February 4, 2025 • 28 mins
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Kristopher Eng, a founder and composer at House of Elias, as he shares his journey and insights on adaptive music in video games and beyond. Kristopher's pioneering work in adaptive music for video games is not just about sound; it's about transforming the gaming experience into something engaging and authentic. We'll also hear about his fascinating path from the Royal College in Stockholm to developing the Elias 4 platform and how adaptive music can play a crucial role in storytelling.
We discuss the challenges of integrating advanced music technology, the importance of setting industry standards, and why game studios embrace these innovations for more immersive gameplay. Don't miss this exploration of how music complements and drives the gaming narrative forward.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, welcome to Season 2 of Creativity's Jijiji.
And the world has flipped sinceI did Season 1.
Since I ended Season 1, it's anew year and it's a flipped-out
world.
I mean it's crazy, right?
(00:23):
I mean the crazies have takencontrol of the world.
I mean it's it's crazy, right?
I mean the crazies have takencontrol of the world.
What do you do?
What do I do?
I write and I compose music andI produce and I paint and I
cook and I do anything I canthink to do to express my
(00:45):
creativity and to push back onthe motherfuckers that are
messing with us.
You know these guys aren'tgoing to be around long.
That's just the way it works.
You know politicians, they comeand they go, right.
Who is the mayor of Vienna whenthey dumped the pauper in the
(01:07):
grave?
Right?
You know who I'm talking aboutMozart.
You know Mozart.
Who's the mayor?
Who's the mayor?
Who's the president?
Who's the king of the world?
Nobody knows, but everybodyknows the pauper, the composer,
the brilliant, shining light.
That's who I follow.
(01:29):
The artists, they are ourleaders, they are the soulful
ones, not these motherfuckerspointing fingers and blaming
everybody, saying fuck you, fuckthis, forget it, dig into your
creativity.
This is Chris McHale and I'mexcited to be back.
And when I jumped in with bothfeet on this podcast, I was
(01:52):
clueless.
I'm still clueless.
I just try to be as creativewith this podcast as I can.
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
I try to do something different.
You know just the way I am andwe have some fantastic lineups
coming, some guests from allcorners of the creative world
and I'm going to do a couple ofsolo shows and I'm going to do a
couple of shorter shows,because people have been saying
(02:13):
like oh man, chris, you're goingon, so okay, and we're going to
be asking our creative visitorswhat inspires them, how do they
work, what techniques drivestheir crafts, how does one carve
out a career in creativity inthe first place?
And is that important?
No, it's not important.
Actually, it's not important atall.
(02:34):
Today we have with us one of myfavorite guys to talk to,
christopher Ng, who is thefounder of the House of Elias, a
composer, an entrepreneur, andChris and his team of software
geniuses on the verge ofreleasing Elias 4.
If you know the video gameworld, you know the musical
(02:56):
platform Elias 4.
It's innovative, it's intuitive.
It actually has a lot ofapplications beyond video games.
We're going to get into that alittle bit and we're going to
dive deep into how it works, howChris works, and the creative
process behind his thinking.
You know the future of adaptivemusic, and if you don't know
(03:21):
what adaptive music is, well,look it up or just listen to
this podcast as we get into itwith Chris.
I started off by asking Chris,you know the question I love to
start with, which is you know,where did you go to begin?
(03:42):
Where did you begin findingyour way through the maze,
through the labyrinth?
How did you do it?
And here's Christopher with hisanswer.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Having been writing for a lot of theaters and things
like that, coming in directlyfrom the Royal College in
Stockholm.
After a couple of years I gotthis call from my friend that
said you really need to be apart of this awesome game, and
it really was awesome.
My role actually was to recordnew sounds that hasn't been
(04:14):
heard before, and also I sampledall the percussion in the Royal
Orchestra in Stockholm and Isampled everything I could find
and we used these soundstogether with a real live
symphonic orchestra and it wasreally, really, really cool to
(04:35):
be able to aim for whatever weneeded.
No, we didn't need soundlibraries and things like that.
We did everything from scratchand authentic and I started to
write down some ideas of my ownfor the new tech that would be
more suited for music and games,and I actually got a patent for
that in the US and I started acompany and after that I became
(04:58):
kind of.
I was the CEO of the companyand I worked with that for many
years like eight years or sowith only you know raising money
, go to different conferencesand try to make this work, and
the company actually got quite.
I think we were like 20employees or something like that
.
And but then you know the firstwe had the pandemic and then
(05:22):
the war in ukraine started.
Everything just collapsed.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That was actually the best thing that has ever
happened to me you created asoftware you know how would you
put it a software engine.
Yeah, that brought a moremusical experience to composing
for video games, so it soundedmore, more musical right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, to me the thing that I thought was lacking in
my first game project was peopletalked about adaptive things in
other games, but to me it wasnot really adaptive.
For me, true adaptive music iswhen it sounds linear, it sounds
written, it sounds like it'ssupposed to sound, and to be
able to do that you need tosolve a lot of things.
(06:06):
You need to make transitionssound right and also be able to
use motifs on top of the music,and you can't have it work with
just a stereo track.
You have to work with stems andthings like that.
So a lot of these things I putdown into Elias, Because even
today I get a little bitallergic when people only strive
(06:27):
for adaptive music.
You have this bubbling musichere and there and then some
drums comes in and it's notlinear.
