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Join host Jamin Warren on conversations with someone of the most unique and experimental artists, designers, and thinkers in the worlds of games, play and culture
Jamin Warren founded Killscreen and has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames." Additionally, he has served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art's design department, acted as cluster chair for the Gaming category for the Webbys, and hosted Game/Show for PBS Digital Studios.
Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves, Scoring Fear Transcript (Verbatim)
Recorded Oct 13, 2026, Riverside. Jamin Warren with Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves. Cross-Conversations: Horror, presented with MUBI.
Source: Riverside MP3 export of the cleaned edit (Magic episode 01, revision 7, 60:10), transcribed in Google AI Studio.
[00:00:06] Jamin Warren: Well, welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for for
joining us for this conversation called Scoring Fear. We got two wonderful
people here with us today: Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves. Just a housekeeping
note before we get started. This is going to be the first of three conversations
this month, so it's also being recorded, so it'll go up on on killscreen.com.
You'll get an email afterwards as well with the recording. Cross-Conversations:
Horror is presented with MUBI in celebration of Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex
and Death at Camp Miasma, which is now streaming exclusively on MUBI. There
those three three free talks that I mentioned this month, it's going to be
putting people who make horror films and horror games in the same room, and you
get 30 days of MUBI free at mubi.com/killscreen. So many thanks many thanks to
them.
[00:01:03] Jamin Warren: Let's talk about our guests. Ryan Holladay is a
composer and sound artist based in Los Angeles. With his brother, Hays, and
director, Zach Cregger, he scored Weapons. With Hays, he scored this year's
Resident Evil, which opened in September. Before the film, the brothers made a
location-aware album called Bluebrain, which starting with The National Mall
in 2011. We actually wrote about it way back then on Kill Screen. This had music
where that only plays where you stand. And he's right now working on a scoring a
game called Abelina as well. I've played that demo. It's great. You should
definitely go check it out.
[00:01:42] Jamin Warren: Jason Graves is the composer behind the original Dead
Space trilogy, which won the BAFTA for Original Score in 2009. He scored Until
Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, including this year's Directive 8020, and
Still Wakes the Deep, which we'll talk about, which built a around which was
built also around a custom metal sculpture shaped like an oil rig called The
Rig.
[00:02:06] Jamin Warren: Maybe just to start, Ryan, in just to go back a little
bit, you you did this project called Bluebrain, which involved which you walked
through The National Mall and you would hear music through an app, and you said
that that project actually came out of game sound and Myst in particular, where
sound kind of grows as you walk it. 15 years on, curious about, you know, how
that maybe that early experience kind of scoring something that it was designed
to be moved through space maybe prepared you for some of the work that you're
doing compositionally in the future?
[00:02:38] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for having us, and it's
such a pleasure to be doing this with Jason. And really exciting. You know,
everything my brother and I have done has always come from sort of a spirit of
experimentation, and a new tool comes along, or a tool that we that doesn't
exist that we want to build. It's always kind of like, "What does this thing do,
and how can we break it or change how it's it's used?" And for so for the
location-aware music stuff, it was around 2009 when the iPhone had been released
and they had just allowed third-party developers to make their own apps. And no
one had really done There'd been some music apps, but they were kind of like
novelties, and and more kind of like toys for making music, or like Yeah, really
novelty kind of things. And we were like, "This is a pretty powerful thing that
you have in your pocket in the sense of it has GPS enabled, and it has this
audio engine, so we could we could almost"
[00:03:36] Ryan Holladay: The way we kind of approached it was, what if we took
a actual physical space like The National Mall or Central Park, and mapped it
musically like you would a game? So as you approach one area, this piece starts,
and then that's time synced to this other area, so when you sort of walk between
them, you are the thing that is triggering sort of the mix of these different
elements. And then so you could put little Easter eggs throughout the the space.
And so it just kind of became a an immersive audio experience that was really
wasn't available before then. I mean, there were artists like Janet Janet
Cardiff who had done like location-based music, but it wasn't until the iPhone
came along that people had like the average person had this level of technology
in their pocket, so. Yeah, I guess the way Was your question how [laughs] Sorry,
I just kind of went on a tangent, but
[00:04:26] Jamin Warren: How How maybe how maybe that prepared you for I was
curious like how maybe that prepared you for like doing work related to games
and also doing, you know, dipping your toe also into scoring games as well.
[00:04:36] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, I think it just it was just that spirit of
experimentation, and what can this thing do? And it did kind of it whetted our
appetite a little bit for how how music can interact with with space, whether
that's physical, real space or, in the sense of a game, a a virtual space. So,
yeah, that was a that was a fun sort of first experiment in that.
[00:04:59] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Jason, just a background question for for you.
You started as a as a drummer, and I was curious if you saw direct, you know, is
there something special about maybe drummers or having a percussive background
that makes you positioned you well for like that first demo when you you tried
out for this EA gig and, you know, were able to move on to Dead Space?
[00:05:18] Jason Graves: In in retrospect, being a drummer is amazing, and I
love it. And I can see how it has a major influence in the way I write, and
especially the way I think about approaching a score. But in the moment, for
probably the first 15 years of my career, and when I was in high school,
college, grad school, and before I started the career, I always felt like being
a drummer was the the weakest link in my repertoire, because I had friends,
music majors, right, that played piano, or played saxophone, or they were into
electronic music and they had a sampler. And I was just always sort of "Jason
bang drums good. I can play vibraphone. Does that help anybody?" And I didn't
feel like it was a serviceable, usable skill.
[00:06:00] Jason Graves: But thanks to technology, especially, and just doing
something like Dead Space, which was the original lightbulb for me thinking,
"Being a drummer is actually kind of interesting." I was able to lean into
rhythmic melody, for lack of a better word. I didn't want to have any themes, I
didn't want to have any chord progressions, didn't really want to have anything
that put the player at ease or made them feel at home. I wanted everything to be
off-putting, and I leaned on just crazy permutations of time signatures and and
rhythm to do that. Sorry, are we good? I'm getting little windows popping up in
Riverside. Are we good? [laughs]
[00:06:36] Jamin Warren: Yeah, I I can I can hear you I can hear you fine.
[00:06:38] Jason Graves: Okay. Yeah, so I pretty much approach anything from
rhythm. Unless there's going to be Now, even if it's a melody, like a love theme
or something for a scene in a film or a game, I'm still thinking about the
rhythm of that theme, where the notes are playing, and sort of the harmonic
rhythm of the chords. I love the way classic composers like Jerry Goldsmith or
John Williams would write just not block chords every four beats, they would
have a a rhythm to the chords, where you could almost hear the chords without
the melody and it would paint a picture of that particular theme. So it's been I
think the only way I can appreciate it is retrospectively, and I wouldn't have
answered this way 15 years ago, right? I'll probably answer slightly
different 15 years from now, knock on wood.
[00:07:24] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Well, I I think that
first thing, and I wanted to talk about the creating that the feeling of the
feeling of dread. You know, tension is something that's built before the scare.
