Minecraft Legends Composer Crispin Hands on Gaming Music as a Career

Today I’m having a gas with crisp in hands who is the founder director creative Chief put her out of fires over at lion’s head pro I’m also the janitor it’s uh also the janitor it looks like you might be a Steinberg user as well I sure am uh we are currently uh recording

To nuendo nice so you and Han Zimmer do you have that in common uh and a bunch of other stuff as well as in you’ve both done work for Disney and you know other big studios I don’t dare compare to you know his Lord and uh masterness but um

Yeah I’ve actually been in hans’s studio sadly wild not I’ve been in his Studio like three or four times while he was not there um because I was working with uh you know the first time I was working with Trevor Morris um who’s a composer for Vikings and then

Um later on I was working with Ramin jawadi who did Game of Thrones and Westworld and yeah um remains fantastic so we we work together on Gears five um yeah there was a lot of a lot of fun uh he’s an incredible I mean he’s such

An amazing composer but he’s just also a really really lovely guy um and a great collaborator it’s like he uh he certainly taught me um to up my game uh in terms of how I interface with clients and things like that he’s just he’s such an incredible

Professional this is good because I want to talk a lot more about this as we as the as the show goes on um a lot of uh the things you you may have found this in your career that a lot of the things that people don’t

Teach you about or don’t prepare you for is less the composition of Music less the production of sound is much much more how to deal with the business how to find projects how to deal with projects that are ongoing so we want to talk about all of that but the cool

Stuff first so you’ve been at remote control Studios with Ramen um am I saying that right Ramin Ramin and obviously it was when Hans wasn’t there because the joke kind of in the film scoring sort of Industry these days is the hands is never there at the moment because he’s always out touring

Flit being a rock star playing his score was you know at Arenas worldwide is that are you going to be going for that Crispin is that your um I would love I would dearly love to see some of the music that we do here be performed live on stage because we’ve

Worked with some truly incredible musicians in the recording of it I probably will never make an appearance on stage other than to be like hey these people are awesome thanks for listening because I’m a terrible musician you’re going to be the MC and you can program stuff well but playing live is a

Different story yeah I I’ve never you know I can I can play okay on the keyboard and I can play okay on a bunch of things just to get the ideas out but I’ve never really um probably because I’m horribly lazy I’ve never really put in the practice to

Become a good musician I’m I’m always just really impatient and I want to I want to hear the thing that’s in my head so I you know play it into the um you know into the sequence era and then I fiddle with it till it sounds right and correct all my terrible

Playing and also you’re a sins guy first yeah I was sort of um you know I used to fancy myself a bit of a piano player and and uh and I was never very good um but yeah I’d chose to be a synth guy because the

Long time ago the reason I got into music is because I I met a guy at a party he was playing guitar and he’s playing all this stuff that I liked and and I was just like man what can I do to be in this guy’s band uh I was like 18

Or 19 at the time and right so you know he’s attracting attention at the party and yeah and it was just like sitting and hanging with him and singing along was like one of the best experiences I’d ever had in my life like it just felt really good and he was

Really gracious about it and we’re still best friends 30 plus years later uh my best friend Dino danicolo and he’s he’s an incredible musician so I never got to be in his band um unless you count like you know singing uh up on stage with him a couple times

Um but I have produced his last two albums um and we we do lots of stuff together and you know I’ll hire him on to my tracks sometimes to play bass because he’s a killer bass player and he’s a great guitarist and um yeah he’s a consummate musician I am

Definitely not so the the trade is happening the reciprocity is kicking in he brought you into the world of music by playing guitar and then you have been able to build this machine that you are running and use that to help him produce his stuff yeah pretty much really really cool yeah

Um the one thing I picked I’m picking up from you which I see the more and more I I do these talks and do these podcasts um and for people at home by the way I might be looking I’m trying to always look at wherever Crispin can actually

See me and I think that’s here because I got a laptop down here yeah that’s perfect yeah um there’s no linear path right um there’s not you you started out what we’re just wanting to be in the band and at no point where you’re there going I I

Hope to be you know running the uh you know a very highly sought after sound design and music studio in video games you know those two that was not a straight path and I I don’t want to do the full how did you end up there

Um you know because I I was just listening to you on another podcast where that’s kind of covered so I don’t want to interrupt that territory but but you get the thing right it’s like um one thing that can really deter young people is the idea that ah this next

Step isn’t going to take me directly to my end destination so I only want to do things that take me there what do you mean what’d you make of that yeah that that couldn’t you’re you’re being on and uh and it’s just straight up not true the

You know and it’s funny because my Direction Changed you know for a while I was like I’m gonna be a rock star and I I even have my own band for a bit um and uh I was in a couple different bands and we were terrible or I was terrible and

Let’s be honest and you know but at the same time I was working at a law firm just so I could have a day job and pay for gear and eat and have pay rent and stuff and it it during working at the law firm I had a comp

Side background before I quit college and went into music um and I saw an opportunity to further stuff so I I started learning the it and this is early 90s so it was a very different game yeah um and uh and I just learned I learned more about you know things like

Accounting and filing and just running an office um and uh it really helped every single thing if you look at it the right way every single thing can contribute to your later success if you keep your mind open and you stay focused and you say you know you don’t lose

Sight of the goal even if the goal might be shifting my goal was always intrinsically to move forward into music in some way and then um yeah I remember playing I think I think they’d loaned me a computer from the office and and it had a CD-ROM drive

Which was a big deal in 1994. uh 1994 also they loaned you a computer because the idea of owning your own computer was like a rich luxury kind of thing it was it was you know yeah I mean well the funny thing was is yeah actually it was

About the same cost for a decent one as it is today but back then you know that amount of money was a much bigger deal because you know inflation has totally changed the way our dollars are so um yeah it was it was wild and and I had uh

I bought a copy of this game called Mist on a CD-ROM m-y-s-t have you may be familiar with that and it blew my mind I got Riven on this PC down oh my God amazing um and it blew my mind and I and then it had this little postage stamp sized

QuickTime as a bonus on it and you could watch a making of that included stuff about sound and I just I became obsessed and I was like and I called up my buddy who I helped on a on his student film and I was like we gotta we gotta make

Video games like look at this and uh yeah and and so um a friend of mine helped me get a job as a QA tester at EA and uh and I just worked my way in from there and you know the the first thing is getting your foot in the door somewhere

Um making connections because it’s really all about who you know and far more important than like hey you know what’s your knowledge is how much do people like working with you and how open-minded are you how quick are you to learn um how hard do you work all of those things

