Voodoo Jazz Composer
Xbox.com: Can you tell us how you first broke into the industry? Steve Kirk: In 1992 or so, I was in a band called the Club Foot Orchestra (I still am, I think), and the founder of the Orchestra, Richard Marriot, was working as a composer and sound designer at Atari Games down in Milpitas, California. He called me up one day (I was working as a shipping clerk in a warehouse) and wanted to know if I could make myself available to work as a contractor—editing dialog for a “Beavis and Butthead” license. Of course, I was game! I would also be doing some guitar work for the game, which was unfortunately never released. After that, it was hit or miss—I was the in-house composer for a small development company for a year and a half and have done sound design and music contracts for various companies since then. For the last five years, I’ve run my own project studio here in Oakland (Steve Kirk Pop Studios), doing gaming projects, music for television and radio spots, karaoke tracks, work with music clients, and of course, my own personal work as a composer. Xbox.com: What path brought you to becoming a composer? Steve Kirk: I began playing the guitar at age eight and had always entertained the idea of writing songs—you know, like the Beatles … When I was 13 or 14, I had a buddy, and we would hang out and listen to Freddy King records and attempt to play the blues. By the time I was a teenager, I was studying music theory and composition, walking around between classes at high school with manuscript paper under my arm, taking all the music classes I could, and doing my best to talk my classmates into performing the stuff I had written. I had a band called the Musk Floral Ensemble and was pretty heavily influenced by Frank Zappa, Stravinsky, Hendrix, the Beatles, Gentle Giant, Clapton, Bartok, and to a lesser extent, jazz artists like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, John Coltrane, and Chick Corea. Xbox.com: How did you decide on the overall musical style for Voodoo Vince? Was it inspired more by the character or the pseudo New Orleans locations he finds himself in? Steve Kirk: The creator of the game, Clayton Kauzlaric, already had a pretty refined idea of what he wanted for the game, and the pseudo New Orleans environment figures prominently. In fact, I think it’s the main deal. You could even say, without too much of a stretch, that the main character, Vince, is as influenced by the twisted New Orleans angle as the music is. In my discussions with Clayton prior to my work on this project, his vision was that all or most of the music in the game should have a basis in jazz and then be subverted by other styles to more or less of a degree, depending on the requirements of the environment or playing level. He sent me temp tracks for some of these levels, which was really helpful. That gave me a template to work with. Some levels needed to be moody and relatively sparse, so maybe I would do a kind of medium slow hip-hop beat with muted trumpet improvising over the top. Or, in the case of the Crypt City, Sarcophagus Hustle, or Zombie Guidance Counselor cues, I sat down with my drummer buddy John Hanes and went online and researched and downloaded all sorts of traditional New Orleans-style drumbeats—second line, funeral marches, Dixieland, etc.—and incorporated variations of those traditional rhythms into these cues. In some areas, there’s a lot of action, so for the Trophy Room level, I did a Jimmy Bryant/Speedy West take off—a fast country-jazz piece with spooky parallel minor chords, a second-line beat, and a pedal steel solo. Some elements of traditional or twentieth-century classical music were also used, among other various stylistic influences, but not much rock. Too macho, probably. There’s even a Steve Kirk Techno cue in there somewhere, but of course, we didn’t want to overdo any of that stuff. The feel of the game is such that popular influences beyond the late fifties wouldn’t fly unless you were really sneaky about it. Xbox.com: What was the biggest challenge you faced while working on this title? Steve Kirk: Getting it all done on time! There’s about three and a half hours of music in the game, and there was a six-month timeline to write, record, and mix everything. That’s a lot of music! More, for example, than you would ever expect someone to pull out of their butt for a feature film. And, of course, I wanted every piece to be good and to stand on its own. Coordinating musicians’ schedules and having clean parts printed up for them when they arrived was another big challenge that was important to meet. Musicians really appreciate it when you’re prepared and will give you a better performance because of it. Xbox.com: Can you give us a glimpse into how the game’s soundtrack was recorded? For example, was it a live orchestra, was it recorded en masse, or was it made in little bits that were edited together? Steve Kirk: Most of the music was composed on a sequencer program (Studio Vision Pro) and ported over to notation software to turn it into a master score and individual parts (Overture). Sometimes, I would write everything in Overture and then port