Claws and Chaos!
Claws and Chaos! As a phantom presence in several amazing Video Game soundtracks over the years, I have actually never had a credit in the industry as composer proper until this very day! The album was released this morning, and the game itself will be available tomorrow on Steam. The game is a cutesy, tongue-in-cheek little autobattler called Claws and Chaos. One of the artists brought me on because I was working on another project with her, and it was such a lovely change of pace from the other two behemoths I’ve been working on these past few years – not to mention a wonderful collaboration with great people! I was originally asked to deliver six minutes of music, given the small scope of the game. I fell so in love with the developers and the game itself that I ended up doubling that, scoring nearly ever major cutscene in the single-player campaign as well. This album is special to me for another reason than it simply being my first game OST as composer: I managed to rope in big names that really did not have to take the time to even notice this project, let alone work on it. One was the now industry-famous swiss army knife woodwind player Kristin Naigus. One was Austin Wintory’s multi-talented assistant Dallas Crane, who plays a mean Trumpet and Flugelhorn (he’s also comfortable improvising, which is an incredibly valuable and rare skill as a musician!). And the most insane of all was the legendary Steve Kempster, whose credits include things like Bourne films, Enemy of the State, National Treasure, Twister, Remember the Titans and Ori: Will of the Wisps. And of course, my mother plays violin, managing to hold her own even in the Jazz Improv world. As a result of these heavy-hitters and the irreverance of the game, the album ended up an ecclectic little oddity. It often plays the straight man to the game’s zaniness, but also isn’t afraid to go full Looney-Toons with it. There’s even a Sailor-Moon-esque adaptation of the B section of the main theme as the final track, which doubles as the boss fight underscore and credit sequence. I have more amazing things to share before the year is out, but in the meantime check out the official project/album page here! If you’re looking for more BTS material, I do have a version with commentary on youtube below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_D3WZX6IM
Hidden Crunch
Hidden Crunch One of the downsides of being a freelance composer is that you invariably run into hidden crunch. When you have multiple clients (by necessity, in order to sustain your income), none of them really have any idea about what else you have going on. So deadlines can start to compound and overlap in very inconvenient ways. In my experience, this happens more often than not. It’s just one of those realities of being a freelancer. There aren’t really a lot of ways to mitigate this, either, because deadlines are deadlines and there’s rarely much you can do other than A) be transparent about the situation to all parties and/or B) hire on additional help to pick up the pace. A won’t always do much, because clients have deadlines too and can’t always wait on you. And often times, particularly in your early career, B is out of reach financially. So quite often, you simply end up overworked, overstressed and with deteriorating mental and physical health. Even when you love what you do, it can be overwhelming and can threaten to sap the very joy out of it. Ideally, what happens as you progress through your career is that B becomes more attainable because you’re earning more money, and A also becomes more effective because you don’t have to take on quite as many projects in order to stay afloat. But a lot of people don’t ever get there. In fact, it’s a pretty extreme minority of people who end up in that enviable position within the industry. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I am actually turning down work on occasion, but I also am nowhere near that lovely sweet spot. This is one of the many reasons why most people can’t or won’t stick it out until their career takes off. Frankly, I don’t have an answer for how to solve this problem. The old addage “if it were easy, anyone would do it” does indeed apply here, but I am also the first to recognize that sacrificing health for a career is a pretty toxic mentality, whether it’s necessary in the short term or not. This cognative dissonance is something I meditate on quite often. This is also further complicated by the fact that I, personally, have had some of my best experiences on projects where I’m putting in 16+ hour days and sprinting like mad. This has been the case on everything from being a lowly copyist on AAA films and games to writing my own stuff: being in the zone and putting everything you’ve got into something that you love is an amazing feeling. I am certainly not alone in this either, as most of the more successful people I know are like this too. So it’s a complicated issue. This is also a big part of the reason why I haven’t posted anything for the past few months. Rest assured, though, that once I’m out of this insane sprint and after perhaps the first full-week vacation I’ve had in something like seven years, I will have a mountain of things to post and talk about all over my website and social media. Until then, wish me luck!
