September 6, 2007

Cris Velasco on Composing His “Dream Project” – Clive Barker’s Jericho
By Louis Bedigian

“I knew it was working when my girlfriend came down the stairs at three in the morning to say I was giving her nightmares!”
 
Picture this: you’re a game composer, a diehard fan of Clive Barker, and you’ve just been given the opportunity to work on his latest project – a horrific video game for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. You’re overjoyed with excitement. Could this possibly be real?
 
Then the reality of the project sets in: yes, you are the composer. But you have less than one month to complete the score.
 
That was the dream (and challenge) for Cris Velasco, composer of Clive Barker’s Jericho.
 
“I've been a fan of all of Clive's works for many years now,” Cris told us during our interview. “Actually, I'd have to say that he has probably been the biggest non-musical influence on my career.”
 
Cris said that the biggest influence for Jericho was the game itself. “The mythology of the Firstborn and the Jericho Squad that Clive has created for this game were more than enough to get the creative juices flowing. The visuals that Mercury Steam have created to accompany Clive's story are so detailed and rich that I was completely immersed in this world.”
 
For further inspiration, he says he turned to Clive’s past, adding, “I did re-read a couple of his novels prior to writing the score to help achieve the right frame of mind. I read Weaveworld for its concept of worlds within worlds and The Damnation Game for it's sheer brutality.”

Clive Barker's Jericho is a dream project for you. Was it a game you went after when it was announced?
 
Cris Velasco: Yes, the very day it was announced I began to pursue this project.  I got in touch with Clive to tell him I was interested and to see if he thought this might be a good project for us to collaborate on.  He was very supportive from the beginning and personally requested that I should do the music.  What was a dream project for me soon became a reality.
 
Let's get into the meat of Jericho... It's a dark and creepy game, so that means it'll need a dark and creepy score. Knowing this, how did you move forward, and what kind of a sound were you looking to achieve?
 
CV: One of the sounds that Clive and I both thought would be crucial to Jericho is a choir. It really became the soul of the score. There are definitely moments where the choir is used traditionally. We've got the big epic moments with the chorus blasting away. There's also a chant that I had the men do that basically translates into "evil approaches." I used this as the evil motif, which was a great suggestion of Clive's. He thought it would be cool to have some sort of musical statement that got bigger and scarier the closer you get to the Firstborn. My idea was to have the choir do this as a chant, almost as if they were trying to summon a demon from the depths of hell.
 
The choir starts out doing this as nothing more than a whisper. Towards the end of the game they are shouting it at the top of their lungs. Finally, my favorite use of the choir was having them do very long, atonal passages. In games, we hear the orchestra doing these kinds of passages all the time. It's a great effect when you want to scare the audience. I haven't really heard a game do the same sort of thing with choir, though. It worked great with Jericho and at times could almost be mistaken for the anguished moans of the damned that have been consigned to live within the walls of the Firstborn's prison.
 
What scares you?
 
CV: In games? I like the moments of calm. Maybe you've just finished a big fight, your team is dead, you've got almost no ammo left, and everything just seems too quiet. Creeping your way around each corner can be terrifying. Especially when you know a monster should have just jumped out at you. It was the perfect spot to be ambushed so why wasn't anything there? You almost wish something would jump out and finish your character because waiting for it to happen is way worse than actually seeing the creature in front of you. When games allow your imagination to get the best of you, that's what scares me.

 
Did you pull any real-life fears into the music? Or is it a purely fictional fear – the kind that comes from games and movie screens?
 
CV: Well, I think the music is what the typical Western ear would associate with being scary.  However, some of the music may sound quite tame and perhaps even beautiful when taken out of the context of the game.  The magic is when you have a scene from the game, something truly grotesque and visceral, and add music that should not be there.  Like a solo boy soprano or strings and choir playing something almost reverential.  That's when the scene takes on a whole new level of eeriness and can make you have to leave the room. I did actually use a "real life" sound with one cue. For the child crusaders I wrote an action cue that also incorporated the sounds of children laughing and babies crying. There's even a type of music box lullaby in there. I knew it was working when my girlfriend came down the stairs at three in the morning to say I was giving her nightmares!
 
Have you met Clive Barker? Did you get to communicate with him at all about the project? And if so, did he give any input as to what he was looking for from the score?
 
