this is a giant, everchanging drafcollection of micellaneous tidbits about my life and career.
On The Moniker
I had a habit as a kid of creating fictional entities just so I could create visual designs. I wanted to form a band, but before calling any friends I came up with a name and a logo. The group never really came to fruition, but the name has stuck since 2004.
I like wordplay. It was a play on masterpiece. I originally spelled it 'Disasterpiece', but in learning about the Slipknot song of the same name, I changed the spelling (to 'Disasterpeace'). Peace and disaster are kind of at odds as ideas, and I like that.
Committing to a name I chose as a teenager could have very easily been a tall order. So I'm glad that after all this time, I don't think it's a dumb name.
The idea essentially was to create a separate identity for personal and work projects. But over time, the two melded together. At this point, I still do like the idea of "Disasterpeace" being something that is separate from me, even though that can be a confusing thing to explain to people all the time.
On The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage
I wrote that album before I had any proper theory education, so I was mostly just using my ears and trying to experiment a lot with rhythm, harmony and time signatures / etc.
I wrote most of those tracks starting from drop d riffs on the guitar, so that is what gives it the sort of style it has ... i also used a tablature editor which kind of freed me up to write longer tunes with multiple sections that i could play back to get a sense of an overall structure.
there's a general kind of ignorance of key changes / modes in the music, it leans a lot more heavily towards 'what sounds cool' and coming up with riffs to play on the guitar, so a lot of the music came out of those explorations, and then adding accompaniment to those on the computer (drums and bass, mostly)
On My Music Education (Berklee College of Music)
Going to Berklee was a big help for me as a musician. It gave me an impetus to learn a lot of different things about music. Classes like theory, counterpoint, ear training, conducting, and arranging were invaluable. Also, by choosing to focus specifically on Music Synthesis, I was exposed to a lot of different types of music technology and felt empowered to keep using computers to make music. A lot of the people I needed to meet and places I needed to be to find opportunities in the games industry happened because I was at a music college. I think it's possible to succeed without going to school but for me and my personality it would have been a harder journey, and I might not have as many tools in my toolbox. Going to school is a bit like hopping on a moving train, and that momentum I surrounded myself with was invaluable.
Early Production Style
I started with a very narrow approach to production. I had a simpler musical taste at that time, and a general lack of understanding about how to create the sounds I wanted. I like to mess around with my music much more now. Much of what I did back then was with the intent to sound 'heavy'.
I'm not sure I realized it at the time, but shifting to writing all my music in an 8-bit style was very convenient for me. Beforehand I was trying to realize full band-style productions. It's hard when you have limited chops and limited equipment. Working with a digital sound significantly lowered my overhead. As I wrote more in that style though, I truly began to appreciate all the nuances and strengths associated with it. Chipmusic is great because it puts more of the focus on the musical content, and less on getting caught in performance ability and production (though production is still important). It also forces you to think about music in a contrapuntal context. Starting to use the computer to write music allowed me to decouple my limitations as a performer and musician.
Looking back I can safely say that chipmusic was very much the right musical style for me at the right time. It allowed me to focus more on composition in my early years, and improve my production skills at a comfortable pace, instead of trying to reach higher standards all at once.
How I Got My Start in Games
Not long after I started making recordings in 2003, I began to post my work on discussion forums. I found there were many individuals more than happy to listen and provide feedback. Early on, this process was addictive. I got hooked on the rush of getting feedback, regardless of its quality or temperament. In 2005, a friend showed me an advertisement in a forum looking for music, and kindly posted my work in thread. I followed up over e-mail, an da few months later, I heard back from the poster of the ad, someone who worked at a company that made cell phone games. He asked me to write music for one of their projects, and I couldn't believe that writing music for games could be my job.
The first couple of cell phone projects I worked on required that the music and sound be delivered as General MIDI files. I realized early on that trying to do recordings with guitar, drums, bass, all this kind of stuff, was hard. It was hard to get the production good and to get good takes. So pretty early on, I discovered tracking, using synthesizers to emulate those instruments and then using guitar tablature software to keep track of my ideas. And it also had MIDI playback, so that became my go-to piece of software to write music in the very beginning.
I had all these guitar ideas, and I was getting frustrated with trying to record them straight. I got into the habit of coming up with riffs and transcribing them into tablature. Then I would arrange supporting elements using MIDI instruments, like bass and drums.
My first project was a game about zombies for a cell phone company. I don't think it ever got made, but I created a handful of ditties and General MIDI sound effects for it. The follow up was a mobile version of the 70s/80s game show 'Press Your Luck.' I made sound effects and a few musical themes. The third and last project I worked on for the company was a puzzle game called 'Wasabi,' for which I wrote 16 looping tracks. They ended up releasing that game without any music at all. I later released that music on my site under the name 'Limeade Grin'.
I was fortunate enough to go to music school, and get some audio internships, which turned into work opportunities. I also used college loan money to go to GDC in 2009, and that's how I landed 'Drawn to Life' and through that, Puzzle Agent. I became very interested in smaller, independent game projects, and started looking for free games to work on. I did some pro-bono work to get my feet wet in the beginning.
Early on I made it a point to seize most if not all audio related opportunities, and I think that’s really one of the most important things you can do when you are getting started. Seize every opportunity for awhile, give yourself a chance to get acquainted, feel yourself out, and establish some kind of repertoire. I think you have to become somewhat well-established before you can be more selective.
