Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - The Music of Squadron 42
Composer discusses scoring Squadron 42: the dynamic music logic system, character and player themes, location-based sounds, the largely orchestral vertical slice score, planned live orchestra recording, and tools like Cubase. Also touches on Pedro's Star Citizen music and the Constellation ad.
TL;DRZanelli first met Chris Roberts while scoring the film Outlander, was invited to the narrative campaign for Star Citizen, and had grown up playing Wing Commander.
Okay, with Chris, I met him actually scoring a film that he was producing called Outlander. And I think probably because he had heard music that I had written for the Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one, Curse of the Black Pearl, with Hans, and I think took a meeting, looked at his movie, and I mean, we had a monster destroying a Viking village, and I thought, I have to do this. I'm raised on fantasy movies and sci-fi and adventure, and actually my first experience with Chris was as a film composer. So when Star Citizen came around he said, look, we're doing this narrative, story-driven campaign that's part of the universe, would you like to take a look at it? And of course I came and I saw his early ambitions and goals. This would have been, I don't know, a couple of years ago. And sign me up, because, well, the other thing is I knew Chris even before Outlander, not personally, but I knew him because I played his games. I played Wing Commander. That was the exact time in my life when I was in high school when I had that perfect moment when you can game all the time. And so Wing Commanders 1 and 2 were those years for me, actually.
TL;DRZanelli starts from story outlines, characters and plot points, aiming for memorable themes that follow particular characters and the game itself, as heard in the vertical slice.
Well, I might. Yes. Sometimes if the movie gets the script, other times they will send you the movie and you watch it. In the case of Outlander, they had already shot it, so I did watch it. In the case of Star Citizen, obviously the game wasn't done. So they talked about story outline, what are the main characters, main plot points, and those would be the starting points for a composer. So the goal for me is to have memorable themes that track certain characters through the game. Like if you watch the vertical slice, you see Old Man and he has a piece of music that goes when he launches and there's an intro sequence that plays. His music, and the squadron itself, or really the game itself, has a theme of its own as well, which people are starting to recognize. It's in the Bishop Speech from a while ago, and it comes in varying forms throughout the vertical slice as well.
Well, I should say I looked at the outline of the game. I realize the script probably keeps getting longer, actually, but yes, it is a thousand pages now, isn't it?
I don't know quite where it's landed right now, but the last time I talked about it with Haddock, it was something like twelve or thirteen hundred pages at that point.
It was not that long. When I looked at it, it was an outline, a story outline. And by the way, a developing story outline. So it was surely slightly or maybe significantly different now than it was then. But I knew that there was going to be a great story arc. And I know from Chris's prior game work and from Outlander that he's looking at a big picture. And, well, sign me up, right?
I think we're certainly planning on some fun Easter eggs. Part of the joy of Star Citizen, there is a whole lore building. We're building a world, and in that world, there would certainly be music. So what I'm mostly tasked with is the score of the game, which is not in-world, it's actually more the player's experience, but within the world we're exploring ways of creating music and art and things that exist in that world. So let me say, don't be surprised if you find some really fun Easter eggs when you get into the game regarding space radio.
It's one of the hallmarks of any Chris Roberts project. He wants that lived-in, diegetic universe. And that means there are things that are going to be on TVs. There are conversations by characters you don't think are important to the story going on in the background. And maybe they're listening to music on a boombox.
Totally, and it makes it immersive. In fact, actually, I did the music for the Cutlass commercial, which actually had a radio in it, and we switch over to the tango, and that's little old me playing the guitar.
TL;DRYes, the score will cover horror, tension, heroism and other moods to match the player's experience, with the vertical slice only hinting at the more dramatic moments to come.
