The past days at Soundtrack Cologne 11 have simply been a blast. I am still mind-blown by all the famous but also kind-hearted composers I met there and all the interesting panels about composing for film and games I had the chance to attend.
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| Garry Schyman and me right after his talk |
In the unlikely event that you have never heard of it: The Sountrack Cologne is a congress for composers that takes place annually with 3 days of workshops and panels about game and film music.
Game music panel (Day #1)
The first day was filled with game music related speeches and discussions, starting with Garry Schyman who composed the music of "Bioshock" 1, 2 and Infinite, "Destroy all humans" and "Dante's Inferno". All talks were hosted by Helge Borgarts, Composer of "
Jade Rousseau – The Final Revelations" and CEO of phenomedia publishing who did a great job always asking interesting questions about the projects, different approaches, trends and the games industry in general. Garry answered a lot of questions especially on the Bioshock Series and told the audience about the process of finding the musical style and for the game, how they differed from Bioshock 1 to 2 and how the approach and workflow changed when working on Bioshock: Infinite. He also spoke about how deadlines help even him to get things done, how he got the job for his first game score and why developers choose him. And he also talked a bit about his methods and tools. It was really interesting and also an honor to meet him and get the chance to ask him questions on his work, as I played and loved all of these games, especially the Bioshock series.
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| Garry Schyman and Helge Borgarts during their talk |
The talk was followed by a workshop by Olivier Derivière, the composer of "Remember me", "Alone in the Dark" and "Assassins Creed 4: Freedom Cry" who, as a gamer, has a clearly different approach on how to conceptualize interactive and smooth music games. He also showed his Wwise Session for "Remember me" so the audience could see (and partly understand, if familiar with Wwise) how skillfully and detailed he crafted the interactive music for the game. Having an insight in his session actually answered some questions about adaptive music that I had in mind before and it was really impressive how smoothly the music played synchronous to the changing situations/parameters/perspectives in the game. He underlined the importance of really understanding the game you are scoring for and developing a style and music design that grows completely out of the game itself - without using references/temp tracks. That was impressive and encourages to also fight for new ways instead of using techniques and ways that are "safe" because they have been used a lot before.
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| Helge and Olivier Derivière talking before his Wwise presentation |
The last speech of that day was given by Inon Zur, the composer of the "Star Trek" Game Series, "Prince of Persia" and amongst others "Fantasia: Music Evolved", who also had a completely different approach than Garry or Olivier. It is difficult to summarize all the hope and energy he emanated to the audience when he emphasized on how important it is to find his own voice as a composer and to find the duality in it. Therefore he showed some of the pieces he created for his projects only using a zoom recorder and the results were simply amazing. His speech was inspiring and fueled surely not only my courage as a young composer. Besides that he also talked about contracts and precise prices for building a budget for a live orchestra including engineers, editors and even travel costs and the importance of having a financial buffer when recording with an orchestra.
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| Inon Zur during his presentation about budgets and after his motivational speech |
After the speeches there was a last discussion panel with all of the referees, Helge and Borislav Slavov, the composer of the "Crysis" Series and "Ryse: Son of Rome". As all of them have talked about their different approaches and shown, how diverse they are, having a discussion with all of them created an interesting variety of points of view. At this point a huge thank-you and thumbs up to Helge and the Organizers of Soundtrack Cologne for doing such a great job choosing and inviting them!
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| Garry, Helge, Olivier, Borislav and Inon after their discussion on game music |
Masterclass: Adaptive Game Music (Day #2)
On the second day Helge and Bobby hosted a Masterclass on adaptive game music, and I owe my greatest thanks to Helge, that I got the chance to attend the workshop. It was split into a theoretical and a practical part, starting with the basics of adaptive music. Even for those people already used to those concepts, as I wrote my bachelor thesis on game music, there was a lot of useful side information and advice given by Bobby. He gave an overview on which points adaptive music can connect to the game, how silence can be a composers best friend and stressed the importance of writing meaningful music in the first place and making it work within the game in the second step. Then he gave some advice on Layering and what matters when working with this approach and showed some examples of the music for Crysis. It was really helpful to get some advice from an experienced composer for working with those approaches in practical projects, as understanding the principles does not prevent one from having problem when actually writing and implementing on real games. He also elaborated on transitions and tricks when implementing. In the practical part he and Helge gave feedback on the music submissions written/produced by the participants, what not only brought out some further advice on composing methods but also tips on production tools.
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The Masterclass had a really open and familiar atmosphere -
I missed my chance to make a better photo than this one, when Helge said goodbye. |
At the end of the workshop there was an assignment to all the participants with a task that has to be done within 4 weeks after the Masterclass. It is about creating a Wwise project for an interactive music design. When I am done with the assignment I will also post it here.
Bobby is an open-minded and kind-hearted person that always offers his help to his students. I've actually never met someone like that before, so if you have the chance to meet him someday - don't miss it!
There were some really interesting talks about film composition parallel to the game music masterclass that some collegues attended, like the talk of John Ottman, Jean-Michel Bernard or Matthias Weber that must have been awesome too, as they told me. I just managed to watch the second talk with John Ottman after the Masterclass, which was not a workshop but still interesting to hear what he recommends young composers - what actually fueled the discussion about the decreasing fees for composers in Hollywood.
Music Politics (Day #3)
The last day was also loaded with different workshops, some on music composition for TV, others on Sound, but there also was a panel on Music politics, which I attended to update my state of information on royalties and collecting societies. Game music and collecting societies have always been repelling each other and therefore I am not a member of any of them because of my focus on game music. But this won't be the case forever so you need to stay informed and know about what you/I loose with this attitude and how and when this will finally change. There were lawyers of ver.di and GEMA as guests and with Stephan Benn who hosted the talk and answered questions on why the situation is that difficult, what could be possible steps to change it and what the status of creative commons is right now. In the end they tried to find solutions and I am really curious on how that will develop.
Besides the workshops and talks there have also been some parties, of course. On these events attendees had the chance to talk to their icons and get to know other composers and that's what I did and what made the time in cologne even more amazing than it already was. It was a friendly and familiar atmosphere during all the panels and events - that was just amazing.
Thanks a lot to all of you! And thanks to the organizers for holding such a great event and offering me the opportunity to meet some of the icons of the game music scene.
I am already looking forward to next years Soundtrack Cologne #12 and to see all of you again!