On The Role of Video Games in My Career
My very first soundtrack gig in 2006 was a game, and I’m still working on games. It’s a very challenging and fun medium to contribute to. There’s something to be said about the history of videogame music too, and how it evolved from simple, technologically restricted beginnings. I came to appreciate these early stylings, which are sometimes called ‘chipmusic’. It dramatically influenced my own work. I think videogames really got me to think about music contrapuntally. When you’re emulating a style that limits you to a few voices and simple sounds, everything that remains needs to be quite strong. It also delayed my foray into the production side of things, and got me to focus more on composition. I was able to perform my music live for many years as part of a small but international scene of very enthusiastic people. I could really go on - it was an awesome experience and I owe so much to the medium of games and to many of the smaller scenes in its orbit.
How Did You Get Here?
- Established a musical identity
- Disasterpeace, chiptunes, 2005
- Made an effort to work only on projects that I'm interested in.
- If you're lucky, projects you think have value will be well-loved
- Projects that are well-loved garner attention
- Attention means more ears hear your music, which usually means more opportunities to work on more projects.
- Seized the opportunity to work on FEZ
- Spent a year at a game studio learning what I didn't want to do
What Went Well
- Internships were stepping stones
- Work on early projects got me referrals for bigger projects
- Tried to choose projects that would allow me to learn and grow
- Clarified my focus over time
- Discovered that I preferred smaller projects to larger ones
- Typically not a fan of large-scale sound effect work
- Working with developers to create useful tools for music implementation
- Getting hired to be me
- Working with people who care about every facet of their game
- Learning from older colleagues
- Referrals from the more experienced helped me land projects
- Introduced and helped me pick up middleware software like FMOD
What Went Not So Well
- Could have sought more critical advice and feedback from peers
- I mismanaged my money at times.
- Paying off more of my student loans than I could afford to.
- I had to take a part-time job for a while.
- Developers sometimes vanish, along with their projects, after you've put in time and effort.
- Sometimes clients are too uncertain to give you direction, or too controlling to let you be yourself.
- Sometimes clients lack the investment required to care about the details of your work.
- Being out of the loop as a freelancer leads to miscommunication and implementation mistakes.
- Projects often linger on for way longer than you want or expect. Beware!
- People may try to pigeonhole you for a single trait or ability.
On Analog vs. Digital
I think we all have a different relationship to creative tools. There's something inspiring about playing with physical knobs and instruments. I love playing my piano, for instance. But for me, from just wanting to have a clean space to work in and to be portable so that I can work from anywhere, containing my work to my laptop makes my life much simpler. The technology is such that there are so many options on my computer that I can do, and you can get so many different kinds of sounds out of it. People have learned how to model old analog gear and at this point, I have a hard time distinguishing. The trade-off to go back to hardware is not worth it for me based on my values and interests. I'm not an audiophile. I care a lot about the way things sound, but the nuances that separate a hardware compressor from a virtual one are lost on me.
On Placement
A media composer can benefit from asking: why music? Will another discipline shine brighter in this scenario? Do we drive, take a backseat, get out of the car altogether? Editing your work extends to asking whether it even needs to exist at all.
Growing Up With Rock Star Dreams?
Not really. I was going to school for graphic design—that was probably my first passion. I spent most of my teenage years doing design stuff. I grew up in a musical family, but I got into music late. I didn’t really start playing a musical instrument until high school, when I picked up a guitar. Over the next couple of years I got pretty heavy into rock stuff: prog rock, metal—listening to a lot of Tool and Rage Against the Machine. I wanted to get my ideas out quickly, so I was using guitar tablature software just to get stuff down. I struggled a lot with recording, struggled with getting a good sound out of my guitar and getting a good band-type sound.
Around the same time I was also discovering that there were people doing video game remixes. That was interesting to me. And through those online communities, I stumbled into people who were making original 8-bit music. A lot of them were using the original hardware to do it. That just blew my mind when I discovered it, probably about 10 years ago.
I started messing around with those sounds. Not with the hardware, but with simple sounds. I was using GarageBand. I found a sound that I liked, and I realized that these were tools where I could get my ideas down really quickly, and then move on to a new idea. Because I grew up in a musical household and didn’t start really making music until I was older, I had a creative backlog of ideas. So when I finally started writing stuff, I had a ton of ideas that I was trying to get out.
Early Tools
In the early days, I was using guitar tablature software editor called TablEdit, so I could import MIDI files into GarageBand. And then there was a synth that came with GarageBand, I think it was called Simple Synth or something. It was really simple—a very basic synthesizer where you could pick a square-wave or a sawtooth, and there was one filter and a pretty basic envelope, and that was it. I used it a lot. I’d combine it with an acoustic drum sample, and that was three or four albums worth of music. The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage, Atebite and the Warring Nations, Neutralite and Level, those are pretty much just one or two synths in GarageBand and acoustic drum samples.
Early Internet Communities
There were a few different communities, I’d say. There were people who frequented web forums like The Shizz, which is run by this band Minibosses—a lot of really talented musicians hung out there, some of whom I went on to work with in the future, and some of whom still work in games and are doing really good work. I met my friend Eirik Suhrke, who goes by Phlogiston, there. We went on to start a net label called Pause, and we ran that for maybe six years. Eirik went on to score a bunch of games, like Spelunky, Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box, and Downwell, which has done really well.
Transition to Game Scores
My understanding of it was that there were these segmented communities getting into independent game development at around the same time. Indie game development has been a thing for as long as games have been a thing, but at that point—nine or 10 years ago—some of the indie developers became more well-established. The same thing was happening with the chip music community, which was something that I sort of stumbled into. I wasn’t really a part of it, per se, I just knew some people who did that kind of music, and in my quest to learn more about it, I started going to shows. I learned that there was a pretty substantial community in New York. There were only a couple of websites at that point that hosted these music communities—there was a site called 8Bitcollective, where people would upload their music and get feedback. I met a lot of people through that site.
