Secret Level
THE UNSUNG HEROES OF DEVELOPMENT
Award-winning composer JASON GRAVES on the process of writing music for games
Music captured Jason Graves at a young age, and never let him go. After becoming enamoured with John Williams’s ET soundtrack, music became “an emotional touchpoint” for him. Singing lessons, piano lessons, and musicals were just the beginning; he’s been performing music in one way or another since elementary school.
Graves went on to learn a variety of instruments, and in college majored in music. “I thought I was going to be an educator or a performer of some sort,” he says, “but I decided that what I really wanted to do was attempt to write the kind of music that emotionally charged me as a kid, and even now”. Thus he switched from general music study to composition.
Today, Graves is an experienced composer, with an enviable CV that encompasses games, TV, and movies. His game credits include Dead Space, Moss, The Dark Pictures series and the 2013 Tomb Raider to name a few. His favourite music to write, he says with a smile, is, “Whatever I wasn’t doing the day before!” So how does scoring a game differ from scoring anoninteractive project?
“In many ways, TV and film is a lot easier,” he explains. “If someone decides to watch the TV show again, or replay that scene in the film, the music still does the exact same thing. With games, it’s interactive, and the player could play that level again and make different choices. The gameplay is going to be different, and the music needs to react accordingly.” There’s always the same fundamental desire to deliver something emotionally satisfying, but with games, Graves needs to deliver subtly different takes for the same scene. This demands an approach different to that suited for passive media.
TAKE A BEAT
“Food is always a good analogy for me. So if I were scoring a film, it’s like you bake a pizza. Here you go, here’s the pizza, and it’s all done, right? If you’re doing it for a game, you’re like, okay, here’s the crust. And now here’s the three different sauces you can choose from. It’s sort of like pizza a la carte, and that way the game developer has choices. They can reassemble it a couple of different ways.”
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