Hello mr hunt thank you so much for doing this interview thank you for having me welcome before we start i want to tell people why i’m interviewing you i got minecraft dungeons for christmas last month i love the game and i really love the music this is my piano teacher jamie Tomorrow we have a winter music festival jamie asked every student to do a presentation on some music that inspires them so i chose your music it’s worth it are you ready to start the interview yeah okay different people are inspired by different things another interview said you are inspired by music from The video game super mario 64 in final fantasy 10. is this why you started composing um yeah i would say that pretty much that’s the reason i mean i started playing games when i was a kid um my parents were really into games themselves actually uh so i was lucky that way And i’ve actually thought about downloading them which is the funny thing yeah yeah i mean for me go ahead i mean my friends talk about final fantasy 10 like one of them talked about the final fantasy 10 like once so i might get it i don’t know Hate yourself to compose or did you learn from other people um i would say both definitely i mean um it’s um you sort of you’re sort of expected to learn by yourself in the cases i’ve been in the music schools i’ve been but you know you get certain guidance from from people All the time so you’re definitely helped along the way that makes sense that’s cool i like that it seems like you work in the studio a lot do you go to concerts too uh not that often and not that often nowadays of course um mostly like when friends play at like minor venues But yeah i went to uh specifically a final fantasy concert like 12 years ago which was really cool lots of fans of the games so sounds fun the and culvert isn’t really helping at all no really yeah and what’s your favorite concert you’ve been to i think it’s actually that fine fancy Concert um because people were so hyped you know i was about 18 19 back then and you know the first time video games really got that sort of attention in the concert halls you know so we were all very excited and seeing our favorite music and hearing it At that big venue it was awesome really right nice that’s it i have a question uh the final fantasy concert was that was that orchestra was that band what kind of a concert was that yeah yeah exactly it was a symphony orchestra like full choir um yeah the whole shebang basically And they played like sequences from the video games in the background that kind of big big screen so that was really cool very cool i think you grew up in sweden that’s probably different from the united states when you’re 10 or 11 what was school like for you Um i would say i mean this is just a guess of course but i would guess that it’s pretty much the same as in the u.s um Have similar you know school systems and the biggest difference for me i think was that i went to school which had a lot of choir practice baked in so we had uh yeah choir studies like three times four times a week or something and lots of concerts On top of that so that’s a lot of music well that’s nice it’s cool well school is school yeah supposed to learn if you don’t well you’ll probably flunk which obviously you didn’t have you been to the us uh yeah a couple of times i’ve been to california and new york um A couple of times and i actually went to philadelphia once because my dad almost got a job over there so that when i was like seven or something so but yeah that never turned out to be his job so yeah i got stuck here okay well that’s sticky Do you think video games are healthy for kids yeah definitely i mean it’s just like reading or watching movies it’s you know the same um i think that you can get too much of it of course and there are probably certain aspects that are problematic for young kids i mean we Have age readings for a reason but not much different to any other sort of entertainment i think i completely agree do you actually play minecraft um yeah it’s been like two years since i’ve done it but um i had like a big playing spree back in 2018 uh I think i played like 100 hours or something in very very short amount of time not healthy and if you know who scripted the creepers why why do they explode it’s the most annoying thing in him yeah i might actually know the person who did it I can send them your comments and see see if he changes okay that’s that’s nice they are annoying though yeah yeah i agree totally what are your favorite current video games um i mean it’s hard to pick of course but um the one i’m playing the most At the moment uh and i’ve been playing for like 200 hours or something it’s uh stardew valley if you’ve ever heard of it i haven’t uh it’s like a farm simulator you’re you know attending your farm and you know to your animals and growing crops and selling props it’s Very peaceful and you can play with your friends so that’s very peaceful i like peaceful games but i also like action games i like both all right what are your favorites my favorites minecraft and roblox and among us okay and also like i have like 20 games on my phone so Yeah yeah except ads pop up every 10 seconds yeah that’s a bit annoying we try not to do that i have a question peter what was your first game system um that was the nes i think um i was born like a couple of years after that came out so We already had it when i was born and then it just you know went ahead with every other system that came after i think okay that’s i’ve never heard of that so i’m assuming that was made before i was okay born back for minecraft dungeons did mojang asked ask to write some creepy Music or was it more specific did you compose the music first or did the game come come um actually when i started uh the game had already been in development for two or two and a half years i think um so i was just dropped in the middle of it and Wasn’t supposed to write music from the start i was just there for a temporary position when my boss was on parental leave so i was like okay i have to do stuff we need music here uh okay write some music uh do some sound effects and then The game just grew and grew and i made more and more music so no one really told me what or how to do it from the