Behind The Soundtrack of Assassin s Creed Odyssey

Hi there, welcome back to Spitfire's Black Weekend and thanks for joining us on a Sunday. We've got a lovely intimate crowd here at the HQ and I'm delighted to be joined today by Alexis Smith and Joe Henson, part of the flight composer team, The Total. We did a video earlier this week where I interviewed both of you and someone said which one's your brother. I think they were joking. You're multi-nominated, multi-awarded, hugely successful computer games composers but that's not how it started. I thought we could maybe kind of map your progress into it when it became your central focus and then we can maybe address the last kind of major job you did which was Assassin's Creed obviously which was like a mega franchise. So maybe starting with you Alexis, how did you start out? With music? Well I'm going to go back really far. Standard, I wanted to play guitar because I've watched Top of the Pops and the cool people were playing guitars. I'm not that old. So I wanted to play guitar, learned guitar then soon realised that to have a band is a massive pain in the arse because you've got to get other people just as dedicated as you in a cold garage every week which is difficult. So then by chance I discovered a very basic version of Cakewalk Sequencer on one of those discs you get stuck onto the front of a PC magazine. Loaded that up onto my 386 and then had this massive brainwave like, ---- I can make music without getting those people into my garage who couldn't keep in time or weren't particularly good. Now everything's in time and I can control everything. So that was the first revelation, I can do this, I love making music on my own but also at that time you couldn't record, you just sequenced MIDI and stuff. Was it sampling? No it was just the sequences. So you couldn't sample into the computer then? I couldn't sample into my computer then no because it was just basic but anyway I'll skip the next five or six years or so. So I got into that at the same time as learning like normal music and stuff like that and then next chance event that happened was that Marius De Vries who's a very famous 90s record producer happened to move into my tiny little Cambridgeshire village where I lived. My dad bumped into him at a dinner party, got his number because he knew what I liked doing and then I rang him the next day and pestered him for about two years until he listened to one of my tapes which I made and sold at my sixth form school every month. He listened to it actually realised it's not actually as bad as I thought it was gonna be, rang me back and said do you want to come and look at my studio, went down there, looked at the studio, pestered him for another two years until he took me on for some work experience and on his one work experience like just did everything I possibly could while I was there including like remixing stuff on Christmas Eve so that I could show him on Boxing Day when we got back together. Impressed him enough that the next year I didn't bother going back to university, I stayed on working with him instead, ended up as his programmer for about five years, we did things like Moulin Rouge, yeah that was like my first massive thing that I did. At the time I thought oh there's never going to be anything as complicated as this ever again. But yeah so I started his programmer which wasn't actually just a job in those days that people used to have, producers would have a programmer. Yeah yeah yeah it wasn't just films, I'm just trying to think of things that people might have heard of. Bjork, David Gray, various Vice Girls, did do some David Barry yeah, worked as his programmer for a while then there came a point where I had to go off on my own, started going off on my own, didn't realise I couldn't do this on my own, it's not fun because with him it was fun, we were working in these big studios with loads of great people, making records as a team and then suddenly I was on my own in a room in my house. I met Joe through a band that he had that I was co-producing, we got on really well and Joe, we had a conversation about working on your own is not fun and then we had this and the next conversation was well let's try working together. I often have to pretend not to know the answers to the questions but it's just so obvious that I'm going to know all of the answers that Joe wrote. So Joe how did you start out? I remember, there's one thing I can remember of Joe is he did a lot more practice than I did on my own. I did a lot of practicing, I wanted to be a bass player, my dad has a massive record collection of mostly jazz, but the good stuff and I wanted to be a bass player, it's a really good big record collection and I got really into Stanley Clarke and wanted to be him, so I practiced a lot, got into live touring as a live session player, toured a lot with the band called The Freestylers, did big stuff, toured all of America, the same time you were getting into film and used to get me to come in and play bass, getting off the tour bus, having a bath, going and doing a bass session, swearing at him, it was a tough one, and then I kind of realised that I started doing some programming with you and some of your films early on, got really into it, started picking up some telly work, had a band at the same time and met Alexis through our label, he was a co-producer on the record, we soon got dropped, got on really well with Alexis, because he's a programmer and I was a bass player, we were quite into being behind the scenes rather than sometimes you get work with a famous band, and we like the process of working rather than the glory of being a front person, so we got on really well, but also we're compatible, musically compatible from different ends of the spectrum, you're very into folk and I was very into funk and stuff, but we meet at hip-hop in the middle, so it kind of works out, but we're into cut and paste production, because I was talking with The Freestylers, I learnt a lot from them, watching them DJing and how they produce stuff, so we come from kind of cut and paste, we don't really talk about scales that much, no scales at all. So when did the first, I mean I kind of, in the maelstrom of, because we worked together on the first few computer games that you did, but I can't recall when they presented themselves and why you were interested. Well the first one we did was Zubo, I mean obviously everyone's heard of Zubo, most people have played it to the end. It's actually a really important point, it was Rupert Gregson Williams, I was thinking about it anyway, and I was working with Seventh Son on a promo video, and Rupert said this