Maybe, Ryan, you can go first. You know, on Resident Evil, you've said, you
know, that these there's these quiet passages of something I noticed from seeing
the film, you know, the abandoned house, there's you know, there's sort of that
the that that there's just like this blackness or this the negative space that
kind of gets filled in, and that's kind of what creates that sort of that
creates that sort of sphere that fear. Could you walk us through like how you
plan unease when nothing is happening on screen? Because Resident Evil, it's a
travel film, so there's often these sequences where the character is walking.
Yeah, tell us a little bit about like planning for those moments when things are
going to be a little bit slower.
[00:08:10] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, gets filled in, or doesn't get filled in. I
mean, that's a big part of it is like Zach, you know, Zach, I think, I've said
this before, his his approach You know there's that that term minimum viable
product? I think his approach is often minimal minimum viable score. [Jamin
laughs] So whatever the least amount to do the job is, and that that's
especially true when it's like a dread moment or something. There's a lot of
times where we'll build something that we're really excited about, we're really
proud of. You know, in Resident Evil, there's there's a moment where he's
walking through the woods with his with his camera as his flashlight, or his
phone as his flashlight, as you have up there, and he's looking for something. I
don't want to give any spoilers away, but he's looking for something that
[laughs] he just caused to happen. And we had built this kind of whole collage
out of out of brass, out of horns, and it sounded cool. And then one day Zach
was like, "What if we mute this?" And it was like, "Oh, that's scarier."
[00:09:10] Ryan Holladay: There's a number of times where we'll kind of go
really big and and or or put a lot of time into creating something that's very
layered, and then ultimately we come back to, actually, it only needs this one
element. And, you know, I think a lot of with that kind of stuff, with the
dread, we can we can kind of prepare and and make all these all these cool
things that we think are going to work really well, and ultimately, if it
doesn't work alongside the picture, it's going to go or it's going to get
changed. But I think a lot of times for Zach, if it pops out too much, if it's
if it's drawing too much attention to itself, it's not working.
[00:09:44] Ryan Holladay: There's a scene in Weapons that I remember Zach sent
me a review that mentioned this music moment, and it was it's the scene when the
mother comes out of the house with the scissors, it's like a long one shot, she
walks to the car, and the and the the review was very was praising the scene,
and it said, "And the whole thing plays out in total silence with no music,"
which is not true, there is music there, but he was like, "This is the best
compliment you could hope for [both laugh] is that no one noticed that there's
music, but they love the scene." And that's kind of that's kind of Zach's
approach to score in general, but especially those moments that are just
supposed to be dread. It's if you're noticing it too much, you've kind of
overplayed. So.
[00:10:22] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jason, is that is that something that
you've found? Does that, you know, what what Ryan's talking about, has that does
that have crossover with, you know, the way that you maybe approach building
that sense of dread in in your work?
[00:10:33] Jason Graves: Absolutely. And I'll just I'll just split the fence
down the middle of the property, and I'll speak more from the game perspective,
and Ryan can speak more from from film, although we both are currently working
on both of those particular genres.
[00:10:47] Jamin Warren: Sure.
[00:10:48] Jason Graves: The biggest upside and downside to games, especially
with scary games, is trying to provide that sense of tension over an
indetermined amount of time. So a lot of that comes down to unfamiliar types of
sounds, I feel like, and just as important, as Ryan just mentioned, knowing
where the music isn't going to play, knowing when the music is going to play.
And games like Dead Space actually have music playing throughout the entire
score, but a big part of that score, and I think this is probably a similar
approach that Ryan was just talking about in the scissors scene, a big part of
that ambient music in the score that's layer one, we called it, out of four
layers that's always playing, is mostly just a full string ensemble almost
playing just random notes. I would get the whole entire string section, the
music would say, "Play any note, ppp, you know, sul tasto, muted." And you just
kind of give them a indicator, and they
[00:11:43] Jason Graves: you get this beautiful, tense, impossible to write
unless you had 50 staves, one for each musician, almost jazz chord. But you kind
of get them to go up and down a little bit, you'll say just randomly do little
things here and there and notes poke in and out, or you can say, "This is all
aleatoric stuff," which means having the players decide when they're going to do
something. "Do a little bit of a trill here, do this, do that," and you can get
a couple of minutes of music that really sounds more like room tone than
anything else. And that's the the bed of most of the Dead Space stuff. I didn't
do that necessarily for a lot of the other games, Until Dawn or The Dark
Pictures, we took a different approach, because every game is different, just
like every film is different. But a lot comes down to preparing the viewer or
the player for what may or may not be the scariest moment in the in the film or
or in the game.
[00:12:38] Jason Graves: The original audio director for Dead Space said, "I
want you to write music so that as we're walking down this hallway, it gets so
tense that a little floppy stuffed bunny rabbit could jump out like in cartoon
form and go, 'Hi, guys!' and you would still throw your controller across the
room and scream, because the tension had been built up so much, it didn't matter
what the end reveal was, and then that way the game can take care of everything
else." And that was a big lesson for me with scary stuff was, musically, how to
how to represent that, and then also how to how to program it from an
interactive standpoint, so if they decide to not go down the hallway and they
turn around and leave, the music can respond accordingly.
[00:13:17] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you do you find, you know, it does
seem like some some of these, though, I mean, this is true of horror in general,
that people have different triggers for themselves. Is there a like a, you know,
a universal language for for that feeling of dread, like some things that you've
been able to lean on that you feel like will kind of be spooky to everybody? You
know, I was thinking about, you know, just watching Resident Evil, it's like you
watch that film as a as like a parent. For example, I have a I have a
four-and-a-half-year-old, and there's, you know, there's notes of, you know,
there's obviously notes of like parenthood throughout the film. You know, Jason,
I think, certainly like with your work, like you know, with if you have a I
don't know, a nostalgic attachment in The Dark Pictures Anthology, you know,
with Until Dawn, like a nostalgic attachment, you're going to maybe approach the
way those types of films are hommage you know, homages to, you know, you know,
past slasher films and things like that. Musically, are there elements that you
find are universal that create that sense of, you know, that sense of dread that
you can tap on, or you can lean into from even though even though every project
is different, there are some things that you can feel like can, you know, create
a good base for you?
[00:14:16] Jason Graves: Go ahead, Ryan. No, please. I want to hear you first.
[00:14:18] Ryan Holladay: Well, I mean, look, there there's so many fun,
creative, original-sounding things that we put in this movie in both of these
movies that I I'm really proud of, but sometimes, you know, a a string glissando
just works, or a a weird like plucky You know, there there are things that are
tropes for a reason, and there are times where, despite trying to reinvent the
wheel, it's just like we can try five different approaches, and then ultimately,
actually, just a string riser here is kind of what's needed. And, you know,
[laughs] unfortunately, not everything can be a completely genre-bending
approach to sound, and sometimes there's there's things that just work, and so,
yeah, I feel like we really tried
[00:15:00] Ryan Holladay: It's funny, the things that we set out to kind of
avoid are the things that maybe we knew we would be coming back to. I mean, we
said in the beginning we weren't going to use synth. Now synth is like all over
the score. We kept coming back to the The Thing and John Carpenter and like But
originally we were like, "Let's do all of this with brass." Same with strings.