It's not what we.
We have like a 3000 year oftradition, what music is.
So we have to keep that in mindwhen we talk about adaptive
music.
You can't do adaptive music tothe sake of really quality music
(06:47):
, game music.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It doesn't just accompany the story.
You know, it's not like a filmscore, it actually has to live
within the game.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes, so your, your challenge is to do that as a
composer to write music that isaccompanying the story but is
live today I'm working with thenew company called House of
Elias and we brought in the techagain and we're actually going
to release a new version of it,and it's also going to be for
(07:16):
everything that sounds in thegame, so sound effects and
everything.
But in this new company, myrole is actually to compose
music.
I, of course, use the tools andso on, but I'm back to being a
composer and that's theimportant thing in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If I gave you a film and said, chris, score this film
.
You would take a differentapproach, I think, than if
you're sitting down to composefor a video game.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So the biggest difference is composing music
for a game.
You're composing for a storythat isn't written yet.
You're're composing for a storythat isn't written yet.
You're actually composing for alot of things that could happen
, and that's number one.
And the easiest way to do thatwould be like doing a bunch of
music and you cross, phasebetween them and and you think
you're done.
But that is what's.
(07:59):
That's the kind of commonapproach to do that and it
doesn't really work.
We need to, as composers, weneed to realize the power we
have, even for a video game, andnot only just make music and
crossfade between them.
We need to know that if you'rereally detailed, as you are in a
movie, in a game, you can takethis game to a completely new
(08:20):
level.
You can make a small indie gamefeel triple A experience only
with really good music.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
You know you said something like you're composing
music for a story that hasn'tbeen written yet, which which is
true but that that is becomingan even more complex challenge
with the advent of AIstorytelling, which, you know,
some of the NPC in the games arenow going to be fully
(08:51):
participating.
I mean, how are you going totrack all that?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
You need at least to have ambition to try to do it.
As you say, it gets harder andharder the more intelligent the
game gets.
It would be the same thing ifan NPC gets sad the way a real
person would get sad.
So you could prepare for it.
You could prepare for a lot ofthings.
You can also use layering Ifit's complex.
(09:17):
Feelings you can have a littlebit of both feelings mixed
together and things like that.
You have to invent really goodsystems for it.
The way I do it, I'm actuallydoing a kind of a game like that
now.
I'm not trying to do it moretechnical, I'm just trying to
look back and see what tools wealready have.
So you could use music theory,like I'm doing, a foundation
(09:42):
that could be both sad and happy, okay, and because of the
layering on top, it will decidewhat it is Right.
So I have these kind of broadbrush strokes and then I can
have really sharp tools with,like the stingers and the motifs
and things like that.
I'm trying to preparedifferently in this game.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
That sounds like an insanely complex project.
That approach that will takeyou many, many hours to work
that out yeah, it depends.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
you could say like back in the day I was telling a
game studio, I looked at theirgame and in this game there were
like 12 different villages youcan enter and the approach was
to to score new music for everyvillage and to me me it was more
like it's better we do a reallycomplex village music that has
a lot of variations.
(10:36):
It will never sound the sameand then you put all the effort
on that and that will.
You can reuse it all over thegame.
So even if there's now we havefour new villages, well, use the
same music, because it's goingto sound different every time.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Okay.
So it's like you're putting,it's like you're doing a
powerful sonic montage technique, you know, and creating colors
that you can layer.
It's like you have a palette ofcolors and how you mix them
creates the effect.
What is your composing processfor video games, you know?
Because it sounds to me likeyou kind of take that approach
(11:12):
but then you've got to kind ofdeconstruct it in a certain way
to be able to reconstruct it.
Yeah, it's a little bit.
I mean, when I did it Takes Two.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
For instance, there were I don't know how, was it
like 200 cut scenes or somethinglike that, even more I think.
And then it becomes that's afilm score almost right, the cut
scene.
So I had a lot of these as well, and me and gustavo did the
music there, treated the musiclike in the cut scenes.
We can be really linear andreally make the music as it
(11:43):
should be, in lack of anotherword.
And then, when it comes to thegameplay, it's it's more
important that things arehappening because you're doing
something in the game.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
But what I'm looking for is, like you know, where is
the base inspiration, and how doyou build from that?
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, I've thought a lot about that.
My studio that I work in, Icollect synthesizers and
instruments and I have apercussion and I have everything
In my computer.
I have so many libraries and somany, and this is very common
these days because libraries arevery cheap nowadays, yeah, and
good, by the way, and good, yeah, good and cheap, yeah, and so
(12:23):
we get the new.
I think everyone experiencesthis problem is that you have
too many possibilities, so myinspiration comes from limiting
myself.
That's the first thing I do,and we have this limitation and
that, for me, always gives birthto inspiration.
Like there was one part in thistree that I really want a big
(12:45):
brass, but I couldn't because itwas the rule or else I couldn't
do it.
So I ended up dubbing, I think16 bassoons or something like
that to achieve the same thing,and I wouldn't do that if I
didn't have the limitations.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It feels like the top is blown off the video game
industry in terms of pushing theboundaries of sound, design and
music and how those worktogether, and it just feels like
the last five years have been areal revolution.
What have you heard that youthink is really pushing the
boundaries of sound, design andmusic and video games?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, a couple of games Sadly I don't have.