game stuff was interesting to have a look at, and I'd been thinking about it for a while, I met a guy who's directed a promo video, so I really want to get into games, he said oh I know some of the EA games, Lydia, and I pestered, again pestered her for a few years, there's a thread, and then just very funny emails, very funny emails coming and going, and then eventually she wanted to do a game where it was, she wanted music to sound licensed, which came to us because we had formed a record, what can you do, and this was this game called Zubo, which everyone, which is really good, we did, we had a run of a few games which didn't, either didn't chip or didn't do very well, but we kind of learned how to do games, and Zubo was originally was a big, oh it was mega, big game which eventually only came out on the end. I still remember the meeting where we'd been on it for six months or so, and we'd had Christmas holidays, and then Christine texted us, come and meet, come and meet, we've got some stuff to talk about, and we went in there, and it was like the first day back after Christmas holidays wasn't it, now it's not going to be for all formats, including next gen, it's just going to be for Nintendo DS now, and we don't need 80% of the music, but we also had a huge music budget, the first thing we did was we kind of recreated all of our favourite samples, including orchestral, like Disco Spikes, and all our favourite beats, we basically got all of our favourite breakbeats, and got a drummer to play those, and also we did loads, that was the first time that I made a dedicated kind of sample, a real proper bank of stuff, I was involved in that, making that kind of sample, which has really, really informed the way I've carried on. Answering your question, we realised, working with Lydia and the people at EA, we realised that we really like the, A, the briefs that you get in games, but we really like the people, and being part of a team, and that was the first kind of thing we started, because we were doing some adverts and a lot of television as well, and records, and we started thinking, we really get on with these people, we fit really well with them. But also, just to be coldly commercial as well, you could see, when we started, obviously records were a much more important thing than they are now, and games were a much more niche thing, weren't they? And you could see popular culture, those two things shifting, I'm not saying the records are less important, but their place in society has massively changed, and games have become much more important, much more, as they've developed as forms of art and forms of entertainment, they've become much more important. And so, you could also kind of see the writing on the wall, and that's, if you're a composer in the music industry, and you want a long career, you have to kind of read these things as well, because you can't just say, well, I'm not doing that, I'm just going to carry on doing what I always wanted to do, you can't, you'd be a dinosaur. We were writing a lot with artists at the same time, weren't we? So we were doing, we had two agents, we joined forces, had two agents, one for doing music for screen, and one for doing records, and we were doing a lot of writing. Which was Lana Del Rey. Lana Del Rey, and a lot of, for a couple of years, it was kind of good timing as well, when she started, people started knowing about her, we were just kind of getting into the game, it was very useful. But while we were kind of really slogging, when you're doing co-writing, it's such a pump, such a lottery, and people kind of said, yeah, just give us a hit single, and we're sat in a room, okay, and there's, you know, somebody with their back to us tweeting while we're trying to write. It just felt, actually, this is really good funding, and they employ you for, it was also a combination. Also, us getting older, families, this will kind of work more compatible with, we've done our, in our 20s, we've done the work until three in the morning, working with artists whenever they want to get up, and stuff like that, and actually you want to take more control, you tend to want to take more control over your career as you get older, and you want your time to work for you. I don't think there was a point though, you know when you were saying, I don't think there was a point where we went, let's just do this. It was for me, which was when we saw the budget to do that. It was massive. It was actually, okay, right, you know. This is serious. They're taking it seriously. Taking it seriously, and for me, I get a buzz off working on big, long projects. After 10, 15 years of little two day here, three day here, you get really sick of that as a freelancer, and actually, it's much nicer just to know, we know what we're doing for the next two years, and we can just get our teeth into that. We literally have a list. And get creative, you know. We have a list pretty much of every piece of music we have to write over the next two years. Yeah, we don't know what any of them are. We've got a list. So, the next thing, something I really want to touch on is something I've really observed and admired with you, Joe, back in the day with Paul Freudian. I heard that. Right, I've proclaimed myself a little bit there. That's been a long weekend. It has been a long weekend. So, something I observed with you as freestylers was, you got all of the band endorsements. And you're really good at pestering people without making them feel pestered. But I do think it is part of the secret of your success, certainly in moving on to Alien Isolation and Assassin's Creed. So, yes. So, and this is what Alexis, when he said when he hurt Mario, it sounds flippant, so I pestered him. What Alexis did, I noticed when we worked on that record together, and then every three months or so, you would just ring me, go, hi, mate, how's it going? I know you have me in a diary saying, ring Joe. But it seems, it's a natural, they were kind of just natural homemade kind of phone calls. And I think I did the same, just if you meet somebody you like, just keep in touch with them. It isn't pestering, we say it is. But if it's somebody you either really admire or you really like them as a person, even more importantly, it's just to stay in touch with people. But stay on the level as well, not being corporate, but also not being kind of beggy. You know, you find gifts and stuff. It's just funny, I'll just remind you, it's really, it's a fine line between stalking and being a nice person. But it was, I managed to tread it just about. But I did, yes, I used to have, I used to ring up when I was in a band, can I come and see you? And