We're like, "Let's Let's not do any of like the rising strings." Well, of
course, sometimes it's just like that's what that's what's needed, even if it's
just like a layer underneath there. So there are sounds that we associate with
horror or with dread that are that just work, and they kind of work on our
nervous system in a a way that maybe we don't even understand. But despite
trying to change that [laughs] and reinvent it with every new project, sometimes
you just come back to those things that work.
[00:15:42] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah. How about for you, Jason?
[00:15:44] Jason Graves: I have a very methodical and researched for the past 20
years [Jamin laughs] three-prong answer to this question, and it's everything
that Ryan just said. But because I did this first Dead Space game and then they
asked to do a second one, and then they asked to do a third one, and then that
extrapolated into more scary things, I've done a lot of soul-searching and
pondering, and number one, the unknown is always scarier than the known. This
would be like the shark fin under the water or the hand that you see under the
bed, right? If you're watching a scary movie, it's always the scariest until the
killer or the killer monster, whatever, is revealed, because once the audience
sees something and can attach physical recognition to it, it's like, "Oh, okay.
So," I mean, in the '80s it was it's just a guy in a suit. Now it's, "Oh, it's
just a CG monster." The the tension's released, so it's not as scary.
[00:16:34] Jason Graves: So I try to make, just from a very upward level looking
down in miniature, try to come up with sounds that are really unfamiliar,
because unfamiliar is scary, right? And it can be from a synthesizer or a thing
of coffee cup, right, tapping it and putting something into the computer, just
making it different and unique, plus that's fun. The second thing that really is
a trigger for me is that kind of baby crying register of sounds. We have a puppy
right now, and he's adorable, but he has this like high A natural or B flat,
like really high when he barks, and it makes me jump even if he's in the other
room. I have this visceral response to it, because it's just this sight-piercing
sound. So now we're talking about screechy violins, you know, the the the Psycho
string stabs, anything in that upper register, especially if it comes at you
really quickly, just puts humanity in in an uncomfortable position, because,
especially if it's kind of like strings or something, [Jamin laughs] sounds like
a baby crying.
[00:17:34] Jason Graves: The opposite end of that is any big, low, massive
sounds, especially if they kind of hit and and go away, and come back in some
sort of a regular rhythm, because now we're This is all prehistoric stuff,
right? Now we're talking about giant creatures are going to eat you and your
family. Same thing with any kind of, you know, big [roars] kind of big
roaring-type sounds with a synth, or with an orchestra with low brass. It's just
coming up with prehistoric versions of these sounds that tap into our survival
instincts for ourselves or or for our family. Okay, that's
[00:18:10] Ryan Holladay: It's such an awesome answer. I I need to be taking
notes. That's like a [Jamin laughs] this is a masterclass. I mean, Jason, you've
been doing this for so long. I mean, it's it's amazing how how you've had so
many years to iterate and build on this franchises and and and just your
approach. I mean, it's amazing how you've how you've dissected this. And and you
become a father in this time, right? So you
[00:18:31] Jason Graves: Oh, yeah. [both laugh] Kids and animals everywhere. And
and I'm a drummer, so that leans into basically me just banging, right, as as
much as I can. And while we're while we're doing this real quick before we
started our talk, I was complimenting Ryan on Weapons, which I thought was just
such an incredible film and such a wonderfully creative and and effective score.
So this is this is me geeking out just as much. Thank you.
[00:18:56] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that does,
you know, separate the you know, the two the two different sides is a sense of
the sense of control. You know, how much control you have over the sequence over
the sequence. You know, in in games, those are are generative and, you know, I
famously I mean, I had a conversation with with Will Wright a bunch of years
ago. I was asking about comedy specifically, and it was like, "Well, it's really
hard to deliver comedy in a in a game, in part because comedy requires you to
set up expectations, to set up the joke, so to speak, and then to pay it off,
and players come into different, you know, different environments with different
perspectives." You know, in film, you do have that ability to kind of control
things along the way. You know, Ryan, could you talk a little bit about about
maybe some of like that that maybe maybe some of the process stuff that you're
working with with Zach on with with Zach? My understanding is that there was
almost no no temp music. You know, say there wasn't something that was there
before. You're working at the against this kind of this this sort of the
silence. Tell me a little bit about that sequencing. Like how did how did you go
through that process of being able to sequence things in a way that you felt
like would would set things up in a way that worked well for Zach, but then also
worked well for some of the scoring work that you've done?
[00:20:06] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. I mean, we have kind of a unique process or what
I think is is unique, which is that we start with him very early. I mean, for
both Weapons and and Rez, we did Hays and I do a ton of pre-production, so
that's one part of it is we do we write a a lot of stuff in advance, knowing
that when we start the film, it's going to be happening very rapidly, and
there's going to be changes all the time that are happening. And so the cool,
esoteric, weird ideas that we want to get out of our system, we start those very
early, so we have kind of a bank of things to draw from. But the way it works
with Zach is that, as soon as they start the edit, we actually move our whole
studio into the post-production house. So it's kind of like on one hallway we
have like the edit, the VFX, and us. And so Zach kind of jumps between the three
rooms, and all of these things are advancing simultaneously. And so we're seeing
the earliest edit of the film with very placeholder VFX, and we're starting to
write to it.
[00:21:07] Ryan Holladay: And so the edit is changing, the look of the movie is
changing, and the music is changing, so there's never a point where it's like,
"Okay, this isn't a good place for you to start composing." We're literally
creating that from the very beginning. And so the the benefit of that is that we
Yes, there's no there's no temp score. So as we're writing something that's kind
of working, they're they're changing the edit to that. And then the flip side is
they're still kind of carving this movie out. So there might be something that
we're pretty we're pretty excited about how this this kind of evolves, this
piece of music. This cue goes exactly the right Now that scene is way shorter.
And actually, it goes here, and it goes, you know, that shot has changed.
There's all this stuff that that is kind of evolving. So it can drive us a
little crazy on a on a process side of things.
[00:22:01] Ryan Holladay: But I think the the the benefit is that, when we get
to a place where things are starting to come together, it's all locking into
place simultaneously. So it's like, "Oh, wow. Now this scene really makes a lot
of sense, and the music is is is making sense with it." And so with Weapons and
with Rez, by the first time the studio saw a cut of the movie, it was like
pretty much there was no temp music in it. It was all original score. And so we
kind of, from that point on, it was just like, "All right, we're just refining.
We have the big rocks in place." It's harder up front, but I think for us it
works well, because by the time we've found it, it's so locked into the picture
that that, you know, they're they're really married at that point.
[00:22:41] Jamin Warren: Yeah. And you were in a band with Zach, is that right?
That's that's my understanding, as well.
[00:22:44] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. So Hays and I played in a band with
Zach for We grew up We all grew up outside DC, so we've kind of come up
together, like, you know, working on different creative projects, and playing in
a band was a big part of our lives, and Zach was the singer. You know, so there
was [laughs] there was a little bit of a you know, I think a band is, at least
in our case, was a, you know, it's a democracy. Everybody has a voice and a say.