start but then you know as time went along we had more and more discussions when my boss got back and we talked about you know what what’s Scary but not too scary and fantasy but not too fantastic so so you’re dropped in like the spite like the webs that the spiders throw at you it’s sort of like that yeah and i stuck as well except it except from straight up to death except straight like that instead of Like curved yeah yeah slight curve traps when i went in through the lobby okay what is your favorite minecraft dungeon soundtrack um i think the one i’m most proud of at least is uh luna if you have heard it it’s the one you hear when you’re in the camp It’s like this piano going up and down and some strings playing along because i mean it it felt felt really nice making it and people really seem to connect to it which is my ultimate goal to connect with people so well maybe i should listen to it Or maybe i should just go like everywhere and do everything and try to listen to it and maybe both and listen if i hear piano going up and down yeah do you have a spotify no no okay yeah there’s there’s probably something on youtube as well if you want to listen okay I i heard some other of your music online like dance music and really cheerful game music what type of music do you like to write the most um i don’t think it has to do with the genre really i think it has to do with uh Yeah as i said like connecting with an id or an audience so like i try to focus more on what type of question i’m trying to answer with music like what’s the sound of love and what’s the sound of love in a specific culture perhaps or a specific country what what is it For you know if you’re feeling melancholic about love or if you’re feeling excited by love those are very different things so you know i want to sort of puzzle that together the puzzle pieces of emotions basically that’s yeah that’s a good way to do it i actually on um On a website i heard a thing called jelly garden loop and i listened to it like 30 times it’s awesome fun yeah i made that for uh university assignment so where it was like a mobile game uh if you ever played like candy crush or something that’s basically a similar game i used To play that yeah i’m sure you’ve written a lot more music than what i’ve heard what was your favorite song to compose like ever um i had a lot of fun writing music when i made because i made a lot of music for uh korea and japan that sort of pop market Over there um so i made i went to japan to write with people there uh you know their composers over there um and that whole yeah that whole thing was super fun and i don’t know if the songs were that great but i had the most fun doing them i think Actually on a different interview it said the rope pop too yeah it’s pretty cool um if you’re working on a music project now could you show me an example of how you work yeah definitely if i get the uh screen sharing to work here um let’s see share screen Remember to share sound as well okay all right can you see this yeah that looks a lot like i expected it to look all right great it does look a lot like sound editing yeah i mean to me it basically is sound editing i mean even if that sounds a bit Detached from the music i mean it is in a way this sort of puzzle piece procedure um so definitely a lot of that lots of that approach to it um so i thought i might show you uh the program i’m working in it’s called reaper um and it’s yeah basically for doing Anything related to music or sound design or actually video editing as well if you’re into that so that looks hard but fun oh yeah it is hard it’s taken me all of my life to learn so and i’m still still yeah learning a lot every day um but i thought i might show You something from the upcoming expansion that we’re going to release soon um i don’t know have you played any of the dlc’s for dungeons the jungle or yeah basically there are we have released three different types there’s like a jungle one an ice one and one that can plays out in the mountains Basically and this one i think i’m allowed to tell you i don’t know it maybe it doesn’t matter uh but it’s in the nether uh area of which is like a big area in vanilla minecraft as well so it’s like this whole other realm like in another dimension sort of so The track i thought i might show you is actually from what’s called like a spider cave where yeah the name says it all basically it’s a cave full of spiders and i am very annoying yeah yeah they’re definitely annoying you’d hear munching noises every like 0.2 seconds yeah Yeah lots of spiders lots of creepers unfortunately and zombies as well you know and i wonder letters of course um but yeah i look at all those layers yeah i mean if uh by any chance anyone who will be watching this is thinking oh this is a complicated setup that i Need to have in my life then i would advise you not to do it like this i think it’s over overly complicated for what i was trying to achieve uh so i’m like looking at restructuring my templates so it’s not this yeah drawing basically makes my head hurt just looking at that yeah But i i mean we can we can listen to a small portion of it if you want Like 10 or 20 seconds and let’s we can go through some some of the instruments basically This First So do okay so that’s um a little bit of that track it’s playing when you’re inside the cave uh basically at all times um unless you’re in like a big fight then it becomes a bit more dramatic yeah um otherwise there’s like 50 spiders trying to eat you yeah and Yeah i mean i can i can show you as much as you want or as little as you want it’s totally totally up to you so i have a question uh and this might help felix understand do you use a midi keyboard to input all your melodies um yeah actually I mean i don’t really use it that much i do have it to sort of get myself started on the song um mostly with chords not really with melodies melodies are sort of in my head i think and then um when i actually commit to trying to make something of that melody I usually just insert a little track over here and i don’t know if you can see this window as well uh i just enter notes and i’ve always done that it’s a bit uh stupid really but i from the beginning when i started making music i didn’t