Mahlerfest 2024
Mahlerfest 2024 One of the things that helps to break up my parade of professional composition projects is this glorious annual celebration of Mahler’s works. Professional musicians come from all over the country for the opportunity to play in this unique festival, and the results speak for themselves. I’ve been a percussionist for decades now, but these days I am so busy with composition and arranging that this ends up being really my only steady time to be on stage anymore. And every time, it’s both a joy and quite terrifying. It really forces you to play up when you’re around all these pros. But man, the feeling you get when you’re performing the climax of the second or eighth or even fifth is nothing short of exhilirating. This year is no exception, though it is punctuated by the addition of Strauss’ Alpine Symphony! Soon I will return to my (thankfully) plentiful composition projects, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to this magnificent orchestra and the opportunity it offers me every year to be so enriched by its presence. If you are in the Denver or Boulder area or really anywhere in Colorado, I highly encourage you to check it out. Details are below.
Heir to the Empire
Heir to the Empire I’ve been following along with the new Star Wars material by Disney as a life-long fan of the franchise. As a result, it has not gone unnoticed that they are dropping a lot of hints for fans of the Expanded Universe novels (now called Star Wars: Legends) that Thrawn is about to become the new big bad. Obviously I’m very excited about that, but simultaneously it filled me with a bit of sadness and nostalgia, because the original Thrawn story is something we’ll never actually get. The cast is too old (in some cases no longer with us), and the franchise’s sensibilities have all but moved on. Therefore, I was inspired to write an original soundtrack for the book that started it all; the book that had me totally enraptured and obsessed at the tender age of eight and eager for more EU stories. Well, I’m pleased to say that samples have evolved to a point where I can (reasonably) confidently do this! My plan is to treat this as though it were a movie adaptation of the novel, since it is itself based on a movie franchise. So it follows, naturally, that full orchestra will be the bread and butter of the score, borrowing heavily from John Williams’ style and sensibilities (mainly extremely virtuosic and thematic orchestral work, but also jazz here and there). However, there are some fun, unique opportunities in this story that will allow me to venture into new territory with things like synth and world music, borrowing from the new direction the franchise’s sound has taken with projects like The Mandalorian and Jedi Survivor. Should be a fun time, though a bit intimidating! The first tracks are available via the link to the album below. So much of this book reads like slightly harder scifi than Star Wars normally is, so while I’m largely using the JW brush, I’m also being very judicious about where music should be as opposed to writing wall-to-wall. This is a massive project, and I’ll never be able to profit off of it, so it’ll take quite a bit of time. But I’m having a blast with it, and it’s really pushing my mockup and writing abilities! Below, you’ll find the album page, which will have the mp3s, links to the youtube album and evenutally some BTS content as well on youtube. I’m releasing track-by-track rather than all at once due to these circumstances. Whether you’re a fan of the book or Star Wars in general, I hope you enjoy!
