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fanfoolishness · 5 months

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The Music of Jedi: Survivor

Last night I went to the Grammy Museum for an event celebrating the Jedi: Survivor score! Sometimes living in Los Angeles has its benefits. It was an evening with composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab, as well as their recording engineer Alan Meyerson, moderated by Jon Burlingame. I took copious notes throughout so I could share them with you all :) All quotes are paraphrases, I’m not that quick a note taker.

My husband and I settled into our seats, me vibrating with excitement as the lights dimmd. I was already hyped to hear the composers talk about my favorite game and their process for scoring it, but then my jaw fell out of my head because who strolled up on stage but fucking Cal Kestis himself, Cameron Monaghan, unexpected and uncredited on the event description.

I almost rolled out of my chair. Then I frantically started smacking my husband (who’s never played the game, but loves music and production) and hissing “it’s him it’s him it’s the Jedi!!!”

Cameron’s intro was brief but lovely. He introduced himself, then paused and said something like, “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of silence. That is awful. I can hear my own thoughts! No one wants to play a game like that. Which is why we have these guys!” He introduced the composers, Stephen and Gordy, as well as the sound engineer Alan and the moderator for the event, shook their hands and exchanged some hugs, then sat down in the audience. Giddily I returned to my notes as Jon led the discussion.

Q: How did you get into scoring video games?

Stephen was a gamer and had always been interested in working with video games. They were “enticing” and the schedule was much more appealing than for TV, where you might be handed a script and told to get the music back in a few days.

Gordy hadn’t worked particularly in games before.

Alan has been mixing and engineering video game soundtracks for the past 25 years, like Gears of War.

Q: What’s the difference between scoring a film and scoring a video game?

For film, it’s adding music onto what already exists; often the composer isn’t involved until the last 6 weeks or so of production. (Fun fact I learned earlier this year, Ludwig Goransson was involved from the start on Oppenheimer because Christopher Nolan specifically wanted to subvert that.)

The film is fairly static by the time the composers get their hands on it, so things are unlikely to change.

Video games are more like trying to put clothes on someone running a race, because drastic changes can happen at any time. The timeline is also greatly extended — 2-3 years is common — so things may evolve and shift drastically in that time.

Film is also much less volume of music… they wrote an entire 8 hours!

Q: Is there a Star Wars music “house” style?

Initially Star Wars projects outside of the original trilogy were often scored as if they were B sides to the original soundtrack. But the aesthetic is evolving. There are a few standards though — there must always be that symphonic scale.

The score was performed at Abbey Road. Alan mentioned that he was actually there on 9/11 working on a movie about a terrorist attack. Stephen loves recording at Abbey Road so much he and his wife named his daughter Abbey. All three of them agreed that Abbey Road is magical and the orchestra practically blends itself; for choral performances, all you have to do is stick a couple microphones in there and they sound fantastic.

They played a clip of “Dark Times,” with gameplay footage intercut with the symphony performing at Abbey Road. They explained that they wanted to develop a new theme for the Empire. At this time, the Empire just is. You can’t use the Imperial March, because the Imperial March is how the Empire perceives itself. But how does Cal see the Empire? It’s dark and ominous. It’s everywhere. It’s a fact of life.

Gordy explained that they literally shaped the melody like the sinus rhythm of a heartbeat to indicate that Cal’s on the run, his heart always pounding, never safe. They used a full 12 tone chromatic scale to keep the track always uncomfortable and unsettled.

Stephen is such a Merrical shipper! He talked about how one of the central conflicts of Survivor is Cal struggling with his feelings towards Merrin, and what do you do when you’ve utterly lost the fight? He pointed out what the Senator tells Cal, and calls him a pretty reasonable guy. Do you stop fighting when you’ve clearly lost? “Maybe Cal should go shack up with Merrin somewhere and have a nice life.”

Q: What is it like having so much funding for the score on a game like this?

All you can really sell now is quality, and people expect it now.