have any midi you know It didn’t have any midi capabilities my setup that i had so i just learned to do it that way and i’ve been doing it ever since okay is each line each instrument yeah each line with a blue uh thingy here is an instrument but all of these empty ones are actually Empty so they’re pretty much useless my mom’s listening she’s gonna buy me the dlc just for the music all right cool okay yeah so whenever you start out do you usually start with chords do you start with a melody what what are your building blocks for a piece of music Um that depends really what the type of music i’m trying to write i mean in even in the context of dungeons um if it’s like one of the intros to each level because there’s like an intro sequence player you sort of fly over and there’s narrator talking about what you’re supposed to do Um those sequences are very much based on this theme that i try to inject here and there just to make it more like cohesive all over the soundtrack So i often start with that and try to expand on that idea and like use it in you know many different ways flip it and you know rotate it and stretch it out and shrink it and do it in different keys and yeah every sort of trick in the book But sometimes like with this opening um this one that was really random basically i was just playing around improvising and i sort of ended up in that area and feels like yeah this would probably sound good with this combination of piano and um pull in your strings when you hit your Strings with the bow so okay and when you said you said when you said that you shouldn’t do it this way why does it sound good it’s it’s it sounds amazing well first off thanks and uh i feel like i have a tendency to sort of overcomplicate things Um as you said it’s very it looks very complicated i don’t know yeah and it’s and when you like hear it it’s it’s mostly the the strings on the piano i i could have two tracks or three or perhaps four tracks where i record that but i don’t know that from the start That i’m gonna have it so i want as many possibilities as possible ready to go at the start so i don’t lose time or like energy when i compose because that can be crucial sometimes if i feel like oh what i just did was so bad or just Because i didn’t find the right sound but then half an hour later i get back to it and i’m like okay i’ll move this from you know pizzicato strings to uh to a bassoon or something and then it’s like oh yeah of course this works and having to wait for Everything to load is really yeah it hampers you i feel so this is an entire template of the instruments you usually use and you’ll experiment with moving melodies to different instruments to get different sounds and that’s like like leaving it in this complicated format yeah yeah basically just so i have everything ready It’s like sheet music basically also because i’ve tried to structure it like woodwinds brass tuned and untuned percussion and voices piano morgan and then strings at the bottom so i sort of try to keep that format because i’m used to it since yeah i’ve played in orchestras and yeah have that Sort of experience and what you said about loading welcome to my life yeah that’s a big big part of it i actually loaded up this uh quite a while ago just to be sure that we wouldn’t have to you know wait five or six minutes for it to load Are the grids a different color like some of it’s green someone’s right so if it’s yellow what’s that um so uh are you talking about this little line here no i i mean kind of like lower kind of where your mouse is that big ah do you mean like it’s shaded in a Way um no i mean there’s like wait go squish it back together like you see it kind of uh well okay it’s really hard to see but there’s some like lines that like one of them’s orangey right now i mean the vertical yeah not not the one that’s not the one That’s really easy to see i mean i mean one that looks looks kind of like a colorful shadow so i felix i see one orange vertical line is that the one you’re talking about no no oh i guess it’s hard to see is it like the difference between This vertical line and this vertical line uh it’s i think it’s just too hard to see yeah okay it’s maybe only i can see it i i don’t know that’s really cool i like the software already yeah i mean when you have this sort of template up and running it’s Really easy to just remove stuff instead that’s sort of how i like to work just add everything and remove stuff until it’s good could you show us i i don’t know if this is possible show us how easy it is to put a new melody into one of these Um yeah i mean i don’t have a midi keyboard connected at the moment so i can’t play anything but let’s say what are we not using stuff let’s see that this actually works um you can hear this still right yeah it’s quiet but i can’t yeah this when it’s in like the Arrangement mode that i’ve set up it’s uh supposed to be a lot quieter so i can then like squeeze it together and make it more loud and just when everything is finished but yeah um we can take the flute part here and open the midi the it’s called the piano roll Uh most often it’s confusing yeah i can see why that would be confusing i don’t even know um so basically i can change melodies however i want uh you probably don’t hear this because it’s so low in volume um oh i see so basically it there’s the screen that shows Everything then you zoom into one small part and then just edit it like that yeah yeah and since i’m so used to actually writing it as a score i that’s the way i tend to do it i i’m not that good in reaper yet but i can do it fast Uh i grew up using another uh software called logic that’s it which is most mostly used by like songwriters um but this is sort of adapted a bit more to games so i’m starting to use it for for music as well okay now i understand it that’s cool so I really appreciate you showing us all this yeah i mean no words it’s it’s just fun sharing the love for music basically this is really cool to see convenient That’s very advanced wait you mean that whole grid was just one of those tiny little keyframe things um which one this this one like like you see the little spaces in between the lines is that what the entire grid thing is that’s um yeah i mean uh these