GDC Developer’s Concert
GDC Developer’s Concert One of the many wonderful things about working for Austin Wintory is being along for the ride when he invariably and anually makes history. This year was no exception: he was the mastermind behind the first-ever GDC devleoper’s concert! I had the privelage of working on four of these charts: the two big medleys, God of War and Celeste (the last of which was my arrangement featured at the World Soundtrack Awards, but paired down to a smaller ensemble). The biggest challenge was Austin’s insistence on keeping the big opening medley brutally short in its callouts, which made the transitions extremely challenging to pull of for both myself and the musicians! A lot of these charts proved to be fun challenges, some of my favorites being the ones that weren’t already orchestral. The stand-out in that regard is the Modern Warfare 3 theme, where I have the orchestra immitating the wonkey, harsh synths in the beginning with quarter-tone ad-lib slides in the strings and flutters in the brass. Speaking of musicians, the ones onstage simply crushed it in a very demanding setlist and with only 2 brief runthroughs! The concertmaster was the legendary Paul Cartwright, someone I’ve greatly admired ever since he did a lot of solo work on Bear’s Battlestar Galactica score many years ago. So it was a particular treat to get to meet him backstage! Also worthy of mention was Laura Intravia, pulling triple duty on Flute, Piccolo and a suprisingly amazing operatic voice! Also Kristin Naigus, traditionally accompanied by her small army of winds. The section players were all conservatory students, if you can believe it! San Francisco Conservatory. They did every bit as well as a group of professionals would have in their place. I was actually worried in a couple of spots that it was a bit too technical for so little rehearsal time, but they just crushed it. Dallas Crane, Austin’s assistant, handled the Bioshock chart at the end and did an amazing job closing out the concert, featuring an inceredible vocal solo from Troy Baker. I had heard his voice before on my time working with Stray Gods, but I had no idea he could really open up like that. He absolutely brought the house down, with a fantastic improvised fiddle solo from Cartwright. Here’s hoping this becomes a regular event, because it was easily one of the highlights of GDC for me! Full concert on youtube below! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wNHW50J0UI
Celeste at the World Soundtrack Awards
Celeste at the World Soundtrack Awards The honors just keep coming! This time I had the pleasure not only of arranging Lena Raine’s iconic music from the indie game Celeste, but also had the pleasure of e-meeting her and collaborating a bit! The brilliance of this music is apparent, but what was less apparent was how I was going to approach arranging this for live players, given its reliance on synth and the unique compositional opportunities that presents. She was adamant that she didn’t want a medley and instead wanted me to focus only on the main theme, featured in First Steps and Reach for the Summit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8OHSXvneOE&list=PLe1jcCJWvkWiWLp9h3ge0e5v7n6kxEfOG&index=2 So from there, I decided to really delve deep into orchestration for First Steps, giving pretty much everyone a chance to shine. Reach for the Summit required a more direct approach, because there are actually strings in that bit, and the chugging ostinato works just as well in a live context. You’ll note I added things like a wind machine and brass players blowing through their instruments during the transition, which was fun. A lot of orchestration and arranging inspirations went into this one, but the biggest I would say are the amazing piano arrangements by Trevor Alan Gomez. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZEW4X7RGMs&list=PLczA8pMWxlsF1D00-GoHXtcmSJE9CxWEl&index=11 And of course, I couldn’t end without using a Celesta. It is Celeste, after all. 😛 And to my everlasting joy, the performance was recorded! That’s below. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_LLVxQBXQA
Fear of the Unknown Part II!
Fear of the Unknown, Part II! A while back, I wrote about my friend Thomas Eliot’s new one-shot tabletop horror RPG, and the theme I wrote for it which doubled as the theme for his horror podcast “Invasion of the Pod People.” One year later, I finally had the time to realize my initial vision: to write a full-fledged companion album for the game, which of course includes the main theme. Thomas’ initial direction was “Write a film score that’s a marriage of John Carpenter and Harry Manfredini.” For those of you horror film buffs, this provided a truly exciting opportunity to marry two very distinct styles…and also flaunt a bit of my super nerdy film score appreciation. Everyone knows Manfredini’s score to Friday the 13th: full of orchestral aleatory, piano and crucially, of analog delay, mainly used in the series’ most noteable auditory calling card: ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma (derived from kill them, mommy). