“Alice,” “Area 51” and “Tabula Rasa” composer Chris Vrenna speaks to GZ about his upcoming projects

by Louis Bedigian

 

When it comes to immersive game music, Chris Vrenna is the man.  GameZone talks with the man behind many stellar game soundtracks, including American McGee’s Alice. 

 

Doom 3.  Area 51.  The Sims 2.  Tabula Rasa.  American McGee’s Alice.  These five games are about as varied as you can get, but they have one thing in common: they all feature the music of Chris Vrenna.

 

As the drummer and one of the founding members of Nine Inch Nails, Chris Vrenna has been a part of some of the most memorable rock albums on the planet.

 

When he left NIN to work on his solo material, Chris looked back on one of his earlier creations: the music of Quake.  He realized that music – whether with a band or in a video game – is all that he wanted to do.  And what many who join the gaming industry have realized, once you get bit by the virtual bug you never, ever go back.

 

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of video game music, but being a big fan of Nine Inch Nails and Chris Vrenna’s previous compositions made it impossible to resist an interview with man known as “Tweaker.” 

 

 

Could you start by telling us what your current and upcoming projects are?

 

Chris Vrenna: There's two going on.  I'm doing music for Area 51 for Midway.  It's a PS2 game, which is a console adaptation of the coin-op as a first-person shooter.  And the other is Tabula Rasa, which is a massively multiplayer online game for PC.

 

Upcoming...there's nothing currently that I'm looking at.  My new solo record, Tweaker, comes out April 20th.

 

What about Doom 3?

 

CV: I did work for that, which I kind of call musically-oriented sound design.  I made a bunch of stuff for those guys, but my participation in that is done.  I think that game is coming out pretty soon.  I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for pre-orders at Best Buy.  I was like, "Wow, that's gettin' close."

 

Do you play games?

 

CV: Yeah.

 

Which ones do you play?

 

CV: I'm mostly a console fan.  With music I'm at my computer all day, everyday, so when I'm not doing that I usually like to be out in the TV room.  What have I been playing lately...I haven't been playing a whole lot 'cause I've been so busy.  But we did take some time for that new NFL game, NFL Street.

 

What else...uhh...Silent Hill.  I love horror stuff.

 

Which one?

 

CV: The new one.  What is it, [part] 3?

 

Yeah.  Silent Hill 4 is coming out this year though.

 

CV: I saw a preview of it and thought, "Wow, that's fast!"

 

Regarding your music, you seem to go for a heavier sound a lot of the time – is that your preferred style?

 

CV: Not specifically, it's kind of like whatever I think suits the game.  The games I like, first-person shooters, I like feeling like I'm the one in the action, rather than controlling a character gets the action.  And I provide my own tastes, I like sci-fi and I like horror.  I like stuff with a little bit of a dark edge on it.  Things like that.  So those kind of happened to be the games that I get to actually write music for.  There everything comes in creepy or heavy or dark.  So I guess I do like that then don't I?  (Laughs.)

 

Chris says that Doom III is "one of the coolest games I've seen."

 

 

What was the first video game that you worked on?

 

CV: Quake, back when I was still with Nine Inch Nails.  We were in the middle of a tour (I think it was the Bowie tour).  We had met the id guys, and I did that kind of ambience and sound designing.  And then I left the band and didn't really work on anything for a while, just producing and remixing other bands.  Then I got a random phone call from American McGee.  He had left id, he was at id when we were working on Quake.  And he had since left id, I had since left Nails, and we had both ended up in Los Angeles.

 

He was working on his game, which was American McGee's Alice, and asked if I wanted to come up and take a look at the game and maybe do the music for it.  I went and looked at it and I loved every single thing about it, so we worked together on that.

 

More and more I'm leading away from rock production and music-industry things and concentrating more and more on game music.

 

How many games do you think you could take on at a time?

 

CV: Not too many.  It depends on how much is involved with each game.  I do pretty much everything myself.  I have a partner and that helps me out quite a bit, but I'm not one of those music houses with scads of people.  I put my real heart and effort into something that I'm taking on.  I take on stuff because I really like the game and the project and the people.

 

Tell us about Area 51.  Is there a particular style of music that you chose to use with this game, which is primarily about aliens?  Or was the music based on what the developers requested of you?

 

CV: It's a bit of both.  First, we're doing an interactive music thing with this game.  Depending on fight-related things and particular things you do in each level, it will change the music.  So it'll be a different kind of music experience for each person who plays.

 

Most music is electronic ambience, or for big combat things there is a heavier music -- rock and electronic, stuff like that.  The whole thing has an electronic overtone.  No orchestra, no strings.  They tried that for a little while, and everybody really just liked the otherworldly stuff better, thought it was way more alien.

 

They [game developers] come to people like me because I do specific things, and that's obviously what they want.  We sit and we talk and we discuss things of that nature.  And then I usually go home and just start writing with nothing really in mind except for a tech level, or a concept drawing if they don't even have a level built yet, things like that.