I'm not a gamer really Icouldn't say that today because
I have kids and everything.
But I try to play the games mykids play and sometimes I get
really happy.
Tears of the kingdom uh, Ithink they're.
(13:40):
I think the music is fantastic,uh, because and it's typical
nintendo, I think to find thebalance because it's so there's
so much air in that soundtrack,it's it's like and, but it works
so well when it ramps up andbecomes something more and so on
.
So I think that it's a reallygood adaptive score in in that
game.
And also, I just heard of areally funny game called
(14:04):
untitled goose game.
I'm not sure if you've seenthat.
It's just a goose and you'regonna do pranks on on people and
I don't know the name of thecomposer.
I should do.
But there's this piano piece,classical music, but it's really
connected to the game.
So it feels like playing pianoto a silent movie, that kind of
feel to the game.
(14:25):
It really feels you have apiano player next to you playing
it.
But I also like what's her?
She's called sarah sachman.
I thought she did the music forcall of duty 2, if I'm not
mistaken, and um, I was a judgein uh, listen to a lot of game
music and the first time I heardthis music it was like okay,
(14:47):
the same thing again, all overagain.
It's it's this kind of you know, bombastic war music for the
way it sounds in any game.
But then I stopped for a whileand I really listened to the
music and I realized what you'vedone with the music here.
It's it's like fantastic.
It's like like this genre.
I didn't think you could do it.
(15:08):
It's done.
How do you do it again?
But she managed to do it.
I haven't played the game somuch, I don't know the adaptive
level of it.
I was really amazed of how youcan reinvent a genre that you've
heard too many times.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Without joining the player.
You know, is the whole artistryof adaptive scoring.
You know, it's that balancebetween this cohesive musical
narrative and allowing playersto feel they're in control of
their journey.
I mean, to me it's really I cansee why it really seduces you
as a composer to kind of get inthere and figure these things
(15:46):
out.
And you said something inpassing which I think is one of
the keys to the whole thing isyou mentioned a score.
That was simple.
What I wanted to talk to youabout next was you've been in
this business long enough andyou have watched the evolution
of technology.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I started playing on a Commodore C64.
That was my childhood, actually, when I got older and learned a
little bit more of how they did, how they composed this music.
It's so fascinating when youhave, like in a C64, you have
three voices, so one voice hasto take care of like the bass
and the snare or something likethat, and the other has to be an
(16:27):
arpeggiator to even be able tomimic a chord and so on, and
they managed to do thisfantastic music.
Then we came into maybe Ishould say like PlayStation 1,
and everything died because youhad a CD for the first time in
the console, so you couldactually play real music, and
(16:48):
that was a cool new thing.
I can hear this is a realguitar, this is a real vocal,
and that was was a cool newthing.
You could I can hear this is areal guitar, this is a real
vocal, and so on.
But when I came in with myideas of adaptive music, that
was kind of dead back then, justeight, just 10 years ago, and
no one really talked about it.
It was still in this, you know,I I use london symphonic
orchestra game.
(17:08):
Wow, that was the thing.
But then, as you say today, Ithink everyone is talking about
adaptive music and theimportance of technology and so
on.
And when you're talking aboutimmersiveness, you can't only
say that well, I'm going to useLondon Symphonic Orchestra.
That's not enough.
You need to have more.
You need to be connected to theplayer, like at least come
(17:38):
close to how connected a filmscore is.
When I went at the royal college, we were at the film music
class and our teacher said I'mgoing to put on this, this uh
scene here from the friends,french lieutenant, something, um
, and you have jeremy irons, youhave Meryl Streep in a dialogue
, and then we're going to talkabout the music.
And we looked at this scene andhe turned it off.
And I was embarrassed because Icouldn't remember if there was
(18:03):
music in that scene.
And then he said, okay, anyone,the music.
And no one had anything to sayabout the music.
And then I said, ok, now youknow there's music, so let's
listen again.
And it was this like you havein the front, this oboe playing
every thought that MerylStreep's character had.
She couldn't talk, so the oboedid it for her.
(18:25):
It was so perfectly written sothat you don't think of it.
And that is the thing withscoring a film, you are actually
enhancing the story and that'sit.
The music is really doing itsjob.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I think Hans Zimmer said he looks on
composing as the underlying.
This is where you're supposedto start feeling yeah, yeah.
And he said his breakthroughwas when he realized he wasn't
writing music, he was scoringfeelings.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The knowledge we have 3,000 years of knowledge of how
to make music and how to createor wake feelings, and that's a
really powerful tool.
So we need to be proud of thatand talk to game studios and get
them to know the importance ofthat and the power of it.
That's the first challenge.
(19:14):
The second challenge is okay,now we need to enhance the
technology of this, because it'sall doable, but without already
made technology and we alwayshave to build it it becomes too
cost, it's not cost efficient.
So we need to bring in somestandards and there's a lot of
(19:36):
people out there trying to dothat, and that is a good thing.
But I think the first hurdle isto make the game studios know
what they are missing.
Because, if you think of it,what's been done now for many
years?
Which composer can do likereally bombastic things and make
this sound huge, this game?
Well, today there's just oneanswer and that is AI.
(19:58):
So we're not needed for that,so that you can do with AI
easily.
So why are we needed?
Well, we're needed to do notonly enhance the story in a
video game, but give the music astory Right.
