Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 81 how important Cortana was. Truly, I think Cortana is the main character. Master Chief might feel like a protagonist, but he doesn't really do much changing over the course of the series even though, as the player, you are Master Chief. Cortana was the main character for me. All that stuff happened organically. I was there with the team, playing the games, seeing how the story was developing. I kept adapting musically to how I saw the story unfolding and the missions unfolding. I didn't think through ideas like, "here are the main characters in the game and here are their personalities," and write a theme for each. It was very organic. EM: Let's pause the scene there. So, the scale of the music in this game was quite striking at the time. It sounded a lot bigger in scope compared to other games back then. Was it challenging for you to convince the rest of the team of some of your musical aspirations for the score? MO: Well, I had been working with the teams at Bungie for a few years, and when we did orchestral-type music, it was almost always all sampled. In 1999, we realized we had this opportunity to show this very early version of Halo to the world. And we had no sound engine. The sound engine didn't work yet on a Macintosh. So, this was a live gameplay demo using the game engine at Macworld with Steve Jobs. It was a wonderful opportunity for us. But I'm thinking, "The sound engine doesn't work on a Mac yet, so what are we going to do?" We sat there and talked about it, and I said, "Look, I could write an orchestral score with live players and we'll just put it on a CD and hit play at the same time." So, Jason Jones would hit the spacebar to start the demo, and we'd just cross our fingers hoping it syncs up in some cool way. But we knew that the only thing that would be selling the audio side of Halo would be a recorded music soundtrack. The guys at Bungie were like, "Oh, that sounds like a great idea! How much is that going to cost?" I said, "Look, I'll own the music. You just pay the expenses of me, the players, and the studio." I think our entire budget was like $3,600. We had four to six string players—four violins, two cellos. Mike and I sang, "The Monks" and all the vocals were done by the two of us, plus three other jingle singers who I think had just sung, "Mr. Clean, Mr. "The three words that were given to me all the way back in 1999, when we did our first demo at Macworld with Steve Jobs, was the music needed to make the audience feel like this is epic, ancient and mysterious." Halo: Combat Evolved audio director Marty O'Donnell at his Bungie workstation.