Um and I believe that if you’ve got the right attitude and the right mindset you can learn anything um you know within reason except apparently from my case not how to be a musician yeah but uh you know and you know that’s within the confines of it’s which it’s what sacrifices are you

Willing to undertake isn’t it and you know you’ve you’ve been open I’m basically the same uh the sacrifice of long bouts of practice is not one we’re all willing to make being on your own for like two three hours a day just uh contending with the

Stuff that you’re not good enough it’s a quite painful place to be so Pro musicians are really good at just standing in the blast of that like pain but yeah for me that’s a great way to put it there yeah they really have a high paying tolerance mine

My focus was very much I I saw the path through learning to you know understand the gear and the production and produce and because I never I I think I was just always impatient like if I was just playing piano or if I was just playing guitar I was like yeah

But I want to hear drums right now and I want to hear all these other things and I’m like how can I do all that and uh and I wasn’t getting that from just being a musician I wasn’t even getting it in a band um so I I realized that you know once

And this was early you know again early 90s the tech for um you know sequencers and things like that was still fairly nascent like they first came out in the 80s but it was still pretty rudimentary um but it it gave me the opportunity hey

Oh I’ve got you know a 486 computer with Cubase on it and Cubase didn’t have any audio at the time it was purely midi um and I can get that to command all five voices that my synth can do and then I added one little extra Sith module and

Oh now I’ve got another like four voices wow I’ve got a whole nine instruments that I can play at once and that that was really satisfying to me too and I guess that was probably my first inkling that I was headed to be a composer because as a

Composer we write for all the instruments you know and and uh and that that’s I guess that’s my focus just started because of that impatience with wanting to hear what was in my head you know well I’ll bounce something off your head because how much of a how much of a

Mix engineer are you have you had to be uh you know learn how to do a lot for your career you know it’s funny I I resisted it for a while to my detriment um but I realized after a few years in that the mix is just another instrument you know

Production production and so mix and production became one of my key instruments uh and you know that’s a that’s a lifelong Learning Journey you know I mix a lot of my own stuff yeah um I’m quite picky about it but I also hire mixers because they know that they know

It better than me they’ve been that’s all they do so you know I want to hear what they’re doing and how they approach it and um yeah I absolutely um I think you know there’s there’s a division sometimes of of or more traditionally there there’s often the division of

Composer a ranger orchestrator if we’re talking about you know more classical music or film scoring Etc um and to me composer is just one part of the whole picture so I I really enjoy composing and arranging and orchestrating and I will hire an orchestrator to take my orchestration and make sure that the

Instruments can play things properly and you know if they need to transpose stuff or whatever that’s awesome but when it comes to like making sure that hey you know what I’ve set up the division of these strings uh in a certain way I do that because I I

Want to hear things voiced a certain way um and and but I do love working with a good orchestrator uh who will give like input on stuff and give ideas um that’s really exciting because yeah any um anytime you work with a fellow creative who knows what they’re doing

You’re gonna learn and that’s yeah you know that’s that’s my favorite thing about this industry um not just music but but games especially you never ever stop learning you can’t and if you think you know at all as soon as you think you’re an expert that’s when you’re done you’re dead that’s when

The next person is going to get the next job absolutely yeah yeah so yeah it’s uh there’s just I mean every time I turn around and it’s a classic cliche you know the more you know the more you realize you don’t know um and that it’s 100 true yeah so you you said

Um a few things that uh I would pick up on that and one is I think it’s like the the second time in 15 minutes you know you’ve pointed out that um your one of the one of the things that has contributed to your success has been always

Um assuming that anywhere you are there is something vital that you need to learn there’s something that this what you’re doing right now can teach you you know you said you’re in a law firm at first and that’s what you how to operate the machinations of a business

How to do invoicing how to you know make sure everything is uh all the things that we don’t want to think about as sound engineers and as composers all the non-cool stuff is absolutely essential to keeping you afloat and making sure that everyone’s wages can get paid and

All of that stuff so you know that’s the first place you mentioned that everything’s a learning experience but the other thing absolutely is the case that um working with people who really know what they’re doing is exciting because you know I imagine every time you work

With you know you are I don’t know if it sounds like you work with one orchestrator but every time I work with a great mixer I’m like how have you done that I’ve been trying to do that for so long yeah you do that so cool yeah yeah

I’ve been uh really like you know and we have the same thing with sound design and so you know music is part of my focus but I’m also an audio director and I’m a sound designer although I do less sound design these days um just because I there’s only so much

Time in the day and I have really phenomenal sound designers on my team and uh yeah and sometimes you know they’ll deliver something and I’ll be like how did you do that we gotta talk that’s so cool you know and and same same with the mixers um yeah there’s some really spectacular

Mixing talent and engineering and and you know just hearing the way they approach it but it’s you know what’s really cool is is it’s like some of my more Junior people will do stuff and I’ll be like how did you do that yeah that’s really cool you know or

Their approach to stuff and um you know I have well you saw Matt in the background um so Matt O’Connor and I have uh Dan Reyes and I have Shane um Johnson AKA Sonic Johnson and these guys came through lion’s head uh they’re they’re kind of on-ramp has been to assist me um

And one of the things that’s been so cool is they can read music yeah I can’t you know I’m I’m a self-taught hack so so they are able to explain stuff to me and they’re and they’re like properly educated like you know Matt just graduated from USC

Um Dan came out of VFS but he was also doing like music elsewhere um so the the way you know they they know the names of chords that I don’t know you know it’s like it’s it’s really cool so I get to learn from them and I

See their approach to doing stuff and the way they talk about things and I’m like oh okay I’m picking up little little bits and uh but you know what’s what’s super cool is the you know the reason I brought them on is because they displayed from the get-go this real Drive passion determination

Very polite persistence um and uh and this thoroughness and attention to detail and you can just tell they really care and they really they demonstrated that they really liked what we’re doing and they cared about that and uh and that was like I was like okay you’re in you know this is let’s

Get you in and um you know two of those guys have already kind of graduated into they’re going in to being sound designers now um yeah so one of the things I like to do is say you know if you want to come on and be a composer in your Junior

Um it’s going to be a journey because the the challenge is there’s there are so many composers um and music producers um the the number of composers and music producers you know outstrip the number of actual available jobs um by a factor of probably like a

Hundred or a thousand to one it’s I don’t know the numbers but it’s crazy so how many emails you get a week saying Crispin so many and um you know but one of the things that really helped Propel me because I was not you know I was nowhere near good enough

To be doing music for the games when I first started at yay um was okay well I go through as a sound designer you know and I learned sound design because there’s more work than there are good sound designers you know so it’s a really great path and and this comes back to