I would go, I'd leave with boxes and boxes of stuff. And it's just, dad used to do it. Dad used to get motorbikes. He did in fact. But it's just, it's just, I really like your, it's being genuine and getting in touch with people and having, not being nervous about it. You ended up working with Marius. And then we've, you know, Marius is really good actually. Whenever he's in the UK, he will get a call. I'm in town, do you want to come out? We'll come out and there'll be the producer from La La Land. And he just gets through to people. It's how this world works, isn't it? And it's stuff I'm sure we'll talk about later. Whenever somebody says, how do I get this stuff on YouTube? How do we get into the industry? I'm sure you'll ask me later. It's just getting in touch with people. But actually, moving on, your thread that you were getting there, it is really interesting because that, Zubo, obviously it didn't, that was our first big game that we did. And we learned a lot about the games industry and how you write the games and everything like that there. But we obviously didn't make a big splash. But directly through that, the two people that we worked with on that game, one ended up being the audio lead on Alien Isolation and the other was the audio director on Assassin's Creed Odyssey. So that's the, you know, it's just all, I think you talk to anyone kind of, anyone up here you're talking to and there'll always be that kind of a thread through something. I read an interview in 95, probably, in Bass Player magazine when I wanted to be a session bass player. And it was a first call, they used to call me first call session player in LA, I think it was. And he said, same question, he said, I only seem to work with my friends. I don't know what it is, but I'm just working with friends. And it's the same, Lydia is a really good mate about that. And it's when you get a big project like that and you're working with friends, A, it helps. But also, yes, I don't know what I'm saying. We make friends with people, basically. But we wouldn't, we didn't meet in social, do we? We're friends with them because we like working together. Yeah, yeah, we meet socially now. Yeah, yeah. So that was kind of a, obviously, Zubo, Alien Isolation and the beginnings of the Assassin's Creed thing. Yeah. Horizon Zero Dawn. Yeah. How did that come about? That's, yeah, that's slightly more complicated. But it's still, so a friend of ours, who is just another composer. Yorush. Yeah, Yorush Daman. Another composer that, how did you meet? I met, we've had the same agent. I met him and we got on really well with him. Our agent. So he was working on a game because he'd worked on their previous franchise. And he was working on this new game. And they had someone else, they wanted two composing teams on this game because they were two quite distinct pillars to this new story they were working on. They wanted Yorush to do one of it and they wanted someone else to do, they wanted to find something that contrasted with Yorush for the other half of it. And they tried a couple of people out, but then they got to the stage where they were looking for someone else and Yorush recommended us to them. And did you pitch for it? We did pitch for it, yeah, yeah. Because we pitched for Alien Isolation. That's important, we pitched for everything. We pitched pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, unless it's actually, you know, you might, like, we didn't pitch for like doing the DLC or something like that. If Creative Assembly had made another Alien Isolation straight after the first one, we wouldn't have pitched. But it tends to be that even if it's just to prove, even if the audio directors themselves know they want to work with you, they still have to prove to make that choice. And they still have to justify their selection to the game director. With Odyssey, it got, so we pitched for Syndicate for that, it was with Lydia. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but I couldn't say that. We pitched for Syndicate. You just have. But so she's a mate of ours, so she will, you know, if the job's right for us, she'll say, can you join a pitch for this? And we know, you'd want to get her a friend, you know, but she's working with a huge team of people and she has to sell up. So eventually we, I think it got down to, it was a blind listening that they did with three people on Odyssey, yeah. And we were, so it was, yes, we got friends there, but it was still a blind listening. And it's worth remembering every time she calls, you know, or if she calls again, if you want to do a pitch, but no one knows, you know, they listen to it purely based on music. Yeah, because they're quite, they can be very different as well. I remember the Alien Isolation pitch we did and I was just feeling that this is, you know, this is something that's so important that we've got to remember is that we actually have three jobs. We're composers, we're heads of a department that we have the responsibility of delivering this product, but we're also CEOs of the business that is us. And I remember clearly on that, that the budget and the potential of Alien Isolation is so large. We made an investment into that pitch and it's like tendering any business board. And I remember us all coming out of that process going, that is as good as we could have done. And if it doesn't win it, then it's not the right choice for us. Every pitch has to be. Well, actually on that was, that pitch, no, I remember, we blew it out of the water and there's a big part, you were a big part in that as well. And we learned on that always. And every pitch we've done since then, we've always gone the extra mile, haven't we? And also- When we wanted it. Also, you, but also that was a real learning thing of being confident. It's Alien, but we didn't just do A Sound Like Rain, we just did the complete, and we kind of did the opposite to what anyone was expecting. I think it was a really pared back, slow, yeah, thing. And then on Odyssey as well, we did quite a pared back. Well, you've also, you always say, you've got to do something that you would then be happy to, it's got to be you because you're then potentially, you're trying to get to work on this thing for two years. So if you don't, if you do something that, you know, it was really, wasn't you, and it was really difficult to get out and you didn't, you didn't really feel comfortable doing it, then it's not really a good, it's actually, that's actually probably not the right thing to do, just to get the job. You've actually got to say, well, look, this is how we would do it. Yeah, it's going to be two years. Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't like that, that's fine. You know, it's better not to be on it if you don't share, you know, some of the... And we've had to explain that to our agents sometimes. We'll do a pitch for that, but we're going to do it how we do it. So you may be surprised by what you get. And quite a lot of the time, some of you come along and we say, you know what, we're not the right people for that. And so we won't pitch on it. So getting the job, I'd love to just, just start on Horizon Zero Dawn and just talk about the differences with Assassin's Creed. But Horizon Zero Dawn, I'm right in saying, was a new brand, new IP. So what was that, you got the gig, what was that first creative meeting like? And what did you discuss? Oh, it was in Amsterdam. So we went over to Amsterdam and we were, we tend to, what we like, what we, I mean, we specify this now, but I mean, that was probably the first, they were the first developers that we went and did this with, was we go over and we try and meet, you know, the people who wrote the story, the people who are in charge of the art, people who are running the game, you know, are in charge of making all the decisions. And then, and then, you know, we want, we want to go there for a few days and we want to get, you know, we want to sit in a room with these people and have them tell us their vision, you know, from all the different, all the different departments. Yeah, but I'm coming in with a set of words, after your words, before and after your words. Discipline. All the different disciplines, telling us their vision for what they want to achieve. Because obviously at that stage, music hasn't had any kind of a say yet. But also really important is that people have seen your face and have met you. It's the first thing on any job can I come in and see you? And meet, as soon as you've met people, they, they'll bring their, they'll bring the barriers down. And then maybe it's just somebody in the, there may be somebody who didn't really particularly like your stuff and then you meet them and you, I don't say, it's really important to, face to face with everybody, all the way up to the top. So that's, that's like conceptually, imagine you try and do that on like day one or something, and then day two, they're not personally being the kind of project manager of the Flight Enterprises Limited. I want to find out how much music they want for this game and how long they've got and then work out how we're going to do that. Because that is always the biggest thing. You don't just say, you don't just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then leave and go, well actually, you have to get, you especially, you want a list, tell us exactly how many minutes. With games, again, coldly commercial, you get paid by the minute and they have an amount of, they have to work out an amount of minutes of music that they feel they need in order to do the game properly. But not cold economics, we then know what the scope of the project is. If they want 500 minutes, they want 120. No, but I'm saying that because we know how much we can write per month. And then Monday to Friday, you get to Friday, we're on track. We might need to put a few extra hours in next week. No, you know, it was, you don't want to get like that too much, especially at the beginning of the game. You've got to feel your way in, you've got to let things breathe and people listen to stuff and try out things. But by, it usually by, yeah, by the middle of a project, by the second half of it and with AC, because it was such a tight turnaround. Because that's it. That's a franchise. The mix has gone white. I think you spent the week and I've gone, actually, that's a lot. It is a franchise. They've got to make a new one every, luckily that was two years between that one. But we only had 18 months to do four hours of music. And so that, you know, once you've worked out what that is, which is, you know, it worked out for us about 20 minutes of music every month, which, that might not sound like a lot, but you know. In games. Well, in games you're right, but it's 20 minutes of music that's arranged so that for every minute you've got three minutes of music that can work, A, B, A, C. And also, it's, you're making it and mixing it, delivering it, stemming it as you go along. So that again, so you take your 20 minutes of music a month, so you're getting down to about four and a half, five minutes a week. So that's a minute every day. Now a minute of a cut scene in a day, yeah, no problem. A minute of intense, epic level fight music with three layers in the beginning and end and loopable sections, no, no. You can't do that in a day, so it is balanced. We play most of the instruments as well, we do orchestral stuff as well, but the core of most of our stuff is us actually playing. You do have to, you do have to, on a project this long, you do, in any film as well, I'm sure it's the same thing, but you do have to have an idea, you know, by week, by month, and then ultimately, by the end of it, how are you going to do it. And we don't, we don't really crunch, it's not like we work to this and it all comes to team, we try and manage it constantly. So the first meeting on, you know, once you've got the gig, it's great, it's with Lydia, with Assassin's Creed, was there a subtle difference to you coming in on an established franchise? Were there rules in place? Yes, they know exactly what they're doing, exactly what they want. Yeah, and it was Canada, which was nice. But yeah, so we flew to Canada, we're jet lagged, we arrive, we're knee deep in snow, walking, luckily it's Lydia, his friend, and it's also, we're there on the plane going, this is Assassin's Creed, this is massive. And then it's a friend, that's really nice, and then it was a very intense week, and this is the game, this is what we've been, ancient Greece, and all the stuff that they were, and they really do know what they're doing out there, with each, it's how many, I don't know how many they've done, but that list, I think it was number seven, or eight, that's a big one, and you've got a lot, you look at the list of composers, we've done previously, going on this list, and it's a lot of, it's a big act to follow. Yeah, I've always really, I've always really liked, some great scores. Yeah, the AC scores are brilliant. And what I have observed, and it's something I've experienced as well, is when you're doing, particularly slightly more ancient music, the last thing you want to do, is actually use it, with how it would have sounded back in the day. But that's what, A, no one knows. Yeah, luckily. B, Lydia didn't really want that, and she wanted, and