Right, sure, obviously. Well, look, the point of the score actually is to play the player's experience. So certainly if something is horrific, you'll have horrific music. If something is tense, you'll have that. If it's heroic, you'll have that. So the short answer is yes, you're going to hear all sorts of kinds of music. Kind of a sonic palette, I'd say, that we're going to use for the game, which doesn't mean we never color outside the lines, but it does mean that we have some consistency. But there are a few moments in the vertical slice which start to hint at some of the more tense discoveries you're going to make. Discovering those, well, I mean, Trejo's chained to a pipe, you know what I mean? So you get moments like that, and I would say that would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of drama that we have in this story.
TL;DRZanelli partly agrees the vertical slice music was too intense, saying it is an early pre-alpha mix and that the music logic system will be tweaked to support the player rather than intrude, including dipping under dialogue.
Well, a couple things. The vertical slice is actually something that's educational for us as the development team as well. It's actually why we make these things. It's shown to the community so you can see what we've been up to, but the reality is that is how I gain insight into whether or not my music's working, and I don't believe it's working 100%. The thing about what I do is I write music and then I find any way that I can incrementally improve any bit of it. I happen to agree actually in a lot of cases with the way it's played in the vertical slice. It's a pre-alpha, right?
Right, exactly. And it's not necessarily the final version of the mix or the final version of the volume or the intensity of anything. So, in fact, I actually went through it with my red pen and I wrote down a little bit: this is what we need to carve here, this is what we need to do there. And working with the audio team in the UK, the game engine is going to...
The music logic system will be tweaked in such a way that it'll support the player's experience with the music as opposed to invade it. So let's say the launch sequence, well, that's a good moment for music to be in your face and big. But if you're flying from one place to another, it's not necessarily the place for the big tune. It's more ambient, it should be setting the mood, and is it tense, or is it heroic, or is it that, but it doesn't need to overstate it. So those are all things that we are working on, myself and the audio team in the UK, to make it better. Let me put it this way, the pre-alpha version that you guys saw in the vertical slice is the absolute worst that that could ever be. And in fact, it's quite promising to see it looking this good this early.
I know one of the features of the music logic system that wasn't completely online at the time that we did the demo is how it mixes with the dialogue. The music is supposed to dip down at the moments when people talk and stuff like that.
Well, and there's another thing the music logic is doing in there that would be transparent, I think, when you're watching a video of a playback like that, which is what that was. The music is written in such a way that the music logic system inside the game can actually score the player's actions as they happen. That was step one when I talked with the audio team, Phil and Lee Banyard, about how can we get the game to make the decisions that I would make if this were a movie and I were scoring it. So all the music is written... Let me put it this way. I would not be surprised if there are whole pieces of music that certain players don't hear because they went that way instead of that way. There's a mass of music that's there and the engine is making a lot of clever, very situation-dependent decisions about what to play to the player as they're going through.
TL;DRZanelli writes music in pieces that can transition at any point, so the engine can switch between versions such as grim, heroic or ambient depending on what is happening to the player.
Well, and it is different, right? Because there isn't a version of E.T. where he doesn't go home and no one had to write that music, right? But in this case, we know certain things most likely will happen, but we also don't know when they're going to happen. That's another thing. But what I did really was with the music logic systems, let's say you're flying a ship. And you're in combat, right? But that can mean a lot of different things. There can be two enemies, there can be ten, there can be none, they can be right around the corner. So those are all different pieces of music, but they're written in such a way that they can transition at any point from one to the next, and the game engine can keep track of what's happening to the player. Did the bad guy come out? Are you outnumbered? Are you injured? Are you winning? Are you losing? And it can switch into and out of a grim version of the same music, a heroic version, a more ambient version. And this exists for all sorts of different levels, game states. Is it a more epic scene? Is it more intimate? Is it hand-to-hand combat? Is it EVA?
Actually, it's not changing the key, because that would make it more difficult to transition into and out of, but other techniques that our musicians can use are how fast it is, how busy it is, how dark it is, so all the different arrangements. It isn't always even necessarily the same melody when it switches to grim. There might be a new melody that comes in that's more doom and gloom, or something a little more heroic, or sometimes it's not melodic at all. It's just a tonal shift. And in some cases, it's really subtle. In other cases, you're going to really feel it. The player is actually almost in control of what the music is doing in a way. If they're winning, it rewards you.
