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RAGE Rod Abernethy (www.rodabernethy.com) is an award-winning composer who has written scores for such top rated games as Dead Space, Area 51,The Hobbits, and Tera (released first in South Korea, and set to be released in North America in the spring of 2012). He spent two and a half years creating the score for id Software's Rage, a first-person shooter videogame. Abernethy worked with Christian Antkow, audio lead for Rage and id Software, throughout the game production to create music that worked best under game play. Thanks to a relaxed schedule, Abernethy was able to write sections, send them in for approval, and make any fine tuning revisions that Antkow required. "Sometimes in gaming you're under a very tight deadline, but this was a great schedule and it was a great team to work with," says Abernethy. "Christian and I had a really good To create the various soundscapes, Abernethy used a combination of synthesiz- ers. For software, he used Native Instruments Reaktor, Spectrasonics Omnisphere, as well as Rob Papen's Punch, Blue and Predator. For hardware, he relied on the Virus TI synthesizer from Access Music, an old Oberheim OB-X, Nord Lead 2X and a Roland Juno-60. "This technology is available to everybody, but it's just how you sit down and combine all the stuff. I might run the orchestra through some of this stuff for a particular sound, or I might leave the orchestra in its natural environ- ment, and try to work in a guitar line or weird percussion thing underneath it for a hybrid sound. Sometimes the guitar is plugged in directly through a fuzzbox into Digital Performer with no coloring at all. It's just raw. Other times I'll put it in there with any kind of software on it when I'm just experimenting." On the "Dead City" level, Abernethy used a blend of electronic, industrial and orchestral elements. For the orchestral part of the score, he used samples from his own personal library as well as from other sample libraries, including East- West/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Platinum, ProjectSAM Orchestral Brass Classic and also Symphobia. Abernethy is very fond of the "Dead City" level, in terms of game play and the score. "I like that level a lot. The end is exciting, and big. I love the marriage of orches- tral and techno in the score. Even though there wasn't a live orchestral session, I think it carries a good orchestral feel. It's getting harder and harder to tell these days whether a game has a live orchestra or not. I don't think we'll ever be able to replace a live orchestra, but it's getting close." He mixed the score in Digital Performer and mastered it in Bias Peak using Waves Platinum bundle, PSP Audioware Vintage Warmer and Sony Oxford plug-ins. Pitch and time corrections on the tracks were completed in Peak. "I'm constantly pitching and time correcting samples and putting them back into the sequencer or the DAW. You don't often hear people using Peak Trevor Morris used traditional and non-traditional instruments to create musical themes for the film Immortals. dialogue back and forth about what he wanted. He would talk about the feel of the game, and he might reference a specific movie or something I had already done, and we'd start with that. We pretty much hit it dead on in the first couple of tries. If you have a good audio director and a good audio lead, who know what they want and how to direct, you're going to come out with a great game score." Abernethy chose not to use live orchestra for Rage, though he has gone that direction with other games in the past. For example, he recorded 125 minutes of live orchestra for Tera, an MMORPG soon to be released in the US. For Rage, his focus was the guitar parts and the synth-y soundscapes. Abernethy per- formed all the guitars, acoustic and electric into MOTU's Digital Performer using a wide variety of guitar amp simulators, and vintage and new guitar pedals. "I have an extensive vintage guitar collection, so a lot of the stuff you're hearing in Rage is not samples. It's me playing. For instance, the gunslinger-type slide guitar in the theme, that was played live, and then I'd manipulate it in Digital Performer with other software I have. We have so much software available to us now, so many options." The overall sound for Rage is a blend of guitar, orchestra, percussion and elec- tronic elements. Abernethy used a large variety of guitars, both clean and heavily manipulated, to create a unique sound. "I've used everything from vintage Les Pauls to a Japanese Guyatone to Gretsch Chet Atkins to Mosrite 'Ventures Model' and others. I have an array of guitars I went through, and then I put them into a vintage fuzzbox or something new, like Geiger Counter by William Mathewson Devices. It's the best little pedal I've ever found. It does all kinds of stuff, from mangling to 8-bit glitchy stuff. Part of Rage for me was having fun finding sounds and blending them into a cinematic score with orchestra and percussion and some electronic stuff. It was fun to find some new sounds and combinations I hadn't been able to in other games." for pitch and time correction, but I love it. It doesn't seem to color the sound." Game scores today are as rich and complex as film scores, but they pose a unique set of challenges. Unlike film, where the picture is always the same, game play is constantly changing. Also, a game isn't played twice. The score has to be flexible and engaging. "You have to write things that can get looped in different ways and not get too repetitive. And while looking at Rage and seeing id's Tech 5 software, I was thinking about how I could make a score to match these great looking visuals. How can I make this edgier than something that I've done before? Or, how can I make this different from what I made last week. It was invigorating for me to do it. I loved writing this score," he concludes. IMMORTALS Creating a score that sounds both ancient and modern, while staying true to the fantasy genre, was the challenge that composer Trevor Morris (www.trevor- morris.com) faced when writing for the new Relativity Media film, Immortals. Morris began the score by working closely with director Tarsem Singh and edi- tor Stu Levy four months before picture was completed. "I was involved early by today's standards. Usually composers are dropped in at the last minute, which is unfortunate because it's tougher when you don't have as much time. But I was brought in while they were mid-edit. The movie was taking shape but wasn't completed yet. That's a good spot for me." To get started on Immortals, Morris began by formulating a general concept on how the score should feel. From there, he created melodies for what he called the "Immortals Theme." "I'm a piano player and a melodic-driven kind of composer, so the first thing I did was sit at the piano and bang away at the theme, which became threaded throughout the entire movie. It was the first thing that I played for Tarsem." Morris uses Steinberg Cubase as his main source for sequencing with a Yamaha 88-note controller as his input source. Since he is a piano player, everything starts at the keyboard, including percussion. In Cubase, he builds a score mock-up using www.postmagazine.com Post • November 2011 31