I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled into the independent game community. I got a couple of gigs doing music for mobile game projects, before smartphones. They didn’t lead to any more work, but they did inspire me to want to work on games. When I first went to Berklee College of Music we had a club called the Video Game Music Club, and we would meet up once a week and talk about music and games, and about events happening in Boston, which is where I lived. I found about the Game Developer’s Conference, which I went to while I was in college, and I think that’s where I found out about TIGSource, which was a really important independent game website. A lot of the people who made really important games were frequenters of that community: the people behind Minecraft, Fez, Spelunky, Super Meat Boy, etcetera.
These communities just had so much in common. A lot of people who were just interested in chip music as an art form—a lot of those people wound up working on games. It’s a really good marriage. It just makes sense. I enjoyed working on games, so I sought it out. But at some point, they started to seek me out. I was doing live chip shows, and game developers would come to shows, and they’d find me that way.
From Game Score to Game Soundtrack
It’s an interesting process. Depending on the game, it can be really simple or really complicated. For example, I composed a game called Mini Metro last year, and that soundtrack is almost entirely procedurally generated. So it’s the farthest thing from straightforward to make that into a soundtrack. There are no recordings to pull from. It’s all samples—it’s all individual notes. So we talked about, ‘Should we make a listening app that runs the music system under the hood,’ or ‘Should we record gameplay?’ A part of me doesn’t want a game like that to be translated into a static item, it’s just so diametrically opposed to what the music is. That’s why we haven’t released a Mini Metro soundtrack, because we have to figure out how to do that.
With a game like Hyper Light Drifter, it’s a little more straightforward—it’s all loops. The loops are layered, and different things happen contextually as you move through the game-world. So on some level, I had to stitch those together. Things don’t happen once or twice or whatever—it’s however long you stay in an area. The music is tied to your interaction. That has a certain flow to it when you’re playing, and I tried to capture that by roughly mimicking the length of things. If you play through the final boss battle, and you win, how long would that take? Building the soundtrack was kind of like trying to recreate that experience for the player, even though they’re listening to it passively. You have to build out some song structure and find a track order, and then you have to get it all mastered.
But first and foremost, my focus is on the game. When people tell me, ‘Oh, the music is the best part of the game,’ or ‘I play the game for the soundtrack,’ I know that they’re trying to pay me a compliment, but I actually find it a little insulting, because they’re complimenting my work but criticizing my taste at the same time.
Awareness of My Audience
It’s a little all over the place. Some of my audience is definitely gamers. A lot of creatives, actually. A lot of people in creative field—artists, people who work in film and games. That’s been a really great thing for me, because those are people who might offer me work in the future, or people I might collaborate with. And then there are horror enthusiasts, because of It Follows. I think I might be going to some kind of Horror convention this year. And it’s funny, because I’ve never been into horror before. It’s fun interacting with people on that wavelength—they ask me these really sort of nerdy horror questions, and I don’t know anything about horror, really. I just went with my gut.
People project a whole lot onto music, and they project a whole lot onto what I do. There are a lot of people who call It Follows a chiptune soundtrack, which I think is just hilarious. It’s strange to me that they would think that. But maybe there’s a thread in my work that harkens back to working with a really small set of limitations—that’s one of the defining characteristics of chip music, that it’s limited to a certain number of channels. I’ve kept that a little bit, but when I sat down to do the It Follows soundtrack, chiptune was the furthest thing from my mind. I’m not picking up on that at all. Some people thought it was so ’80s, and I don’t hear that at all. So everyone hears things in their own way, and everyone likes to categorize music and figure out how it relates to them. And that’s fine—it’s just a funny experience to have people constantly telling you what your music is. To be fair, it doesn’t really belong to me anymore. Once I make it, it’s just out there and all those critiques are fair. To the old guy at NPR, It Follows is cheesy organ music, and to someone else it’s a John Carpenter ’80s thing. What are you gonna do?
Dream Project
It’d be fun to try to create a dynamic music system for an old sports game, something like NHL ’94 for Sega Genesis or something. It’d be fun to try to come up with a system that reads into the various contexts of a game of hockey (ahead a goal, behind a goal, penalties, time running down, etc.) and try to create a musical narrative for it.
Production Techniques
Rolling off low frequencies is one of my go-to techniques, it can help tremendously in clearing up a mix. I also try to keep things mono as much as possible, so that if something is stereo, you notice it. Or I make everything stereo and randomize the positioning per note so that you feel surrounded.
On Juggling Multiple Projects
I'm often involved in anywhere from 5 to 15 different projects of various sizes. It may seem like a lot, and at times it is and feels that way, but given the right balance it can be managed. Since all projects are developed under different circumstances, with different timelines and workloads, I am often able to move from project to project when I am needed. If you're concerned about work stability, being involved in multiple projects secures your future work schedule.
Interactivity in Music
Growing up, I don't think I noticed game music doing things with form and structure. And yet I think that's the strongest aspect that sets music in games apart from other art forms and other applications of music. The interactive developments of game music were already happening in the fifties and sixties. The ideas of aleatoric music and music by chance were prevalent decades before video games and the chance games that Mozart played predated those by centuries more. He designed a game around music where you rolled dice, and your roll determined the order to play sections of the piece. There were hundreds of sections.
There were some early standouts. Many of the LucasArts games from the 90s ran on a system called iMUSE (Interactive Music Streaming Engine). Games like Monkey Island had really sophisticated music systems that allowed the music to transition smoothly between sections by using real-time MIDI generation. Most other music at this time was simple looping material.
