Marius Masalar talks with composer Lorne Balfe about two of his latest projects: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Skylander: Spyros. Balfe also reveals how he got into video game music, the challenges of writing music for popular sequels and what he considers his dream project.
 

CORRECTION: Lorne Balfe composed the exhibition trailer for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which was the third game of the series, not the second as he inadvertently stated.
 
Episode Highlights
 
02:06 — How did you transition from film to video games?
06:27 — How did you come to work on SKYLANDERS
13:13 — Did you feel that you had to be dutiful to the original Spyro?
15:25 — WHYBLT? – Hugo, Twilight for Chamber Orchestra
17:22 — Assassins Creed: Revelations – How did you work with composer Jesper Kyd?
24:14 — What were some of the musical highlights for you from AC: Revelation
27:00 — What sort of reactions have you gotten to your music for AC: Revelation
28:51 — The next Assassins Creed, Sherlock Holmes, Anthems, and Bat Man
33:01 — What is your ideal project?
36:02 — The Ron Howard/ Canon Project
40:10 — Taste, subjectivity, and style

Cliff had just come back from an early morning screening and mentioned he was running on a few hours of sleep as his duties as a Jury Member of Sundance were starting to take its toll on Day 6 of the festival, however Cliff was pleased to sit down with me for this interview.
 
We discussed his work on DRIVE, CONTAGION, his working relationships with his directors and his experience as a Jury member at Sundance 2012.

I recently found an old folder full of puzzles that I had cut out of the newspaper years ago and never got around to solving. As I started tackling them, one at a time, it occurred to me that here was an opportunity to objectively examine, and dabble with, my creative/problem-solving process, removed from my usual worlds of music and journalism, and see what I could learn about my creative processes. Your mileage may vary.

Read the full piece here.

You know that feeling you get when you listen to a favorite part of a favorite song? Some scientists have a refreshingly unscientific word for it: They call it the “chills.” In the lab they can measure the chills, which correspond with a specific pattern of brain arousal and often are accompanied by increases in heart and breathing rates and other physical responses.

Now neurologists report that this human response to music — which has existed for thousands of years, across cultures around the world — involves dopamine, the same chemical in the brain that is associated with the intense pleasure people get from more tangible rewards such as food or addictive drugs. The research will be published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Read the full piece here.

In this SoundWorks Collection exclusive we talk with Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Sound Re-recording Mixer Michael Semanick, and Re-recording Mixer, Sound Designer, and Supervising Sound Editor Ren Klyce.
 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a 2011 English-language drama/thriller film. It is the second film to be adapted from the Swedish novel of the same name by Stieg Larsson. The first was a 2009 Swedish-language/English dubbed film. The 2011 film was written by Steven Zaillian and directed by David Fincher. Daniel Craig stars as Mikael Blomkvist, and Rooney Mara stars as Lisbeth Salander. In essence, the film follows a man’s mission to find out what has happened to a girl who has been missing for 36 years, and may have been murdered.

Mr. Spielberg credits the composer for making him “a better director than I could have ever been without him.” Recalling the blockbuster that made them both household names, he describes the “esoteric” placeholder music he’d selected as a model for the “Jaws” score—and how Mr. Williams forced him to reconsider.
 
“He said, “Steven, it’s not an intellectual film. It’s a pirate movie,” the director says, adding, “John is like a great writer. He rewrites me musically every single time.”
After the success of “Jaws,” Mr. Spielberg nicknamed Mr. Williams “Max,” after Max Steiner, who wrote the first memorable original feature film score (for “King Kong”) and helped establish the orchestral language of the movies.

 
Read the full feature on John Williams here.
 
(via @YvetteJJackson)

Check out Miguel’s interview here.

The soundtrack of Limbo says a lot about the game, which in turn says a lot about our culture.Video games are rarely the object of analysis for sound culture studies, this is fairly counterintuitive considering both their social impact and technological nature.

Should sound studies take a closer look at video games – where would it start?

Read Aarons full post here.