again, because they're friends, she knew she could trust us, she knew kind of what we do, and she knew we could, we're very good at electronic stuff, and she said it's not, not specifically, it is historical, but it, and the game is very particular, about historical stuff, but the music doesn't. But she had, all along she had a plan, of the very much, the actual, how they actually thought, the music would sound, would be, there would be some people in marketplaces, playing a lyre, there would be people singing on boats, so we didn't ever have to touch, on the really diegetic stuff. In our pitch, the first thing we thought of, when we read the documents, was the first thing I thought of, was that little fragment of, ancient stuff, with big delays, over dark electronic. Really? No, I read it, I read it and thought, there's no way we can do that, I was in the bus, getting off at Stratford, and you rang us, I reckon. Yeah, yeah, no, instantly. Yeah. I saw those little fragments of lyre, with big delays on them. But something I've also observed, is that, when we worked together, I was like the orchestral god, and you're now doing, orchestral music, and I just want to talk about, you're just like, is that, was that a kind of a wrinkle, you had to overcome? Actually in the meeting in AC, I'll talk about that, we were saying, I said, you know, we're going to do it smaller, and subtler, and more subtle, and live you in. Yeah, but it is epic as well. Well, we actually, as in that, we actually had from, there is a lot of subtle, very intimate, you know, just single instrument recordings there, but of course, there are always boss battles in games. You can't do that, in boss battle, you've got to get out, the whole of it. I don't, I think, I think you've got, I think you have. Joe has stepped up to the plate with that. I know that you, you know about, you probably trained in music, but I remember you learning, a lot of the stuff from, doing orchestral, using samples, and you, oh that's what that's called, and learning the techniques and stuff, through having these libraries, where they have all the techniques, and we, you, it was, we do orchestral stuff, and we, it's not our main thing, which means our mixers are slightly, interesting, because we, we don't, we mix the orchestra quite, we mix it down, with the beats and stuff, but we're, it can, it can be scary, but if you just think of them, they're just, they're just sounds in a palette, and I don't, I don't, I've never studied, how you arrange, no but you, you've learned by ear. I've got ears, yeah, I've, I've learned everything by, by ear, when I was, a touring bass player, I would, I could play a song before it finished, the first time I heard it kind of thing, so I've got very good ears. That's what actually makes, your orchestral stuff, interesting, because it doesn't sound like it, it doesn't sound like you studied, and I don't mean that in a bad way, no, I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean, you are doing it by ear, yeah, which is, which is good, that's the best way of doing music, it's in tune, I like clashing, like you do, I like clashing and stuff, but it, it just sounds aren't they, once you get over the fear of, and then when you have to go into a session, you have somebody who helps you out, with the orchestration, and then they're just doing, they're just musicians aren't they, it can be, and they look quite serious, yeah, well, I think there's this kind of obsession with, well, they didn't write out the parts, it's like, well, no, you do, and that's, that's something that, that, my agent taught me, is you just get the holes in the knowledge, you get, yeah, the team in, just like you were helping Marius out, in parts that he didn't know, or wasn't up to date on, absolutely fascinating, I'm going to go to some of the questions, online, some of which are really long, so, maybe pick some short ones, could you talk more about, how you layer up a track, and how these get triggered in the games, how do you evolve music, do you have to stick to the same key tempo, yeah, interesting, so, stick to the same key, yes, if we're doing stuff that needs to, evolve, and switch your pieces, like the whole, yeah, apart from missions, yeah, by, so we, you have, so we split the map up, but within, within those pieces, you don't have to, stay in them the whole way, it doesn't have to be limited, no, yeah, you don't mind switching up, and then you're, you're delivering in, I don't know how many people are aware, you know, you're delivering in stems, is it usually three? Now it's, no, now it's a lot more, now it's, now it's almost a multi-track, we basically give them multi-track, and then, and they'll do another process after that, of making them into the actual stems, for the game, we'll try and give them a break, it's almost, but is it by instrument type, or is it by stuff that will work together on its own? Yeah, both, or, you know, when you just do it, when there's, there's gaps, you can put another instrument there, you can, but, but the, and then in the, in the, in the engine, it has, either a streaming, like a looping system, which has stem, I'm doing, I do hand like machine, so it's going through levels of, of, you know, like Alien was quite complicated, the system that it had, let's say, you're exploring, a tension layer comes in, when the, the alien comes into the room, it changes again, when the alien knows you're there, that's quite, that was quite complicated, or you're doing fights, which are in loopable, there's, there's a few different ways of doing it, but we deliver them, you could talk for hours, you could talk for hours on it, honestly. Let's find another question, I always feel weird on an iPad, that you think I'm kind of on Grindr, and I'll say, you could have picked anything, do you actually play the games, this is one of the reasons, why someone asked that, yeah, this is why I got slightly put off, writing computer games, because the amount of writing, amount of playing computer games, so I'm, I'm, I'm two years behind, so I've just finished Horizon, on easy, easy, easy mode, it's like saying, it's like saying to, somebody who works at Tesla, you must drive cars all day, or are they designing cars, but we, sometimes Alien, we had a build coming in, every week on Steam, and we were playing it, while we were composing, they would send us videos, very rarely do we get a chance to display, yeah, especially, they are very, very secretive, don't like them, out the building, and now, now we're, yeah, they tend to be quite, we tend to be quite, tight with timings, we are, we're mostly working to videos, but we, we will