Q: What is the process like?

They are brought into the game in the script phase, where they may see some concept art and get to read the script to help determine the story beats.

The collaboration is joyful! It seems like it could be really scary, to have game play testers, the game designers, and other music folks all weighing in on how the score is working or not working, but they actually really enjoyed it. They’ll usually do about half the music, then have people test play it for a few months, come back with notes, and then work on the remainder after seeing what worked and what didn’t.

They played “Flight” in its entirety with gameplay of Cal and Merrin outrunning the Trident, and talked extensively about our girl Merrin! Stephen talked about how in JFO, Merrin was important but not as big of a player. Now in Jedi: Survivor, Merrin is vital,and we can see her story arc take shape. Her small motif in JFO was expanded into an epic, heroic scale after we see her power with portals and moving on the wind. They reached for all kinds of wind instruments, from Alpine horns, Tibetan horns, and even the “most tasteful vuvuzela ever.”

Note: it’s almost as heart-pounding to watch that sequence on the big screen as it is to play it!

They both said that some music flows onto the page and is easy to write; the escape from Jedha sequence was not one of those! It wasn’t easy to write, mix or play! A hundred people worked on this song, and it was hard as hell. The orchestra musicians kept coming up to Alan and telling him they loved playing it because it was such a challenge.

They don’t always tell the studio who wrote what. They work well together as they both love bourbon and coffee! Stephen says he’s great at about ¾ of the tune but not the ending, whereas Gordy can fix that up in a jiffy. They also sometimes divvied things up by planet or emotional beats.

Q: I noticed in this last song (“Flight”) there was a choral element. How do you decide when to incorporate choir instead of synth choir?

Choir is often the first casualty of budget cuts since it’s so many people involved. Sometimes, synth choir is chosen for just a vibe or an extra layer.

However, there’s a rule that in musicals when the emotion is building to a point that words can no longer contain them, that’s when a character must burst into song. For a score, when the emotion is swelling and can no longer be contained by mere instruments, that is when to pull out the choir. So we see it in “Flight.”

Me: We also see it in “Rage,” muahahaha.

They used 120 singers for Flight and only needed 3 microphones because of how good Abbey Road sounds.

They prefer amateur choirs to session professionals since you can sometimes have too-professional singers trying to out-sing each other, and amateurs are usually more relaxed.

Q: There were a number of unusual or even invented instruments used for this score, tell us about them.

Gordy made bottle chimes. He accidentally dropped a bottle of water while playing tennis and a ball pinged off it, making a lovely sound. He ordered 20 metal water bottles and strung them in a wardrobe rack with different amounts of water in them. Because it took ages to make, they used it in loads of places in the score.

Stephen went nuts and ordered 200 containers of BlueTack for the pianos for Koboh. They wanted Koboh to sound like the old West, but not that spaghetti Western honkytonk piano sound. If you make BlueTack into a sausage shape and roll it around a piano string you can make it make these strange broken sounds sort of like a gamelan. This is called a prepared piano. The low bumbumbum noises when first getting on Koboh and meeting the pit droid? Freaking piano. I would have never guessed! They did this to 3 pianos.

They played a clip of Where the Nekkos Roam. They used the prepared pianos, an orchestra, dulcimers, Basset horns, euphoniums, tubas. They wanted Koboh to feel lived in and to have history expressed in the music. The musicians were excited to have to rent out Basset horns since like nobody actually owns one.

Q: Tell us about the cantina music.

The original cantina brief from George Lucas to John Williams was apparently, “what if aliens came down in 1000 years and found sheet music from Benny Goodman, but didn’t have the same instruments?” And thus we got the Mos Eisley cantina theme which is almost unbeatable.

They were thinking of scoring the cantina music themselves, but then thought, “what if we gave that brief to a bunch of really cool bands?”

They highly recommended Dan Mayo from Tantran. They recommended taking a few hours to watch him kick ass on the drums on YouTube.