But even in Super Mario World on Super Nintendo they were starting to experiment with reactive music. When you're walking around, there's music of course, but when you jump on Yoshi, they add a little percussion track. Or in 'Yoshi's Island', on the map screen, depending on how much progress you've made in the world, the game will add more layers to the music. Little touches like these give the player feedback about their progress. The beginnings of interactivity were beginning to show back then, but I don't think I consciously noticed any of it until I started working on games and realized the potential for myself.
Favorite Game Soundtracks
- • Tomas Dvorak - Machinarium, Samorost 3
- • Yasunori Mitsuda - Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross
- • Various Artists - Jet Set Radio Future, Katamari Damacy
- • Koji Kondo - Yoshi's Island
- • Yoko Shimomura - Super Mario RPG
- • Yuzo Koshiro - Streets of Rage 2
I really love the work that Tomas Dvorak (aka Floex) does. His Machinarium soundtrack continues to inspire me. Little Nemo: Dream Master for NES is an all-time fave of mine, as well as the Chrono series (Yasunori Mitsuda).
On Making Things Sound 'Big'
I would say it's a combination of stereo imaging, things like saturation, knowing what to put in the forefront ... the more separately perceivable elements you have, the less 'big' you can make all of them. So the simpler your arrangement is, the bigger you can get. That's part of what makes a track like ♫Titan work.
Marketing
If you’re trying to make a career out of your work, you’ll have to find an audience. Once I started to gain more of a following, I started to forego attention tactics in favor of creating a comprehensive website, making my work and ideas accessible to those who might stumble across it or seek it out.
Mediums
I find that working on many different types of projects is a great way to stretch boundaries and grow as an artist. Each medium has its own unique qualities. I look at each medium, and more specifically each project having unique context. Each breeds a certain set of limitations, which yields a distinct creative output.
Inspiration
I find inspiration is rarely limited to music. Diving fully into other interests and aspects of life has yielded creative returns for me.
Lifestyle
I try to lead a simple life. I have a solid routine, a small group of friends and a few hobbies. I love to play ice hockey. I paint with friends on weekends and try to make it to yoga once a week. I believe that leading a balanced life is crucial if you want to have a sustainable creative career.
Streamlining Workflow
There have been the obvious increases in computing power and portability, which have helped my productivity by reducing the time repetitive actions take, and also improving my ability to conduct business from anywhere. I've been using Logic Pro since 2008 or so, and learning the ins and outs of that program has helped me to realize my ideas much quicker than before. I believe it's important to minimize the amount of time it takes for an idea to get from your brain to reality.
At some point, I started sending my albums off to be mastered. I can't understate the value of having a fresh pair of ears listen to and tweak the sound of your tracks after a long creative process.
On Choosing What to Work On
I had to learn to let go of the desire to work on every project that comes my way. If you're lucky, a day will come where you'll have to learn to let go of the desire to work on every cool project that comes your way. I try really hard to be selective and to only work on projects that interest me and align with my goals. My goals are always shifting, but generally, I am trying to grow as an artist and a human being. Sometimes I will take on a project so I can develop relationships, or learn a new skill. Because I am in a fortunate position to choose my projects, It feels foolish to work on things I'm not thrilled about, when there are others who might have a greater need and a greater enthusiasm for that project.
If I do a bunch of really taxing, serious projects, I usually like to shift to something short and fun or try something completely new. There are things I haven’t done before like theater, or working with voices. I’m always looking for a new medium or style to explore.
General Approach
What I can say is that with every project, I really try to find the common denominator between what the project needs, what my collaborators need and what I need, or what I'm looking to gain from the experience. Usually, for me it has to do with seeking out novelty, having fun, or there's an emotional resonance that I gravitate with, that I'm trying to help achieve.
On Creative Blocks
There are times where technology gets in the way, and you find yourself spending time fixing those problems instead of fixing musical ones. The best way to avoid that is to look to simpler, more primitive forms of technology, like a piano or a guitar, and a recording device. Playing my piano periodically and recording ideas I believe show promise is one of the most beneficial things I think I can do. An instrument like the piano also allows you to focus more on the form and structure of a piece than the vertical composition so that you can save the instrumentation choices for later. The horizontal (chronology) vs. vertical (arrangement, layers) issue is one of the most common ones I face when I work. I do my best to separate composition from production.
I also can’t stress enough how valuable it has been for me to collect all of my unused ideas. I have found great homes for dozens of seeds of ideas that sat idle for years. Majesty, Love, and Nocturne from the Fez soundtrack were all repurposed ideas that had been devised well before I was even involved with the project.
For fighting creative blocks, there are some excellent writings to help. Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' are a great card set for creative blockbusting. 'The Listening Book' by W.A. Mathieu is another fantastic resource.
On Work Revisions
Sometimes the most important thing about doing revisions for a client is not to psych yourself out. You may be revising your work but you don’t have to revise yourself. Let the “you” continue to shine through. Better to fail and be true to yourself, than to succeed at being what you’re not.
Choosing Tools
Most of my work has been done using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). 'The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage,' 'Atebite and the Warring Nations,' 'Neutralite', and 'Level' were all made with GarageBand. 'Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar' was made with Reason, and most of my work these days is put together in Logic Pro. That being said I have used Famitracker on a few projects, including the music I did for 'Runner 2', and 'River City Ransom: Underground.'
When I wanted to take part in the NES tribute section of Runner 2, Famitracker seemed like the perfect choice because it allowed me to write authentic NES-style chiptunes. Normally, I am not as strict with myself, though, on many of my past chiptune albums, I have picked a general aesthetic and tried to stick to that as best as I could. In my tools, I aim for some balance of ease of use, flexibility, and sound quality.