In a film, by you know, definition, it it is one person's vision that we are all
in service of. And so there was a a little bit of recalibration just with the
three of us, like realizing, "Oh, this is not a everyone everyone's vote matters
equally." It's like, "No, no, whatever We can all we can all throw things at the
wall, but ultimately it's what one person thinks is going to work. That's what
the direction we're going for."
[00:23:31] Ryan Holladay: Which can be freeing in some ways, because it's like
you can try as many different things, but you know that there is it's not just
about, you know, matters of opinion. It's really about what one person thinks is
is going to make the best film, make tell the story the absolute best. So we're
all just kind of like rowing in the same direction.
[00:23:50] Jamin Warren: Yeah.
[00:23:50] Ryan Holladay: But it's yeah.
[00:23:52] Jamin Warren: Jason, you you're dealing with players who are moving
through a world with different speeds. Can you tell me a little bit about some
of the Yeah, some of the tricks that you've that that you've some of the things
that you've learned along the way in terms of like, how do you how do you
account for the interactive element, you know, the interactive the interactive
element for for games? I understand you've built some, you know, really
interesting or done some really interesting work on the interactive audio side
to to make that work well for players and feel like very natural.
[00:24:20] Jason Graves: It's always a a wonderful challenge, because every game
is obviously different, just like a film. However, there are also always
tried-and-true ways to get interactive music to work a certain way. And most
people are either using something called Wwise or something called FMOD. The
bigger the bigger games with bigger teams usually use Wwise, and I'm familiar
with both. So a lot of it comes down to, literally, I'll have a developer say,
"Hey, so this scene in, you know, a Dark Pictures game, that the character does
this and the music does this, how did that happen?" And sometimes I can answer,
and sometimes I can't, because in the case of something like like Modern
Warfare 4, that's coming out in a week or something like that, I did all the
multiplayer music for that, but I did not by any means do any of the
implementation, because it was too big of a project, there were too many things
going on. It was a team of four or five people just doing music implementation.
But that's a little off topic of what you were asking.
[00:25:18] Jason Graves: A big part of of implementation is trying to avoid
repetition, because you don't want the music to be looping if the game play is
constantly moving forward, or if you turn around and go back to a different
place, maybe you don't want to necessarily have the exact same music play again.
This is a very cinematic approach to game music as opposed to a more a
Nintendo-fied, for lack of a better word, you know, where the music's very short
and recognizable, and you hear it all the time. Usually with horror you don't
necessarily want that. So a big part of interactivity is how scary or how
intense the music is, and it's come a long way. We can pretty much do anything
now in these third-party apps, like Wwise or FMOD. And we could put a little tag
on a creature, or on a doorway at the end of the hall, to bring up that previous
example I was talking about, or on a timer, or on a just a specific location,
and then you can tell the program, "So as the player gets closer, like as their
distance changes to either this creature, maybe, that is approaching you, toward
to this door that you're approaching, or to a new region in the game, maybe a
new level that's going to unlock, do the following things."
[00:26:26] Jason Graves: And it can be making the music scarier, making the
music more simple. Sometimes dialing the music out all together and getting it
really, really quiet is the most effective way to build tension. We have a
thousand different ways that we can implement a lot of this music, and the
wonderful thing about games, very much like what Ryan was saying, I'm usually
involved from the beginning, so I'm creating music and doing suites and ideas of
things as the game's getting made, and a lot of times the developer will be
listening to, even if they're just demos that I've sent, and working on a level,
it might influence the lighting, they might hear something and think, "That
would be really cool if that that jumpscare plays, that gives me an idea for
this thing that could happen, and and pop out around the corner." And most of
the time we're running parallel, and a little times the games will get ahead of
me, other times I'll get ahead of the game, but we're always sharing
information, and it's very much a team effort. Usually with the audio director,
so I'm not talking to the the director of the game or the producer, there's an
audio director who is herding all the audio cats, sound design and music and
everything else.
[00:27:33] Jason Graves: And it's just a matter of trial and error. Put it in
the game, see if it works, we can play it, so we can I can get literal feedback
after it goes into the game the next day, and just figure out how to reassemble
the what? The pizza, for lack of a better term. It's like I made this beautiful
pizza, but now I have to take all the ingredients apart, give it to the
developer, they have to reassemble the pizza somehow, and have it be
interactive. Interactive pizza.
[00:27:59] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is there a You mentioned like objects
having kind of like a weight to them. Is there a favorite object of yours in
from a game that you've worked on, like a maybe something unexpected for players
that triggers a sense of, you know, unease or or dread that you can think of
that was maybe unexpected for players and maybe maybe not noticed by them
directly? That's not the big bad monster, you know?
[00:28:19] Jason Graves: Right, right, right. The very first time, the What
comes to mind immediately is the very first time I was visiting EA and we had
original music that we had recorded with the live musicians implemented into the
game, and I hadn't even written anything yet. It's just EA was there at the
recording session, they took all the Pro Tools sessions, I took all the Pro
Tools sessions, and they were just implementing raw takes of of strings and
brass and things, and all they did was just assign a couple of very basic state
variable music bits, quiet strings, louder strings, and then loud brass, and it
would just kind of fade in as you're standing on a very tall building with a
bridge, and it's all smoky and misty, and there's a Necromorph approaching you,
which is the bad guys in Dead Space, and as he it gets closer, those states ramp
up, and the music builds, and they basically programmed it so that Necromorph
would come up and do some little crazy thing and then sort of not see you and
turn around and go the other way.
[00:29:15] Jason Graves: And they played that for me. As soon as I got there,
the audio director was really excited. I didn't even know it was my music. I
thought they'd used like some Penderecki or or something, and that was when we
realized that this interactive, multi-stage music tier attached to a specific
thing would actually work. As far as I know, no one had done that yet, because
this was a proprietary engine that EA had built from scratch for a previous
game, and it hadn't really been used to 10% of its potential. So we were stress
testing it and just pushing it every way we possibly could. And that's When you
talk about interactive music, that's the first thing that I I always think of.
It's very tried and true now, but we had never We didn't even know if it could
be done, so it was super exciting.
[00:30:02] Jamin Warren: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's strikes me as
interesting is also like when we think about you know, within like in film, for
example, like, you know, John Williams or, you know, like we sort of associate
like their work, and it's You mentioned the Nintendo kind of like You know, with
Nintendo, it's like, you know, Koji Kondo, you can think of like The Legend of
Zelda scores or Mario. Those are like identifiable like sequences. It's
interesting, because like what you're doing is it does seem sometimes it's
harder to assign the same type like the same type of Players feel it in a more
holistic way, but they may not be able to kind of like point to a specific like
Yeah, they may not point to things in a specific way that you might with like a
film or another game that more explicitly kind of like loops something. Yeah, I
was just curious. How How do you feel like your your your your thumbprint gets
communicated to to players, because you've chosen this more dynamic, interactive
approach to to to to to making to scoring scoring games?
