| SB: I love film music, and it's something that I really appreciate and spend a lot of time listening to. My CD rack is full of movie soundtracks. When I was at music college that was what I wanted to do, to become a film composer. So, I knuckled down and learnt as much as I could from established composers and about orchestration, conducting, and techniques of writing music to picture. I worked as an assistant for a film and tv composer in London for a couple of years after finishing my studies. We went off to record scores in Brattislava, and London, and I met directors and producers in LA, and some very talented musicians. So, yes, I'd really like to write a score for a film some day. I'm having a lot of fun in the video games industry at the moment, and hope to keep writing scores for games for some time to come. I'd say that game music is very different from film music, it is often non-linear and can be interactive and branch-off depending on what you do in the game, it also has to be varied so it doesn't become repetitive. We use software tools to manipulate how the music is triggered, and as we work more and more with these tools and see the possibilities they offers us, it has a knock-on effect on the way the game music is composed. I’ve got a lot of friends here at Rare, so working with them on the game projects is something I enjoy. Rare is a great place to work, I’ve been here for over 7 years now. We have our own recording studio kitted out with some really nice gear. I like working with Cubase for composition, and ProTools for mixing and sound design. As an in-house composer and sound designer, I work here full-time along with all the other development staff made up of programmers, artists, designers, musicians and producers. On every project I’m involved with, I like to get in there from day one. For me this is really important, and as the game develops and comes together, the music and sound design become integral and can even affect game design decisions. Being part of a team also allows a fair amount of trust in what I do, so when it is time to write a new piece of music, the game designer can communicate what he wants in a few words with non-musical terminology, and I know exactly what he is looking for.
My favourite movie score genre would probably be 'quirky' if that's a genre :-) I love Jerry Goldsmith's scores to films such as Gremlins and The 'Burbs.
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