definitely, always make sure, we go and play the game, at least once or twice, go to the developers, and we play the game, because you absolutely, you have to play the game, that you're working on, you've got to, even if it's just, a day at the beginning, and a day in the middle, somewhere, you've got to see it, you get the atmosphere, you don't get everything, from a video, there are interactive, forms of media, there, there's stuff, I learned, actually in my, delayed playthrough of Horizon, I learned loads, about the game, I didn't know, two years later, yeah, we said, I think that, we, you've spoken, about how, it's slurred fast, and then it gets, it's slurred first, then it kind of, has to speed up, and it's just interesting, to talk through that, kind of, creative process, because, from what I've observed, it starts off, about kind of, just getting the world right, getting the vibe of the music right, what is the job of the music, and then it's actually about, just kind of, really printing those things. Yeah, yeah, because they have, you're coming on, you know, usually coming on half, roughly halfway through, the entire development, cycle of the game, so say it's, say it takes five years, to make a game, you're coming in, two and a half years in, maybe, maybe the last two years, and, and so, once you've, kind of, got going, and everything, then you're catching up, with their milestones, they are finishing things, as, as you're going along, these last few years, and you've got to get the music in, for those. But it's quite important, not to get scared, when you first start, because there's going to be, a bit of toing and froing, and getting your, getting your leg, and working out what, what they're actually after, because sometimes, what you pitch, and what you breathe, what you pick, what the, sometimes their creative vision, the reality of that, can be quite different one, actually we didn't mean that, you know, the other people have missed it, and now we're playing, we've realised, we actually need more of this, so it can be quite, it could be quite nerve-wracking, if you didn't have the experience, but that's all right, once we get going, we can really hammer this stuff up, but it's learning, like what you want, the exploration, kind of free music, what you want for the characters, working out the sound of it, of the game, once you're there, Something I enjoyed with Lydia, was that she's from, the film and music team, so she had that kind of language, do you find working with people, who are more from a games background, that the way that notes, and the way that creative briefs are given, is different? It can be, and different web, depending on nationality, and as well web, just how people talk about things, can be very different, and how, like you were saying before, you know, all the different jobs you've got, as a composer on a big project, one of them is, it's actually one of the most important ones, is actually working out, what people actually mean, because everyone has an opinion about music, whether they're trained, not trained, love it, don't listen to it much, whatever, everyone has an opinion about music, and knows what they like, and knows what they don't like, and it's actually translating, kind of, someone, you know, you're going to get sensible stuff, from the person you're working with most, who tends to be the music supervisor, or the audio director, but you might get less sensible comments, from other people, whose job is not to do with audio or music, and it's about working out, what they mean by those things, and then translating them, into something you can actually do, and that's a big part of it. You always make much more subtle changes, than I would, when I used to work on my own in TV, I would do rewrites, and work with Alexis, he would go, no, they just want to change the hi-hat, and it literally can be, always, always just the hi-hat, his hi-hats are awful, no, it can be as subtle, let's change the bass sound, yeah, no, it can, let's change the lead sound, something that they can go, it's not working, the piece isn't working, and then you get to the bottom of it, and it's just because, it's getting in the way of, the sound of the machine, that's in the room, that's really important, for the player to listen to, or it's changing the pace, you know, like it's changing the walk speed, or it's changing the pace, the perceived pace of the bike, so you've got to work out, what that thing is, why something's not working, then, only then can you go back, and do it in a musical way, do you find yourself holding hands, a little bit sometimes, with your audio leads, you know, holding their hands, to kind of go, this is, you know, or is it just responding to the way, they know what they're doing, but I know what you mean, sometimes, yeah, it depends how many, you know, again, depends how experienced they are, how many games, they've done, how confident they're feeling, about the project, at that time, yeah, sometimes, sometimes they're not, they're not feeling, you can see, that they've had some difficult meetings, that week, and aren't feeling that great, about what they're doing, you know, so actually, you're, that's the nice thing, is it's a length of time, that you do actually get to know people, and it is like working in a team, and sometimes, yeah, and sometimes, they're asking you a question, rather than telling you to do something, yeah, maybe sometimes, they're saying, we're not sure about this, what do you think, they haven't specifically said that, but they want you to go, actually, we think, they actually want you to tell, what right, no, we did this, because this, yeah, and this, right, and that gives them, kind of, you know, they've got to believe, in what you're doing, it's like, you have to believe, in what you're doing, and that's, I mean, that, do you feel, there's usually a point, where the kind of belief, yes, got some in the relationship, and a lot of time, it's a lot of time, it's that pop, doing that face-to-face, but yeah, if you've done it, maybe sometimes, you get employed in a job, then you, you do some music, then you fly on me, and some, then you, you can, the music, that they weren't sure about, when they sit in the room with you, and listen to it again, and you can say, this is what we were thinking here, this is how we use it, and they go, oh, okay, we get it, but sometimes, it takes longer, you know, sometimes it, is there a kind of, sometimes, what I've discovered, with certainly difficult directors, is if you can give them a hook, of some sort, not necessarily a melodic one, but, like a concept, and then they suddenly feel, they've got