourself up for possible failure. I hate that word failure and I know it was in composer confessions, but I see it as more like opportunity than anything else. So, Dead Space 3, I believe, um no uh where where the audio was not there. No, that's audio, but Yeah, I'm I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. So, this is all music that was not used in the game. But it was all recorded live.

And at one point in time there was going to be this giant spaceship, I'm not making this up, a giant spaceship of redneck like truckers from space that you were going to be doing things with. We were going to do country songs, like space cowboy country songs. We were going to have all kinds of crazy sort of country influence kinds of things in the score and those of you who are not familiar with Dead Space, it's very organic sounds that are completely messed up in a very natural way. People just playing their instruments wrong. So, as a result, I had two weeks of recording in Nashville with electric guitars, accordions, harmoniums, pedal steel players, vocalists, all kinds of experimental stuff that I just sort of pulled some things real quick to to play. This is more the ambient stuff, but there was action in there as well and it's all country music. It's just, you know, the the perverted version of country music and it was really one of those moments where I was like, this is the third one. I feel like I want to do something a

little bit different and they want to do country, so how far can I push it before they just, you know, say you're in you're in crazy, you don't you can't do that. And this was the result and everyone seemed to like it a lot, but there was a lot of internal shifting, if any of you remember when Dead Space 3 came out. It was a little confused. It wasn't sure, is it horror, is it action? What's what's kind of going on and the the audio director that came in was like, "No, we don't want any country stuff." and just just cut everything. And it was it was a lot of music. It was a lot of, you know, me pouring my heart into it and working with all these players and learning all these new techniques. It didn't make it into the game and oh gosh, I haven't figured out anything to do with it yet, but it introduced me to Nashville and I became friends with Alan there who's the contractor and also plays violin and I've been there five or six times recording orchestral scores and small pickup things and that was all through hanging out with him while we were recording this Dead Space 3 stuff and it's really one of those whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger and

I try to push as hard as I can, no matter how scary it might be or how much I'm convinced that I don't know how I'm going to make this work. If I'm not in that position mentally, then it's almost like that's when I operate my best. That's when I'm really feeling charged and trying to do something really different. So, I'm going to go backwards to Dead Space 1, which originally had a much different idea in terms of the tone of the gameplay and I think it's really cool being composers up here. Our music is so influential in how people feel when they play the game and the original Dead Space wasn't necessarily super scary. It had more of a um action kind of feel. This is what they wanted. But it never really worked. We ended up

deciding to throw out like 30 minutes of music and go with the opposite kind of approach where there's no rhythm, there's no melody, there's like what can you do to terrify the player the most. I'm I love talking over my own music if you haven't noticed. So, this is what we ended up doing instead. Awkward pause. Awkward pause. It's coming. Now, the interesting thing about this music, the first track was all done in MIDI with me in my own studio. Um to do the scary stuff, they wanted to have control over the music, but they wanted it to be scary and there were no alien word libraries back then and I the audio director at the time, Don Veca, said, "Well, how can you give us the scariest music in the world, but let us have control over it?" And I was like,

"No, if if you want to do something like that, you're going to need to go and give me all the live budget up front, let me go record the orchestra playing all these different sounds and things and then give me months, cut it all up and put it together into something and maybe give you a demo after that." But it was like like six-month plan at the least, thinking of course he would never go for it and he's like, "Yeah, man, let's do that." Which that was the ultimate like setting myself up, you know, enough rope to hang yourself and all that kind of stuff. And I was terrified the entire time I was working on the job. I was going to GDC talking on a panel and in between my panel and the next panel I was going to attend. I was going back to my hotel room and working on orchestration and trying to figure out what to do with the players, but I learned so much from all of that unknown territory at first that I was just completely terrified of. And of course, everyone says, "Well, that's why the music's so scary." No, it's it's scary cuz I grew numb to making. It's not scary enough. I have to make it scarier. But just having

that sort of drive to do something different and to really get it under my fingers and feel confident that about halfway through the project, maybe, you know, I think this is going to work. I think it's going to work. And then usually by the time everything's finished, it ends up working, but it's not something that's been completely intentional. It's not something I think that any of us are feeling like, "Oh man, we've got this, you know. Don't sweat." I mean, maybe we've got the martini glass and we're like, "I know exactly what you want. Don't worry about it." But inside, we're terrified because we're trying something new. And I've seen people from Jerry Goldsmith to John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, I mean, any of these amazing media composers talk about how terrified they are at being creative, trying something new, putting yourself out there. But the more you do it, you're still terrified all the time, but at least you have a little bit of a background like, "Okay, I've done it before. I know I'm going to somehow do it again." And you just keep moving forward and you use all that stuff that you learned from the last time you internally almost were fired even though

no one thought that. And it's the next gig and you're starting over and pushing yourself and learning more. So, I'm going to end with a little emoji thing and when we get to the last slide? Okay, great. Austin. All right. I We have 10 minutes for questions. Thank you all. Have at it. Smartin. Yeah. Yeah. Austin, this question's for you. Oh god. Well, based on Can I go back to Jason's slides? Slides. Based on your well-documented ability to write really relaxing music, I was wondering if you have considered maybe switching to a lucrative career writing for Muzak and spa meditation CDs. Well, I just resell the stuff I do write and it I don't have to even switch careers. Thanks for that, though.