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CDWUUjgCog&list=PLXXCnjDGjgNKFQpMh5XjaFhOU0COaCGGJ&index=5 What you may not know, though, is that Manfredini is on record stating that he owed a lot of this score’s success to Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien (1979), which happens to be one of my favorite horror scores of all time with a fascinating backstory that I’ll not get into here. What’s important is, if you take a listen to that OST, you’ll immidiately see why he made that claim: all the same stuff is here! Orchestral aleatory (albeit generally more restrained), and lots of delay, in this case on the cellos and basses playing col legno battuto. In those days, Jerry had to run everything through an echoplex rather than simply slapping a delay plugin on his stem like we do today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-oK0klLhgM&list=PLqnnuEVGcRQxuqYpNjdR32_dVRzDmVs1O&index=6 So naturally, I threw in a few Alien callbacks in my album, since the goal of this album was mainly to be background for player sessions (though Confrontation does indeed go head-first into Friday the 13th action cue territory, but even there lies a pretty overt Alien nod). Of course, the other part of this marriage was the John Carpenter influence. For that, I turned to his love of the Prophet 5 synth. He often scored whole horror films with just this one piece of equipment, and he was also the director of his films…you don’t see that very often. At any rate, I found a few Omnisphere patches that used the Prophet 5 sound directly, but I didn’t stop there…I made synth an equal partner in this album, which included embracing how far that technology has come in the modern scoring era, while simultaneously trying to hold onto the glorious analog sound of the 80s. That said, since we were using orchestra, I couldn’t help but give a subtle nod to my favorite Carpenter film, which ironically was not scored by him. The Thing is my OTHER favorite horror film/score. That was written by the great Ennio Morricone, who did a remarkable job blending Carpenter’s love of synth with the lush palate of the orchestra. In particular, some of my string work in Inciting Incident and Epilogue are a love letter to this thorougly unsettling cue, when our heroes are investigating the Norwegion camp that has been utterly devistated by something nobody understands as yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPWiYcYx6Ow&list=PLohYzz4btpaSRpyIibpGVmaIFfzzSSw8H&index=6 And of course, The Thing’s most iconic bit of score is it’s low synth pulse, which was heavy inspiration for the three eighth note low riff in Fear of the Unknown, because that’s probably the most chilling opening to a film I’ve ever seen. Just a very subtle but inevitable sense of creeping doom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8fBTwmnvUE When I asked Thomas how each game would generally go, he basically described phases of a story, since each campagin could potentially be in wildly different settings or time periods. This formed the basis of the structure of the album: Inciting Incident, Investigation, Confrontation and Epilogue. I kept the track names exactly that vauge, again given the massive range of potential settings, and tried to make the album as fitting as possible for any situation. Keenly aware that tabletop RPGs seldom have time to switch tracks, I also took Inciting Incident, Investigation and Confrontation and made them into bonus tracks that actually loop seamlessly on any media player! So if you don’t find one track to your liking but adore, say, Investigation (easily the most minimal of the five), you can just loop that for your entire session, and it will quietly add ambience to your game without intruding. This also marks my first album that has been properly distributed, and is now out on all major platforms! It’s also, as always, available on Bandcamp should you wish to directly support me and own high-quality audio. Links to the RPG, as well as my album are below. Happy Halloween!
Indie Symphony – Video Games in Concert
Indie Symphony – Video Games in Concert This past month, I arranged a bunch of Stray Gods and Celeste music for Orchestra Victoria! It’s always a thrill to arrange Austin Wintory’s glorious music, but it was a particular pleasure to meet Lena Raine and translate her wonderful work on Celeste to orchestra. While Austin’s work is generally more geared towards live musicians, Lena’s was purely synth-based. It’s charming melodies and grooves prooved effortless to work with, a testament to the excellent compositional prowess. Unfortunately, there isn’t any audio or footage of the concert just yet, but I will post here if that changes! Meanwhile, there are a lot of awesome things coming up at the end of the year, including some new releases from yours truly!
Stray Gods: Additional String Charts!