CV: I've been friends with Clive for a number of years. It's an interesting progression actually. I had always been a great admirer of his work. So I went from a fan, to the two of us having mutual respect for each other’s art, to becoming friends and collaborators. 
 
Clive had very definite styles in mind for this score. Before I started writing a single note Clive and I had a series of meetings, on the phone and in person, about the direction of the music. One of the interesting styles that came from those meetings was to include some of the late 20th century style of writing like Ligeti and Penderecki.
 
However, to get an even creepier sound we decided to add more tonal textures over the top of these atonal clusters. For example, in the Crusades level I have a mixed choir singing these long, drawn out atonal passages. From out of nowhere I then bring in a men's choir singing a very traditional Gregorian Chant.  The two of these superimposed over each other made for a really great effect. Especially when you've thrown Clive's visuals into the mix. The other style Clive really wanted to explore musically was a religious one.  In this way I was able to better score the overarching story of the game rather than each scene individually. The choir is all singing in Latin with the text taken right from the Mass.
 
This being a dream project, were you nervous at all? Was it a moment of, Okay, I've got to put everything into this score?
 
CV: At first, I was very nervous actually. This really was a dream project for me. I'm very passionate about Clive's work though so the excitement soon displaced all feelings of dread. I never really felt like I had to throw everything into the score either. Clive and I had a series of great discussions about style and musicality and I was never tempted to stray from this. Unless by "everything" you mean did I try extra hard to write something great for Clive. Then yes, there was certainly that factor but probably no more than any other job. I think it's important to treat every score as if it's a dream project.

The music might not be creepy at all times, but the visuals sure are.

Is this the kind of score that we'll listen to and think, "This is from a Clive Barker project"?
 
CV: I hope so! However, the music is not all scary. Like I mentioned before, Clive wanted the score not only to be frightening at times, but to have an almost religious tone to it.  So yes, there are moments of action and tension. The choir that I recorded at Skywalker Sound was singing some very eerie, aleatoric passages too as I stated already. But there are also moments of beauty, for example, The Firstborn Theme. This character represents the root of all evil in the game. His theme is one of innocence though with just a hint of the darkness creeping through. I recorded an amazing boy soprano, Brooks Fisher, for this.  I should also point out that each period of time you visit in the game is scored differently while still maintaining a cohesive sound. The music heard in the WWII level is much different than the Crusades level which is unlike the Ancient Sumerian level, etc.  However, they all sound as if they belong in this world that Clive has created.
 
How long did it take to complete?
 
CV: I initially had only 3 1/2 weeks to complete the whole score, about two hour's worth of music! In the end though they were able to give me a couple more weeks to finish things up. Those extra weeks really helped out.
 
However, even with the additional time I still needed to enlist the talents of more people to help pull things together. Sascha Dikiciyan, my long-time writing partner, worked with me on some of the most important and intense set-pieces in the game when his time would allow. Mike DiMattia lent his hand by doing some drum programming for me to work with on things like the Sumerian level. This really helped for example when trying to get that huge and primitive sound for the Sumerians. Laura Karpman was also able to lend her hand and contribute a lot to the score. Her knowledge of late 20th century orchestral writing was exactly what I needed and worked perfectly to set the mood.
 
Were there any re-writes during the project?
 
CV: Not very many actually. The challenge is always to strike the right tone for the game.  This is always the first step in writing any kind of score. How do I capture the essence of Jericho musically? Something I strive to do in any project I take on is to try to make the score work even if the narrative and visuals are stripped away. I want people to be able to hear the music and say, "that sounds like Jericho."
 

Did you get a look at the script while working on the music?
 
CV: Actually, I had something even better. Codemasters was kind enough to lend me a 360 devkit so that I could play through the whole game myself.  I can't begin to tell you how much this helped my creative process. I've gotten quite used to working with very little material from the games I work on. Being able to play through Jericho in its entirety allowed me to make sure the score was working every step of the way.
 
How do you move on from a project like this? Are you going to bug them to work on Clive Barker's next project?
 
CV: Only time will tell of course, but Clive has let me know how much he personally liked the score to Jericho. For me, it would be the greatest honor to be asked back for the next chapter. In the meantime, I'm back working with Sascha again. We've got our hands full scoring some new and exciting projects.

 
Sounds great. Thanks for your time Cris!

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