Nightmarecast24
01-21-2005, 10:43 AM
January 21, 2005 - The world of video game music just keeps getting more and more intricate as time progresses. Once was a time where plunky 6-bit squonks were the norm, annoyingly high-pitched bleeps and whirs bouncing along in a just-slightly-out-of-sync cadence to the action in the game. Nowadays, developers have realized the hitherto untapped potential of music as a synchronistic and intrinsic element to their games. As a result composers enlisting full-fledged orchestras are steadfastly becoming de rigueur when it comes to scoring the soundtrack to a game. Yet even this practice, is beginning to change as cutting edge developers look outside the realm of more traditional composition and begin to enlist the services of musicians who thrive on pushing the envelope.
Case in point, noted electronic kraftsman Amon Tobin, best known for his string of eclectic albums that make the foray into the outer realms of the ambient soundscape. Tobin was hand-picked to concoct an immersive score for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, a move that was both bold and innovative on the part of the game's developers, Ubisoft. Not only that, but Tobin crafted two versions of the score, a standard one and DVD-Audio/5.1 Surround mix, as well.
Seeing Tobin's name attached to the Tom Clancy franchise is at first strange, especially for those familiar with the artist's work as a sound collagist and DJ. However, the project was intriguing, to say the least, to Tobin. "I checked it out and they said that I'd have a lot of room to maneuver on the soundtrack, so it was a really attractive thing," he says of why he chose to take on the project. "I suddenly thought 'Wow, it's gonna be great to do a soundtrack and be able to do what I'd like to do.' There wasn't really a conflict there, so we just went from there."
Part of the attraction came from Tobin's suppressed desire to float into soundtrack work, an inkling that more and more artists of his nature have been developing over the course of their careers (think BT, DJ Shadow, RZA, just to name a few). "I mean a lot of the records I collect are soundtracks," Tobin muses. "For awhile I've thought about doing one, maybe for a film, but I hadn't thought about doing one for a game, you know? So it was kind of an interesting thing that popped up because I hadn't really thought about it and I hadn't realized how much room there was for music on a game. Although it is limited, obviously. There are limitations with how the music can run with the program and the amount of music you can put on there and the quality of sound, etcetera. But generally speaking, I approached it like doing a soundtrack for a movie, basically. I think that's what they were after anyway. They wanted the game to sound cinematic, they wanted the game to appear cinematic, as well, so it sort of made sense to have the same approach for the music."
In terms of the process Tobin underwent to compose the score, he was given updated clips from the game and from these he crafted the score bit by bit. "Basically I would receive QuickTime files of the game in progress, of the developers testing the maps, etcetera, and I'd work from those. I'd import those into my sequencer and make music as if I were scoring to picture," Tobin explains. Listening to the score it's hard to tell if it's 100% digital or if Tobin employed real musicians and then pulled a John Cage cut-up stylistic of mixing and matching sounds into a cohesive whole. To this end, however, the artist is a bit reluctant to share his trade secrets. "You know, there's a few surprises in there that are actually revealed on the soundtrack, so I'd rather not go into the actual process of recording too much, if you don't mind," he laughs evasively. "It's been an interesting process. I'll put it that way."
Recording process aside, Tobin encountered some challenges on the project that differed slightly from when he works on his own solo material. "The main difference, I supposed, is that the music has to adapt to what the player does. If I were making a record for myself, obviously I can choose when the chorus comes or when the breakdown is etcetera. Whereas this is a very fluid thing. If the character moves around in a different way to how he did 10-minutes ago, the music's gonna change. And it can change at any time, so it was a very, very different approach to begin with."
The way that Tobin eventually adapted to these "restrictions," so to speak, was quite interesting. "The way around it, which was actually quite cool to experiment with, was to take each arrangement, which I'd make about 6-to-8-minutes long and then split them into 4 layers, which then would be triggered individually," he explains. "They'd work when they were all together, but they'd also be able to work individually and make transitions between all the different levels [of the game]. So obviously the music adapts then to what the player does." He goes on to explain the process a little more in-depth, "What I tried to do was make one large arrangement with various layers of stress in there, from a kind of stealth [level of stress] to stress [levels] 1, 2, 3, and 4 and going up to a kind of manic battle layer of stress. What I'd do is split out the different layers as they corresponded to the action. And it sort of worked out better that way because it's like there's one track playing and it's not like it's switching from one piece of music to another just because the intensity of the game play has changed. It's actually just building more; it's changing and adapting, but not switching completely."