The learning things that help you if you have your mind open to it um and being a sound designer for so many years it taught me so much not just about hey how to really manipulate sound which is super important and how to like you know populate the different

Frequency ranges and not have stuff build up and all those things uh how to make things Punchy how to make things interesting you know how to voice stuff but it taught me uh the really important things about how to integrate things how we integrate things into the game and how there’s such a

Um there’s so much contention for resources in a game you know contention for Ram contention for CPU Cycles um all those things and how we manage that and it applies to music too yeah um you know there’s contention for disk space often still you know especially on

A system like the Nintendo switch or even more so on a mobile game um you know there’s so you have to be really judicious and and think carefully about how you’re going to put together your music and how you’re going to make it fit and what sacrifices you’re going

To make but in addition to all of that and also sorry just quickly how you’re going to be inventive about your implementation to make things interactive in the music and of course the same with the sound design I mean when I was at EA we were working on Need

For Speed uh like the first five of them on and on the Sony PlayStation one and that thing I think I think it had 512 K of sound Ram yeah actually that might be higher than it was I can’t remember but the upshot was that our player engines

Had to fit into I believe it was either 80k or 160k of ram so just for someone someone like me who is uh a bit less educated about these things sure ATK 160k this is more or less a tenth of a megabyte is that right

Right okay so all of the audio for all of the games that I grew up with because I’m Nintendo 64 guy oh yeah there was even less RAM on that so you’re fitting everything and all these wonderful soundtracks I spoke to a musicologist for about an hour on the podcast about

Ocarina of Time and I’m like oh yeah so that’s all being fit into about 80k oh it’s like yeah I can’t I actually don’t know what the ram was on the N64 uh and it was dependent on like there were different cart sizes um yeah it was

Very very little much less than the PlayStation one um right yeah and uh yeah and so all the music you hear on the N64 is it’s a it’s a bunch of samples stored in and then midi plays those samples in real time um whereas on the PlayStation one for

The most part we were like hey we have a CD now so we’ll stream actual like wav files off the uh except they’d be compressed uh so they were compressed using Sony’s compression um the analogy we used for the Layman on the last one was the it’s it’s like

Instead of flip putting a sound recording into the game tell me if this is right it’s more like you’re putting the sheet music into the code of the game and then it’s being played right okay that so that’s what it was on the N64 and some PS1 games actually so

Um yeah like uh games like Crash Bandicoot that was all midi yeah um but the yeah games like Need for Speed we had you know full full wave like stereo music that was streaming off the disk um from a compressed file so think MP3 but we didn’t have MP3 at that time yeah

Oh yeah yeah um and we we so normally the music would get recorded at 44 kilohertz um and then it would be put onto the the disc at 22. um half a generation down to begin with yeah you you so and I mean it still sounded okay it’s funny we still get

Occasional fan mail for music We did in like 1997 for the Need for Speed it’s wild um mostly from Russia yeah yeah so myself um ROM deprisco uh yeah a bunch of the crew sakikaska’s uh who’s sadly no longer with us um yeah the the all of us who did music

On that we you know people still talk about it and it’s it’s so funny because I mean well ROM and Saki did amazing stuff I was just fledgling I had no idea what I was doing um 24 at the time ah I think I was 25 right maybe

Um I’m trying to remember it would have been yeah I was around 25 26. uh so this is like one of your entry-level gigs Need for Speed yeah yeah and this was after spending a year in QA just so I could get like led into the audio department

Yeah but uh yeah it was it was wild um but again you know back to what about learning at the time it was so much about um not just learning the ins and outs of the tech which is super important so you know if you want to get into game audio

Or game music learn implementation that’s the number one thing you can learn because so many people don’t have it and if you have that you have a major advantage okay so should we just should we should we I I don’t want to cut you off but I feel like we should probably

Spend a good 10 minutes just going into that area implementation because to someone who hasn’t even grazed the surface which I you know I uh we happen to have done it gas I get what you’re saying is we’re talking about middleware right we’re talking about getting your

Sounds into the engine of the game in a way that takes that responsibility away from the Developers yeah and it’s you know um so yeah we we could talk about middleware we can talk about F mod and y’s or even fabric um and then there’s some studios that have their own bespoke stuff

Um and then but there’s also unreal and unity have their own audio stuff built in um and unreals is becoming more and more fully fledged uh personally my favorite combination is wise and unreal five like the together you can do really incredible stuff so the example of what

It is about those two dovetailing is really really good um wise is really really great for getting a whole bunch of audio in and tuning it and making it sound good and react in certain ways regardless of whether using Unity or unreal it’s it’s fantastic for

All of that um and it’s it’s really mature I mean it’s been in development for a really long time um and they get it you know but unreal is amazing because of blueprints you can roll your own stuff so you can roll your own logic without a programmer for how you’re

Choosing to fire off the sounds you can hook up your own sounds sound events you can you know it’s really easy to place all your sounds in the environment and then give them behaviors based on game logic without writing a single line of code you’re doing what kind of behaviors are we talking

Uh so for instance you can be like cool I’m going to change this sound of this emitter based on time of day or weather you know yeah okay you know or um you know we’ve got wind uh that kind of comes and goes through the thing and we

Could even just be like hey we’re gonna roll an entire win system ourselves and we could set it up and we can have it so that when the wind reaches certain Peaks certain emitters are hooked up to things like Signs and flagpoles and stuff and they make more noise as the wind gets

Louder you know and that’s something that if you you know have a reasonable idea of what you’re doing and unreal you can just roll that yourself right and so help me as well with you you keep hearing the term roll is that is that like a little neologism uh industry term

Or yeah sure I I mean I don’t know if it’s I don’t know if it’s uh widely used but it’s basically you can you can script the stuff yourself relatively simply um and then you know once it’s all good you know you can go to a program and be

Like okay hey is this okay or is it you know like weighing down the CPU and do you want to up you know write hard code it so it’s optimal but does it help to have a sort of background in a programming language you know absolutely yeah but it’s not essential and that’s

One of the beauties of unreal is you don’t know how to code you don’t have to know how to code it’s it’s always helpful because it helps you knowing how to code helps you think about the way um like the topography uh of of you know ram versus CPU and

Um disk and how things talk to each other and how to how to write you know one of the most important things you learn when programming is how to write an algorithm how to come up with an algorithm for how this logic is going to work and then

You know you make the code and then you have to optimize it and so much of what we do is optimization so it really helps you get into that mindset um and I I won’t pretend that I’m a coder I learned some code I learned some um

Assembler and I learned some C and some Pascal way back when and I you know I’ve done Lua on a few games it’s like but it’s very like my first you know my first program you know two finger typing code for me do you have a uh do you have

