Behringer X32 - Audio Media

NEWS GAMESOUND
24 November 2012 | audiomedia.com
Halo 4 Massive’s Maestro
Neil Davidge clearly remembers playing the
first Halo game on breaks from writing,
producing, and mixing duties on such
iconic Massive Attack albums as Mezzanine.
A decade later, he was asked to score Halo’s fourth
iteration, developed by 343 Industries...
Davidge reflects on being chosen for the hugely
prestigious gig: “When I first met the team there was
good chemistry, and I think the fact that I’ve been a Halo
fan right from its beginning really helped... I’ve been
working on electronic music for many years but I also
have a pretty authentic touch with emotional music.
There’s a real blend of human and machine and a lot
of sound design – I think that was a big pull for them.
“I’d been listening to Marty O’Donnell’s music
(original Halo series composer) for ten years. If I allowed
myself to think about following on from that, it was
daunting – I mean, he’s the dude – he made game score
into a serious art! Music is probably a third of what
made the game so successful in the first place… I tried
as much as I could to put that out of my mind and just
write from the heart in a progression from what he’s
done, rather than a complete revolution.
Bartschi Nails Hitman
IO Interactive recently shipped the fifth in its
highly successful Hitman franchise, in which
gamers play the now-famed ‘Agent 47’. The
popular series, which has been garlanded
with a number of Bafta nominations and wins,
is noted for top-drawer audio.
Taking a well-earned breather, Audio
Director Thomas Bartschi spoke to Audio
Media: “Since joining it in 2009, my aim has
been to focus the audio department on sound
as an emotional and communicative element,
and think of interesting ways to use adaptive
audio to support game-play, enhance mood,
and tell the story. Used correctly, sound has
a magical ability to make the player connect
with the experience.”
Hitman: Absolution has been developed
using IO’s own Glacier 2 game engine.
Under the hood FMOD is the base audio
engine embellished with various custom
tools and features to service specific
requirements. Audio functionality is
controlled from within ‘G2’ with a special
‘graph view’ enabling designers to work
experimentally, intuitively, and creatively on
complex audio set-ups, connecting audio
functionality with advanced game-play
mechanics. The team created a custom
“Marty
O’Donnell…
he’s the
dude – he
made game
score into a
serious art!”
Neil Davidge
dynamic music system for maximum creative
freedom in integration and implementation.
Gear-wise, the audio department
streamlines its studios for ease of
interchanging projects and templates. All
sound designers have Pro Tools installed
plus an additional DAW of their choice (Live,
Cubase, Nuendo, etc). Bartschi: “Most of my
work is centralised around Ableton Live. I find
it fast and intuitive. I used it in creating more
than 2.5 hours of music and countless SFX –
both in-game and for cut scenes. However
“I think there’s a far more expanded sound palette
in this score – a lot of very original sounds created
specifically for the game, making the music very
individual. I create instruments by a lot of processing,
for instance, I might take the rich orchestral sounds
from our Abbey Road recordings then play around
de-tuning, processing and editing to produce
something unique.”
Davidge’s score runs for some four hours so creating
a soundtrack album (released last month) with ‘a
cohesive and intriguing musical flow’ presented some
tough decision making. Additionally, many stems were
handed out to re-mixers, for the production of a second
Halo 4 music collection.
Davidge’s outlook on being involved in videogames
is positive: “Everyone knows the music industry has
gone through a pretty bad time and it’s still really
struggling. There’s a lot of work and creativity in scoring
games. A lot of the people in games development are
fairly young. They’re excited about doing something
different and there’s a lot of passion for music.
www.halo4soundtrack.com
Pro Tools and Wavelab are my preferences for
working with surround and dialogue, as well
as batch processing.
According to Bartschi, who holds a
Tonmeister degree from Copenhagen’s Royal
Academy of Music and London’s SAE, what
sets Hitman: Absolution’s audio apart from
previous iterations is the overall enhanced
attention to detail and deep integration of
sound and music to create the sense of a
living, breathing world.
http://hitman.com/