On Performing Live
For a while it was me on guitar and my friend Roger Hicks who plays drums. I'd put together the entire set beforehand, as a recording without drums. Then I'd automate a bunch of guitar effects, so that they'd change on the fly and I wouldn’t have to worry about stomping down on pedals/etc. I also played solo at times in a similar fashion, and at the tail end of my live phase I was doing some shows as a singer/songwriter playing piano and singing. At some point I realized that live performance wasn't really serving my goals. To be a good performer is a major time investment, and yet performing has never been a top priority of mine. So I chose to stop. I'd rather generally pursue projects that I'm 100% invested in.
On Lighting
If you ever go camping or something, where there are no streetlights around, you're not under fluorescent lights like you would be at your house, it's easier to get tired and fall asleep at night. Staring at a screen, a bright blue light until eleven or twelve or whatever, it keeps you up and makes it harder to fall asleep. In general though, I try to give myself an hour window between screen time and sleeping.
I use white light in the morning to supplement the sunrise, blue light during working hours, which I find focusing, and red light in the evening. Because red is the color lowest in frequency on the visible spectrum, it has been shown to affect your circadian rhythm the least. It's also just fun to hang out in a red lit space. It feels a little bit like being on a submarine.
Gear
When I started making music around 2004, I used consumer grade boom-box speakers, Garageband, a guitar and a dinky little interface. I didn't use a MIDI keyboard for the first three years or so and wrote a lot of music just by manually inputting notes.
My setup is very simple. I've got only bare essentials: laptop, mouse, display, monitors, headphones, audio interface, and a midi keyboard. That's pretty much it. I do have some instruments too, though. I still have my very first guitar, a Stratocaster (update: it was stolen). I've also got a baby acoustic guitar and an upright piano. The piano is my favorite. I do my production work 'in the box', as they say. My current DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice is Logic Pro. I try to keep things minimal. I don't like having lots of stuff around that I don't use on the regular. I've had a few synthesizers over the years, but I sold them all. My upright piano is my prized possession. I find the sonic difference between digital and analog synths to be minimal. I still like to go to acoustic instruments when that need arises.
Synthesizers in Film
Use of synthesizers seems to have crossed the threshold from questions of datedness into a potential for timelessness. I believe a synth soundtrack can stand the test of time. Synths are also budget friendly. The barrier to entry is far lower than working with a live orchestra.
As a designer of sound, synthesizers are a dream come true. I can shape my instruments to behave in so many different ways. That ability is not unique to synths. But they have an unparalleled speed and ease with which it is possible. The barrier to entry is also far cheaper than working with an orchestra.
Tips for Aspiring Composers
Don't aspire, write!
I think the best advice I can give is to put yourself out there, go to events, make friends and meet people, and try to make the best music you can, and make sure it's truly the kind of music you want to write.
Recognize and cultivate your unique perspective, and lean into that as much as you can.
Starting
For me, the approach is usually the same: I start with an infinite possibility space, and then I try to wrestle it down to something small and appropriate as quickly as possible. There are a lot of ways to approach a project, and figuring out the limitation set is in many ways one of the most crucial design challenges for any project.
I may have elaborate ideas about what the music is going to be, what it's going to sound like, and how it's going to work. But when I start to write, that process is fluid and unpredictable and often doesn't fit into that box that I've created. Then the question becomes “how do I wrestle these two conflicting sides?” Sometimes it's helpful just to start writing without thinking about it too much.
Choosing Sounds
It’s usually a combination of approaches. I do like to set aside time to audition, tweak, record and build sounds which I’ll usually collate into a library for easy access once I start writing. Sometimes I like to just dive into the work, and discover and create sounds as I’m going - it forces me to move quickly and make decisions. There’s a feverish quality I find to writing music for instance, where I feel an internal pressure to keep moving so as to not lose whatever sense of inspiration it is I might have.
Restrictions
Restrictions open up possibilities. That may seem counterintuitive, but when you're starting at the beginning, the possibility space for something is infinite. As a creative person, being restricted allows me to make something tangible. Otherwise, I may drown in the infinite.
Restrictions can be challenging, they can also be beneficial. I've been fortunate to work on a lot of projects where I had the freedom to create restrictions for myself. Projects like #FAMAZE or #Gunhouse were open ended as to what I could do. I had free reign to make whatever made sense. So a lot of times when I start working on a project, I like to start with an idea or an aesthetic. With “Famaze” it was about an aesthetic. It was about “what can I bring to this project that's going to be unique, going to be consistent, that allows me to grow as a musician?”. For me at that time, that was trying to do an all FM synthesis soundtrack.
I was more laid-back about #Gunhouse and so it was different. I approached it more from an angle of “what can I get out of this project myself, what do I want to accomplish that will make this fun and challenging?”. When I first started messing with software, I would just throw a bunch of loops in and be like “oh I made a song”. For a while, I had a stigma about that not being real music, not being creative. But then a friend of mine who also works on games, James Primate, told me about a talk that Darren Korb gave, the composer of “Bastion”. He uses loops a whole lot in his music, and I thought that was worth exploring. I didn't force myself to only use loops, but I had the intention of using them as my primary approach.
Taking Direction
There are times when I may not be feeling creatively ambitious. Sometimes I feel a bit directionless, and the creative director has a more focused vision of what the music needs to be. The word direction is right in their title, after all. In those cases, I'm happy to let them take the reins. That's what happened with the film #It Follows. David, the director, had a clear vision of what he wanted, and it made my job easier to be a conduit for him. And that's what's happening with “Hyper Light Drifter” a little bit. I've had a lot of time and success exploring ideas for that project. But when I'm feeling a bit fatigued creatively, I think it benefits the project to have a dialogue with the creative director, so that we feed off of each other.
