Making music for videogames is no easy thing. In addition to the inherent difficulties associated with any creative process, composers who work with videogames face an array of unique artistic, technical, and organizational challenges. Perhaps even more than their contemporaries in film and television, videogame composers must be supremely flexible and able to write for a variety of popular and esoteric genres, sometimes all within the same game. And that's just for starters. To get some real insight into the process of composing music for videogames, we contacted four of the industry's biggest names -- Sam Hulick, Jason Graves, Sascha Dikiciyan, and Cris Velasco -- and asked them to talk in-depth about the unique challenges they faced on their latest projects. Here's what they had to say…
Sam Hulick -- Mass Effect, Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Sam Hulick
GameSpy: Let's start by discussing the first two tracks on the RO2 soundtrack: Storm Clouds over Stalingrad and the Unstoppable Wehrmacht. These two establish the soundtrack's running theme of duality -- Russians on one side, Germans on the other. What inspired you take to such an adversarial approach to structuring the music?
Sam Hulick: When I was first brought on to write the score, Tripwire had asked that there be two distinct sets of music, one for the Russians and one for the Germans. As far as the soundtrack album goes, I decided to order the tracks in a way that the listener is taken through the battle chronologically. "Storm Clouds over Stalingrad" opens with a sense of foreboding from the Soviets, while The Unstoppable Wehrmacht represents the Nazis' sense of bravado after their recent victories. Definitely a stark contrast there. Of course, around the middle of the soundtrack things really start to go south for the Germans.
GameSpy: How do you establish that kind of thematic continuity in your tracks? What makes a German track German, and a Russian track Russian?
Hulick: That was one of the initial challenges for me actually. I had to set out on this quest to figure out how to flavor the music accordingly. I'm not really sure I could definitively say what makes a track sound German or Russian, it's just something I felt out and picked up on from my search for musical references. The Soviet marches have a structure where they start in a minor key, go major just for a moment, then return to minor. They always end in minor. Even their victory music sounds kind of sombre and serious, which worked really well for the game.
Some of the German stuff uses certain chord progressions such as D dim7 to C minor, for example. These aren't things I already knew, I learned them specifically on this project while listening to classical references and figuring out what made them tick. Also, instrumentation kind of hints toward one culture over the other, subtle things like that.
GameSpy: Did you have any trouble writing lyrics in German and Russian? Do you just happen to speak both languages fluently, or was there some kind of translation process there?
Hulick: There was actually a huge lesson for me to learn here. I initially set out thinking I was going to write lyrics in English and then translate them into Russian or German, but that plan nosedived pretty quickly. You really need a writer capable of writing in the native language because when you try to translate English into a foreign language in the context of a song, it just doesn't work.
I think I got away with it partially for one of the songs, So Far from Home, because the lyrics were pretty simple, but for the more involved songs I had to hire writers. I had one writer based in the UK writing Russian lyrics, and another writer in Berlin handling the German lyrics. I could've saved myself a few headaches had I started that direction in the first place!
GameSpy: Returning to the subject of duality, did you look to Soviet and Nazi society at all for inspiration when writing tracks? Did you ever feel uncomfortable with the notion of writing music for either country?
Hulick: No, I didn't really feel uncomfortable writing any of this material, but I knew I had to draw certain lines, at least for myself. I didn't want to make any praises to Stalin or Hitler in the song lyrics. I know it would have been historically accurate, but these can be sensitive areas for some people and I didn't want to go down that road. Besides, while the game goes to great lengths to portray the battle accurately, that wasn't necessarily the goal of the music. The music's main goal is to create an emotional response in the player or listener, and try to instil that sense of desperation, hopelessness, and loneliness that no doubt so many of the soldiers must've felt.
GameSpy: Was there much of a transition for you in terms of going from a blockbuster like Mass Effect and the sequel to a smaller project like Red Orchestra 2? How did the thematic change from shiny sci-fi to grim reality affect your process?
Hulick: I really enjoyed the change of pace actually. It's fun to be able to come off a project like Mass Effect and jump into something like Red Orchestra 2 where the soundtrack commands something emotionally gripping and at times depressing. I guess I'd say both soundtracks are emotional in their own ways. Mass Effect is more ominous, dreamy, and vast, while Red Orchestra 2 is hopeless and intense, with brief moments of stifled triumph.
GameSpy: Now on to the quickfire round. Three favorite bands?
Hulick: Fleet Foxes, Ray Lynch, Damien Rice.
GameSpy: Three favorite albums?
Hulick: OK Computer (Radiohead), Violator (Depeche Mode), Purple (Stone Temple Pilots). I might also add that I think those first two are among the top fifty best albums of all time.
GameSpy: Three favorite videogame soundtracks (not including your own)?
Hulick: Oblivion, Baldur's Gate, Assassin's Creed.
GameSpy: Hitler and Stalin. Bare-knuckle boxing. Who wins?
Hulick: Stalin, no doubt. I just imagine Stalin having these big hammy fists that he'd use to pound Hitler into the ground. And then Stalin's mustache would beat up Hitler's mustache.
GameSpy: You and Richard Jacques. Bare-knuckle boxing. Who wins?
Hulick: Richard. Probably with one punch, too.
GameSpy: Future plans?
Hulick: I've got a bit of new music coming out soon, that's all I can say right now. As far as non-videogame stuff, I'm still trying to find time to put out an album of my own, just music written for the sake of writing music. Some day...
Hit the next page to read our Q&A with Dead Space composer Jason Graves.