It needs to be this is ChrisMcHale his music Right and I'm
(20:23):
going to use him on the nextproject because all his ideas
into this project were so greatand you know we need to enhance
ourselves and put us.
It can't be about, you know,libraries and making things huge
.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
That is not a composer's job oh, so talk to me
about the new.
What is it?
Elias four, or what do you callit?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
yeah, uh, last yeah 4.5, I think 4.5 and that's
coming out.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
When's that coming out?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
well, it's software, so I can't say yeah, right.
But the last thing I heard fromthe programmers were a Q1 next
year.
Okay, so it's coming out soon.
Yeah, so we are already usingit in a couple of game projects,
so it's already working.
But you know you have to polishfor the market and so on.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Can you take us through really quickly, I mean,
a couple of features that youthink are really going to
address some of what we've beendiscussing here.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, I think if you think of Elias 1-2-3, we're like
adaptive music in a certainstyle.
That's it, and that was like atool for people.
So for me to make a studio wantto use it, I first had to
explain to them that they wantto have adaptive music.
That's hard, of course.
So in this new version it'smore a complete solution with
(21:45):
audio and music, but with aNodeGraph system where you can
do whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So I think the first versions of this new version so
it will will be.
You can do whatever you want,but it's going to be a lot of
nodes, right, and then we'regoing to listen to to everyone
and see what our own needs arelike.
Okay, people are using like acar engine, like this all the
time.
Let's do a combined node forthat and so on, and it's also
(22:15):
going to be a really open systemso people can do their own
systems and so on.
That's a thing.
And when it comes to the musicpart, it's more like, if you
just open the new music part ofthis solution, you might think
that we left out a couple ofthings from the last one, two
and three, but we actuallydidn't.
We just moved it to the nodegraph.
(22:36):
Before it was, we had thispowerful tool that was called
action presets.
Using composer could, could,could, script a long chain of
events that will happen andcertainly like play these stems
on the on this level, at thesame time, play the stinger and
when that stinger is done, playthis and so on.
You can do like that.
So, as a composer, when youdeliver the music, you know how
(23:01):
it will sound in the game Withour new system, you can do even
more.
You could do like well, I'mgoing to connect this certain
aspect of the music to thehealth of the character of the
music, to the health of thecharacter, and I'm going to
connect this certain aspect ofthe music to the area or
whatever, or knowledge about thearea, or so, so you can get
(23:22):
even more granular.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
What advice would you give to aspiring composers and
sound designers anyone who wantsto break into this video game
industry?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, actually, I've changed my mind a little bit
about this the recent month,because of AI, actually.
So I learned that there are somany people out there and that's
a good thing that are using thetechnology today and creating
music, but that is not the sameas composing music.
(23:53):
They buy their chord packs andthey buy good libraries and they
, they put them together and itsounds great and then they get a
feel that they are a composer,and I'm not saying that is a bad
thing, but if you want to workas a composer, you can't do that
because it doesn't matter howgood you are, to just bring in
(24:14):
the right technology.
Ai will always be better and itwill be better and better and
better.
So don't do that.
Go the other direction.
That's my first thing to say.
Go back and see if you canlearn some music theory.
See if you can learn somesimple score, string arrangement
or whatever.
(24:34):
Learn things and combine thatto your passion.
I'm sure, let's say there's a Idon't know, there's a ukulele
player listening to this and theonly thing you can do is play
really good ukulele.
But yeah, use that, that's youredge and use the rest of your
(24:55):
time to learn the craft andlearn the skills.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You want a music career, you want a professional
music career, you need about 10years of music study.
You know, you got to pick yourinstrument your guitar, your
piano and you got to sit downand you got to try to master it,
because mastering that toolwill open up doors for you.
And it's just nothing.
There's nothing, even close inthe technology, to an artist
(25:19):
actually putting their hands onsomething yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And also talking about that, if I'm sure you have
the same experience that I have, like, if I listen to something
I did 20 years ago, it willstill sound good today if I use
real instrument.
What you just said.
It's so powerful to have yourreal instrument playing that
(25:43):
because it will sound as good in2000 years.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
All right, Christopher, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming onCreativity to Gigi and talking
to us about video games andmusic and all that kind of stuff
.
Thank you so much for having meand we'll talk again soon, okay,
yeah, all right, man, take care.
Christopher eng, talking to usfrom sweden, one of the more
(26:11):
interesting thinkers I've met inthe last 10 years while I was
wandering through the world ofvideo games Sort of never really
quite connecting, but learninga lot as I did that At core.
I think Chris is a composer.
(26:31):
I met him when he was a CEO andhe had lots of staff and fancy
ideas, but you know he reallyjust wanted to write music.
I get it because I startedStudio 2GG to get back to
writing music too.
So I understand where Chris iscoming from.
He's a musical composer, slashtechnologist, you know, and that
(26:57):
fusion of art and innovationhas led him to some really
groundbreaking production toolsand to push the boundaries of
adaptive music and just to writesome good music.
But I think he's a guy who justreally wants to pick up his
guitar, pick up his bass, youknow, get his hands on a
keyboard and just compose.
I mean, I know already that guyjust shuts the door, says leave
(27:21):
me alone and I am working.
I always love talking to himand I hope you enjoyed this
conversation.
I hope you learned something.
This has been Creativity to Gigi.