Tantran recorded "Fields of Dusk" for the cantina first, then Stig came back and said “what if we wove this into the score? What if it was Cal and Merrin’s love theme?” Then they created a symphonic version, also partially inspired by a Joni Mitchell song.

They played part of the cantina version of “Fields of Dusk,” then they played the symphonic version with Cal and Merrin riding the spamel to Cere’s base. They gushed about being able to work with the story and the subtext.

Alan said that "Fields of Dusk” “is visceral. It vibrates shit inside of you. Mixing it was a highly emotional experience for me. Even now sitting under the subwoofer — it’s right here, over my head — it’s very emotional.”

Q: How many motifs do you have?

“Seven thousand.” - Stephen

Gordy later amended that to about two dozen, but with tons of variations.

Q: What are the interactions like with the game developers?

They get to be in the building with them, working on the narrative team — making sure to serve the story first. It also lets them practice gameplay or watch others playing to see how it flows.

Again, it’s a 2-3 year process.

They played the clip of Cal and Merrin making a campfire in the cave on Jedha. Stephen is all about the Merrical ship (not that he used those words, alas, but still)! He said this was such gorgeous writing, really allowing the technology to showcase the acting, and it’s his all time favorite scene in the game.

The whole theater clapped as he said that. Yes! A whole theater clapping while someone was talking about Merrical and calling it gorgeous. *sobbing forever*

Q: What has it been like to meet fans?

They’ve been delighted by the fans and how much they love the characters and the amazing performances of all the actors in the game.

Q: Are there plans for a sequel?

Stephen: “Are there Lucasfilm snipers out there? Look for the red dot…”

Gordy: “There’s not NOT plans.”

Fan questions!

Alan mentioned he loves doing the hardest piece first! Then it’s all skiing downhill.

A fan asked about more weird created instruments.

They also used a bunch of bamboo smacking other pieces of bamboo, as well as using little drums from other purposes or sets.

Was there anything they messed up or wanted to do differently than they did in JFO?

They accidentally didn’t loop music in the hangar on Zeffo, so if you stick around there for more than 3 minutes, it just becomes wind sound and gets very lonely. A live streamer was playing the game, talked to his audience for like 10 minutes, then wandered around almost in silence as his fans commented “why is this game so quiet?”

Gordy wanted to make JFO sound much darker and got his wish in Survivor.

I had so been hoping they would talk about “Rage” and the struggle with the dark side, but they were sort of avoiding spoilers. So when they got to the Q&A I had to speak up.

I asked, “What was it like working with darker themes later in the game, like with Rage? You see a real shift in the motifs and there’s also more amazing choral work.” Their faces seriously lit up XD

Stephen said this was one he handed to Gordy because it was very difficult.

Gordy said that this is Cal at his worst, so it had to be so over the top. Think of consonant sounds crashing through the melody, Cal trying to keep control of his thoughts but they’re twisting away, he’s trying to think straight and can’t. It’s discordant. It’s also scored to evoke a heartbeat throughout, like breathing.

It was so hard for the choir to do, going back and forth — you can’t do that with choral samples or synth!

They ended with a video they played from their Hollywood Bowl show in June, and said we were only the second group of people to see it. They played a clip where they do use the classic Imperial March, but contoured so you only get the silhouette of its shape, instead of the full sound. It ended with a clip of the Tantran band playing a wicked awesome set out in the desert. The last image they showed was a list of the 287 people who worked on the score!

We let out and I did get to meet them! Stephen was lovely and I told him it was just such a beautiful, haunting score. I actually had a sketch of the campfire scene with me and he signed it! His daughter Abbey is an artist too and she was really impressed by my sketchbook (she looked to be about 11). Gordy also got to see a bit of my sketchbook and signed Cal in Nova Garon! What an awesome night! We didn’t see Cameron again but I was so astounded to see him the first time I didn’t mind at all.

SO COOL! Sometimes, kids, living in Los Angeles isn’t so bad!!