[00:30:57] Jason Graves: That's the kind of thing I'm trying to think if there's
any A lot of times, I'm sure Ryan has the same experience, it's a very mutually
creative He mentioned throwing things at a dartboard. That's that's very much
the idea with implementation, as well. So a lot of it just comes down to how the
game how I feel like the game play feels, like the the kind of vibe that it's
giving. And I think the only way I can answer your question is I do have a
specific example with a a series of games called Moss that was very much not
scary, and the company originally wanted to have more of a Nintendo-y kind of
approach to it, where if you won a trophy, it would play a little, you know,
[sings fanfare] kind of thing, and if you died, it would go [imitates descending
tones]. And they wanted the music to be very kind of regionally, "Okay, you
cross this border, this 60-second loop's going to play, and we want it to be
very recognizable." And I did a little bit of that at the beginning, but it just
It was a VR game, and it was very immersive and beautiful, and one of my
favorite projects to to work on, an incredible game developer, and it felt like
the music was just doing too much.
[00:32:03] Jason Graves: It didn't need to do all of that, and I said to the
audio director after we did an initial test, "What if I just write like an
eight-minute piece of music that sort of goes through the vibes of what this
level's all about? If there's a swamp and you're in a boat, I'll do a couple of
minutes of that, if you're in a forest and it's raining, I'll do a couple of
minutes of that, and I'll just give you all the stems, and we talk about how we
can implement it. But I want the music to, if it's okay with you, I would want
the music to feel more like a cinematic soundtrack that's just in the
background, just gently guiding you, as opposed to knee-jerk reacting to
everything that you do." And the best answer to any question for a game composer
is, "Let's put it in the game and see if it works," you know, "see how it
feels." And that's what we ended up doing for the whole score. Not that I don't
think the Nintendo thing would have worked, but it would have given the game a
much more kind of, you know what, like kind of tongue-in-cheek playable, like
Not that it's not fun, but yeah. I mean, Ryan, do you You know what I mean? Like
taking a step back and painting with a broader brush as opposed to being up in
your face all the time, right?
[00:33:08] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. And it's, you know, I I'm working on my
very first game, Abelina, with with Gabe, and Jamin has has worked on it with us
a little bit, and, you know, I took that approach mainly because I just didn't
know the tricks of of everything that you could do with these engines, and kind
of did that approach of let's I I just kind of write long suites of music that
could be played in this world. But what's amazing is how often it just works. I
mean, just playing the game, it's like, "Oh, that actually feels like it's
triggering that, and that's" And it's just It's It's funny that like sometimes I
I I remember my friend in college, this is kind of a funny my roommate in
college, you remember that like where if you watch Wizard of Oz and play Dark
Side of the Moon
[00:33:50] Jason Graves: Dark Side of the Moon.
[00:33:51] Ryan Holladay: at the same time, all these things link up? He told me
he was like [laughs] he we did that, fell asleep, and woke up, and it was just
Dark Side was just playing to whatever was on TV, like commercials and stuff,
and he was like, "That album just goes with anything," you know, it's like
[laughs] it doesn't really matter what's on the screen, everything just kind of
works with it.
[00:34:06] Ryan Holladay: And I feel like my approach was a little bit like, let
me just write things that feel like they live in this in this biome, in this
universe that that Gabe has built, and just see how it links up when you play.
And the amount of times it's just like, "Oh, that actually works regardless of
where I am, if if if the spirit of the music kind of compliments this world, it
did kind of work." But I am so curious about how you, I mean, that that that
experience you were talking about where when the monster's approaching and the
music is I mean, and they you were saying they took music that you didn't even
write for that and was placed by Was it like a music editor or somebody that
kind of chose that? Does that happen a lot in games where things that you might
have written for another area were then kind of repurposed and Yeah.
[00:34:50] Jason Graves: Yeah, it it can, for sure. Especially I mean, from a
big game, like Call of Duty, all my music got completely taken apart, and
different stems are played at different parts of all the multiplayer stuff, even
to a smaller game, like Still Wakes the Deep, which is Chinese Room, they're
they were an indie developer at that time, and it was just three of us, the
audio director, and one guy doing all the music and sound effects editing. But
they had something to give a illustrated point, at the very end of the game, all
these story lines were coming together, and I hadn't written anything for it
yet, and the editor said, "Hey, check this out. I actually I took the cello
thing that was playing this theme, and I pitched it down in in Wwise, so it's
twice as slow and an octave lower, and then I took the other things that you
used from this thing from the main character that's now evil, or whatever,
right, and I put it underneath it, and pitched it up a little bit so they're in
the same key," and he played it for me, and it was just like, "That's genius.
That that totally works."
[00:35:49] Ryan Holladay: Yeah.
[00:35:50] Jason Graves: And it's always done with respect, right? They're not
trying to jilt you out of composing for the game, it's a team effort, and
they're just trying to They were trying to help me at the time, because there
was a lot of music. I'm always overly ambitious, I want to write a lot more
music than maybe they're prepared for. So, yeah, you can mix and match stuff.
Especially, I do a lot of stem delivery, like a lot of times it's every
instrument, right? If it's an orchestra, if it's something like Until Dawn,
there's probably 50 or 60 stems, so nowadays, you know, pitch and time
stretching and all that is almost you can't even tell that it's happening. And
then you've got all the real-time controls in games with reverb, and pitch and
time stretching, and distortion, and filtering, and it's insane.
[00:36:36] Ryan Holladay: That's so interesting. Yeah, we've had that experience
a little bit with our our music editor, Scott Hedrick, who would take things
from We have a folder just called "Sandbox" of just things that we've thrown in
there that we've written from the very beginning of a project, and it's cool. I
mean, it's really nice to have somebody else kind of bring things in and and
even combine things in ways that you wouldn't expect to do, or you think to do.
And, yeah, there's a number of times where it'd be like, "Oh, goddamn it. They
put in some Marco Beltrami thing," or some like, "Now we got to match that. Oh,
that's actually ours. Oh, okay. I forgot we wrote that. Cool." [Graves laughs]
"Okay, so we can actually use that." That would happen a bunch where it'd be
like we would kind of hit a wall, and not
[00:37:16] Ryan Holladay: And having somebody come at it from a fresh
perspective and bring in things, or combine things, or slow things down and hear
it in a different way was hugely helpful. And I'd imagine in a game where
there's so much music, having having somebody be able to do that and know your
stuff, and and and that you give sort of creative license to, obviously I'm sure
you come back come in at the end and and and then, you know, refine it, but it
kind of gives you a a an inspiration, something that you might not have come to
in that way, because it's a fresh set of ears. It's interesting.
[00:37:45] Jason Graves: Yeah. And having that trust with the people
[00:37:48] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally.
[00:37:48] Jason Graves: that are mangling, for lack of a better word, and I
mean that in the best way possible, mangling your music, makes a big difference.
With with stingers, [laughs] I mean, I must have done 150 different stingers for
the original Dead Space, because they were all, you know, high intensity, medium
intensity, low intensity, and I sort of drew shapes, you know, is it this kind
of a stinger? Is it that kind of a stinger? Is it this kind of a stinger? And
now I just do buckets. I just call it stinger buckets, and for Still Wakes the
Deep, it was just high, medium, and low elements. So a high element might be a
[makes sound], like a real rattly sort of sound, and there'd be 25 of those,
right? And then a low one would be some sort of a distorted low synth, or
something.