Visit us at studiotogigiio andsubscribe to this podcast and
maybe join on the website.
(27:41):
It doesn't cost anything, butit keeps us in touch.
Share, you know, help us out.
Okay, we've got some goodthings coming up.
Stay tuned for more inspiringconversations about the creative
life, and I will see you nexttime on Creativity to Gigi.
Hey, welcome to Season 2 of Creativity's Jijiji.
And the world has flipped sinceI did Season 1.
Since I ended Season 1, it's anew year and it's a flipped-out
world.
I mean it's crazy, right?
(00:23):
I mean the crazies have takencontrol of the world.
I mean it's it's crazy, right?
I mean the crazies have takencontrol of the world.
What do you do?
What do I do?
I write and I compose music andI produce and I paint and I
cook and I do anything I canthink to do to express my
(00:45):
creativity and to push back onthe motherfuckers that are
messing with us.
You know these guys aren'tgoing to be around long.
That's just the way it works.
You know politicians, they comeand they go, right.
Who is the mayor of Vienna whenthey dumped the pauper in the
(01:07):
grave?
Right?
You know who I'm talking aboutMozart.
You know Mozart.
Who's the mayor?
Who's the mayor?
Who's the president?
Who's the king of the world?
Nobody knows, but everybodyknows the pauper, the composer,
the brilliant, shining light.
That's who I follow.
(01:29):
The artists, they are ourleaders, they are the soulful
ones, not these motherfuckerspointing fingers and blaming
everybody, saying fuck you, fuckthis, forget it, dig into your
creativity.
This is Chris McHale and I'mexcited to be back.
And when I jumped in with bothfeet on this podcast, I was
(01:52):
clueless.
I'm still clueless.
I just try to be as creativewith this podcast as I can.
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
I try to do something different.
You know just the way I am andwe have some fantastic lineups
coming, some guests from allcorners of the creative world
and I'm going to do a couple ofsolo shows and I'm going to do a
couple of shorter shows,because people have been saying
(02:13):
like oh man, chris, you're goingon, so okay, and we're going to
be asking our creative visitorswhat inspires them, how do they
work, what techniques drivestheir crafts, how does one carve
out a career in creativity inthe first place?
And is that important?
No, it's not important.
Actually, it's not important atall.
(02:34):
Today we have with us one of myfavorite guys to talk to,
christopher Ng, who is thefounder of the House of Elias, a
composer, an entrepreneur, andChris and his team of software
geniuses on the verge ofreleasing Elias 4.
If you know the video gameworld, you know the musical
(02:56):
platform Elias 4.
It's innovative, it's intuitive.
It actually has a lot ofapplications beyond video games.
We're going to get into that alittle bit and we're going to
dive deep into how it works, howChris works, and the creative
process behind his thinking.
You know the future of adaptivemusic, and if you don't know
(03:21):
what adaptive music is, well,look it up or just listen to
this podcast as we get into itwith Chris.
I started off by asking Chris,you know the question I love to
start with, which is you know,where did you go to begin?
(03:42):
Where did you begin findingyour way through the maze,
through the labyrinth?
How did you do it?
And here's Christopher with hisanswer.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Having been writing for a lot of theaters and things
like that, coming in directlyfrom the Royal College in
Stockholm.
After a couple of years I gotthis call from my friend that
said you really need to be apart of this awesome game, and
it really was awesome.
My role actually was to recordnew sounds that hasn't been
(04:14):
heard before, and also I sampledall the percussion in the Royal
Orchestra in Stockholm and Isampled everything I could find
and we used these soundstogether with a real live
symphonic orchestra and it wasreally, really, really cool to
(04:35):
be able to aim for whatever weneeded.
No, we didn't need soundlibraries and things like that.
We did everything from scratchand authentic and I started to
write down some ideas of my ownfor the new tech that would be
more suited for music and games,and I actually got a patent for
that in the US and I started acompany and after that I became
(04:58):
kind of.
I was the CEO of the companyand I worked with that for many
years like eight years or sowith only you know raising money
, go to different conferencesand try to make this work, and
the company actually got quite.
I think we were like 20employees or something like that
.
And but then you know the firstwe had the pandemic and then
(05:22):
the war in ukraine started.
Everything just collapsed.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That was actually the best thing that has ever
happened to me you created asoftware you know how would you
put it a software engine.
Yeah, that brought a moremusical experience to composing
for video games, so it soundedmore, more musical right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, to me the thing that I thought was lacking in
my first game project was peopletalked about adaptive things in
other games, but to me it wasnot really adaptive.
For me, true adaptive music iswhen it sounds linear, it sounds
written, it sounds like it'ssupposed to sound, and to be
able to do that you need tosolve a lot of things.
(06:06):
You need to make transitionssound right and also be able to
use motifs on top of the music,and you can't have it work with
just a stereo track.
You have to work with stems andthings like that.
So a lot of these things I putdown into Elias, Because even
today I get a little bitallergic when people only strive
(06:27):
for adaptive music.
You have this bubbling musichere and there and then some
drums comes in and it's notlinear.
It's not what we.
We have like a 3000 year oftradition, what music is.
So we have to keep that in mindwhen we talk about adaptive
music.
You can't do adaptive music tothe sake of really quality music
(06:47):
, game music.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It doesn't just accompany the story.