Like a team do you have a department that do just do that that just do the implementation yeah yeah we we well so we have foreign both sound designers and composers who do some of their own implementation and I always feel like that’s a really powerful thing because if you if you’re

Already thinking about how you’re implementing it and you’re working on that and you’re tuning that then you go back to your DAW and you’re designing the sound and you’re you’re designing it directly for how you’re implementing it so that makes a really big difference right yeah so the actual the

Implementation and you said optimization as well and I’m guessing that that kind of amounts to troubleshooting in some sense so yes and no so troubleshooting is different that’s you know every game every piece of software has bugs and and every single game that you’ve ever played ships with bucks it because you

Can never fix them all and what happens is you take care of the what we call the priority ones first um the things that break the game badly or you know crash or whatever and or other ones that are really no spoil are really painful

Um and then you go for the priority twos which are like oh this is frustrating we got to fix this and then the priority for you is like oh that’s a little bit of a blemish you know and so forth and you do as many of those as you can

Before you’re cut off and they ship it you know because the the ship date is the ship date generally speaking it’s funny because in my mind what you’re describing is priority three is the kind of thing that I normally makes me go this game sucks like this they haven’t

Fixed this you know you know sometimes that’ll be a priority 32 that slipped through the cracks one of the challenges is that you know as developers we’re trying to cram as much goodness into the game as possible because we want players to love it we’re

Gamers you know and we hate it when a game sucks uh and the worst feeling is when you work on a game for you know two three four years and you ship it and you’re like that sucks you know you just feel like you wasted a whole bunch of your life

Um or like you put all this love into it and then something slips through the crack that breaks it and then people are not enjoying it and you’re like oh man we put so much work into that yeah um you know and and people it’s funny I see

You know YouTube comments or comments on forums and Twitter or whatever Reddit about being like oh I can’t they make this game these guys don’t know what they’re doing they’re idiots like you have no idea how hard these teams work and yeah and how many people there are

Yeah yeah it’s absolutely and there are just so many forces working against you at all times and any one of them can trip you up um you know I worked on a game called impossible creatures way back when like 20 years ago and I was really proud as my first game

Where I was audio director and composer and I did the majority of the sound design blah blah blah wrote a whole wrote most of the music except for the main theme which was done by a guy named Jeremy Soule and we shipped it um and I rolled off the project uh

Because I was a contractor and after I rolled off a programmer changed something in the game that he thought was innocuous and it caused you this is an RTS so you had the henchmans and it caused the henchmen to constantly spam the phrase the critters are under attack and in every review

That was what they talked about and I was absolutely heartbroken there’s one bit of like so they’ve got this big network of things that are interacting and one of them was slightly tuned differently and that caused the whole thing to do this yeah and no and and you

Know he didn’t test his changes against that he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t go and listen to like the effect of that and maybe he didn’t know too it might have been like some designer asked him to tune one little thing um but it broke my audio and and I was I

Was already gone I was already on to something else and I couldn’t like the contract was over so I couldn’t work the doors locked and you can’t get back yeah and I I didn’t I didn’t even know about it until I started seeing the

Reviews come in and I just at my eyes I was like getting stabbed I was just like so gutted and so I made you know I made a real um promise to myself that I would never I would do everything in my power to make sure that that never happened again

And uh yeah and so that that leads me to you know kind of back to what I was saying before a little bit about the other things you learn when you’re in game development uh and and that you learn especially as a sound designer because as a sound designer you’re much

More involved in the day-to-day um than a composer where you like you know you spend a week or whatever writing a track and kind of throw it over the fence a lot of the time um you learn how to work with teams um and more specifically you learn how

Dev teams are organized and how they um you know how different departments tend to prioritize things and how they tend to think um and how it’s really important for you to make sure that you make it clear to them um a that you’re there to support them

And make their stuff as cool as possible but be that you know you have to be on top of what they’re doing because sometimes these little things they do they will break your work or that you know you actually need to understand how the different departments actually

Interact not just that they are there but that because obviously I’m speaking with enormous Layman kind of alarms going off here that not you know I’m not part of this world but um in any complex organization that interaction that we described that kind of you know this counterbalance is uh is

Is a factor you know so I’m in um I’m more in the I I we work in advertising post-production okay similar things to use composition sound design post-production mixing it all together and what you know you find that the people who work with uh Studios like us

All the time uh still for instance unclear about the distinction between mixing the music and mixing the music with the sound and the voice yeah and so it’s like oh well you know you’re doing a mix how come it’s not mixed it’s like no that’s and so you know that you’ve

Got to be very clear with your communication so that that gets planned into the work pipeline early enough so that it can all get finished on time and you’re doing stuff like this but in a more complex way with people who I don’t know uh design the environments or you

Know what what can go wrong yeah absolutely and it you know I made well I’ve made a lot of mistakes many of them daily but the oh in their early years one of my biggest mistake was I was so focused on doing the best that I possibly could for audio that I didn’t

I don’t think I had the right amount enough compassion for the other um disciplines in the other departments and what they were doing and so sometimes don’t you understand how I do this kind of thing well it’s more it’s more like hey you’re breaking my sound

You know like yes you know like like we got to get this right in like making a big fuss and like you know like no we’ve got to have these resources blah blah and it is important to fight for Stuff um but but the fight gets far easier when you

When you look at when you look at it and communicate it through the lens of we’re making you know design gameplay is absolutely King it’s Paramount um and the and story you know those are the two you know king and queen um they are and everything serves those

Two things yeah and and if you know you might be like hey but I’ve made this really cool sound I want to hear it if that’s not serving gameplay if it’s not serving um story it doesn’t matter it’s irrelevant but that’s that’s just you like that’s you

And your ego so yeah the the most important thing and and ultimately here’s the other thing that’s an even more important thing you know as and it’s a hard lesson to learn as a you know as an artist I use air quotes there um the the most important thing is that

We the players are loving what’s happening and they’re that they’re coming back for more and that they’re telling their friends and that we’re selling copies because if you don’t sell enough copies of the game the studio shuts down because it’s really expensive to make these games it costs so much money um

And so it’s really important the way we think about it now is yeah gameplay and story absolutely and in tandem with that how are we making you know the sound the sound design the sound effects how are they super signature and iconic how are they very clean and legible and also

It’s the same with the music you know how are we either setting a really nice vibe that supports everything that’s going on without getting in the way or how are we you know in a in specific focused moments saying hey we’re we’ve created a theme and every time you hear this theme you