[00:38:29] Jason Graves: But any of them could go with any of the other ones.
And it gave the audio editor, music editor a lot of variety, and he could just
use a single one, or he could filter them, and distort them, and combine them,
and it's really more music arranging at that point. But it makes the little tiny
bit of music that was written for all of that go really, really far. And that
originally started with Dead Space, because I wanted the stinger to play
differently if you walk down a hallway and get killed and have to start over and
you walk down that same hallway, I wanted a different music stinger to jump out
when the creature jumped out, so that it felt like a slightly different
experience.
[00:39:07] Jamin Warren: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one last set of questions, and
then we'll open it up to the floor if there's any Q&A. One last thing I wanted
to ask about was was texture, and about maybe some of the physical process stuff
that you have done to like physical objects. You know, you were talking, I
think, before our call about like how much you can do on computers now, but
there is something really wonderful, obviously, about working with like physical
objects, live instrumentation. Maybe to start, Jason, do you want to talk about
the talk about The Rig, the the metal sculpture for Still Wakes the Deep, and
that might be like a good a good a good place to a good place to start?
[00:39:42] Jason Graves: I can give you the 15-second byline, as well. So I was
working on a game called Tomb Raider about 15 years ago, and I wanted some metal
things that I could manipulate, and I called, eventually found a local
blacksmith. I was talking to him on the phone, turned out he was half a block
away from my house. I lived in a downtown area at the time. And over the period
of a year, he built an entire sculpture for me that was called The Instrument.
And he's got pictures of it online. But all the UI interface of the game, all
the UI sounds, and the entire first level the sound of the game were nothing but
this metal sculpture.
[00:40:20] Jason Graves: So fast-forward 15 years, I'm working on a game that
takes place on an oil rig in the late '70s. So, of course, I think, "Late '70s,
I need to buy a Moog," which I did. You can't see it, but it's sitting right
here. I went to Moog, who are in North Carolina, famously, the manufacturing
plant is here. So I got a Moog, and I contacted Matt, the sculptor, and just
basically said, "I need another sculpture, but it doesn't need to be the size of
a refrigerator. I need something small, and you know what I want to do, Matt. I
just want to bow it, and like rub a Super Ball on it, and tap it, and and make
different sounds." And, oh, it's a little heavy, but it's not that it's not that
big. Matt built this for me. Now, I know I've got a super busy background, but
it it looks like an oil rig. [laughs]
[00:41:01] Ryan Holladay: That's amazing. Oh, my god.
[00:41:02] Jamin Warren: And that was intentional, right? That was intentional.
[00:41:04] Jason Graves: Yeah, yeah. He he completely, if if you look at the
game, it looks just like the oil rig from the game. But it's got like a spring
here, and it's got holes in it, so you can fill it up with water and kind of do
a waterphone-y thing if you want, and all of the different rods are different
pitches, of course, and everything it's just it's very very resonant, and makes
just all kinds of of horrible, wonderfully horrible sounds.
[00:41:31] Jason Graves: So that was probably two thirds of the game is that
sound sculpture. And I also recorded a lot at 192. I don't know if you've done
any quite musical sound design stuff like that yet, Ryan, but I met someone at a
conference who turned me on to that, and sound designers have been doing it
forever, but you get specific mics and you record at a really high frequency,
and you can drop it twice as low, and it makes it four times as long, and you're
uncovering all these frequencies that we can't hear with the human ear. So even
something like me just tapping that spring, you drop it down two octaves, and
there was this [makes sound]. It was originally about 130 Hz or something, and
it pulled it down to, you know, our audible range, but it sounded like someone
screaming through a distortion pedal into a giant metal room.
[00:42:26] Jason Graves: And I could recreate that, and ended up building sample
instruments out of it, playing it on the keyboard, playing a lot of it live, and
most of the music from that game, when I get asked about, "What's that sound?" I
know before I even see what they're talking about, I'm thinking, "It's The Rig."
Because it's this completely unknown, nontraditional sound element that makes
everyone feel super uncomfortable, but also is interesting, because it hasn't,
literally, ever been heard before. And it was fun for me to work with people,
super fun and inspiring as a as a percussionist to get those kinds of sounds out
of it. And it's just the it's the melding, it's like the Venn diagram of all the
best things. And it inspires me, which gets the team excited, and then they ask
for more things, and that gets me excited, and yeah, it's a it's a wonderful,
you know, snake eating itself kind of thing.
[00:43:10] Ryan Holladay: That's amazing. And it's so cool, cuz nobody else has
those sounds. That's like completely unique to you. Yeah, we we kind of learned
on Weapons to record very high quality, because you never know when something's
going to sound way better slowed down. And sometimes, yeah, talk about sound
design tricks, that is like the best one. If you I mean, how how many cool
sounds are just something that sounds pretty pretty simple, not even that
complex, but then you slow it down and it reveals all of these hidden
undertones, and just beauty or terror within these sounds. Yeah, recording at
high quality and slowing it down is such a such an amazing trick. Yeah, that's
that's very cool that you you have that that sound sculpture there.
[00:43:56] Jamin Warren: Ryan, do you Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jason.
[00:43:58] Jason Graves: No, I was just going to say, I'm addicted to it now,
because I have a pair of mics that record high, so no matter what I'm doing
around the studio, I have them going through a separate interface and I can
record it to my laptop, so when my studio isn't at 192, but exactly like what
you said, be, "Oh, maybe" Some of the things that I think will sound really
cool, it's like, "That just sounds like a cow. That doesn't sound interesting at
all." Other things that seem completely innocuous and innocent are the, "Wow, I
wouldn't have expected that."
[00:44:25] Ryan Holladay: Totally. Yeah, you have no idea what it what it's
going to be, [Graves laughs] but you're right. So many of our our favorite
sounds are just something that we've like a little snippet of It might even be
like a little bit of sonic detritus at the end of something we thought was going
to be way cooler that wasn't, but it's like, "Wait a minute, actually, when you
left the room from doing that cool thing you thought, and you closed the door,
that sounded pretty cool." [both laugh] You literally never know what the thing
is going to be. But wait, so you're saying you have a set of mics set up, is it
running to a different DAW that is just recording, and so you can literally at
any point start throwing stuff in there that's outside of your session?
[00:44:57] Jason Graves: Yeah, I just have It's not hooked up right now, but I
just have a little tiny Sound Devices stereo
[00:45:02] Ryan Holladay: Yeah.
[00:45:03] Jamin Warren: Oh, no. We lost him.
[00:45:04] Ryan Holladay: We lost him. He left us with a
[00:45:06] Jamin Warren: We lost him. [laughs]
[00:45:07] Ryan Holladay: a tantalizing studio inside there.
[00:45:09] Jamin Warren: With a with a with a with a cliffhanger. [both laugh]
[00:45:11] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. He's back.
[00:45:14] Jason Graves: I'm back. It kicked me out.