One of the coolest things about my career right now is that I get to frequently collaborate with Austin Wintory, a man whose talent is matched only by his generosity of spirit. It is always a joy and excitement when he sends me an email with work, and this was no exception. Stray Gods was released a few weeks ago, and I had the honor of contributing Additional String Arrangements to this behemoth. For those of you unaware, Stray Gods is a Roleplaying Musical – possibly the first ever created in the sense that it’s not just a musical on rails, but a game in which you can make choices mid-song and consequently change the song, altering everything from the tone of it, to potentially the hook itself and even plotlines and setlists down the road. This resulted in a game that you could literally never see the same story and set of songs unfold twice in one lifetime, even if you were to play all day every day. So naturally, this was a monumental task, and one Austin could not complete without help. He assembled a massive team to contribute more than usual because there was so much to do. As a result, I got to do more than just part-making for sessions or arranging for concerts: this was my first video game credit in which I actually have a creative role! He trusted me enough to have creative input on one of his big-time games, and that feels good. I contributed a total of six string arrangements to Stray Gods, and I’ll go through each of them because they were so fun to be a part of. Spoilers ahead! The Ritual This is probably my favorite song of the lot that I worked on, and the entire branch of it isn’t even heard unless you hit the green option at the very beginning! It’s a very somber affair, with one of the immortal gods undertaking ritual suicide to try and avoid the pain of past horrors. In this branch, you take the comforting approach, empathizing with the suffering she has endured. It’s hauntingly beautiful and such a chillingly light touch. This was one of the ones where I was initially given strict parameters of what Austin wanted out of the string accompaniment, but as the song goes on there are more branches, featuring more variations in the song. Here is where he let me experiemnt a bit. What you hear below is still only a fraction of the options available after the first branch. The Throne This was fun because it’s the polar opposite of the last one and provided a nice contrast: here he wanted the strings to be ready for battle. Here we have three competing characters with different goals, all convinced they are right and that the others are wrong. This vibe is more rock, more badass, and it was fun to throw in some staccato energy, fun rhythms and extended techniques. However, the most fun came on the very last variation of the last choice, because I had actually misread his instructions! He wanted more staccato aggression there, but I was so under the gun I straight forgot about that as I was ploughing through and ended up turning in what you here here at the end, with this sort of echoing figure taken from what was already in the vocal lines and accompaniment. I turned it in, making it clear I can redo it no problem. Instead he liked it, it gave him a new vantage point for that branch and he re-did the entire accompaniment around it! It’s Time Another that has a special place in my heart, this was the first one he gave me. There’s a moment here that gets me every time, and did even when there was only the vocals and a piano accompaniment. You essentially have to make the choice to either give up your godhood to save your best friend who sacrificed herself for you mere hours before, or to let her go and move on. I can’t overstate how incredible this cast is. It was just an absolute honor to have touched any of this at all. Let’s Have This Dance Reprise The other thre tracks were all reprises of the romance options. I loved all three of these, but Pan’s was my favorite because it’s so full of character. This guy lives life to his fullest, every moment is an adventure. And that’s kind of what the arrangement is like, too, heh. I initially put in more portamento, but Austin steered me away from that because he ended up using a lot in Apollo’s song “Phantom Pains,” which incedentally is probably my favorite musical number in this game. Oh, one other thing about this one: I actually ended up writing those harmonics more straight than they appeared. He ended up changing it so they didn’t quite happen together in a very tonal way. Super cool last-minute change that made way more sense! Dunno if he did that at the session or after the fact, I’ll have to ask him about that. If Only Reprise I really loved this one. Freddy is such a joy in this story, and it is such a gut-punch when she sacrifices herself to save you from the furies. I must admit, she was my first romance choice on my first playthrough. And this song is so adorable and so pure. This was pretty straight ahead, I knew it needed a light touch and that’s what I gave it. If Only Reprise This song grew on me as I worked on it, to the point at which it might be my favorite. It’s just so poigniant, particularly for someone who struggles with some of the same things Apollo does – mainly, how to find the courage to be joyful even in the face of hardship and darkness. This one was pretty straight ahead too, but I did throw in
The Game Awards
One of the small projects I had on my plate this year was engraving Austin Wintory’s phenomonal new “In The Blood” Arrangement for the LA Phil in a historic 10 year anniversary concert for The Game Awards. Very exciting to be a part of this, even in a small way! Sadly, I won’t be able to attend, and one of the regrettable drawbacks of Hollywood Bowl concerts is that they are not recorded. However, if you are fortunate enough to be in LA on the 25th, there is still time to grab tickets! Hearing Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett belt it out live with one of the best US Orchestras around is something you won’t want to miss. The Game Awards 10-Year Concert The Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles CA June 25th, 8:00 PM The full arrangement is now on youtube. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCk8Yvw4O0