Know that it’s something about this um and it’s it’s telling you that even if you’re not like consciously aware that like oh there’s that theme this thing’s happening you’re subconsciously you tie it together and you’re like oh this is about this character or this Arc or this conflict or this overall situation

Um so that’s that’s something and I actually get a huge amount of joy out of doing that when when composing and like really thinking about you know how you know because if you have too many themes then it becomes kind of like it’s hard for people to

Connect to it and relate to it so you have to sort of decide like okay I want you know two to three maybe four or five like really strong themes depending on how big or how long the story is um and they’re going to connect to certain things and then you know beyond

That you have like uh different instrumentation and different Vibes for different areas or environments of the world or parts of the story and you can take it you can take any theme you can make it happy or triumphant you can make it sad you can make it ominous you know

You can make it scary you can make it you know lonely or rejected that’s that’s the beauty of music you know especially if you have a theme that’s flexible and that’s one of the other challenges is you have to come up with a flexible theme that can that can do all

Those things and I I have to tell you working with Ramin jawadi and hearing what he was doing really really nailed that one home for me um he’s an absolute Master at that so it changed the way I wrote after that watching him on Gears of War

Yeah yeah and because he so I was the music director on that gears on Gears five um so basically he and I like I I kind of like mapped out hey here are the themes that we want and what we want them to mean can you go write these and

The music director is more like a creative director role it’s like you’ll see you’re setting the landscape okay yeah and I and then I would also set up it was a little bit technical as well in that I would I would come up with the design of hey how are we going to

Implement and um manipulate this music in game based on what the player is doing and where they are and what’s happening so something as simple as like hey we’ve just walked into a new area and the music changes to reflect that and we’ll think about things like you

Know in Gears five you go through a whole bunch of areas that you went through in Gears two so we actually like kind of Easter egged a bunch of the gears two themes and music in what we were doing there and some of that I wrote myself um because

You know I kind of I wrote about an hour of the music in Gears five uh because we wanted Ramin to focus on you know you only get so much budget uh to work with and rameen is one of the most sought after composers in the world so you know

We could we could work with a certain amount of music from him uh which he delivered and it was spectacular um and then for like the the extra little bits of dressing here and there I just did that myself um but it was it was cool because I

Would you know run with some of his teams or I would run with some of the themes written by Steve jablonski and uh Kevin ripple from the earlier gears uh and and I’d work those in to the environment so that you kind of got these Echoes or ghosts from the past as

You’re walking through that’s really awesome it’s also um there’s something kind of just amusing about the image of the musical director going okay well they can’t afford to remain so I’m just gonna have to fill this with so you know like you know the inversion of authority there so I I

Wanna I wanna be kind of clearly it’s not that they couldn’t afford it’s just that we were given a certain budget of a number of minutes and like this is what you get and remains busy too so it’s like he only has time for so much

Um and so basically Beyond two hours of Music anything else we want you know we have to roll it and yeah yeah in a motion picture you know they’ll be have you ever done motion picture or is it always been games no I’ve done I’ve done film and TV

Um yeah and I yeah go ahead I I I’m very interested to hear your experiences well you know that you’re typically a supervisor and the composer or just the supervisor will spot the media and say this is why we need music that’s where we need music is it the same with games

That’s the first question do you play the experience and go without this is gonna need this or do you start much earlier where before you can actually get into it great question and it really depends on the game for Gears five we started a lot earlier and you know the thing is that

It’s not like they go and shoot the game and all of a sudden you have all this stuff it’s like they have to build all the environments they build the characters they mock out the characters and they they capture their performances but that’s ongoing throughout the entire development

Um and you know they’ll build a level and they’ll play through and and you know they’ll change it until it plays well and those changes could be quite dramatic but what we do is we go hey generally speaking we’re going to map out a general story and these are the

General environments that we think we’re going to want so that the artists can start building the art for those environments um but knowing that the geometry is going to change quite a bit and the final art isn’t going to happen until much further down the line

Um but you know we have like uh what’s it concept artists who will be like here’s a picture of what this you know what we want to shoot for the landscape and the art director will you know work with them to like really hone in on that and then they’ll go cool yes

This is kind of our North Star for say the you know the the desert uh levels this is what this wants to feels like um and the art direction is kind of locked in and committed to from early on easy yeah yeah it’s so so quote unquote

The art the art direction is established but like all things in games it’s it it’s amorphous because if you say you know no one can see the future um and if you’re the art director and be like this is what we’re doing and that’s it and we’re not changing anything

You’ve stuck yourself in a box and as you develop you you might suddenly realize like hey you know what actually there’s a problem with the story that we thought was going to work here it’s not going to work and we actually have to change this level to make this you know

This part of story connect to this other part properly or the gameplay just doesn’t feel right or it’s just it’s just not a fun environment so we’re going to change it you know and I I remember hearing I had friends who worked on um the Uncharted games in The

Last of Us games yeah and they’d build entire levels and spend months or even years working on them and then sometimes throw them out and yeah so it’s just what we we actually threw out a part of a level a pretty big part of a level on

Gears five and I was bummed because I thought it was awesome um but it they they had to make decisions again gameplay and story are Paramount you know yeah and and also it’s a question sometimes of like yeah okay that’s cool for gameplay but there’s problems and it’s going to take

Longer to solve these problems and make it good than we have and you you want the experience to be as good as possible so you have to you have to kill your baby sometimes you have to throw that out you’re like we don’t have time to

Make that as good as it deserves to be for the players um so it’s there’s there’s a lot of heartbreak that happens in development so it’s like that’s that’s why I’m I’m always kind of like oh guys give us a break when when you see people complaining on YouTube or whatever it’s

Like we’ve already been through the ringer to get you this much you know it’s um it’s an experience and I I get it you know like like we built this for the players and and so at the same time I’m like I love that you’re so passionate about this right so it’s a

It’s such a it’s such a double-edged sword it’s like I love that you’re so passionate and that you want it to be better and like in some cases you know you see account and you’re like yeah we wish we could have done that you know or

Like hey that’s actually not a bad idea but the there’s so many forces at play um that do you know any of the guys on uh on Battlefield at EA um I used to yeah it depends which one because there’s been a number I I knew a

Bunch of people on sorry the Star Wars Battlefront um no sorry I mean uh Battlefield yeah I know yeah I knew a bunch of the audio team I I knew a bunch of the audio team that was on Battlefield uh I don’t know if they’re all still the same um but I

Knew a few of them yeah really amazing team yeah I mean uh more than I realized I’d taken a long Hiatus from gaming because when I was growing up gaming was still the thing you shouldn’t do while you should be doing homework yeah and you know so I checked out around 16