I played, I think of the Ultima games. I think of Wing Commander as well. I think George Oldziey wrote the first one, right? And I know George. Great job on that. Let me think. I mean, because I am a gamer, I find Mario to be irresistible, the original one. But I mean, I do, I respond to things that are unique.
TL;DRInspired by the game's classic space opera feel, Zanelli wrote largely orchestral music and plans to record with a live orchestra to give it a textured, human, acoustic quality.
So, well, the game itself is a good place to start. And I think once we kind of got a sense of what the story was, we went, okay, this is actually classic space opera, right? Which is why I think in the vertical slice here, it's not entirely, but largely orchestral. And there's a real good reason for that, which is that once we actually record this with a live orchestra, we should talk about that actually, you're going to hear humanity and real people and musicians and something acoustic and real, and that grounds this massive, unbelievably, I don't know, epic experience in something you can feel. When I record orchestras, I don't like the glossy, distant orchestra. I like when you can hear players and bows scraping and breaths and all of that stuff, and that kind of...
There's a texture. It gets into the blood of the music and you hear it and it does something to a person. You know what I mean? And so I want it to grab you and pull you into your screen. But that is another thing actually that wasn't in the vertical slice. Those are demos of the music. Savvy musicians will have noticed it's not a live orchestra yet, but we're going to be recording this thing with a massive orchestra, and I'm excited.
Elevator music. I feel like answering that would be a spoiler. I don't know. There's an elevator in the vertical slice and there's a cue there, but it's not elevator music.
TL;DRLive orchestra recording isn't happening next week, but will follow once final tweaks are done, and the scene-independent music logic material is ready to record as soon as an orchestra is booked.
Not next week, no, but like I said, I have a lot of music written, and obviously the point of it is to make the final tweaks and make sure everything's working, and we're all tightening the screws on everything that came from the VS, the vertical slice. So once that's done, we can sit down with an orchestra and record that. And also there's a large amount of what I would call the music logic system music, which is not tied to any specific scene in the game, but would play, like I was saying, the flight and hand-to-hand combat and these kind of game states that we know are going to be there that we can use. And that is basically ready now, actually. So that could be recorded as soon as we book an orchestra. And we are definitely going to do that. So this is the next level for the score.
Oh, Cubase. I write in Cubase. And then I have Pro Tools, which is basically my mixer and my video playback rig. But Cubase is where I do all the sequencing, and it's all sample-based and everything. And then we go and sit down with the orchestra and they play what I've given them.
TL;DRA key hurdle is writing music for long stretches of travel that stays interesting without repeating, which Zanelli tackles by writing layered stems that the engine can combine in different permutations.
Well, let's see. I think one of the trickiest parts about it is when you have, let's say, a long stretch where the player might be going from one place to the next, right? And what's going through the player's head is actually what the next task is, and they might have a busy mindset. But you need to do something with the music while they're traveling that is both not repetitive but interesting enough and keeps the pace going and that kind of thing. So one of the tricky things is finding ways to create music which can play for long stretches but isn't repetitive. So the way it's actually done, or what I've been trying to do, is write it in, say, three or four, I want to say stems, or something that can each play in different permutations. So you might not play all of it at once, or you could, but you can strip away certain elements or you can put certain elements in, different combinations of that same basic track, and that can actually be decided by... well, the game engine makes the decision, but we discuss with the audio team how to implement it. So it might be game-based.
Shortly before the release of Alpha 2.0, Pedro, who is the composer for Star Citizen, sent me this 20-minute-long track for Port Olisar, the area where most people are going to be. He goes, would you just listen to this all day and tell me if you're sick of it? So literally we had it on for two days straight. It's like, no, it's all right. It's good.
