"I don't adhere to the washy chords that exist in games these days" Part two of our interview with Grant Kirkhope, Audio Director on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Grant Kirkhope is a Video Game Sound Designer and Composer of great repute. His previous work includes Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Viva Pinata amongst others, with his latest being the recently finished, soon to be released incredi-RPG from EA and Big Huge Games, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The soundtrack is even getting a CD release, that's how amazing this man's work is. So pay attention, you might learn two things. Three if you're lucky.

Part one of Made2Game's exclusive interview with Mr. Kirkhope focused on what it's like to be a sound designer and composer on such a huge game, and the difficulties that came with it. In part two Grant takes us more in depth with his methods, talking instrumentation and inspirations as well as his biggest lessons learned from working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Amalur is a huge place. Fleshed out with more than ten thousand years worth of deep, intriguing lore thanks to the fantastical fantasy noggin of one R.A.Salvatore, scribe of numerous best selling novels, Amalur isn't some throwaway vacation spot. It's a world created to be explored, to be learned, to be challenged by and to be absorbed in.

Indeed it's a creation with a remarkable breadth of scope. You'll travel around grassy plains, magical forests, dank dungeons, harsh deserts and even rocky fissures in your bid to change fate, all the while battling a menagerie of bizarre and creepy creations from the mind of comic artist and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane.

But a world with this much thought and artistry put into its visual and narrative construction needs a massive array of music and sound to bring the whole shebang to life. So naturally you put a weight of such gargantuan gravity on a set of shoulders that can support it - cue inimitable audio mastermind Grant Kirkhope. But how does one start work on a project so huge? Grant tells us:

“You can't just jump into it and think it's going to be great, you have to think about it and take it one small step at a time. So our first port of call would be the game's first area, Dalanatar. We'd look at that and think about the sound design for that part and think about what music that area would require and just take it in very small steps.

“I think it's important to get something into the game quite quickly because then the developers can sort of hear what it may sound like. It gets everyone excited about the game, there's nothing worse than just looking at blank pictures with no sound!

“So we get a basic ambience in there like the birds tweeting and the trees rustling, as well as all the basic animation stuff like footsteps. Basically all the kind of things that plant you in a world - they're the very first things you notice. And maybe we'd add one tune that would give you the kind of feel for the area, that's kind of where we start it off.”

Starting Slow
Naturally with a project this big (the recently announced demo will let you play for almost an hour. Most games are already winding down when Reckoning is just getting started) variety is absolutely paramount. But there is one thing that Grant is quick to point out:

“When it comes to [writing music for] something like [Reckoning] you have to make sure that things don't get boring quickly. So we haven't opted for writing wall-to-wall music that occurs all the time in Reckoning, it comes and goes to give you a sort of feel for the area.

“So in a main ambient area you're going to get a handful of pieces that play randomly on a timer and will just come and go to sort of soothe you along.

“When [writing for] a cinematic [cutscene] it's very filmic, you know how it's gonna go as it's the same thing every time. But when it's the in-game action or the in-game stuff it has to be suitably diverse and not get on your tits!”

But even though the music isn't constant its ability to add flavour to an environment cannot be understated. Would Ocarina of Time's Lost Woods have felt so labyrinthine without the quickly looping, cheeky chirp of Saria's Song? Alternatively, it would feel wrong to play a Star Wars game, walk into an ancient Jedi temple and have some trashy organ infused electronica-rock start blaring out, yet that's completely acceptable in Devil May Cry. When it comes to creating an appropriate sense of place and character, instrumentation is key:

“With Amalur I think I tried to make it so we had big dramatic moments, but also had the right mix of ambient chordal stuff that needed to be there just to create the kind of feel of where you are.

“[For] a swampy area, that would be sort of dark, low woodwinds... The first area Dalantarth is very sort of magical fairy tale so it's very chinkly, with Celeste, Harp, Glockenspiel, pizzicato Strings... instrumental sounds like that. Then the plains are very stringy and open,” a little like Vaughn Williams, as Grant revealed last week, “I tried to get a big open grand sound just trying to get a feel for how big it is.

“I've tried to use sections from the orchestra to represent some of the areas that we're in.”