You know, it's not like a filmscore, it actually has to live
within the game.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes, so your, your challenge is to do that as a
composer to write music that isaccompanying the story but is
live today I'm working with thenew company called House of
Elias and we brought in the techagain and we're actually going
to release a new version of it,and it's also going to be for
(07:16):
everything that sounds in thegame, so sound effects and
everything.
But in this new company, myrole is actually to compose
music.
I, of course, use the tools andso on, but I'm back to being a
composer and that's theimportant thing in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If I gave you a film and said, chris, score this film
.
You would take a differentapproach, I think, than if
you're sitting down to composefor a video game.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So the biggest difference is composing music
for a game.
You're composing for a storythat isn't written yet.
You're're composing for a storythat isn't written yet.
You're actually composing for alot of things that could happen
, and that's number one.
And the easiest way to do thatwould be like doing a bunch of
music and you cross, phasebetween them and and you think
you're done.
But that is what's.
(07:59):
That's the kind of commonapproach to do that and it
doesn't really work.
We need to, as composers, weneed to realize the power we
have, even for a video game, andnot only just make music and
crossfade between them.
We need to know that if you'rereally detailed, as you are in a
movie, in a game, you can takethis game to a completely new
(08:20):
level.
You can make a small indie gamefeel triple A experience only
with really good music.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
You know you said something like you're composing
music for a story that hasn'tbeen written yet, which which is
true but that that is becomingan even more complex challenge
with the advent of AIstorytelling, which, you know,
some of the NPC in the games arenow going to be fully
(08:51):
participating.
I mean, how are you going totrack all that?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
You need at least to have ambition to try to do it.
As you say, it gets harder andharder the more intelligent the
game gets.
It would be the same thing ifan NPC gets sad the way a real
person would get sad.
So you could prepare for it.
You could prepare for a lot ofthings.
You can also use layering Ifit's complex.
(09:17):
Feelings you can have a littlebit of both feelings mixed
together and things like that.
You have to invent really goodsystems for it.
The way I do it, I'm actuallydoing a kind of a game like that
now.
I'm not trying to do it moretechnical, I'm just trying to
look back and see what tools wealready have.
So you could use music theory,like I'm doing, a foundation
(09:42):
that could be both sad and happy, okay, and because of the
layering on top, it will decidewhat it is Right.
So I have these kind of broadbrush strokes and then I can
have really sharp tools with,like the stingers and the motifs
and things like that.
I'm trying to preparedifferently in this game.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
That sounds like an insanely complex project.
That approach that will takeyou many, many hours to work
that out yeah, it depends.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
you could say like back in the day I was telling a
game studio, I looked at theirgame and in this game there were
like 12 different villages youcan enter and the approach was
to to score new music for everyvillage and to me me it was more
like it's better we do a reallycomplex village music that has
a lot of variations.
(10:36):
It will never sound the sameand then you put all the effort
on that and that will.
You can reuse it all over thegame.
So even if there's now we havefour new villages, well, use the
same music, because it's goingto sound different every time.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Okay.
So it's like you're putting,it's like you're doing a
powerful sonic montage technique, you know, and creating colors
that you can layer.
It's like you have a palette ofcolors and how you mix them
creates the effect.
What is your composing processfor video games, you know?
Because it sounds to me likeyou kind of take that approach
(11:12):
but then you've got to kind ofdeconstruct it in a certain way
to be able to reconstruct it.
Yeah, it's a little bit.
I mean, when I did it Takes Two.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
For instance, there were I don't know how, was it
like 200 cut scenes or somethinglike that, even more I think.
And then it becomes that's afilm score almost right, the cut
scene.
So I had a lot of these as well, and me and gustavo did the
music there, treated the musiclike in the cut scenes.
We can be really linear andreally make the music as it
(11:43):
should be, in lack of anotherword.
And then, when it comes to thegameplay, it's it's more
important that things arehappening because you're doing
something in the game.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
But what I'm looking for is, like you know, where is
the base inspiration, and how doyou build from that?
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, I've thought a lot about that.
My studio that I work in, Icollect synthesizers and
instruments and I have apercussion and I have everything
In my computer.
I have so many libraries and somany, and this is very common
these days because libraries arevery cheap nowadays, yeah, and
good, by the way, and good, yeah, good and cheap, yeah, and so
(12:23):
we get the new.
I think everyone experiencesthis problem is that you have
too many possibilities, so myinspiration comes from limiting
myself.
That's the first thing I do,and we have this limitation and
that, for me, always gives birthto inspiration.
Like there was one part in thistree that I really want a big
(12:45):
brass, but I couldn't because itwas the rule or else I couldn't
do it.
So I ended up dubbing, I think16 bassoons or something like
that to achieve the same thing,and I wouldn't do that if I
didn't have the limitations.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It feels like the top is blown off the video game
industry in terms of pushing theboundaries of sound, design and
music and how those worktogether, and it just feels like
the last five years have been areal revolution.
What have you heard that youthink is really pushing the
boundaries of sound, design andmusic and video games?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, a couple of games Sadly I don't have.
I'm not a gamer really Icouldn't say that today because
I have kids and everything.
But I try to play the games mykids play and sometimes I get
really happy.
Tears of the kingdom uh, Ithink they're.
(13:40):
I think the music is fantastic,uh, because and it's typical
nintendo, I think to find thebalance because it's so there's
so much air in that soundtrack,it's it's like and, but it works
so well when it ramps up andbecomes something more and so on
.