But that's a real hurdle, and it's not necessarily easy to write music that works like that. It almost goes against what composers are bred to do, so that does make it challenging, but it's also pretty exciting when it works, because the idea is to never intrude on the player experience, but instead to enhance it.
I would anticipate we'd probably do more of that in the future. We're in touch with each other, we share sounds and stuff, but so far we've been deliberately keeping it as separate worlds. And I think the reason really is the persistent universe is, you can do anything at any time. It's kind of a different animal than scoring a narrative Squadron 42 game. Even though the player can still make decisions in Squadron 42, it's story-driven and narrative-driven. So they kind of exist separate. And also certain characters, I believe, are only in Squadron and that kind of thing.
TL;DRZanelli hasn't yet written anything for the Vanduul, but says he would certainly seek new sounds for alien races, environments or characters if the chance came up.
Yes, indeed. Well, that is a good question. What I've been up to thus far with the music has not involved the Vanduul. But it's certainly gears turning in my head.
No, it's not. What I'm saying is you've seen the bulk of what I've done in the vertical slice, which doesn't really include it. But I completely understand the concept of it. I mean, they are alien, and let me put it this way. Anytime there's something that gives me an excuse to create a new sound, a new tone, and that can be an environment that we're going to go to in the game, it could be a race, it could be a character we don't know about yet because it's not in the VS, there will be an opportunity for me to do something new and fresh and interesting within the soundscape that we're already living in. So anyway, let me put it this way. Yes, I certainly would do that if that were to come up.
TL;DRZanelli says he created challenges himself by pushing the audio team to make the music engine make composer-like decisions and shift in ways he doesn't think a music engine has done before.
I feel like I probably created more challenges, because it really did turn into a whole lot of conversations with the audio team. Can we do this? Me saying to them, can we get the game engine to do this? And I don't want to get too technical about it.
Well, look, I'm trying to push what a video game music engine can do. I really mean it when I say I hope that it will make the same decisions that I would make as a composer. Well, what I mean is we were certainly talking a whole lot about how can we do these things? Is it even possible in the music logic? And then they'd get back to me and say, yes, it actually is. There's a whole thing in the vertical slice, you're flying through the Coil a little bit and you get a tiny touch of what we're going to be doing with that. That environment is really special. And the way that music is going to work, it's going to swirl and build up in those stems that I'm talking about, but it actually can shift gears in ways that I don't think a music engine has ever done before. The challenges are coming because I'm as ambitious with the music as Chris is with the game, let's put it that way.
TL;DRZanelli came up in rock bands and progressive rock, which drew him to longer-form music and then film scoring rather than a classical training path.
I showed you a picture that I was Freddie Mercury for Halloween. I had the mustache and everything. And I was also Prince one year. I came up in rock bands, actually. I grew up in Orange County here in California, which means I had a ska band, a bad one. We tried. We were not signed or anything, but we sure had a lot of fun. And the point of it was, that was my teenage years, and I was playing video games, and I was in a band, and that was my identity. And I listened to rock music. I suppose I came up at the time when Guns N' Roses was a big band, and I certainly listened to that. Eventually got into progressive rock, I confess. Yes, albums, and what can you do? No, I still listen. King Crimson, I still put them on. Anyway, but obviously that kind of leads you to something in a way. It's what led me to longer-form pieces of music, things that are not three-minute, 20-second songs, which are kind of locked. And it ended up pointing me straight into film music, because you really don't have a form handcuffing you. A piece of music in a film can be 20 minutes long, it could be 11 minutes long, depending on what the scene is, and so you get to go to all these different places. So I liked music that did that. The orchestra obviously came into my life at some point. No, I didn't come up as a classically trained musician. I came up as a rock guy that then started to add in other things, and I keep doing this.