The Influence of Time
When I have too much time, I tend to put things off until I have too little time. I tend to fall into this habit. Sometimes when I have enough time, I'll do preliminary work here and there, but my tendency is to procrastinate. I think time dictates what you're able to do, and reality sets in at some point. With #It Follows, we had three weeks to score the film, so right off the bat I was like “Okay, here are some things I probably can't do in three weeks”. Things like work with live musicians consistently and have it be good, and write the whole score from complete scratch seemed like stretches. So in that situation, going with my strength being music synthesis, and working from a temp soundtrack, were a huge help in being able to finish the film in three weeks.
Having a restricted time frame forces me to commit to ideas quickly. Sometimes I tend to labor over my choices, and so on occasion, it's been nice to have a timeline forcing my hand.
Musical Time Capsules
On a similar token, whenever I come up with a musical idea, I save it if I'm not using it right away. I'll hold on to those ideas for years and then it's just a matter of finding the right home for it. So when a project comes along that needs new ideas, I have hundreds of them sitting on my hard drive that I can go through. I have goals as a musician for myself and for the ideas that I create, and I relish the opportunity to combine those with whatever's going to push a project forward in a good direction.
Freelance Challenges
Being a freelancer has many benefits. You're in charge, which means you can theoretically set your hours and choose the type of work you do. It also means there may not be anyone to keep you in line, and so discipline is crucial. Some freelancers adhere to strict routines to keep themselves productive. Some like myself prefer the fluidity of choosing when to work. I find this allows me more flexibility to get away and do other things. Either way, freelancing often means you can custom-tailor your practices to suit the unique context of your life.
There are some who suggest that being a freelancer means you lose the stability of a day job. On paper that may be true, but freelance means that you are building a personal brand. It's like rolling a snowball down a hill, and over time, you gain momentum. You become more well known and better at what you do.
I often work with friends and colleagues, which can make projects more fun, and provide an extra level of accountability. It also helps me to socialize, which is something you may lose freelancing, especially if you work from home.
Being a freelancer is very different from working for a company in very cut and dry ways. If you can find projects you are genuinely passionate about, working in-house has many pros. The social benefits are clear, and it also gives your life a pre-defined structure. You can theoretically take a load off and not worry about work too much when you're not at the studio. However, I think it can be tough to find yourself working on the right things when you're in-house, which is why I much prefer to be a freelancer.
It's true what they say about hats. Namely, that being the boss starts out with wearing many of them. While you can pay others to share your responsibility, I believe it's important to at least understand all of the aspects of what your work entails. There may come a time that your business grows in complexity beyond what you are capable of handling as a singular person. You can scale down to stay on top of the burden, or bring in those who are better than you at certain tasks. I chose to do everything before bringing in some outside assistance. I built a website, got pretty good at reading and writing contracts, and learned how to do my taxes. I eventually realized I didn't need to be great at writing and reading contracts. I hired an attorney, and while the hours I spent representing myself helped me, I've learned many things hiring an expert that I would not have known otherwise. The same logic will generally apply for other aspects of your business.
Freelancing is maybe not for everybody, but I would recommend you try it. It will help you to understand yourself better, and your work style. Some are put off by the business side of being a freelancer, but I enjoy it.
Development Involvement - Games
Getting involved early means more time to sit with the game and its material, and more time to develop concepts.
Two projects come to mind which had very different implementations and workflows. I worked on a platformer called “Drawn to Life” for the Wii, where my role as a composer was limited strictly to that. I delivered music loops for various areas of the game, and ultimately, as a result of my lack of input and involvement, the music ended up being placed in the wrong sections of the game. Music I had written for a gameplay level ended up being used as the menu music, and vice versa. When the composer is outside of the development circle, these types of incidents often happen, which is why I think it's important and beneficial to have everyone involved on a similar footing, with access to regular builds so they can remain on top of their respective disciplines.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was my experience creating “Waker” and “Woosh” at MIT. I was involved as an equal party member of the team from the very beginning, not only being in charge of the audio, but also helping to direct and define the very nature of the gameplay, mechanics, presentation and narrative. This sort of collective and early involvement, as well as direction over audio implementation, has a great impact on the quality of the final product. By being closer to your work and having solid control over it, you have a better chance to see it realize the potential you had in mind.
There seems to be a 1:1 ratio, where my passion for a project correlates directly with the level of involvement I wish to have in the implementation of its audio. The projects I've been most enthusiastic about, (projects like FEZ, for instance) are projects I've also spent the most time implementing. In these types of projects, I tend to work closely with developers to make sure we share the same vision and goals. Like anything else, there are obstacles and technical limitations to deal with, such as memory, CPU, and voice restrictions, among others. I think it's important to have a willingness to fight for the features you desire, but also to be open to change, and to know when to defer, or to embrace someone else's creative voice.
On Failure
I think there are times when there's a piece of music I'm trying to write, and I'm trying to adhere to limitations that I've set for myself. And I'm struggling to stay within that box and do something that I like. There have been times when I've given up on the limitation and written around it. It's like “okay this works”, it works on other levels, but maybe it doesn't fit within the thematic limitation. There are times when I feel like I could have been more disciplined, more willing to make mistakes, more willing to iterate on ideas. I think part of that willingness to give in so quickly comes from a place of stubbornness and expectation. Sometimes I expect that I'm going to write something that I like right away, and when it doesn't happen, it can be painful. Often when I'm writing, it's an emotional roller coaster. At times, I haven't been willing to take the ride, and instead, I've circumnavigated.
On Bomberman Live: Battlefest
It was an internship that I applied for through my college. We actually decided to (for the most part) write all original material and steer clear of the traditional melodies/songs of the franchise. In hindsight that might have been a careless decision, but there wasn’t any strong direction for us to do so. If I could go back I probably would have paid more tribute to that.