[00:45:16] Ryan Holladay: That was cool, though. So you left us with So, yeah,
you you have that that running outside of your session and you're constantly
kind of capturing whatever you throw into it, which is so smart, because I feel
like so much of the time I have like a barrier to just capturing something in
the moment. It's like, "Well, I'm not really set up for that, and I have another
session going, and I'll do that later." And, yeah, I like that idea.
[00:45:39] Jamin Warren: Maybe let's we can open it up the to questions here. We
have one here maybe is a good a good seg. "Most of these instruments seem to
work well in dark movies and games in the lower end of sound space. Are these
Are there also instruments self-created that works well for a genre as opposed
to darkness?" That comes from Sudan Bhat [?]. Thank you so much for for that
question. Yeah, for the two of you, although I guess maybe that might be more
pointed towards Jason since, you know, with the physical object, but yeah, would
what what do you think about what do you think about that?
[00:46:09] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, like, did you use any of these sound sculptures
for Moss, or anything that you any of the found sounds?
[00:46:14] Jason Graves: No, not for not for Moss. That was all little tiny live
instruments, because it's a little mouse, right? As silly as that sounds and
sort of as cliché, I just want a little pub band in her village, and I'm going
to make a score out of those tiny little instruments. I've I've used I think
textures can be equally soothing or scary. And I'm sure you've done the same
thing, Ryan. I could I could bow this metal thing and pitch it down and have it
be really kind of distorted and gnarly, throw OTT or something on it and bring
out a lot of that kind of nastiness, and then even put like a pitch drift on it,
so it's very, very unexpected sounding, or I could take that same sound and put
it some through some reverb and EQ it a bit, and put a filter on it, and
suddenly I'm playing a pad, I can play a major chord. You know, make sure it's
tuned, maybe it's a tiny bit out of tune, but
[00:47:05] Jason Graves: it's it's how you warp the the samples. I played penny
whistle on Still Wakes the Deep. I'm not a penny whistlist, but I just played it
with a real fast vibrato and kind of tuned, and that's a big part of the pads
that are in that game. I'm just doing minor chords, a tritone apart, kind of
like old John Williams, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of thing, but
that's sort of the sound for this this creature that's in the game. And they're
actually quite soothing, because it's this even though they're pitched down,
it's this very round flute, very airy, and it does have a little bit of pitch
bend to it, but I'm using it in a harmonic way, and it just It sounds a little
mysterious, but if I played a major chord, it could be it could be beautiful,
but still original and and interesting, and maybe evocative of of something
specific in the game, because I've done those happy accidents that Ryan talked
about. I feel like my life is built on happy accidents.
[00:48:02] Jason Graves: The flute just, you know, I make sure the flute plays
when this character says something, the three times they come up at the
beginning of the game, and then I can play that flute again later, and the
audience is automatically, you know, gluing the music and the visuals and the
story together. And even if they don't realize it, they're thinking, "Oh, right,
that's that that's that person."
[00:48:22] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We got another question here from
from Sean Campbell. A question here from from from Sean Campbell was asking, oh,
this is I guess maybe more of a Oh, nope, that was my question. [Graves laughs]
Was a more personal question from Sean. Yeah, [laughs] that's my question in the
chat. Oh, there we go. All right. He Sean was asking, "How do you how do you
show How do you guys work on physically and How do you guys both physically and
mentally manage working on games and films that are so emotionally intensive?
How do you keep your nerves and psyche intact after spending hours on on
horror?" Yeah, any personal personal wellness or self-care tips for people who
work who who work on horror? [laughs]
[00:49:07] Ryan Holladay: It's so funny, cuz I worked before doing a lot of
this, I I I worked for a podcast company for years, and worked on a show for
about seven years called Meditative Story, which is all about combining like
first-person storytelling and very meditative music. So I I have a long history
of writing music that is meant to calm your nervous system, so going the other
direction. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I I feel like I don't know if this
answers the question, but I I do feel like I learned on this film that like
taking actual breaks, like ear breaks, not just for your not just for calming
your nerves, but actually for like doing a better job at at scoring, was really
important. I I kind of always had like, "Well, you I don't really need to do
that." But I I I think I learned on this film that like there's a there's a
point of diminishing returns, where it's like, "I can't tell what's good
anymore, I can't tell what's scary, I can't tell what's too much, what's too"
[00:50:03] Ryan Holladay: and I really need to walk away. And I will say this is
where I I mentioned to Jason that, you know, I have not worked without my
collaborator, Hays, pretty much for my whole life, and having someone else's ear
to be able to I can kind of walk away and be like, "You play with this for a
minute, you try it out, show me what you come up with." That's wildly helpful,
cuz it's like having another set of ears that can come in and kind of like,
while I am sort of resetting, he can he can be trying things out, and then I can
come in with a fresh perspective. But I think just giving yourself time to
reset, take breaks, have ear breaks, is so important for me.
[00:50:39] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:50:40] Jason Graves: Yeah, breaks. I jumped into the first Dead Space game,
I'd never done any horror before, so I had no perspective at all, cuz I was
recording all these sounds myself, trying something that, as far as I was
concerned, and couldn't no one else had tried, and recording all these crazy
things with live players, and having to edit it and build the instruments, and
cut all the things up. So when it finally came down to writing the music, you
know, six months later, I felt all this pressure that I had to squeeze every
dollar that I spent out of the recording sessions, and and make the music as
intense as possible. And I built up a tolerance over time. I mean, it would just
be the most awful, horrendous amount of [makes discordant noises]! That just
like crazy stuff everywhere! And I'd go, "Yeah, I don't know, it seems kind of
boring. Like we need to really need to amp up the tension."
[00:51:33] Jason Graves: That was hard, but I also took every day took a break.
I'd work from 9:00 to 5:00, and at 5:00 I'd I'd have my finished piece of music
for the day, but I would turn everything off, I started listening to a lot of
early like '50s Miles Davis, and I would have a glass of wine, and I needed
about 45 minutes of, you know, I had little kids at the time, too, I couldn't I
couldn't go to dinner and like socialize with people, I just needed to
completely decompress. And I'd just sip a glass of wine and listened and I you
know, Chet Baker and all that kind of '50s like West Coast jazz, really natural
recordings with some nice stereo and very open ribbon mics. That that was my way
of kind of cleansing the palate a bit, and then not think or work on anything
that evening, and of course come back the next day, only Monday through Friday,
but come back the next morning and knock out another two minutes of music or
something. Perspective is so hard. I wish I had somebody, like a teammate, to
bounce that off of. I didn't, unfortunately, but, yeah, it's Horror is scary,
cuz it's so subjective to a certain extent.
[00:52:43] Ryan Holladay: Jason, do you listen to other music when you're when
you're working on a project?
[00:52:46] Jason Graves: I listen to other music a lot, but I won't listen to
other music that could be any way associated with what I'm doing, right? So if
I'm working on a vampire game, I'm not listening to any vampire music, because I
I don't want to sound like Elliot Goldenthal or whatever, right? I'm usually
probably listening to the opposite. I'll listen to show tunes, or like a a
classical piece, or, you know, some classic like Dolly Parton, right? Like get
as far away from whatever it is I'm working on as possible. What about you?