When it comes to influences, you can hear some sonic strains of the Middle East and Asia rifling through the score, as well as more traditional Eno-esque textures. To this end Tobin reached back to his love of vintage soundtracks. "I suppose I've got a real love of soundtracks and I think a lot of the sounds are coming from those sides of things, and also from films I've loved, you know, which have used unusual sounds to represent stress or discomfort or something," he divulges. "I was watching a chase scene recently in a filmâ€"ťI can't remember which film it was, but anyway there was acoustic guitar, not some nu metal chugging riff, but like an acoustic guitar running along in a way that represented stress, but in an unusual way. It wasn't what you would associate necessarily with stress. So I tried to do things like that and I tried to find different instruments to interpret some kind of emotion other than what you would normally expect. Sometimes that's more effective; it maybe takes people a bit more by surprise. But a lot of it, as well, had to do with films like all the Bond movies; you know the John Barry scores. Bernard Herrmann is probably my favorite composer, but John Barry does that great thing where he's lifting sounds from the different locations in the world where James Bond might be. I don't know, I always had a soft spot for that kind of thing, so when Sam Fisher goes off to Japan, there's loads of flutes, you know? And when he's down in Central America there's some saucy beats. I tried to incorporate a bit of that, just for nostalgia's sake, really."
Given the intricacy of each progressive Splinter Cell game, not to mention the intricate structure of soundâ€"ťmore than 2 hours of musicâ€"ťthat Tobin crafted for the newest installment of the franchise, exactly how much time did he sink into the project when all was said and done. "I don't have much hair left," he laughs when asked this. "I started around March/April," he recalls. "And I wrapped up the surround mix in November. So it was a few months, you know? A lot of it was compiling the LP, as well. But it was really an every day thing, which is great. That's exactly what I love to do. I like to try and work in blocks and really get involved in something and then the idea is to take a break after that. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm getting there."
http://musicmedia.ign.com/music/image/article/581/581142/amonfisher2_012105_1106259695.jpg
Case in point, noted electronic kraftsman Amon Tobin, best known for his string of eclectic albums that make the foray into the outer realms of the ambient soundscape. Tobin was hand-picked to concoct an immersive score for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, a move that was both bold and innovative on the part of the game's developers, Ubisoft. Not only that, but Tobin crafted two versions of the score, a standard one and DVD-Audio/5.1 Surround mix, as well.
Seeing Tobin's name attached to the Tom Clancy franchise is at first strange, especially for those familiar with the artist's work as a sound collagist and DJ. However, the project was intriguing, to say the least, to Tobin. "I checked it out and they said that I'd have a lot of room to maneuver on the soundtrack, so it was a really attractive thing," he says of why he chose to take on the project. "I suddenly thought 'Wow, it's gonna be great to do a soundtrack and be able to do what I'd like to do.' There wasn't really a conflict there, so we just went from there."
Part of the attraction came from Tobin's suppressed desire to float into soundtrack work, an inkling that more and more artists of his nature have been developing over the course of their careers (think BT, DJ Shadow, RZA, just to name a few). "I mean a lot of the records I collect are soundtracks," Tobin muses. "For awhile I've thought about doing one, maybe for a film, but I hadn't thought about doing one for a game, you know? So it was kind of an interesting thing that popped up because I hadn't really thought about it and I hadn't realized how much room there was for music on a game. Although it is limited, obviously. There are limitations with how the music can run with the program and the amount of music you can put on there and the quality of sound, etcetera. But generally speaking, I approached it like doing a soundtrack for a movie, basically. I think that's what they were after anyway. They wanted the game to sound cinematic, they wanted the game to appear cinematic, as well, so it sort of made sense to have the same approach for the music."