On Shoot Many Robots
For #Shoot Many Robots, I sat around with my guitar a lot, figuring out lots of bluesy riffs and licks, and establishing early on a certain “sound”. I knew I wanted to go for a Drop-D sound, which is generally is very power chord heavy, but allows for more flexibility in coming up with riffy sounding parts.
On Assuming a New Musical Identity
It is. I think I’ve always been motivated by how people tend to overcategorize, oversimplify and generally just misunderstand artists and their intentions. I relish the challenge and the opportunity to prove myself and others wrong, to surprise people, to interface with new ideas and to allow a new set of requirements to humble me and send my work in a new direction. It’s really important to me that I’m always trying to push my boundaries creatively, to be a little bit uncomfortable and see where that takes me. Under the Silver Lake was very uncomfortable, and an amazing opportunity. To have collaborators who have faith in you, like David had in me to develop a score for a full orchestra with no prior experience, is a remarkable thing. I think there are those who have succeeded through relationship building and public outreach, but that’s never been easy for me - I’m a pretty private person and I like to keep my social circle smaller. So I think for me to be successful, it has to be about taking creative risks and finding collaborators who trust me to take those risks. I was fortunate to have a remarkable team of collaborators on Under the Silver Lake.
Is The Idea Worth Pursuing?
It’s tricky. Sometimes, you get lucky and discover something very early on in the process. You might flag it, saying "Yes, this is a thing that needs to be developed." Other times, it's more of a gradual process of sculpting from a low resolution to a higher one. It’s like you’re molding and refining something, and it's coming into view over time. It’s a process, and sometimes you know that it just won’t be good until it is, and those can be taxing experiences.
I think a part of the process for me is exercising some patience, and being willing to take the time necessary to get to the idea. At the same time, there's a lot of instinct that goes into asking a question like, “Am I going in the right direction right now? Is this an idea worth pursuing?” It can be a puzzle.
What’s so interesting about composing is that sometimes, the first thing you write ends up being the best because there’s something instinctual and real about it. When you’re writing for a specific purpose, it’s not a pure art. It has a utilitarian function. In my experience on many of the projects I’ve done, the first thing I write is cool, but isn’t necessarily the right thing. When you’re coming into it fresh, that’s when some of the wildest ideas emerge, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out. If you’re lucky you can still use those ideas later on another project.
There’s usually a process of refinement that needs to happen, and there’s a rhythm I need to get into to learn the language of a project like a film. I tend to have to build up the capacity to internalize a broader picture and establish rules for the music. I just keep absorbing material into an intuitive mindset, and it gets me into a flow where I can churn ideas out.
I think of it a bit like method acting, like finding your character as you acclimate to the story you’re trying to tell. It’s a complete state shift. The initial exploration is very free and creative, taking on many different forms, but once you transition into a structure, it requires a different approach and a different mindset.
Getting Synths to Sound Huge
reverb, tape saturation, distortion, randomization across voices, and a lot of attention to detail about the way sounds are spatialized in the stereo field, so that everything has ample room to breathe.
On Pixel Art
I think the idea that artists 'can do more' is maybe a mischaracterization ... pixel art is a medium, with inherent characteristics and limitations, but there is plenty of room for growth and exploration there, too. You can do things with pixel art you couldn't do with another art medium and vice versa. I think it can be worthwhile to explore different mediums, or to dedicate a long period of time to a deep dive on a single medium ... either can be fruitful and to each their own.
On Perservering When You Want to Give Up
Short term giving up is a solid strategy. In other words, take breaks! :)
On Work/Life Balance
For me self care and balance are crucial or I become a lumbering blob of worthlessness. The score took me a few years and it definitely wasn't a straightforward affair - I took a decent amount of time away from the project (perhaps too much, as I had to work very hard at the end). Taking breaks and getting outside / away from the work help me a lot with my creative flow. Some of my favorite things to do in that regard : ride my bike, cook, yoga, play ice hockey
On Starting
People so often tell me they 'can't' or 'don't know how to start'. I really think just about anyone can, and you don't need to have a very comfortable sense of how to start, you really just need to begin the process however haphazardly and not be too worried about making mistakes because you are going to make tons of them anyway and that's the only way to improve.
(F)earworms
Sound can tap into our innate biological sense for danger. We sometimes fear things that are unfamiliar, or fear things we've already experienced that are perhaps too familiar. In that case, it might drum up something traumatic or triggering.
Unfamiliar sounds are very effective at creating scary moments. But familiar/repeating material can tap into the idea of the recurring nightmare, the familiar foe, and other sorts of things along those lines. Combining these two means you can sort of live in both your lizard brain and your ape brain at the same time.
Initial Music College Goals
I applied and attended Berklee with the goal of entering the "Production and Engineering" major, thinking I might benefit from the types of skills commonly used in recording studios. My main desire was to continue to make and produce music. It turned out that the "Music Synthesis" major was more in alignment with what I wanted to do.
Back in 2007, while first applying to a program I ultimately was turned away from, this is what I imagined I'd do after graduating music school :
Upon graduating Berklee, I intended to continue to create a name for myself as a producer and an artist by working with a wide variety of musicians on a wide variety of projects. The work environment I most enjoyed (still enjoy) is one of freelance, and I wished to start a production company with the capabilities of doing work from wherever I may be in addition to a static location. The skills learned at Berklee would be ideally applied to producing for music but also for film, video games, and advertising. I am eager to learn as much as I possibly can from the teachers and staff in the Music Production and Engineering program so that I might adapt it to help me reach my goals.