So I think that it's a reallygood adaptive score in in that
game.
And also, I just heard of areally funny game called
(14:04):
untitled goose game.
I'm not sure if you've seenthat.
It's just a goose and you'regonna do pranks on on people and
I don't know the name of thecomposer.
I should do.
But there's this piano piece,classical music, but it's really
connected to the game.
So it feels like playing pianoto a silent movie, that kind of
feel to the game.
(14:25):
It really feels you have apiano player next to you playing
it.
But I also like what's her?
She's called sarah sachman.
I thought she did the music forcall of duty 2, if I'm not
mistaken, and um, I was a judgein uh, listen to a lot of game
music and the first time I heardthis music it was like okay,
(14:47):
the same thing again, all overagain.
It's it's this kind of you know, bombastic war music for the
way it sounds in any game.
But then I stopped for a whileand I really listened to the
music and I realized what you'vedone with the music here.
It's it's like fantastic.
It's like like this genre.
I didn't think you could do it.
(15:08):
It's done.
How do you do it again?
But she managed to do it.
I haven't played the game somuch, I don't know the adaptive
level of it.
I was really amazed of how youcan reinvent a genre that you've
heard too many times.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Without joining the player.
You know, is the whole artistryof adaptive scoring.
You know, it's that balancebetween this cohesive musical
narrative and allowing playersto feel they're in control of
their journey.
I mean, to me it's really I cansee why it really seduces you
as a composer to kind of get inthere and figure these things
(15:46):
out.
And you said something inpassing which I think is one of
the keys to the whole thing isyou mentioned a score.
That was simple.
What I wanted to talk to youabout next was you've been in
this business long enough andyou have watched the evolution
of technology.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I started playing on a Commodore C64.
That was my childhood, actually, when I got older and learned a
little bit more of how they did, how they composed this music.
It's so fascinating when youhave, like in a C64, you have
three voices, so one voice hasto take care of like the bass
and the snare or something likethat, and the other has to be an
(16:27):
arpeggiator to even be able tomimic a chord and so on, and
they managed to do thisfantastic music.
Then we came into maybe Ishould say like PlayStation 1,
and everything died because youhad a CD for the first time in
the console, so you couldactually play real music, and
(16:48):
that was a cool new thing.
I can hear this is a realguitar, this is a real vocal,
and that was was a cool newthing.
You could I can hear this is areal guitar, this is a real
vocal, and so on.
But when I came in with myideas of adaptive music, that
was kind of dead back then, justeight, just 10 years ago, and
no one really talked about it.
It was still in this, you know,I I use london symphonic
orchestra game.
(17:08):
Wow, that was the thing.
But then, as you say today, Ithink everyone is talking about
adaptive music and theimportance of technology and so
on.
And when you're talking aboutimmersiveness, you can't only
say that well, I'm going to useLondon Symphonic Orchestra.
That's not enough.
You need to have more.
You need to be connected to theplayer, like at least come
(17:38):
close to how connected a filmscore is.
When I went at the royal college, we were at the film music
class and our teacher said I'mgoing to put on this, this uh
scene here from the friends,french lieutenant, something, um
, and you have jeremy irons, youhave Meryl Streep in a dialogue
, and then we're going to talkabout the music.
And we looked at this scene andhe turned it off.
And I was embarrassed because Icouldn't remember if there was
(18:03):
music in that scene.
And then he said, okay, anyone,the music.
And no one had anything to sayabout the music.
And then I said, ok, now youknow there's music, so let's
listen again.
And it was this like you havein the front, this oboe playing
every thought that MerylStreep's character had.
She couldn't talk, so the oboedid it for her.
(18:25):
It was so perfectly written sothat you don't think of it.
And that is the thing withscoring a film, you are actually
enhancing the story and that'sit.
The music is really doing itsjob.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I think Hans Zimmer said he looks on
composing as the underlying.
This is where you're supposedto start feeling yeah, yeah.
And he said his breakthroughwas when he realized he wasn't
writing music, he was scoringfeelings.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The knowledge we have 3,000 years of knowledge of how
to make music and how to createor wake feelings, and that's a
really powerful tool.
So we need to be proud of thatand talk to game studios and get
them to know the importance ofthat and the power of it.
That's the first challenge.
(19:14):
The second challenge is okay,now we need to enhance the
technology of this, because it'sall doable, but without already
made technology and we alwayshave to build it it becomes too
cost, it's not cost efficient.
So we need to bring in somestandards and there's a lot of
(19:36):
people out there trying to dothat, and that is a good thing.
But I think the first hurdle isto make the game studios know
what they are missing.
Because, if you think of it,what's been done now for many
years?
Which composer can do likereally bombastic things and make
this sound huge, this game?
Well, today there's just oneanswer and that is AI.
(19:58):
So we're not needed for that,so that you can do with AI
easily.
So why are we needed?
Well, we're needed to do notonly enhance the story in a
video game, but give the music astory Right.
It needs to be this is ChrisMcHale his music Right and I'm
(20:23):
going to use him on the nextproject because all his ideas
into this project were so greatand you know we need to enhance
ourselves and put us.
It can't be about, you know,libraries and making things huge
.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
That is not a composer's job oh, so talk to me
about the new.
What is it?