In terms of the process Tobin underwent to compose the score, he was given updated clips from the game and from these he crafted the score bit by bit. "Basically I would receive QuickTime files of the game in progress, of the developers testing the maps, etcetera, and I'd work from those. I'd import those into my sequencer and make music as if I were scoring to picture," Tobin explains. Listening to the score it's hard to tell if it's 100% digital or if Tobin employed real musicians and then pulled a John Cage cut-up stylistic of mixing and matching sounds into a cohesive whole. To this end, however, the artist is a bit reluctant to share his trade secrets. "You know, there's a few surprises in there that are actually revealed on the soundtrack, so I'd rather not go into the actual process of recording too much, if you don't mind," he laughs evasively. "It's been an interesting process. I'll put it that way."
Recording process aside, Tobin encountered some challenges on the project that differed slightly from when he works on his own solo material. "The main difference, I supposed, is that the music has to adapt to what the player does. If I were making a record for myself, obviously I can choose when the chorus comes or when the breakdown is etcetera. Whereas this is a very fluid thing. If the character moves around in a different way to how he did 10-minutes ago, the music's gonna change. And it can change at any time, so it was a very, very different approach to begin with."
The way that Tobin eventually adapted to these "restrictions," so to speak, was quite interesting. "The way around it, which was actually quite cool to experiment with, was to take each arrangement, which I'd make about 6-to-8-minutes long and then split them into 4 layers, which then would be triggered individually," he explains. "They'd work when they were all together, but they'd also be able to work individually and make transitions between all the different levels [of the game]. So obviously the music adapts then to what the player does." He goes on to explain the process a little more in-depth, "What I tried to do was make one large arrangement with various layers of stress in there, from a kind of stealth [level of stress] to stress [levels] 1, 2, 3, and 4 and going up to a kind of manic battle layer of stress. What I'd do is split out the different layers as they corresponded to the action. And it sort of worked out better that way because it's like there's one track playing and it's not like it's switching from one piece of music to another just because the intensity of the game play has changed. It's actually just building more; it's changing and adapting, but not switching completely."
When it comes to influences, you can hear some sonic strains of the Middle East and Asia rifling through the score, as well as more traditional Eno-esque textures. To this end Tobin reached back to his love of vintage soundtracks. "I suppose I've got a real love of soundtracks and I think a lot of the sounds are coming from those sides of things, and also from films I've loved, you know, which have used unusual sounds to represent stress or discomfort or something," he divulges. "I was watching a chase scene recently in a filmâ€"ťI can't remember which film it was, but anyway there was acoustic guitar, not some nu metal chugging riff, but like an acoustic guitar running along in a way that represented stress, but in an unusual way. It wasn't what you would associate necessarily with stress. So I tried to do things like that and I tried to find different instruments to interpret some kind of emotion other than what you would normally expect. Sometimes that's more effective; it maybe takes people a bit more by surprise. But a lot of it, as well, had to do with films like all the Bond movies; you know the John Barry scores. Bernard Herrmann is probably my favorite composer, but John Barry does that great thing where he's lifting sounds from the different locations in the world where James Bond might be. I don't know, I always had a soft spot for that kind of thing, so when Sam Fisher goes off to Japan, there's loads of flutes, you know? And when he's down in Central America there's some saucy beats. I tried to incorporate a bit of that, just for nostalgia's sake, really."
Given the intricacy of each progressive Splinter Cell game, not to mention the intricate structure of soundâ€"ťmore than 2 hours of musicâ€"ťthat Tobin crafted for the newest installment of the franchise, exactly how much time did he sink into the project when all was said and done. "I don't have much hair left," he laughs when asked this. "I started around March/April," he recalls. "And I wrapped up the surround mix in November. So it was a few months, you know? A lot of it was compiling the LP, as well. But it was really an every day thing, which is great. That's exactly what I love to do. I like to try and work in blocks and really get involved in something and then the idea is to take a break after that. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm getting there."
http://musicmedia.ign.com/music/image/article/581/581142/amonfisher2_012105_1106259695.jpg