Which was 2011. right okay and then because it came back a few years later and one of my best friends is a serious gamer and I saw you know not only the landscape transformed and now this was this you know huge monolithic industry eclipsing film and all the rest of it

Um but also that Audio and Sound precisely affected the gameplay way more than I realized now so you know um I made Chrissy plays the battlefield he’s like mostly I’m listening a lot of the time I’m listening for where footsteps are and I had no idea the spatial

Element had become you know yet such a um such a huge part of it though we’ll get back on to that because the thing I was in about 2042 was I went on to steam to get it because they said you have to get on this we’ll we’ll you know it’s

Great discount and it was like reviews had been mostly negative yeah and you know they’d had to do a whole lot of overhaul and redesign I don’t really understand why but the point is that must be devastating to uh have this kind of big clear Community voice just saying

No try again and like you’re saying it’s like oh we’ve done five six years already on this and we thought we had it all worked out yeah uh I mean it’s never uh we thought we had it all worked out because we always every time they like cut us off

And they start shipping you’re like oh God there’s so much still we want to do or yeah you know it it kills you a little bit but um it was yeah I I hear you basically exactly that and the funny thing is I bet when you played that game you’re like this is

Great yeah you know like what’s everyone complaining about you know and it’s um you know there are certain things that I think are mistakes that developers made and you know I don’t I don’t want to get into it too much not developers actually Publishers where they they try too hard

To squeeze cash out of a game without realizing that like you know delivering something that’s high quality is going to be way better long term for your brand than like delivering something that’s like mediocre but you know you paint it up a lot you doll it up and you

Market the heck out of it and then you know you sell a whole bunch of you know you make everybody buy a ton of microtransactions like if you’re that you’re just making everything harder for long term and I get that it’s great for um short-term profits but I do really

Feel like it damages the you know it puts a real um yeah stain on your rep for long term and I’m I’m personally of the I really prefer let’s ship something high quality let’s do high quality work that people talk about for years and get excited

About and they go oh it’s this studio I’m gonna buy that game because every time I play the game by this studio it’s amazing yes yes yes yeah you know like uh like the I suppose again I’m not so into gaming that I’m willing to take

This uh I put all my money on this but I’m guessing that like valve for example or a studio with an ironclad reputation yep yeah and you know for a really long time and to to a large degree still blizzard you know blizzard naughty dog you know Naughty Dog releases a game or

Sony Santa Monica you know like everyone’s playing that yeah you know and uh um yeah it’s it’s really cool and and I you know I’d love uh I think the challenge is when you have a a property um that has a past like years of war

Um people really kind of view it through rose-colored glasses and they’re they’re really attached to the experiences they had um so and you’ve got half the yo you’ve got half the fans clamoring for something new and then half the fans hate that you change something and so

It’s a real it’s a real challenge there um but I think I think the Coalition um has done an incredible job on those games and continues to do it and I can tell you that every single member of that team cares and they care more than any of the players

Um you know and so like the the number of long meetings and arguments that are had over like you know certain changes um it gets talked about a lot and uh yeah these changes are not made lightly so um yeah I feel I feel really lucky to be

Involved with that there’s such an amazing team to work with um yeah and similarly you know working with uh Minecraft team they’re phenomenal Disney has been amazing um so incredibly supportive and uh and it’s so cool because when you work with Disney you know they’re extremely rightfully um

Careful about how their IP is represented so you know music for a certain level that’s like hey this is Agrabah from um uh Aladdin yeah you know it has to sound a certain way without sounding too much like the original composer because you know that’s a different that’s a

Different legal conversation if you’re if you’re starting to ape the original composer so yeah um yeah you know and the sounds for the characters and all of that it just but what was great about it is that feedback and this is another this comes back to the things you learn the feedback is

Such a gift um because it makes you better and it helps you see their perspective and understand what their priorities are and if you the number one thing you can do is understand what their priorities are um because if you understand that and if you’re shooting for that then two

Magical things happen one is you get a really great result because you’re all thinking about the same thing and more importantly they start to trust you because you know as as a creative I’m sure you’ve had the experience of like hey you hand off something to somebody

And you don’t know if they can do it and they don’t know if they’re gonna gonna represent your ideas or represent your vision or represent you well and that’s terrifying you know but but so the number one thing because I’ve had that thing you know when I’m working

On music and I and I hand off something to somebody or I hand off the sound design to somebody and say okay go with this it was a really hard thing to learn to let go of like yeah I want to control everything um but it’s even harder when your IP is

Beloved by you know not Millions but billions of fans and that’s what we’re talking about with Disney you know they there are billions of fans and if you mess that up there’s going to be a lot of angry people and the the impact to your bottom line can be huge so

Um earning their trusts and earning any clients trusts is the number one thing and the best thing you can do to do that is to demonstrate that you are listening and understanding and acting on their priorities what they want what they care about so there’s this the the the golden Um result the kind of the most desirable outcome is when so there’s what your client I don’t know says what your client is uh asking of you and you know keeping their interests at heart they’re keeping the actual gameplay experience of the end user at heart so

If you can get those two things lined up that’s a good balance and if you can also be satisfied by the work you’re making you get this kind of really glorious through line where everyone’s happy yeah yeah and and you know what’s what’s great is that when you truly understand their

Perspective and you take their feedback and you you know you run with it um so I’ll give you an example I I had submitted some stuff for the main theme of this mirrorverse game for Disney and I was pretty stoked about it you know and they were not you know they were

Like it’s nice music but it’s not Disney and I was like oh God people who aren’t yet working composers for that will happen a lot and it never gets daily right yeah no you so so yeah develop a thick skin and just know that you know

It’s it’s such a cliche but feedback is a gift it will make you better they’re going to tell you why you suck and then you don’t have to suck as much yeah and you know if you’re lucky you get to work with people who are who are you know not

Jerks doing the feedback thing but some people will be total jerks during the feedback and it’s not because they hate you and it’s not because they’re jerks actually it’s because they’re really stressed out and they’ve got their own incredible weight on them of having to deliver this final project and like all

These stresses and if you’re not delivering what they need you’ve just added to that stress so you know the number one thing you can do is subtract from their stress um so yeah and and so I got this feedback um and they paired me with one of their

Kind of internal composers who’s this super experienced guy um Ariel man absolutely brilliant composer and great guy and he gave me some of the best most specific feedback I’ve ever received in my career and I what we ended up with as a result of

That I was I was so proud of you know and it and I by listening and when he first was giving me the feedback I was just like oh God you know and and not not because of the way he did it because he he gave

It in such a lovely and professional way but I was just like oh man I’m failing all over the place and it’s like no you just you approached it with one perspective and they’re giving you a different perspective um and he yeah he taught me a whole