it over to Studio Vision to make the MIDI stuff sound better. Then, MIDI tracks get laid down into Pro Tools with a click track, and then most of it ends up getting replaced by real musicians. I don’t have a big studio, so drums were recorded separately from other instruments, then a three-piece horn section would come into the same room and record their parts, for example. I would usually overdub my guitar parts or bass parts during free moments between sessions, or have Andrew Higgens come in and overdub electric or upright bass for me. If people are playing in a section, I try my damndest to get them all in a room to record at one time, because it always sounds better that way. Then they can discuss how to affect articulations together, etc., and the effect is much more likely to resemble a real band playing live in a room. On a couple of pieces, I had John record different New Orleans style drumbeats, and then I would go in and edit the drum parts into what sounded like good song forms to me, and then I would write pieces around those drum parts, write out parts for horn players or a keyboard player, and record and finish the piece without any MIDI at all. Some pieces ended up being mostly MIDI, or relatively equal parts MIDI and human. It would just depend on the mood or the requirements of the music. Steve Kirk: To be honest, I’m not much of a gamer, and my influences as a composer come from other areas than the gaming world. The structure of the game is usually the thing that sets the parameters and stylistic limitations and ends up dictating what kind of music needs to be written. Xbox.com: Different environments often contain different instrumental use to help add a distinct feel to the environment. Can you talk briefly about how you decide on which motif or instruments to use in each environment? Steve Kirk: During the course of writing the music for Voodoo Vince, I would call up Clayton and ask him to describe the environment or the situation of the level I would be writing for and take it from there. Then, I’d try to imagine in my mind’s ear what kind of music will support that level. Sometimes he would give me a musical example of what he wanted; sometimes he would just describe the terrain or the characters. In the case of the Main Tunnel level, he suggested a musical feel reminiscent of Tom Waits’ music during the Rain Dogs/Swordfish Trombones era, and I knew exactly where to go. Lots of junkyard percussion, a murky, distorted voice howling through a bullhorn in the background, low rent-practice amp-baritone guitar sounds played by someone slightly drunk—and there it was. For Zombie Guidance Counselor I wanted something spooky sounding, so I used distorted slide guitar in three part harmony with minor-sixth/diminished chord harmonizations reminiscent of a Cab Calloway or early Duke Ellington piece, with call and response interplay between the guitars and horn section like a New Orleans second-line or gospel song. That was fun. For the Bog Wallow level, Clay said that Vince could drive a submarine, and I loved that idea—it made me think of something oddly techno, with samples floating by that sounded like ballast being released, or maybe some dopey sound effect I might have heard watching “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” when I was a kid. Main characters like Vince, Kosmo, and Charmaine definitely had motifs or even longer themes that would appear in different pieces throughout the course of the game. Xbox.com: What has been your favorite part of working on Voodoo Vince? Steve Kirk: Actually having the budget to hire real musicians to play on the project. These folks are the best players around, and it adds a tremendous amount of spirit to a piece of music to have the real, superb, nuanced interpretation that a great musician can offer. A lot of credit needs to go to Beep Industries for having the vision to know what kind of musical approach they wanted early on, and for making sure there was a budget in place that could accommodate that vision. Xbox.com: What one nugget of advice would you give to someone who is seriously considering trying to break into the games industry as a composer? Steve Kirk: First, be a good composer. That really helps. Be as flexible as possible stylistically, so that you can tackle a variety of projects successfully, and learn how to do sound design. Most of the time, that’s what’s going to pay the bills in between real composer-type gigs. And, more often than not, a composer will be asked to do a certain amount of sound design as part of his/her overall contract. Also, if you have sound design skills and there are cinematic cut scenes in a game, you are probably the person most qualified to do that work, mainly because you are intimately involved with all the written music available (you wrote it!) to underscore those scenes. Thanks, Steve, for taking time out to chat with us! If a behind-the-scenes peek at Voodoo Vince’s aural paradise isn’t good enough for you, we’ve also got a couple of Voodoo Vince music tracks for you to wrap your ears around. Check ‘em out:
By Alex McLain
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