Hey guys, that was a great presentation. Um this question is for all of you when you have multiple projects you're working on, especially when they involve different styles like one game is going to be completely orchestral and another project is going to be like death metal, electronica. How do you approach that? Like, what's your process? Anyone? Um for me, I I I try to build up a little bit of momentum on individual projects so that I can give myself like a buffer zone to kind of get into that headspace. Um so, you know, I might I might work on one thing for a week at a time and then switch if But you kind of have to figure it out based on the, you know, what the projects are and what the requirements are, but that seems to work for me. Cuz I could say panic, probably. Yeah, right. About all the thing you need to do. It's like a million different styles and like everyone wants it tomorrow. Like everyone wants it like yesterday, you know. So, I think that you do panic a little bit, but I think panic's probably quite healthy and it gets you going. Um but, you know, nothing you do

is ever going to work out like you think it's going to work out. Everything you're going to do is always going to go wrong somewhere. It's always going to be like, "I'm going to manage it and then I'm not going to manage it and you're going to yourself and think I'm never going to get there." So, it's never going to be perfectly scheduled out so you're going to get time to work on everything. You just got to panic and get on with it. So, like the Make a start. Yeah, time-wise is one problem, but for me it's sometimes just conceptually getting yourself back into that sound world. And like being can be very challenging. I I can add that I I for what it's worth, I really love when I have juxtaposed projects that are radically unlike each other because the whiplash of shifting gears actually helps make each direction of travel feel fresher. If cuz if I wrote nothing but the or, you know, the big sweeping orchestral thing, then that it would certainly get stale and flat immediately. But if in the middle of that, you know, we're interleaving all these forays into other stuff. For me, I'm I'm wired to benefit from that. I I like it. So, to

me, the problem you're identifying is a good situation. Yeah. Also, just ask Jason to to hug him. He does that quite a bit. We're going to share the mic cuz I've got four mics down there. I've I've found that splitting it up, just an entire day dedicated to one project and then I'm finished that day on that project and then I start thinking about the other project for the next morning. By the time I get up in the morning, I'm completely dedicated to that second project or even at extreme times, it's been split during the day, but I say at 12:30, I'm working on the other one. And I try to do the best I can to mentally compartmentalize those. Okay. Thanks, guys. Hey guys. Um so, question uh this is from coming from a non-professional composer. I'm a game dev that doesn't actually do a com- composition. Um so, back before the technology became what it was today, um people tended to have different areas of games that had loops and it was like a 30-second loop or a minute loop of music. Thinking back to like the Zelda N64 days. Um It's still very much how we

do things. Fair. Um so, a lot of the melodies that were there are very you recognize them. You hear it, you're like, "Oh, that's that area of this game." Um with all these ambient layers and stuff going on, how do you try to keep melodies that you can recognize and that people can recognize uh in new games that require that to use that new technology? Well, I apparently don't write melodic scores. So, I I'm not qualified to answer here. I actually have an answer that um might be a little upstream, but I think it's actually up to the design of the game. Because what I always find is important is to just identify moments in the game where you can bring music to the forefront rather than trying to have every single piece be like listen incredibly melodic. I don't think that, you know, that really works with games anymore. But what you can do, for example, um how many people here have played Red Dead Redemption? And you know exactly where I'm going with this. You soon as you go to Mexico and it plays that beautiful song, that's a musical moment that everyone remembers. And that didn't come about

because they said like, "Oh yeah, let's have like this the awesome song, you know, all the time." No, they identified a moment in the story and in the gameplay where this would work. And they cut out the AI and they made sure you couldn't get attacked or whatever. But everyone kind of came together and they planned for it. So, it's actually something that you as a designer can help as well. Yeah, if you pick your spots and you underline certain moments, it kind of gives them, you know, it it can give those moments more I guess gravitas. And it's a good thing to can be a good thing to do with melodies so that uh you know, you kind of remember those melodies. Yeah, I think also a simple trick that I use a lot in uh both Journey and Abzu, but I I use it in general, is uh I treat melodies as big as one-shots uh often in when entering an area to the point of like the Red Dead Redemption example, but it can be even within a single queue where, you know, player comes over the hill, we announce a big melody, but when it loops, the melody doesn't loop with it and the the sort of support accompaniment backing track,

whatever, does loop, which is by design more sort of simple or or ambient or whatever the case. So, that it feels like you've just made this giant statement, but you're also not just bludgeoning it to death because that actually ends up taking away from it. My favorite example is I love to take like a 10-second excerpt of The Rite of Spring and then just loop it over and over to see just how fast it becomes the from one of the best things ever written to one of the worst things ever written. And so, like the loopingness is the is the problem. Uh it's not designed for that. So, figuring out ways to be able to make your big statement and then not, you know, uh beat it to death. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I think I tend to beat it to death most of the time. And that's why when we go to PAX, everyone comes to ask for your autograph. Don't stop that. Sir, Mr. Colvin. Hello. Um so, I'm a developer and I've been that person who's giving the feedback and uh that person that's been giving the briefs. So, sorry, guys.