Indeed a little creative thought in regards to instrument choice can help evoke an area perfectly, as Grant alludes to when describing one of the stranger instruments that appears in Reckoning's score:

“We used a thing called a Waterphone, which is a very strange sort of circular thing that's got metal rods on it that you either bow or hit, and it makes a kind of raspy, metallic noise. They are tuned though, so you can write a tune with it.

“[The Waterphone] is peculiar and when it turns up in the game I think you'll notice it!”

Would classic Doctor Who sound right without judicious application of synthesiser? Absolutely not. Yet most interestingly, when quizzed about the use of outlandish instruments, Grant revealed that he is a steadfast orchestra man. And his reasons behind this were most illuminating:

“I've not really got any strange instruments I particularly want to write for," explains Grant. "I've got to say I'm a little bit of an orchestral purist, I don't like to use that kind of ethnicity in the instruments.

“Lord of the Rings and films of that ilk went down that kind of ethnic instrument route, with Uilleann Bagpipes or Mongolian Noseflutes, whatever you want to call it, and I feel that that dates soundtracks a lot because you know exactly what it's about and people think they've heard it a million times before.

“So I kind of think that with full orchestra, it's been around for hundreds of years and it's going to be around for the next few hundreds of years and it doesn't date for that reason. It's just that people are used to those sounds, and because of this I don't think it dates. But once you start adding extra things into it I think that often dates a score because it sound like it's from a certain point in time.

“I wouldn't not use [odd instruments] - if it was necessary I would use something that's ethnic - but I haven't this time. It's a very pure orchestral score.

“I absolutely adore the full orchestra. I spent most my youth playing trumpet and I went to the Royal College of music so I had a proper classical upbringing and spent ages writing for full orchestra. I just love the sound of it, it's just fantastic.”

Building suspense
While variation is key to illuminating a world, what is it that truly drives Grant's music? Why is it his fans email him daily to tell him that the Banjo Kazooie and Perfect Dark soundtracks are sitting proud next to Lady Gaga and Metallica on their playlists? Grant believes their strength lies in the power of the theme.

“I'm a great believer in writing themes. I'm a bit of an old school guy, I don't adhere to the kind of new method of just having some kind of washy chords that exist in movies and games these days, I don't really like that.

“I mean, I think my past games have always contained – hopefully – themes that are memorable. I certainly get plenty of emails from people talking about how they like the tunes and stuff." (We must admit to having the Click Clock Woods tune infiltrating our thoughts every now and then.) “People still like to have a tune they can remember or hum along to or whistle to themselves, whatever that might be, and all the games that I've ever done I've always tried to do that.

“I do think it seems to be a bit of a dying art at the moment, certainly in things that I see and, I may be wrong, but I just think that people like to have thematic moments where they can remember something - "Oh I remember that bit' - and it triggers in the memory rather than some bland chord-y thing that kind of just washes over the place and never sticks in your mind.”

Strong words indeed, and food for thought. But what, then, is Amalur's theme? And how easy is it to incorporate recognisable melodies into a game of Reckoning's size without, as Grant has already so eloquently put it, getting on the player's tits?

“The kind of main theme that you hear right at the start when you turn [the game] on is more or less your hero's theme, so that will crop up throughout the game. You'll hear it in the boss pieces, you'll hear it in some of the areas, and it does pop up here and there so I'd say that's kind of the main theme more than anything else.

“But there are [also] some character based themes, and a lot of region and area based themes. It's difficult to try and - you know when your character pops up and comes back? It's hard to do that sort of light motif where you hear a bit of the tune. Where in a film it would be easy, it's not in a game, as you might have to interrupt something that's going on. So I've tried to do a bit of that, and I would probably try to do that a bit more should we go further with this.

“So yeah, I have just tried to write things that people will hopefully remember. So there are definitely some thematic elements that exist throughout the entire game that should hopefully stick in people's heads. Well, I hope they do anyway, I've done my best!

“I've tried to make a big sounding, wealthy score that sounds, well, it's a place so every area has its own kind of feel to it, perhaps it's a section of the orchestra. Every area has its own theme you'll hear a lot of times but then it's got several ambient pieces that are kind of like it but just match the style.”

Kirkhope's adoration of strong themes becomes even more apparent when quizzed about other game soundtracks he finds memorable:

“Zelda: Link to the Past was one of the games I felt was phenomenal at the time, that still sticks in my mind as a fantastic achievement and a fantastic soundtrack.