Yeah, definitely. Different locations are going to have their own specific sounds. For instance, the Coil is a location, so to speak. It's geographical. So there's a sound for that. You're probably not really getting a full dose of it in the vertical slice, but there's a sound for when you're on the base at the beginning of the vertical slice. This is nice, friendly territory, and that's its own thing, and you're certainly going to get it from all the places that we're going to show you in the future. So yes, I would say geography and character are the two main informants to what my music is going to be.
Well, sure. I've talked a bit about trying to fulfill an ambition, that we're trying to do this on a level that hasn't been done before. So that's certainly a goal. Break new ground. And some of that is technical. But I also want to have a really rich, varied, narrative-driven body of music. By the time this score is written, I'm telling you, I'm already at three hours, there's going to be a lot of music. I think once that's finished, it can be distilled into something quite amazing, actually, because it's going to go to so many different places. I'm not saying the music is amazing, I'm saying we've got... But you know, the other thing is, once you put it with Pedro's music too, we've got an encyclopedia of Star Citizen music. It's going to be cool.
Well, yes, and that's going to be... So Old Man already has one, and it's starting to gel a little bit, and we're certainly going to do it with all of the characters in the game, so yes, definitely.
Well, the player character, yes. And I'll tell you something, that's actually the trickiest thing to me about video game music as opposed to film music. In film music, you write to a character. In this game, the player is the character, right? And each of them is going to have a different experience in it. Actually, that kind of goes back to the most difficult hurdle or most difficult obstacle in the game: how do I get into the player's head and account for different players, different moments, different events. But that's part of what I would call the overarching Squadron 42 music, actually, is the player's theme, if you want to think of it that way.
Well, I grew up as a guitar player, but nowadays I would say probably the cello. Not that I can play one, but I can certainly write for them. And I think that as a solo or an ensemble, which is two very different things, it's the most expressive instrument I can think of. It's extraordinary. I love the cello.
Probably a more complete sound. In fact, I would say almost never do I get a melody that comes naked in my head. It has something around it. If it's an instrument, if it's chords, it's probably both actually. And then I have to go and dump it out of my head and find it. But yeah, I would say it comes more complete. I don't know if it always did, but it does now.
Well, with the game stuff I did before, I'd play beta versions of it as I was working on it. In a way that's kind of what we're doing with the vertical slice. I can watch it. I'm not playing it. But that's the same kind of thing, right? With the movies, sometimes I watch them, sometimes I don't. Usually there's a premiere or something I watch. And sometimes it's terrifying a little bit. Sometimes I like it.
Maybe the Constellation, actually, because to me, that one makes a big promise. You know what I mean? It makes a big promise of what the game is, the scope, its exploration. There's some danger. But what I liked about it especially was that it wasn't just a combat trailer. It shows that Star Citizen does so much more than that. So that's one that came to mind. We also did a little 2001 nod with the music at the beginning. But then it goes into something quite hopefully inspirational and aspirational or whatever.
TL;DRZanelli sees the vertical slice as pre-alpha with music-shaping improvements still needed, but praises the story, the acting and the attention to detail that makes the world feel real.
Well, I was watching it knowing full well this is pre-alpha. So obviously with an eye, or an ear, to music, that's what I was watching it for, and I certainly went through it and went, here's the improvements that I want to make, and one of them is how we shape the music around the player. The whole experience, and in some cases I think it's not there yet, and it will be. So that was my thought on it. But as a game as a whole, just the story of it, I think plays great. I think the acting performances are unrivaled. I mean, it's like you go on the bridge and just any little conversation you have on the way in or something, there's been an attention to detail about that. It's not a throwaway moment.
The three prisoner guys that step off. That could be the only time we see them for all I know. But just those guys, as they stepped out, it's such a texture to it.
Right. I mean, I remember as a child gamer, you'd play a game and you'd walk in a town and seven of the people would say the same thing, you know what I mean? Like, nice weather today. And the immersion isn't there, and now it is. It's like somebody walks by you in the hallway and they have something to say, and it feels legit and real.