Alexander Brandon and Straylight Productions have made music for some of the most popular games of the last few years, including Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Recently the news was released that Straylight would be composing the bulk of the music for Deus Ex, including "title music, end music, and cutscenes." Deus Ex Incarnate was fortunate enough to get some information from Alexander about his latest project.
"Straylight was a pleasure to work with. I've known Alexander Brandon for years now, and he's not only a great musician but an all around good guy!" - Cliff Blezinski, Epic Games
[Deus Ex Incarnate] What is the general process you go through to create music for a
game? Does the developer give you strict instructions as to what goes in and where? Or do you have more (or even complete) freedom? How about with Deus Ex in particular?
[Alexander Brandon] Sometimes a developer will want exact specs for music, sometimes they give you freedom to do anything. Deus Ex is a cross between both. Warren and the gang usually know what they want, but initially its tough for them to describe it. So we will go through and send a number of songs in that we think may work for levels as their themes. Sometimes we're spot on, and others may get requested for a different level. So far I think things have worked fantastically with the acceptance rate and the level of flexibility the team has given us.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] You mention on your website that Straylight Productions may disband this year. Can we assume that this will be after the Deus Ex music is completed?
[Alexander Brandon] Nope... sadly I can't divulge details just yet about our plans because they're not totally carved in stone yet, but soon we'll be finding out and letting everyone know what will happen with our beloved Straylight. (sniff) I can definitely say that there will be a major change taking place.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Your company's resume shows a strong collection of Epic Games titles. How did you manage to develop such a close rapport with Epic, to the point of their licensees using Straylight for their games?
[Alexander Brandon] We started with Epic and Origin as our two big daddy companies. For Epic, I started by co designing and then doing music for the shooter "Tyrian" which got a lot of fans, then went on to "Unreal" and "UT"... since Legend was doing the Mission Pack I thought I'd rather Straylight keep going rather than let someone else do it... "Unreal" is a rather personal series to Straylight musically. As for "Deus Ex", I went for that one alone as I was a big Warren Spector game fan. It turned out we admired each others' work and the relationship grew from there. I honestly never expected success in that area since DX is such a high profile title (perhaps Jerry Goldsmith might have been hired *g*), but we managed to prove ourselves yet again.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Can you give us an idea of the type of music that will be in Deus Ex? Will there be a common theme, or will different areas have different styles (Paris as opposed to New York, for example).
[Alexander Brandon] There is a definite main theme that is repeated throughout the game, and a multitude of styles will be used throughout, since the areas themselves are so different as you've seen from the screenshots, the music reflects that.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Since Straylight does so many Unreal-engine game soundtracks, are you contractually obligated to attack Sascha Dikiciyan from Sonic Mayhem on sight, since he's done music for most of the Quake games?
[Alexander Brandon] HAHAHA Sascha kicks ass... I thought he'd have slagged Unreal's music for being non-studio quality, but he told me "I upped the quality to 44.1khz and I was like 'OH MY GOD!'"... he had no idea MODs could sound even remotely close to studio stuff, but in a few tunes we just took 44.1khz samples and even whole segments and simply had them played back, there's not much difference since we could post process the WAVs before they played.
So to answer the question, nope, I'm not obligated to say Quake music sux, especially since he did some sfx for UT ;) we really like each others' work.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] The Unreal engine allows for music to shift to match the pace of gameplay (Interactive Audio)... is it difficult to write music that can flow to match these shifts?
[Alexander Brandon] YES. This is dangerous ground, especially for hardcore people of varying calibers. To make the music transition properly is pretty tough, but I think we'll be pulling it off well. A lot of people seemed to like the
transitioning in "Unreal" so to do it for DX seemed perfectly logical.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Is there any one thing that stands out as the most difficult part of writing music for games?
[Alexander Brandon] Keeping to technical limits. There are always limits to respect, whether they be deadlines or budget, but man, if I had twice as much to work with for these tunes, they would be twice as good in sound quality. Its tough to make that cut and still say you did the best you could, but every single game developer out there knows you have to do it.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] ION Storm's Chairman John Romero has stated many times that he's a fanatic about game music. Feel any pressure? :P
[Alexander Brandon] I've heard he likes power but I've never met him so I can't say for sure. However as an avid player he probably also likes more ambient tunes (as you can hear in a few DK pieces, they're not all heavy by any means).
For DX there's a lot of varying degrees of action and exploration, and power doesn't always work. Frankly I've no idea, his favorite game music might be "The Dig" for all I know. :)
There's all different kinds of pieces in DX... I'm sure there's at least one or two tunes that will please just about everyone.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Are there any games whos soundtracks and audio just blow you away, and
make you jealous that you didn't write that music yourself?
[Alexander Brandon] Oh hell yes... "The Dig" by Michael Land, "Wing Commander" has always had totally great orchestral stuff... and of course the much admired "Wipeout" and "Wipeout XL" soundtracks, which were the first ones that proved popular bands could produce fitting and really great game soundtracks.
What about metal? Quake / Quake II stand out as among my fav FPS soundtracks for hard edged tunes, but my favorite metal comes from the TurboDuo game "Lords of Thunder".. if you have a TurboDuo or a TurboGrafx 16 with the enhanced CD, you owe it to yourself to check out this game.. it has pounding guitars with wads of bass that blow your speakers. Somewhat 80s in nature but I prefer harmony / Steve Vai hard stuff to death metal teeth grinding as a personal preference.
[Deus Ex Incarnate] Any chance you can give an approximate idea of how far along you are in
finishing the Deus Ex score?
[Alexander Brandon] Like just about all the other elements of the game, we're very close to completion, although if I had another 6 months to work I would definitely take advantage of it ;)
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