The Decision to Pursue Music
While attending Rochester Institute of Technology for New Media Design in early 2005 and thinking about my upcoming year of school, I couldn't help but feel as if I were neglecting my passion for music. Previously it had never occurred to me, but all at once I felt that if I continued down the path of studying design, I would be missing out on "what drove me more than anything else" (music).
Early Exposure to Technology (split out)
I spent three years working as a graphic designer in a professional atmosphere with PCs at a firm in New York City.
I also learned C++ and AutoCAD while attending high school.
I started recording my music in 2003 with a mic'd amp and guitar on tape cassette. Since then I have worked with a modestly sized base of software tools including sound editors, sequencers, notation software, and trackers.
DAWs and Sequencers
When I first started producing actual tracks, I typically came up with parts on the guitar, and then jotted them down using a guitar tablature editor called TablEdit (which, as of 2024, 20 years later, still looks exactly the same and is still actively developed!) Then, I would move any MIDI I created in TablEdit over to GarageBand.
I created my first couple of albums in GarageBand, including #The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage, #Atebite and the Warring Nations, and #Level, before switching to Reason, which I got as part of the software bundle that Berklee College of Music gave us.
I used Reason for just a few years, with the album #Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar being the most notable thing I made. Some other soundtracks I made in Reason include #Rescue the Beagles, High Strangeness. I made the switch to #Logic Pro around the time we started having to use it in class projects. That was probably around 2009.
We also learned how to use Ableton, Pro Tools, and even Digital Performer. There are some tracks like ♫Ascend & ♫Found, for instance, that I've released that were made in Pro Tools back then.
For a short time I used both Logic and Reason together, on projects like the Waker/Woosh tandem, which I worked on as part of my internship with the MIT Game Lab back in 2009. The game lab is still active as of 2024.
I've been primarily using Logic Pro since 2009. Along the way I have occasionally experimented and tried other things, but nothing has stuck.
One aside that I didn't mention is Famitracker, which I used to create the Runner2 EP, among other things, like some of the songs on Strays.
Disastertron
In the Fall and Winter of 2005 I worked with Guerin, an electronic musician from Portland, Oregon on a collaborative project called DISASTERTRON. The results of our work together eventually became an EP which we put out for free on the internet in January of the next year (Cereal Code).
I'll always remember this collaboration in particular because it was my first attempt at working with another musician to put together an entire album's worth of material. There were numerous obstacles we faced while writing and producing the album, all of which we addressed to the best of our ability. Clearly location was an issue for arranging common times and places to meet, so communication was done over the internet on a regular basis.
Guerin and I came into this collaboration with different, initially incompatible methods of writing and producing. While I tend to use MIDI as the basis for my sequencing and writing, Guerin used trackers, and we had to come up with a solution that would allow us to work closer with each other.
Before either of us had any theory knowledge, we decided to address this problem by both using the same application, a guitar tablature program, to address these initial ideas. We also had to decide how we would approach the mixing and aesthetic of the music. Guerin's inability to work with MIDI found us taking different approaches to this issue. Guerin's songs would often contain samples of parts written by me that I had already recorded, integrated into his audio environment, while the songs that I produced would contain his parts that he had written in the tablature software and exported into MIDI. In addition to this we each wrote some songs on our own by taking a few measures of something the other person had written and turning it into a fully fledged production. This process turned out to be an exciting way to write new material.
If it were not for our ability to stay in communication with each other about what the other wanted out of the project throughout the duration of our work, things would have not turned out nearly as well. If I could have changed anything, I would have dedicated more time to the material which we ended up with. In addition I felt at times that I had perhaps allowed myself to take on too much of the project by myself and not allow Guerin to get as involved as he should have. I wouldn't call these regrets though – just things to remember in the future when collaborating with others.
Design
My other great passion in life is design. Before deciding to attend the Berklee College of Music, I spent three semesters at Rochester Institute of Technology studying Graphic Design and its many applications, en route to a degree in New Media Design. Before my enrollment there I worked for a web development firm in New York City. My time there was mostly spent developing brand identities for local companies and designing print and web based materials. I have returned to the firm to work part-time during breaks over the past two years. In addition I've done freelance design and development work for over 50 companies and individuals since 2000, including a campaign website for the current Borough President of Staten Island and a wide array of branding material.
Music Synthesis Program at Berklee
Also, yeah, so I was in that program. I was at Berkeley from 2006 to 2009. So back then, it was called the music synthesis program, and then they renamed it later after I left to electronic production and design. And yeah, that program has, or had at the time, at least an emphasis on learning how to use synthesizers, but it was also sort of a catch-all for any sort of any sort of classes or sort of, you can almost call the minors like there are these like subtracts that had to do with electronic music. So things like generative music, controller is like, you know, live performance with with electronic gear, but also commercial music production. And there were also video game, a couple of video game classes, which kind of for lack of having a better home, I guess they kind of threw them into this music synthesis degree. But basically, it was a music technology type degree with but that also had really solid, fundamental type classes in production and how to like understanding how to use synthesizers and how synthesizers work.
So like when we were studying, when I was in the classes that I took that were specifically for synthesis, my professor, his name was Michael Bridgetta. And I learned a lot of what I know from how to use synthesizers from him, and from that class. And so the class was sort of decked out with these Nord modular, I think there are G two keyboards, which have internal they have like internal synthesis engine. And they also have a piece of software that runs on a computer, where you can, you can basically create your own patches for it.
And it's like a fully modular synth environment. And, you know, back in 2007, or whenever it was that I was messing around with this. And in this class, I mean, it was pretty, I thought it was pretty novel, at least for me, it was novel. I know that, obviously, you know, pure data and C sound and Max, we're all, you know, alive and well already.
But that was kind of my first real exposure to, to that sort of thing. So it was it was definitely really eye opening. It was a game changer.