 

You can say one thing, but I found in every game a song that once you start hearing it put out, it doesn't sound in the real world like everybody was hearing it in their head.  There's always a period of, "Hmmm, we thought that would be cool, but maybe not, that doesn't really...okay, let's try this."  So you go through a bunch of processes like that to try and nail down what everybody is hearing.

 

 

American McGee’s Alice

 

 

How do you feel about the idea of interactive music?

 

CV: I think it's a great idea.  Both games I'm working on now are both going to be interactive music-based.  I think it's still pretty early in the technology, so these two games are attempting to do it completely different.  But I think as it's developed and you figure out cool things to do within that context it'll be awesome, 'cause it'll be just one more level that the player gets to control.  Not just the game and the characters, but everything in the game.

 

Nothing is worse for someone doing music for games than when a player boots up the game and goes to the options screen and goes, "Sound effects: full blast!  Music: off."  That's the worst thing that could ever happen to you.

 

Doing all the interactive stuff, I think it's cool.  Maybe the people who don't really care about music in a game will now start caring about it.

 

Do you like the idea of using music as a sound effect?  (Example: Link's sword attack in The Wind Waker.)

 

CV: Totally.  I love when music gets put into a game [as a sound effect].  This isn't a great example, but in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, you have to learn songs on [the Ocarina].  You'd learn these songs that you can play notes on your controller, and you'd have to know, "Hey, maybe I can do the song that makes him go to sleep."  I like that stuff a lot.

 

I've never done anything that cheesy, but I think it's kind of fun when [songs] become puzzles or parts of the game, little things like that.  Have you played Amplitude?

 

Yes.

 

CV: Those are actual loops of rock bands.  I love that game, too.  I like when music gets incorporated in new ways.

 

Generally speaking, music has always been the afterthought.  After you get your game and your graphics and everything else, it's like, "Oh yeah I guess we need some music."

 

Have you thought about working on a music-specific game like Amplitude?

 

CV: No, I haven't, but that's a great idea.  I wonder what kind it would be.  Everything I've seen so far, like all those ones at the arcade, a drum one or a guitar one.  And a keyboard one.  Basically it's like Amplitude where you hit a certain key or button on the guitar and it lights up, and if you do it perfectly, you make a song.  Like those dancing games.  It's really just a big arcade version of Amplitude.  It'd be cooler to come up with different ways than that.

 

You should try.  That would be incredible!

 

CV: Yeah, that would be kind of fun actually.  I have no idea how I'd do it though (laughs).  That's a good idea though.  (Pauses.)  I'll have to think about that...

 

What is your ideal environment for composing music?  Where do you usually write most of your songs?

 

CV: It's all at home in my own studio.  I do all of my work there.  It's always kind of worked that way.  When I first left Nails and came out to LA, I had a two-bedroom apartment.  I made one of the bedrooms into a small little place [for recording].  Now it's two bedrooms, two big bedrooms have been converted over.  It's so much easier [to do everything at home].

 

Which song or songs that you've written are you most proud of?

 

CV: The thing I'm most proud of is the new Tweaker record.  I think it's the best writing I've ever done.  It's really solid, and it's really, really cool.

 

Tell us about your days with Nine Inch Nails.

 

CV: Long time ago now.  It was pretty darn cool.  We got to a lot of really special stuff, [like] the first Woodstock reunion.  You know, just getting to tour with people like David Bowie, and going out at Madison Square Garden two nights in a row.  The things that the kids wanting to be a musician actually dream about, you actually feel a lot of it come true for yourself.  It's pretty exciting, pretty special.  Plus it was just really cool.

 

All things considered I'm glad not there anymore.  I've gotten a lot older and have moved on to different avenues in my life.  But there was no better way to spend my 20s.

 

More of the lovely Doom III.

 

 

Have you ever looked back on a Nine Inch Nails song and thought, "This would work great in a game"?

 

CV: (Laughs.)  Probably a lot of the Nails stuff.  I did not work on The Fragile, the last record, but you know some of the ambient stuff in there would be pretty good.  There's some songs, like the instrumental interludes on “Broken” are actually very Quake-esque, 'cause we did Quake right around that same time.  There's stuff on “The Downward Spiral” that would work really well.

 

Nails was kind of a sound-designed, influenced way of making music.  That's something I still do now, and that's something I do most often with games.

 

What is the most crucial part of writing a song?  What is the one thing that impacts its success or failure the most?

 

CV: I think it would be the emotional message you're trying to convey to the listener.  I think that we get so caught up in weird sounds and over-production and stuff like that.  When you take it all back and just try to play the chorus on a piano or guitar or something, do the actual notes work?  If you're going for something sad, is it sad?  Does it make you feel sad?  And not get all confused by beats and these crazy synth sounds you've generated.  For me I've always think that the song should work within its structure first and top that with very simple instruments.  And if it works there, you can make those simple instruments into something crazy.

 

Thanks for a great interview, Chris!

 

 

:: tweaker:: Official site for Chris Vrenna

 

Order Chris Vrenna music and more at the tweaker store

 

Chris Vrenna is represented by Bob Rice of Four Bars Intertainment.