“In fact I was listening to Richard Jacques' Bloodstone thing just this morning and I think he did a fantastic job on that. He really captured that Bond type feel... I did Goldeneye so I was very interested to see how he did with it.”

Zelda is a series that has always contained huge, mind-consuming musical ideas - just look at 2011's amazing 25th anniversary concerts to see the quality and popularity of Nintendo's Hylian harmonies. And Bond, with all its bold brass and ominous minor strings, is arguably the core template for the theme this side of Grant's other key inspiration, John Williams:

“I listened to John Williams a lot while I was doing the score for Amalur" Grant reveals, "and I think the boss pieces, certainly in my eyes, reflect that kind of influence.

“I think John Williams has a great way of writing huge great melodies that everyone remembers, but people seem to forget the inbetween bits. And he writes very complex, exciting music in his battle segments, so I tried to utilise that kind of feeling, not necessarily thematic but constantly complicated, very dramatic and all over the place.

“I've tried to do that, so in my boss pieces there are big dramatic moments, but also, in between that, there is this constant exciting music that doesn't necessarily stick out but creates that sense of urgency for when you're doing something big like that.”

The Big Finish
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is massive, and Grant is understandably thrilled with what he and his team have been able to produce. But what could Herr Kirkhope, a certified industry vet, take away from his time working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning? His experiences are tw0fold. One is a take away from Art Director Todd McFarlane:

“The thing that I liked best about Todd was that because he's not got a gaming background he's the kind of guy that always says 'just because everyone else does it like that, why do we have to do it like that?'" explicates Grant, "and I think you kind of go 'oh yeah I suppose, yeah, why do we do it that way?' And a light goes on and you think 'oh yeah!' So that's my main takeaway from Todd - he's a great kind of guy but he always goes, 'why are we doing that? Why are we doing that? Why are we doing that?' It makes you think about it and work a bit harder.” Considering Grant's often original and individual concepts and ideas for music and its presence in games, these are two creative minds that seem to dovetail perfectly.

Grant's other reflection is purely personal, but offers sage like wisdom for any aspiring Audio Designers:

“I think that - counting from when I started at Rare in 1995 - making audio in games hasn't changed that much really. I think the quality has definitely changed, just because you've got more space for samples and all that stuff, but the actual way you make audio for any game hasn't changed all that much at all.

“I think the most important thing for any sound guy is not' how big is your brain?' But, 'how good is your set of ears?'

“I always say to people that I don't care about your tool path, or how you create stuff, or how many different bits of software you bounce things through to make the sound, all I care about is does it sound good at the end? Because if it doesn't then you're wasting your time, aren't you?

“So I always feel that that's my biggest takeaway from any type of game, that it's about your ears – if you've got 50 samples and you need 10, choose the best 10. I think working on a game like Amalur it was just great to be working on a game that's so huge, and I wish I could have written some more in the end.

“You always end up in that struggle against memory and loading times and stuff like that. Finding better ways to load sounds more efficiently is a big deal, and I think we're still improving on that. You end up having to cut things down a lot because they're too big or you can't get them off the disc fast enough or something like that, so I think all that stuff is going to get better as time goes on.

“I think that as a Composer or a Sound Designer... There's always that kind of wish or dream of 'I want it to sound like this', but sometimes logistics and the technicality of it just won't let you do that stuff. So it's a big learning process and I think you always learn something, but I think that the basics haven't changed for a long time.”

And with that contemplative musing, our insightful discussion with Sir* Grant Kirkhope, game composer extrordinaire, must come to an end. Across these two interview's we've learned about designing sound effects and music for various locations, the challenges of designing sound for a massive game, that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning almost contained a Rap, and that even after 16 years in the Video Game Industry the best are still learning. Thank you again toGrant Kirkhope, it was an honour.

Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning is released February 10th in the UK, February 7th for you lucky American sorts, with a huge demo landing earlier on January 17th (which also gives you some free Mass Effect goodies, making it a must play, obviously). The game's soundtrack is even receiving a standalone release on Sumthing Else Music and iTunes, so even if you're just hankering for some tasty modern classical ear juice, get that on the download.

*He's not actually a Sir, yet, but it's only a matter of time. Lizzy will probably be getting her early copy of Amalur through any day now and will be all over getting Grant's knighthood sorted.

Words by James Bowden (Twitter: Dalagonash)

Please register or login to post comments