MEET A DEV: MUSIC

Here a sample of the Hero Suite score here: View store page Dear Cultists,

Ben Bostick the composer here. Greetings from Atlanta, GA, where I sit in my studio taking a brief break from scoring the magnificent, glorious end scene of Join Us. Too many great stories have disappointing endings—not this one. The end is near, and it’s oh so sweet!

Scoring Join Us is my first experience working on a video game. I have done some composing for film/TV/ads/events/etc… but most of my musical career has been centered around the popular music side of the clef; as a songwriter, producer, and performer. So years ago, when my friend Joe first started asking me if I was interested in scoring a game he was making, I didn’t let myself get too excited. I figured he would eventually come to his senses and hire someone qualified for the job.

Then a few months ago, Joe casually told me it was really happening, and the time to start composing was now. I excitedly thanked him for trusting me with the game, hung up the phone, and entered panic mode. I had no idea how to score a game.

Steam post image Partying at the Waterways Cruise Corporation Annual Summer Jam Festival.

Composing for a moving picture (film/TV/commercials) is intuitive—you simply write music that is timed to work with the image on the screen. Writing for games, on the other hand, took awhile for me to wrap my head around. The player controls what is happening on the screen, and the composer has no idea how long the player will be in any area or situation. So how the hell do you account for that as a composer?

My solution was to put myself through a semester of college in a couple weeks. I devoured a couple books textbooks (Composing Music for Games by Chance Thomas, The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell) and watched a bunch of YouTube videos about game scoring.

Steam post image This still has nothing to do with music. It just goes hard.

Eventually I was able to wrap my head around the concept of “adaptive music,” which is a term used to describe music that comes with a set of instructions for a programmer to implement. And after trying my hand at a couple of cues, I started to get in the groove.

My current process goes something like this… 1) What is the game state? 2) What are the creative needs of the game state? 3) What are some technically possible ways to make a cue for that game state? 4) Which of the technical possibilities best allows the creative to shine? 5) Design an implementation strategy for the cue. 6) Make music! 7) Bust out all the different files needed for the implementation. 8) Write instructions to the developers on how to implement this bunch of files that you just uploaded.

The musical “world” of course started with the game world. Join Us has a very specific tone.

Steam post image Interrupting production on the movie shooting in Bedford County's old west tourist town. A nod to the western film influences on the game's vibe.

Early on Joe told me that the game was somewhat of a spaghetti western wrapped in a cult simulator…with the occasional eldritch god. So after some discussion, we decided to try to hit all those tones and mash them into something unique. I came up with a flexible musical theme that could live in all those worlds—the hero theme uses only a few tones and could be part of any number of ancient scales—and I composed a suite around that theme. At first there was a plainchant (aka Gregorian chant) section, then an Ennio Morricone style section, then a vintage sci-fi section, then more Morricone. It sounded awesome, but it also sounded very serious. We tried a version that was more grindhouse inspired, with 70s funk and disco sounds, but I ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The first version was great, but just too heavy. That’s when Joe suggested we throw in a little John Carpenter. And maybe end it all with a big grindhouse funk orchestra bang. My head was spinning at this point. A piece of music that combined plainchant, spaghetti western scores, vintage sci-fi sounds, grindhouse disco funk, and John Carpenter scores? It’s all over the map. It’s insane. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. We recently posted that original “Hero Suite” on YouTube. Go give it a listen and hear how it all began [link above].

I have written hours of music for the game since composing that suite, but most of the basic tonalities of the score were established from the start. Can’t wait for everyone to play the game and hear more music!

Cheerio for now! Ben