Mar 31, 2009 6:45 PM, By Matt Gallagher

I assume that means mostly fast tempos, because often that’s what communicates urgency.
That’s correct—mostly fast tempos. But I wanted to look for as many breathers as possible after hearing all these fast-fast, full-on pieces. So sometimes I would do a half-time piece, but I would always have some kind of element clicking double-time, whether it be some little electronic sound or some little string line moving around. It would always give you the sense that something is moving fast but it might not always be full on or ultra-intense. I think we have a good variety in the score.

It sounds like music plays a large role in H.A.W.X, and that’s probably due to the nature of the aerial combat setting.
I knew that in a game like H.A.W.X, first of all, you probably wouldn’t hear much of the music [laughs] sometimes because of all the engine noise and the shooting and what have you. But I also knew that there would be a storyline to this and there would be certain requirements that they would want to portray emotionally. In certain parts of the game you’re going to feel powerful, heroic and on top of things; sometimes you’re going to feel threatened, sad or scared. But the visual aspect of the game really doesn’t change too much. You’re always flying the plane and you’re always shooting. You’re just in different environments and different locations battling different enemies. But the overall look is the same, so I think the music played an important role in portraying the emotional dimension. The music really had to give the game an emotional layer that would affect the player, depending on what they were listening to. When you play the game, you’ll notice that.

How did you begin the project? What guidelines and parameters were you given?
They gave me a script and a cue list, and on that cue list they gave me a lot of detailed descriptions of the kinds of emotions they wanted. For example, the cue list might have 10 battles and 20 mission intros, and it would often describe the location, particularly for the mission intros. But for the battles, I mean, this [stage of the project] was almost a year ago, so no one really knew which battle the music was going to be used for. So they covered the full emotional spectrum of all the kinds of music they would need based on the story, but not necessarily knowing when and where in the actual game it would be used. So in the most literal sense, I gave them building blocks of music that can be rearranged throughout the entire game to assemble the score based on their criteria. There would be different victory endings and different losing cues, and there would be continuity between all of them. But it had to be done in a way so there was enough variety and didn’t sound monotonous.

In creating these musical building blocks, do you have to be flexible with keys and tempos, depending on how things develop over time in the game?
That’s right. You don’t want to get yourself in a corner because you never quite know how they’re going to implement the music. You want to give them as much flexibility as possible. Sometimes they will take a piece of music that was meant to happen before another piece of music, but in the end it doesn’t turn out that way, so you have to think of these things as interchangeable cues and building blocks of music. I paid very close attention to the tempos and keys that I worked with so even when I modulated, the music sounded very natural going from one to key to another, up or down, and including the tempos as well.

From the beginning, the H.A.W.X audio team wanted a hybrid electronic and live orchestral score—which is the type of score you composed for Ubisoft’s Red Steel (for more on Red Steel, read “Capturing Taiko Drums for Ubisoft's Red Steel” from Mix’s March 2007 issue).
Right. They did their own internal testing with other music, and they all agreed that the score should have both orchestral and electronic elements in it, and that means synths and modern drums. And that’s good for me. I’m very comfortable working in that way. I sometimes use the term “orchestronic.” I feel very comfortable working with both of those styles, and it really enables me to use whatever instrument I want to get the effect that I’m going for, so I’m not just limited to the traditional orchestral palette. If I want to add extra intensity, I can reach into any of my synths or drums, or anything you can imagine—effects, distortion—whatever needs to happen. I really don’t concern myself with “the rules” all the time.

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