Elias four, or what do you callit?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
yeah, uh, last yeah 4.5, I think 4.5 and that's
coming out.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
When's that coming out?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
well, it's software, so I can't say yeah, right.
But the last thing I heard fromthe programmers were a Q1 next
year.
Okay, so it's coming out soon.
Yeah, so we are already usingit in a couple of game projects,
so it's already working.
But you know you have to polishfor the market and so on.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Can you take us through really quickly, I mean,
a couple of features that youthink are really going to
address some of what we've beendiscussing here.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, I think if you think of Elias 1-2-3, we're like
adaptive music in a certainstyle.
That's it, and that was like atool for people.
So for me to make a studio wantto use it, I first had to
explain to them that they wantto have adaptive music.
That's hard, of course.
So in this new version it'smore a complete solution with
(21:45):
audio and music, but with aNodeGraph system where you can
do whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So I think the first versions of this new version so
it will will be.
You can do whatever you want,but it's going to be a lot of
nodes, right, and then we'regoing to listen to to everyone
and see what our own needs arelike.
Okay, people are using like acar engine, like this all the
time.
Let's do a combined node forthat and so on, and it's also
(22:15):
going to be a really open systemso people can do their own
systems and so on.
That's a thing.
And when it comes to the musicpart, it's more like, if you
just open the new music part ofthis solution, you might think
that we left out a couple ofthings from the last one, two
and three, but we actuallydidn't.
We just moved it to the nodegraph.
(22:36):
Before it was, we had thispowerful tool that was called
action presets.
Using composer could, could,could, script a long chain of
events that will happen andcertainly like play these stems
on the on this level, at thesame time, play the stinger and
when that stinger is done, playthis and so on.
You can do like that.
So, as a composer, when youdeliver the music, you know how
(23:01):
it will sound in the game Withour new system, you can do even
more.
You could do like well, I'mgoing to connect this certain
aspect of the music to thehealth of the character of the
music, to the health of thecharacter, and I'm going to
connect this certain aspect ofthe music to the area or
whatever, or knowledge about thearea, or so, so you can get
(23:22):
even more granular.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
What advice would you give to aspiring composers and
sound designers anyone who wantsto break into this video game
industry?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, actually, I've changed my mind a little bit
about this the recent month,because of AI, actually.
So I learned that there are somany people out there and that's
a good thing that are using thetechnology today and creating
music, but that is not the sameas composing music.
(23:53):
They buy their chord packs andthey buy good libraries and they
, they put them together and itsounds great and then they get a
feel that they are a composer,and I'm not saying that is a bad
thing, but if you want to workas a composer, you can't do that
because it doesn't matter howgood you are, to just bring in
(24:14):
the right technology.
Ai will always be better and itwill be better and better and
better.
So don't do that.
Go the other direction.
That's my first thing to say.
Go back and see if you canlearn some music theory.
See if you can learn somesimple score, string arrangement
or whatever.
(24:34):
Learn things and combine thatto your passion.
I'm sure, let's say there's a Idon't know, there's a ukulele
player listening to this and theonly thing you can do is play
really good ukulele.
But yeah, use that, that's youredge and use the rest of your
(24:55):
time to learn the craft andlearn the skills.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You want a music career, you want a professional
music career, you need about 10years of music study.
You know, you got to pick yourinstrument your guitar, your
piano and you got to sit downand you got to try to master it,
because mastering that toolwill open up doors for you.
And it's just nothing.
There's nothing, even close inthe technology, to an artist
(25:19):
actually putting their hands onsomething yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And also talking about that, if I'm sure you have
the same experience that I have, like, if I listen to something
I did 20 years ago, it willstill sound good today if I use
real instrument.
What you just said.
It's so powerful to have yourreal instrument playing that
(25:43):
because it will sound as good in2000 years.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
All right, Christopher, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming onCreativity to Gigi and talking
to us about video games andmusic and all that kind of stuff
.
Thank you so much for having meand we'll talk again soon, okay,
yeah, all right, man, take care.
Christopher eng, talking to usfrom sweden, one of the more
(26:11):
interesting thinkers I've met inthe last 10 years while I was
wandering through the world ofvideo games Sort of never really
quite connecting, but learninga lot as I did that At core.
I think Chris is a composer.
(26:31):
I met him when he was a CEO andhe had lots of staff and fancy
ideas, but you know he reallyjust wanted to write music.
I get it because I startedStudio 2GG to get back to
writing music too.
So I understand where Chris iscoming from.
He's a musical composer, slashtechnologist, you know, and that
(26:57):
fusion of art and innovationhas led him to some really
groundbreaking production toolsand to push the boundaries of
adaptive music and just to writesome good music.
But I think he's a guy who justreally wants to pick up his
guitar, pick up his bass, youknow, get his hands on a
keyboard and just compose.
I mean, I know already that guyjust shuts the door, says leave
(27:21):
me alone and I am working.
I always love talking to himand I hope you enjoyed this
conversation.
I hope you learned something.
This has been Creativity to Gigi.
Visit us at studiotogigiio andsubscribe to this podcast and
maybe join on the website.
(27:41):
It doesn't cost anything, butit keeps us in touch.
Share, you know, help us out.
Okay, we've got some goodthings coming up.
Stay tuned for more inspiringconversations about the creative
life, and I will see you nexttime on Creativity to Gigi.
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