[00:53:18] Ryan Holladay: No, totally. I think that can often sort of pollute
the way I'm thinking of Like even just working on Resident Evil, there was a lot
of there's a a lot of people would would would share songs that they love from
the franchise, from the games, and it's like, and I I played the games and I
know those, but I'm like, "I can't I can't listen to" I I mentioned to you we
didn't watch any of the other films, and and haven't still. I think we're I
think we're ready for it now. But I yeah, I I have to go 180 in the other
direction just to like to reset. I can't And and other people say, "Oh, have you
heard the Camp Miasma score? It's awesome," or this or that. It's like, "I can't
I can't open myself up to that right now, not until I'm through this process."
It's it's too it's too weird. [laughs] I don't know.
[00:54:00] Jason Graves: Yeah, 1,000%.
[00:54:01] Jamin Warren: Yeah. One last question for the two of you. We have one
actually one quick one, just a practical one. Saswat [?] wanted to know about
your workflow for sampling your sounds. This is probably a technical question,
more technical question for someone who's who's hoping to do work like this.
[00:54:17] Jason Graves: Well, I know as a quick as a quick answer that I don't
have specific names, but you can buy handheld recorders now that record at
either 96k, which is means you can transpose things down one octave, or 192k,
and the the microphone's built in, right, the preamps are built in, everything
is built in, and it's less than $500, and you've got your portable recording
studio right there, and it even does eight channels, it'll record surround and
all this crazy stuff. I would look into that, because that's going to be your
cheapest point of entry. And then you just throw it into your computer, maybe do
some noise reduction or something. I usually use RX, which is an iZotope
product, to do my, you know, cleaning up and pitch shifting and all that stuff.
But if anyone has any specific questions about that, they can always reach out
and and ask. I'm sure Ryan, as well, but I'm always very happy to help people if
they're looking for it.
[00:55:12] Ryan Holladay: I might actually be one of the people reaching out to
you. I feel like that's I I'm going to I'm going to copy so many of your your
workflow things. That's amazing. The only thing I can contribute to that is that
we So we were talking briefly, Hays and I use Ableton as our primary DAW, which
is very I think kind of unusual in the scoring world, and I know there's a lot
of there's a lot There's probably a lot of composers that that look down on it,
but we love it, just because it's so snappy, and it's for for building up If
you're working with samples and want to manipulate things quickly, it is it is a
dream machine. I mean, we absolutely love it. We're always pulling things from
other parts of the film, other cues, pitching things down, warping them. It's
it's amazing for that stuff. So if you're interested in playing with your own
samples, I mean, Ableton, even if it's not the primary DAW that you're using, I
think a lot of composers use it almost as its own like free-standing tool, but
we absolutely Is that how you work with Ableton, like as its own kind of
standalone thing?
[00:56:08] Jason Graves: Yeah.
[00:56:09] Ryan Holladay: Totally. We love it.
[00:56:10] Jason Graves: It's just super powerful. The built-in effects and
everything are And I don't mean I mean the EQs and the compressors are great,
but the the manipulative effects, what you can do with it. And a lot of times,
I'll even The most recent thing I did was I recorded you can't even see it I
recorded my drum set, there it is, recorded my drum set playing a thing, but I
wanted to super overprocess it, and I put it all in Ableton, and did all the
processing, and I linked Ableton to Cubase. So when I hit play, they would both
play at the same time, which was super cool. A little a little laggy, but I
could hear it all in real time, and I could see Ableton, and, you know, tweak
the kick drum and a little more filter here, and it was very cool. Yeah. I love
Ableton.
[00:56:51] Jamin Warren: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you both so much. This was
a wonderful conversation. It was great to be able to chat with you about your
respective respective works. Before we move on, what's what should people be on
the lookout for next for the for the two of you before we wrap up?
[00:57:08] Jason Graves: You're working on a game that you can actually talk
about, why don't you do that?
[00:57:11] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. Abelina is a game that I'm working on. It's the
first video game I've worked on with my friend Gabe. It's I think it'll be out
early next year. I'm very excited about that, so wishlist that now on Steam,
Abelina.
[00:57:26] Jason Graves: That's really cool. How do you spell that, by the way?
Cuz I want to look it up, too.
[00:57:28] Ryan Holladay: A-B-E-L-I-N-A.
[00:57:31] Jason Graves: Abelina, okay, the way it sounds. With games, they're
usually super secretive, so you're never allowed to talk about anything.
[laughs] But I did I've already mentioned it, Modern Warfare 4 comes out in a
week or so, and I did all the multiplayer music for that. So that was that was
super fun. And in the meantime, I need to shout out to Ryan again. I teach a
class called Modern Cinematic Scoring, and we talk about film scenes and music,
and emotion and vibe, and influences, and the students get a chance to rescore
what I think are really important scenes in cinema. And in our horror module,
Weapons is one of the films that we look at, and specifically it's the gas
station chase from Benedict Wong's standpoint when he first leaves the house.
It's about two and a half minutes long, and I just I love the film, and I also
rescore all the scenes myself. I need to send that to you, just because it would
be such a full-circle moment.
[00:58:27] Ryan Holladay: I'd love to hear it. [laughs] Yeah.
[00:58:30] Jason Graves: Totally. I did some 192 recording on it, right? I
recorded like lots of breaths and tapping, and it's very tribal. It's basically
just all weird recorded things and some crazy synths, but, yeah. I'm I'm doing
that, so this is wonderful to be able to to meet Ryan and thank him for such a
wonderful contribution to the hanra hanra? horror genre.
[00:58:51] Ryan Holladay: [laughs] Hanra. Hanra.
[00:58:53] Jamin Warren: Hanra. Yeah.
[00:58:53] Ryan Holladay: This is awesome. Thank you, Jamin, for organizing it,
and, Jason, it's such a pleasure to meet you. As I mentioned, Moss was like the
first VR game I played, and it blew my mind, and I love the music for it, and I
know that's not what you're known for, but I absolutely love it, and this is
it's great.
[00:59:06] Jason Graves: I It's so wonderful to hear, because that's probably
some of the favorite music that I've written is for the two, three, four,
whatever, however many there were, Moss games, yeah. Thank you.
[00:59:16] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Great. Well, thanks, everybody. You'll get a a
follow-up with a recording for this if you want to go back and and listen to all
the all the wonderful things that the that we've all shared today. You'll also
get a note. I put together a horror collection. There are eight games that I've
put together with and worked with the the gamemakers for specials and sales, so
you'll get that in your email as well if you sign up at mubi.com/killscreen.
It's a nice little a nice little mix of mostly independent horror games that are
a good a good complement. And stay on the lookout for some of the future yeah,
the future talks that we're going to be planning over the next two two weeks.
Yeah, I'll be announcing those a little bit later this week, but, again, thank
you both so much. This was a this was a ton of fun, and, yeah, have a good one.
[01:00:08] Ryan Holladay: Thank you, guys. Bye.
[01:00:09] Jason Graves: Thanks a lot. Take it easy.