The Sound of Music... My interview with Grant Henry (Stemage)

Author: Steve Flores - Director, Dragon Divide Date: 10/02/2010 "After you hear the soundtrack, I think you will agree that his style was a perfect match for the project. "

I knew from the beginning that Alpha Squad needed to have an incredible soundtrack. I only had one individual in mind and there was only one man who had the talent, the following and the love of gaming to understand the idealism behind what I was attempting to accomplish.

Grant was the very first person I contacted on the project and I am really happy we were able to collaborate. After you hear the soundtrack, I think you will agree that his style was a perfect match for the project.

Steve: When you first decided to take on the project, all we had was a concept art image. Over the last year you have seen that concept image expand into the game's current state with the release of gameplay videos and the trailer. What has that experience been like for you?

I had no idea the game was going to be this badass. The Indie scene has finally started to mature a bit, but back when we talked, there just weren’t many games worth talking about. I certainly had no idea the project was going to become something this crazy cool. At the time that really didn’t matter, because the concept intrigued me, and it was something new. As it turns out, the game rules, and that excites me beyond words.

You started development on the music very early on the project, which ended up being a really good idea since you became very busy later on once the game started to flesh out. However without the actual gameplay in place or the final environments, you needed to build the music from concept images and a basic description of the mood. Was that difficult?

Writing music to a still image and a written description is totally unnerving. To start with, I’d never heard my rock music accompany some other kind of media, so I couldn’t really imagine it. I did a score for this independent film called “For Catherine”, but that involved playing clean guitar over the scenes that already existed. This is like acting on a blue screen with a director telling you that the Master Control Program is off in the distance, and it’s big – except that there’s no director, and the MCP is a sketch of a dude with a gun.

I’ve also never written music with a mood in mind. You asked for a winter theme, so I went hunting for what makes music cold. You asked for a sewer theme, so I went hunting through game music for consistencies, and found some! It was a wild experiment, and I think it turned out well.

The hardest song was definitely the theme song – only because of the weight of that track. It is the only theme that is a full “song” with movements. The rest of the tracks are built to loop after a certain number of times. I really wanted to come up with a main melody that could be referenced in other themes in the game. So I spent some time with that.

Yeah, some people break bass strings. I actually broke the nut on my bass guitar and had to steal one from a friend to finish. Ironically, it was the final boss music. Hopefully the last boss isn’t hard enough to break a 360 controller.