are all you know Uh this is all the information about the piano what what it’s supposed to be doing um so you have like how this is called velocity uh it’s how soft or how loud uh each note should be so you can see over here that it changes like a number I think it’s still mean perhaps that’s it’s like between 1 and 127 where it’s like from low to high so I want to be that’s cool i can add accents as i want you know that’s loud yeah and as i talked about the whole piano upwards and downwards you know and that whole arpeggio thing that looks very expensive yes sort of referenced here as well So i try to get in those things where i can I like how the music And then you can add like whatever parameter you want to this you can add the sustain pedal that’s the same as a different lane uh let’s see i tend not to use it when i’m doing uh big scores because it tends to muddy up things Could be this one i believe perhaps I’m not sure really where it is but you can basically tell it to press down the the pedal and release it whenever you want them to do lots of complicated things too complicated okay there’s so much to navigate yeah it takes a while to learn um But when you learn one of them you sort of know the basics of all of them so transitioning from one to another isn’t that big of a deal i’m having troubles i’m having trouble with the random apps i download to edit audio myself so what are you using now I just download an app and i mean it can edit stuff but it’s not it’s not anything like that yeah do you have um a smartphone an iphone or something yeah yeah um so you should probably try downloading uh garageband if it’s not already oh yeah that’s sort of logic Light basically so if you if you want to learn more about that of course i don’t know if you want to focus on specifically piano or but that could be helpful i think because that also has this sort of same layout it’s you know all of the instruments on tracks here and You know time left to right that’s all there is okay what other questions do you have felix about all this well um i don’t know that’s well how do you how do you like go into the grid thing you right click or what into this one Yes um you just have to double click it actually it’s super simple that’s that makes a lot of sense i like that you can have it here as well if you want to see everything you can have it like docked down here you can see what you’re doing here and here okay What would so peter what would be your best advice to give to a young composer right now um i mean that really depends on where what you want to do with it if you want to do games or pop or if you want to film or because they’re so different types For me at least um if you want to do games you have to focus on making your music interactive that’s the whole point uh writing music in a way that it can change from a very specific moment uh any specific moment basically to something completely different and having that in mind when you’re Actually doing the music but for film it’s it’s more of a linear process so you can stick to that sort of writing it as as a regular song i don’t know if that’s fair to say but um so that i mean the general advice is to do I think just to do what you like the most and yeah trust your instincts basically okay um so if you feel like doing whatever music you want to do you that’s the music you should do i think okay uh i’ll do that that’s my task okay Well are you ready for the next question though um yeah sure all right this is the last one all right could go back into time when you’re 10 or 11 what advice would you give yourself um i think it relates to that you know trusting your instincts Um because i would have told myself to be a bit more brave and not so hard on myself and second guessing myself i mean i feel like i have been brave to a certain extent because i’ve you know i chose to study music even though i knew i might not get a job Within that industry um but i think really what made me more successful was actually taking myself seriously and appreciating you know my own skills and sort of yeah thinking that i was good enough to actually belong in the industry that’s that’s a huge part of it that’s smart that’s very good advice And on a more practical level if you want to do game music learn how to code that’s that will help you i do code some oh you do awesome not very much but i kind of do i i edit code a lot okay yeah when i was kid i didn’t really have Access to any software i didn’t know at least what to use so everybody says minecraft and roblox or enemies i play both of them roblox studio is pretty fun i like making i just like making games for the for the platform yeah i think you know there’s room for both it’s It doesn’t feel real that it has to be a competition between them the most popular game on roblox had like eight hundred thousand eight hundred thousand people playing at the same time and that was like after an update like right after it’s not bad and they have billions of visits My my game most visits i’ve ever had it was like 60. that’s not too bad though it’s not awful but they were like all my friends or my friends friends well then you have many friends that’s a good thing well roblox is fun minecraft is better music except the music is always is Always uploaded by players but well i wouldn’t expect anybody to upload music like this because this is way better it’s it’s just incredible awesome thanks thank you for taking the time to do this interview i learned a lot from you and now i’m even more inspired to keep starting Studying music that’s great to hear i hope you’ll do well with your music and your piano studies okay so that’s appreciated okay bye Video Information
This video, titled ‘Interview with composer Peter Hont, 29 January 2021’, was uploaded by Elizabeth Smith on 2021-05-08 17:44:06. It has garnered 226 views and 16 likes. The duration of the video is 00:40:43 or 2443 seconds.
A young fan interviews professional composer Peter Hont, whose credits include much of the music for Minecraft Dungeons (Mojang) and associated downloadable content. Mr. Hont shares a bit of personal history, offers advice for young musicians, and uses screenshare to provide a window into his creative and technical process.