Bunch of stuff and it literally made me a better composer for every piece that I’ve written since um and yeah it was so it was so cool it was such a it was such a gift to get to have that experience and the end result was far better

Um you mentioned stress tolerance being a oh yeah a key component so I know I know we’re not allowed to actually go in depth and talk about this just to briefly brush over and mention as you have done that Minecraft Legends is coming out this year yes and that Lions

Has been deeply involved if you delivered the full audio package yeah so we’ve um I I don’t know if I can tell you that actually uh but I can tell you that we’ve delivered um all of the music and they just they just released a little mini Dev diary

Covering the Music and Sound um with some of us in it so it’s myself and uh Blackbird who is the main developer and moyang uh their audio leads um well moyang has their audio director Samuel and uh blackbirds audio lead uh session ready um both amazing guys who I now consider good friends

Um it’s been such a pleasure to work with them um how long has the process been it has been a while um again I’m not really sure if I’m allowed to say but it’s been multiple years let’s just say that okay let’s let’s pull the blocks on it there then

The main thing to talk about is it’s going to come out this year it’s coming out in April um and yeah and it was really exciting because we you know we have a big orchestral score and we recorded it at Abbey Road with the London uh Symphony players

Um so technically it’s not the London Symphony but it’s players that you know play in The Lemon Symphony and the London philharmonia and uh basically the best players in the world um and they played on it and that was a truly spectacular experience that never happened you have the constituent

Elements so even though it’s not the lso it basically is kind of yeah it’s it’s yeah I mean the the important thing is they are widely considered the best players in the world although some would argue that some of the LA film Orchestra players are as good or better but it’s it’s sick

It’s sort of half and half I I really love London they’re exceptional so but the part is you’ve got a major game shipping this year um and um you know you have mentioned a lot that you have to leave your ego at the door at all stages of the development process

You know so you aren’t the star it’s not about you getting a shining moment when you’re a kind of composer for Media or games or anything like that so make sure you’re serving you know your client and your end user you know make sure that whoever eventually receives this in

Their eyes absolutely is grateful that happens yeah and and you know it’s it like by serving the end user you are serving your client yeah you know and it’s so very rare that those things come at odds to each other um but you know occasionally you have to make a call

Because the client is serving a longer term goal so you might disagree you might be like this is the users are not going to like this but you know you have to respect that they have a they have a much clearer and more intimate picture of their situation and their

Process and their goals than you do so you you know you have to trust them in the same way that we you know we were talking about mixing at the start and um you uh you were in bands and did you ever get the privilege of going into a

Studio trying to make a record with a band um not with one of mine uh never if we were never that good um but uh the I did go into a studio with a band that I was kind of helping out with um you know I’ve done I’ve done I’ve

Been in studio Lots in in and also during the process of you know doing Need for Speed music and other music you know we’d go into the studio and record and mix and all that stuff so definitely been there for lots of studio time but not

Not so much in band unless we’re talking about the stuff that I’ve recorded and produced for you know friends and stuff like that so well there is a there is a phenomenon that’s well known to um yeah producers who worked with bands in the latter half of the 20th century

And that’s a kind of me loudest mix oh yeah philosophy it’s like I can’t really hear enough of the base there it’s like I know but which would you know it’s not all it’s not the most important thing right here maybe the kick drum is emotionally more important at this point

Um you’re and so you a good producer I think uh not that I am one uh learns to think of the stereo mix that’s the in you we said the mix is another instrument right that’s the actual thing that you’re perceiving and so does the mix have enough low end it’s like no

Well where are you going to get it from and puts them in you know yeah does it need to be sustained or does it really impact and you’re not thinking about drums and about bass but you’re thinking about the low end and so it’s the same um with regards to the experience of

Producing uh you know a video game you’re not there thinking the music it has to be the most important thing you’re like the music has to serve the player and if one day they talk about the music being good then that’s a great privilege but you can’t be thinking that

With the end of mind like I’m gonna cut my legacy here yeah no absolutely not and you know so I’m both the composer and the audio director of Minecraft Legends and um you know there’s many times where I will say Turn down the music because it’s it like that’s not important right

Now or it’s too loud and it’s inter is the number one thing that in the moment to moment that we have to communicate is gameplay and you know Legends I mean it’s known now because you’ve seen there’s been lots of footage online it’s basically an action RTS

Um and so there’s a lot of stuff that happens at the same time on the screen and you you can’t have your eyes everywhere at once there can be stuff happening all around behind you so we need to make sure that key sounds will cue the player oh shoot I’ve got to turn

Around and deal with this thing or oh they’re doing that now okay I better I better like create uh a counter attack or you know some kind of appropriate defense but I’ll tell you one thing that really struck out to me where I where I realized like okay cool I’ve got a

Handle on this ego thing or or just you know I’m prioritizing a little better in the past was I was working on this film a few years ago called the shipment um and we were in the mix and I was just the composer but we were in the mix

Um at the Sound Stage and uh and I basically told them to kill a piece of music and the the mixer couldn’t believe it and I was like like just just kill yourself because composers are always like keep make more oh yeah yeah and I but you know and part

Of that was like there was this other part where I was like the music definitely needs to come up to like you know but I was I was thinking more as audio director and and like than as a composer because at that stage that’s what’s important and

Um and the mixer turned to me he’s like I’ve never ever had a composer tell me to kill a piece of music before and I was like I’m not a composer right now that’s not my that’s not my role in this room right now so it’s great to be able

To wear multiple hats because it stops you obsessing over one part of it too much yeah and this is this comes back to why why I really recommend that composers wanting to get in it to do the sound design because you learn all those roles and priorities in the way that’s

Far better than what you’ll learn as just a composer alone now that’s not you know as you pointed out early on there’s no one clear path so you have to do it the way I did it I just found that that path has served me really well

Um in you know one of the things that we often deal with is you know you get a composer they deliver music and you’re like okay we got to change everything because it’s it’s so busy and I my choices are either turn it down and so you barely hear it or

You know or we leave it up and then we can’t hear all the important stuff that’s happening in the game so you know you need to you need to remix or rewrite you need to choose different instruments Etc and I’m lucky because when I’m writing the music I already know that I

Already know that in advance I know what’s going to be happening in the game or I have an idea or at least I know to ask and I you know I’ll cooperate with the sound designers and be like hey you know what are you thinking for this

Um you know are you thinking like a lot of big mid-range stuff or you know what’s what’s the thoughts here and I’ll try and make sure I stay out of that range or you know how often are we hearing these types of sound cool so I

