S4E10 [TEN] – This Is Brown Note Territory

Background music in fiction is something we tend to take for granted. That’s not to do say it’s not appreciated. It very often is. But how often do you sit down in front of a game and consider what dramatic impact the music has because it sounds exactly like it does? We’re going to return

Continue reading S4E10 [TEN] – This Is Brown Note Territory

Background music in fiction is something we tend to take for granted. That’s not to do say it’s not appreciated. It very often is. But how often do you sit down in front of a game and consider what dramatic impact the music has because it sounds exactly like it does? We’re going to return to the adventure game fan favourite DOOM yet another time for an example:

Consider what difference the music makes in the video above. Bobby Prince’s sweet metal score for the PC original has caused its share of sweaty teenage headbanging. It tells the story of a psyched lone wolf who’s out to kick ass and spit bubblegum at whatever hellish cannon fodder his boomstick should blow to bits.

The music for the PlayStation port tells a very different tale. Evil lurks around every corner. Outgunned and outmanned, you clutch your weak pistol and begin your descent through a demonic onslaught of Lovecraftian proportions, against which you have little to no hope. Sort of how I felt when I had to duke it out with the Danish public transportation system to make the episode recording in time (which I didn’t).

The latter, nightmarish soundtrack was brewed up by this week’s guest: Aubrey Hodges.

He may look friendly, but wait till he dims the lights and powers up the MIDI keyboard.

Aubrey has had a really long and varied career. He started out at Sierra, most notably composing the music for Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist and Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness. It was when he joined Midway that he was asked to compose the music for the PlayStation port of DOOM, and since went on to do music for pretty much every id Software FPS adapted for the console market. If you’re a sports game fan, you may recognise his music for the Madden games as well.

The impetus for doing the episode was that we wanted to talk about the sonic signature of a game, how it felt to replace the fingerprints of Bobby Prince or Trent Reznor, and how the creative process of a music project like that pans out. We wound up talking a lot about music composition in general, though. Aubrey is very passionate about his art, and we touched upon some really cool anecdotes that I won’t spoil here. Suffice to say, the Madden theme is more epic than you may have previously thought. And it already was quite epic, you know:

So, really, this episode turned out to be about many other facets of game music as well. In fact, I’d have considered this episode to be Sound Design³ if it’d had drinking or bitching in it.

You can listen to this week’s episode on YouTube

or below the post. And, once you’ve done so, you may feel like checking out more of Aubrey’s music. Well, fear not. There is a proverbial shit ton of it available on his Bandcamp page.

And so, we leave your ear canals sullied in a slightly more pleasant manner than usual. Catch you all next week!