something, that they own, yeah, and it's something that, okay, we've got a thing now, we always say, it's the first piece, that they absolutely love, once they've got, one piece, that they really love, under their belt, well, I'd like to say that, but, not always, but, once they've got that first piece, then, yeah, that's just, that's totally understandable, isn't it, that's a, that's a trust thing, you know, it's a, they are big, they're big things, these games, they sell a lot of copies, and they're a lot of people's jobs, and, and so, you know, people have to, trust you, well, it kind of has to work, you know, I've worked on, you know, so many things, where I'll be on it for six weeks, that was a bit of a nightmare, got that out of the way, it can't be that way, but everyone knows that as well, yeah, everyone, they're all, they know, hey, they know, this is, we've got a certain amount of time, this has to be out, but they, they also know, this is, this amount of time is two years, or they've been on it for five years, the comfort, the structure of the company, the structure of the team, the way the teams work, is for that, they're not, it's not an editor, and a composer, and we have, we've got to get through this, and get it out, there's a team structure, which we like as well, we like being part of, you are part of the music, or audio team, which is, we really enjoy as well, fantastic, well, I think it'd be only fair, to throw some questions out, to those assembled, oh, look, we do have an assistant, this is Josh, who's going to, take an SM58, literally as far, as you can possibly take it, in this room, so, question at the back there, sir, one, two, hello, Tom from Lex Records here, hello Mike, hello, I feel like, gamers, I've been writing about this, for a couple of years, on the blog, gamers are starting, to get a good idea, of who the composers are, the composers names, are getting out there, in front of the games, more often, but, I'm becoming more interested, in this person, it might be Lydia, in the case of this last project, but the audio director, the point person, person on whom, goes into the game, in their mind, comes up with, flipping great spreadsheet, of what we need, how long it has to be, what type of music, and then, brings it to you, and says right, we need this, this, this and this, and is it the case, I mean, I'd like to hear you talk, a little bit about that, relationship, and do they protect you, or do they kind of, they have to make, presumably a massive spreadsheet, and then, pass it out to you, and say okay, this much, or what's that relationship? Literally, how you said, that's pretty good, and yeah, they're working from, so they've obviously, they are, they are getting, like everyone's asking, you know, I need this music to this, I need this music to that, well, on my level, it needs to change, every time this happens, and all that, and obviously, all the people, asking them, for individual piece of music, will add up to way more, than could ever possibly get done, in the time they've got to do, and they have to, take all those, desires, and requests, and translate it down, into something that then they know, they can actually ask us to do, and yeah, they don't, yeah, on the whole, we don't really hear about that process, but we know it's happened, yeah, it is amazing, when you, when you first say, okay, what do you need, and they, somebody has sat down and gone, okay, so it's, there's a lot of fighting in this game, so let's give them that, this many minutes to fight, and it's, you know, you're two years away, there's a guess, and it does change, it does change, go on and never, it's a bait, two years before the end, it's a guess, it may be right, yeah, but we, we also take the minute, at the minute, requesting at the beginning, we mainly use it to know how, what the scope is, of the game, it's not, we're going to just stick to this, but also, also, because our agent needs it, so they can negotiate a deal, yeah, because that's the only, that's the only way, you know, what they're asking you to do, and how long it's going to take, thank you, jump in the front, Josh, if you pass the mic, I'll just do one from the stream, for those with extensive, this is actually reverse of the question, I'm usually asked, but for those with extensive, music theory knowledge, and not so much sound design experience, what kind of work can they expect to find, how important is the kind of production, and technical side of it, it is important, but it's, it's very important, I think it's become a lot more important, yeah, but I read that, but it, everyone's different, so like Ben Valfish, is a really serious orchestrator, and was doing your orchestration, a long time ago, but he, so he's coming from, from another angle, his production is really strong, he's mainly an orchestrator, it depends on who you are, we're, our strength is, we play a lot of stuff, and production is solid, but, but I think there is, I think there is a point there, so I think, you do, we touched on that a little bit, before when I was talking about programming, in the olden days, you are, I think everyone expects, expects that the level of, demos, pitches, and all that, the production level, it's got to be high now, you won't, you won't get people listening to your stuff, if it's not, and they won't, they can't imagine, you can't simply go, this is a piano demo, but it's going to be, yeah, you know, loads of beats, I mean, you can get away with that, if you're Ben Valfish, or you're at a level of, yeah, you know, I'm not saying he does, but I'm just saying, if you're at a level where people, know your stuff already, and you play them a demo, maybe, maybe someone, you know, but, if this person is, is just starting off, I'd say, that's something, you've got to work on, and yet again, possibly, yeah, well, it's not, it doesn't matter, it's just, but for us, music, the best music is made in teams, whether that's two people, or five people, whatever, it's just, just finding, finding people that do, that, that do, a good at the things, you're not so good at, and you like working with, and it's not even just, simply, okay, I can do this, programming better, and I can play this, it's actually, sometimes, you know, there's, there's ideas you come up with, that you would not have come up with on your own, that you do, when you're, when you're working with other people, and that are much more interesting, and then, and if they're not, if just one person feels like they're doing everything, and then it's not the right team, I'm, I'm Sergio, I'm currently, a composer in the middle of my first indie title, and I'm real novices in the