Could be in this range just a little bit here and there but I can’t be constant and so on and so forth I mean that’s a real privilege that I uh uh you know how to experience one day that you know you’re working on a big team where all

The other people have the same like nerdy obsessions that you do and you can just talk to them you know I we want it happened once working on a pizza Commercial and the post uh mix engineer a great guy called munzee down at Grand Central in London

Um just comes on to say oh no I’m going to be doing this with the sound so the music needs to and we just talked about you know frequencies it’s like oh it’s like so voice is going to be at 400 so I can back off it and uh the creatives who

Were also sort of on the zoom call because everyone has to be on a call even if yeah yeah yeah they were like I don’t what do you speak your own language there what are you talking about you know nice so yeah and you you get that all the time because you’re

Working on these big teams of sound design is dovetailing with music and with voice and you know we we deliver this masterclass to agencies in London and again it’s mostly a learning experience it’s it’s more to learn stuff than to tell stuff that we already know and one thing we found was that

Um let’s say old uh films and you know the great music of John Williams um appeared to be and I could be wrong about this but it appeared to be composed around the locked edit so you knew when there was going to be dialogues so you would leave music out

For those bits and then have your big moments on the other side feels less the case now it feels like you know music is composed before the edit is locked and you have to be able to move everything around so it’s a bit less it’s a bit less melodically intrusive let’s say you

Know Melody is a much much less a part of movie soundtracks than it used to be but it could be General yeah I I mean I know I I partly think that you know some of that is just a matter of like style I think I think culturally you

Know I think for a little while early on um like in the early 2000s in particular Melody started taking a bath seat because it was like considered old-fashioned you know and uh and it was more about Science movie yeah it was more about like interesting textures and

Like just like here’s a general emotion but we’re not getting bespoke with light motifs and things like that um I I’m I’m a really big fan of like you know what feels right for this particular film Game Show or whatever does it feel right to have certain Melodies and like

And you know some some stories and some storytelling is like you know what we want to be very subtle and understated so Melody doesn’t really have a big place or if there is a Melody it needs to be very simple um and you know that’s just a certain

Vibe and it’s it’s really there’s no one prescriptive right or wrong way it’s just like what you know the best way is to work with your team and your creative director or your director or whoever and find out you know okay what’s your vision and what’s the vision for the

Story and sometimes they don’t know and so your job then in my opinion is to help them get there and go hey so this is the story I think you’re telling um here’s one way we could try it that I think would be really powerful what do

You think and they might just be like you’re out of your mind or like they might be like hey that’s cool let’s try that and then that becomes the thing you know and um that’s I love that and I I think I think one of the things you know

That’s really important is again it comes down to that compassion and respect for your clients vision asking those questions early on and helping them clarify that helping them help you basically because a lot of times you know I’ve worked with people and they just they haven’t thought about

It or they haven’t they haven’t written that character in question deeply enough to know to give you the backstory to be like okay this is how I’m going to write that theme um because they’ve been so focused on all the other parts right so you can you

Can help them by going hey so what if we pretend like this is kind of the backstory and we give that and you know and you obviously you want to be careful and read the room read their personality because some people don’t want you kind of having input on a story because

You’re just a composer or whatever um but I I just find that that comes back to again being sensitive to who they are and what’s important to them and uh and you know just say hey you know if this is helpful um do you want to hear this idea uh or

You know and sometimes you just can’t get answers and so you just do your best with what you’ve got yes yes the world isn’t always waiting for you to like fix it and put it right it’s like absolutely yeah yeah um how much uh how much time do you

Spend on on pre-production uh when someone you know two okay so two questions actually um one pre-production how much time how much uh effort what do you do um and so we’ll cover that put a pin in it for a second because uh one thing I’d

Like you to just cover a little bit for those out there who uh who who you know want to be the next Crispin is uh talk to me about you know project pitching and how how often are you pitching for new business and how competitive is out

There or do they just hand you a contract and say you’re you know you’re the team um it’s very rare that we get handed a contract and say you’re the team it’s if if it happens it’s usually because we’re already working with them and we’ve just completed another project and they’re

Like hey here’s our next project you ready um but the the thing that honestly it’s it’s different with every client different with every project and unfortunately I don’t have the time to get into that right now um because I have to I have another meeting in five minutes so oh wow yeah I

Have to roll out and um uh Jam some lunch into my face but uh yeah it’s it yeah pitching is important but again Iowa’s approaching from trying to understand as much as I can what they care about and what they’re doing and what you know what’s the story they’re telling

Um and you know story is not just hey character X said this to character Y and this conflict happened and here’s their Arc over the whole thing story happens also moment to moment in gameplay and like you know in those moments when you’re jumping and gliding or like you know

Kicking or punching or shooting or whatever even that is part of a story there’s a character how to how that is and and when a team is working really well together you know the animation team the design team and the narrative they’re all serving each other and so it creates

A cohesive thing you know like so for example I think um the gameplay in God of War beautifully tells the story of Kratos and who he is and and that’s down to like you know Corey barlog is just such an incredible designer um but this the story as well and and

The animation team the animation team has done such an incredible job on that game of like you know making how he moves and what he does feel like yeah this is all true to his character and this is all True to this story that’s happening right now similarly you

Know when we work on Gears um the animation of the gears like the the characters themselves they have a weight to them that that says like these are you know incredible soldiers and everything’s heavy and everything’s gritty and tough and dangerous and scary and it’s in how they move as well and

It’s in it’s in the gameplay the gameplay Loops feel that way and I just I love that and I think that you know if you if you can start looking for those kinds of things it’ll really help you direct yourself in your own sound design and in your music composition

Well you know this as we’ve said could go on for much longer I hope it could anyway because I feel like we’re learning I’m learning a lot but uh obviously I forget it’s 9 30 p.m here it’s 1 30 p.m I think correct in British Columbia you’ve given us a lot of time

Uh he’s crisping hands he is the director of lion’s head pro and uh he is a firm believer in don’t have a fixed path in uh make sure you’re always learning wherever you are there’s always something to learn uh keep the uh end user in mind and everything will go well

What are the other gold nuggets of information we’ve had here I can’t quite remember but I think mostly just you know really uh listen to respect and serve your clients have compassion for them because they’re you know they have all their own pressures and anxieties and

Your job is to to take some of that away and you wouldn’t always want to switch places with them no no yeah I’m not good at what they’re doing I I you know I I’m barely good at what I’m doing so I’m gonna stay right here of course yeah

It’s been great Kristen I hope we can do it again likewise if you’re ever back in in London at Abbey Road give us a shout and we’ll come get you there lovely excellent stuff cheers have a great day we’ll speak to you too