Um I just wanted to ask, what kinds of brief uh do you wish you got from developers that you don't get? Oh, that's great question. I'm just I'm just going to jump straight in there. The the the thing that annoys me the most is when you're pitching on a project and they give you a single page that describes the game in a very high level way and they go, "So, what would the main theme sound like?" You have no clue what the main theme's going to sound like. You have a single page to work from, you know? To me, the main theme's often the last thing that comes from the project. Um and often, you know, the the composer that they choose to go with can often be selected from that round. And And that's kind of a kind of a really weird thing for me. Um but it's just kind of what I was talking about, just getting to know everybody and things like that. The The point I was trying to make there is so, when you say to a composer, "I want you to make it grand," your definition of grand is completely understood by the composer that you're working with. I mean, what I mean is grand, what Rich thinks is grand, what you think is grand is very, very different. So, it's having that shared common creative language that's very important. It's always good to like ask for, you

know, some YouTube links or some MP3s or things that you think might suit the style of game you're working on or whatever may be. So, at least it puts you in the right direction rather than just kind of going, "I worked for somebody who said, you know, I don't know what the music's to sound like, but I'll know it when I hear it." And that's a bit like, I could be here till next Christmas writing this music, you know. It's completely useless. But you get a guy who sends you four YouTube a one YouTube clip of something that he likes. Like, you get that straight away. You understand it, right? You know? And sometimes getting briefs with no MP3s is a bit crap because you don't know what they really mean by what they're saying. I've got red briefs got that I need to pitch for and thinking that they're asking for some bizarre combination of something plus hip hop, which it seems to be all the time now. Whatever you write, write jazz but with a hip hop beat. Write big band with a hip hop Whatever it is, right? So, like it seems to be stick hip hop in it, whatever it is. And so, you know, it's just it's just senseless. They need to send you something I got someone sent me a thing he said, "We we want something that isn't like this, but it's got the right energy." And I was like, "Well, what what on earth is that all about, right?" So, just send send a couple of YouTube clips or or some MP3s that you think are

in the right direction. At least give us a clue. Right. I'll try. All right, I think we can probably take one last one here and then we're out. Sort of a personal question. Sorry, Jesse. I actually just wanted to give an answer to this guy. All right. You can do that in your own time, Jesse. Get your own time. Um if you can name two people, one uh uh modern era composer or artist um that you really admire, and um previous era composer that For me, one of the Stravinsky, so Yeah. S- several previous eras. Uh for me, Jerry Goldsmith is is sort of king of kings. Uh but today these days I have to say I am in the the the club of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Devontez. That's my answer. Well, you see Come on. Come on, Gravesy. It's your turn.

COME ON. UM UM WELL, MODERN day um I really I love John Williams. I I just classical um you know, semi-modern, yeah. Thank you. Um Uh I'm I'm sticking with films. I'll Well, no, Stravinsky. I love Stravinsky. Ballet suites and all that stuff, that's what I first listened to. I love how programmatic it is and through-composed. And uh it reminds me of uh film music. It tells a story. Yeah, I mean John Williams is God, without a doubt. Um and I guess uh I'm quite I'm a bit metal fan, so I guess like Queen's Reich or something like that or Judas Priest. That's something that I like. Uh probably I'd probably headbang quite happily to that for all day long. Um and I guess like Vaughan Williams and Elgar are kind of classical guys that I really like a lot. I mean, I'm I'm another Stravinsky guy, but to list another name, uh Hindemith is one of my all-time favorite um classical composers, early 20th century. And as far as modern folks, um Yoko Kanno is probably my favorite by far. Any other composer for those who

I I don't really have an answer. To me, it's all just music. I I love everything. I There's not one specific thing that I like and one specific thing that I don't like. Uh it's all the same notes on the page to me, so I don't have anything. I'm sorry, it's a lame answer. I'm going to be a little weird. I uh I def- I listen I'm kind of similar cuz I listen a lot of music and and maybe nothing particular stands out, but but what does stand out for me is actually um artists in other mediums. So, I was think actually thinking of Miyazaki and uh Moebius, who like for some reason visual art kind of speaks to me and kind of inspires me to to write music, so. Uh thanks all for coming.