industry, so when we talk about briefs, I kind of just ask them for a few words, or a short sentence describing, emotionally, what they want from the scene, or the fight, whatever, my question is, what do your briefs look like, and do they change relative to the scale of the game? Well, well, again, it is, that is, it's very wide ranging, okay, so, so at the moment, we're working on two projects, one of them, very careful, but yeah, no, I'm not saying, one of them, the briefs are, a six page, PDF document, for a three minute piece of music, which, you know, and, but then, then it can be, it can, actually, you can end up with nothing, because, yeah, actually, they want you to find out, what the music, sounds like on this, and that happens more often than not, and actually, that's just, that's, job, yeah, isn't it, and they might, they might, talk a lot about, where it is, or the characters, they want it to, happen, and talk about the narrative, and talk about, talk about everything, other than what they want the music to sound like, because, they don't know, and they want to be, they want someone to, do something, and then go about it. We try and get as much, information, from them as we can, it doesn't have to be brief, doesn't have to be written, it can be, just, color palette, you know, just print out some color palettes, for where you are in the world, or, lots of pictures and videos, so, yeah, I mean, it can be anything, and it's depending, who you're working with, what stage they're at, and what, I don't know, I mean I guess, our briefs tend to, they tend to get more specific, as you get through a project, because you, by the end of a project, they might say, oh yeah, we liked your piece you did, and that, and it should be a combination of those two, because we're here in the game, you know, so you actually get more and more towards the end, but at the beginning, it can be very, ambiguous, yeah, the biggest mistake I've seen other composers make, and I'm probably guilty of it, is, is to, create a them and us thing, yeah, it has to be a collaboration, yeah, you are creating something, because it's not a linear exercise, like film, where you're at the end of a particular process, like right, I can take that over now, you're helping, you're part of the creation, of this thing that's happening, and that's what's fundamentally different from film and tv, do we have one more question, that's convenient, really easy, following on from this sort of idea of collaboration, I was really curious as to how you two work together, and how you divvy up the work, and so like, does one of you write half the music, and the other one write the other half, or do you work together and say please, no, we, we do everything don't we, yeah, we, when we're writing, most of the time we tag team don't we, when we get into, again, when we get into our project, and we know what it's supposed to sound like, and we're under the cuff a bit more, we may go, all right, look, I tell you what, we've got quite a lot to do this week, I'll do this, please you do that, please, and we'll start them, but we always, like, no piece is just Joe, or just me, it always, we'll do some work on a piece each, and then, and then swap around, or then put it in the main studio, and both of us work on it together, but, but most of the kind of important stuff, we do together, and it'll be one of us sat at the back, just tag team, and we tag team, and you kind of, okay, I'm off, I'm done, and you walk off, and I've got an idea, get up, so when we've been talking, I've noticed, you know, you can't think of a word, and vice versa, it's the same thing, you know, I was just thinking, when you were talking, I think that's what we do, musically, you can't remember a word, and it's the same thing in music, it's like, I don't know, and I've had nightmares about, you know, the serendipitous things that happen, when you're composing, it happens more when there's two of you, Alexis will be writing something, I'll hear something in my head, and it's like times four, the serendipity, isn't it, and it means that our work, our work rate is really high, and we know each other really well now, it's obviously that all that stuff is, it was harder at the beginning, you're a bit more self-conscious, we can play each other, our really embarrassing voice, you know, voice notes, you know this, and you'll go, I know what you mean, and I would never, I was thinking one day, when we retire, we'll release an album of our voice notes, because they're terrible, but we're at that point now, we sit in a room together, and we'll go, and we'll sing stuff to each other, successful partnerships are a difficult thing, and they're a rare thing, and I think often what you'll have to do, is go through a few partnerships to go, well it can't be like that, for me, my tip is you can't clock in and clock out, it's like going, being in an army company, going well you shot more bullets than me, so I'm going to shoot more bullets next time, but also I think that one of the key aspects, of being in a successful partnership, is the ability to be yourself, you are good enough, and also just on an interesting note, you kind of take that to the front, just on the very first day, that we ever did anything together, we agreed that whatever we made, we split down the middle, everything, even if there is a piece, that Joe completely wrote, and I put a symbol on it, a hi-hat, and it just stops anything, it stops any of that, I remember in bands, I've got a song, I want to write a song, we split everything, and once you know that, it completely takes that off, we haven't even thought about that, I was just thinking about that then, but it actually is important, and talking of the Beatles, Lennon McCartney, McCartney wrote Hey Jude, but he called it Hey Jewels, and Lennon turned it from Jewels to Jude, and you go well what value is that, when it's one letter, but it actually does, it's better. It's not charity, you're not being charity, I had a mate who was a producer, every session play he got to play on the album, he would then do a co-write with, on the album as well, which was just so people, it's generous, but it's just your part, you make people feel part of something. And you too, they split everything, and look how long they've split. Very good advice. Thank you so much for coming here on a Sunday, thanks everyone who's attended here, and thanks everyone online, who's watched to the end. Do join us tomorrow. Thank you both. I believe we're back here at 1700 hours tomorrow, we're bringing back Creative Cribs, and this is the one you've been waiting for, so see you tomorrow, and thanks for coming today.