Composer Newcomer Michael McCann Talks to GZ About “Splinter Cell: Double Agent”

by Louis Bedigian

“For me to do the fourth installment is a great honor.”

Picture this: you’re a spy. You’re sneaking through a building, staying hidden behind dark shadows as you make your way to the top floor. Some very important data must be retrieved, and it can’t be acquired through any other means.

Just as you’re about to complete the mission, three angry guards appear and open fire. You dodge the bullets, return a few shots and put the thugs out of their misery. The data is yours – the mission is over.

Underneath the tension and espionage is a soundtrack that backs up the moment. In the real world there wouldn’t be a song to culminate a moment of victory (sporting events excluded). There wouldn’t be a special MP3 that kicks in the minute a spy has lost his cover.

But we gamers don’t want to live in the real world. We want to be in a world where it’s possible to be almost superhuman – and have a soundtrack that reminds us of that world whenever we hear it.

The man chosen to bring that memorable, finishing touch to the latest Splinter Cell is Michael McCann. Known under the alias “Behavior” (which he uses for projects that involve more than one musician), McCann has done everything from sound design to music editing. He’s produced, composed, and has worked on various film and TV projects.

Most recently he completed work on Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

“The music is great for the entire series,” he says. “For me to do the fourth installment is a great honor, especially as it is my first game score. I also like that each of the games has a very unique sound from the more minimalist but beautiful SC1 to the hardcore technical and intelligent score of SC3.” 

Splinter Cell: Double Agent is your latest project, and you're the main composer. I take it that means you're also working with other composers. Let's talk about that experience.

Michael McCann: For the SC: DA soundtrack there was a real push for very organic and acoustic instrumentation. I come from an electronic background, which is usually mixed with acoustic sources, and I needed a couple of key musicians to really get the sound that Ubisoft and I were looking for. Romain His (Audio Lead on SC: DA) and I decided that acoustic guitar would be the primary lead instrument, and that percussion and drums would also have to be very natural sounding.

For these two instruments, I brought in Graham Playford for guitar and Scott Russell for percussion and drums. Both of them contributed heavily to the soundtrack, and it is why I put the project under Behavior instead of just myself.

Many of the lead guitar lines were composed by both Graham and I together. And for other instruments, like violin (Brigitte Djazcer) and vocals (Andrea Revel) I usually worked around long improvised sessions. A lot of the instruments were created based on improvised sessions – recording long takes (10 – 20 minutes) of lots of different ideas, and then me piecing together something interesting from those. I think this really helped bring some life and edgy vibes to the music.

Who are the other composers? Which part(s) of the game are you handling?

Michael McCann: Graham Playford was the only additional contributing composer, although all the other musicians involved contributed great performances and ideas. For arranging, I brought in a great talent, Tim Rideout, to help with expanding the Fight themes I had created for the Xbox 360. He really helped spread out my fight cues, which were very, very heavy and saturated. I brought Tim on to make them more dynamic, and focus on some of the good ideas that needed to be enhanced in the mix. After his work, I was able to go back and further develop drum and melodic ideas.

For the Xbox 360, all the music was composed by Behavior except the “Main Theme” cinematic composed by Sascha Dikiciyan and Cris Velasco. Romain His and I decided right away that I would handle all music for this version of the game, especially as the cinematics for the Xbox 360 and PC are interactive. This meant I could apply the same logic and production style to cinematics as I applied to the in-game music.

For the current generation version (PS2 and Xbox) I composed all the in-game as well as cut-scenes, menus etc, while Sascha and Cris handled the cinematics. 

Splinter Cell is a really big and important game franchise. Fans know the sound well, and they expect a certain something from it. How do you approach an existing property like this and take it to new heights while staying true to what made it great in the first place?

Michael McCann: The story of Double Agent is very dramatic, emotional and dark. It is the first of the series to bring Sam’s personal life and character into the forefront of the game. In addition, Sam plays on both sides of the fence – as a terrorist and as an NSA agent. This isn’t taken lightly in the game, as there are numerous points where Sam must make decisions which will result in innocent people dying, and the potential loss of close friends and colleagues. This is a central conflict in gameplay. Combined with personal tragedy and loss, you have a very sorrowful, conflicted and pissed off Sam Fisher. And it gets progressively more intense as you play through the game.

Because of this, the music absolutely had to reflect a level of emotion that’s rare to a game in this genre. However, there had to be a separation between story and immediate action. We definitely had to draw a line between emotion and action. This was a big challenge – and took a lot of experimenting to have multiple distinct layers of music that interacted well, and still accurately represented the different psychologies while keeping true to the Splinter Cell series.

However, there is a large shift in tone from previous Splinter Cell games. After the first Iceland mission, and after the story gets going, the music definitely pushed in this new musical direction. There is an obvious message that we are in new territory. A lot of the musical textures and styles are not usual for games – although they are heard all the time in film. Romain and I really pushed to test the boundaries of what was acceptable – to move out of the traditional electronic, frenetic, and “cool” clichés, and into something much deeper. SC:DA is visually sophisticated and emotional enough to allow this.

Tell us about the music. What style are you using? Splinter Cell is all about getting the job done as silently as possible. Will the music reflect that, and have a sort of spy movie feel?

Michael McCann: The design and style of the in-game music is two parts. The first are “infiltration” themes. These are the most ambient pieces of music, and they play in the absence of danger. They are very deep, melodic and slow. These pieces of music are designed to reflect the story, as Sam sneaks through his mission trying to meet his objectives. For these, we could move into musical styles and bring influences that are very unique. For influences, we looked at Brian Eno, Massive Attack, Daniel Lanois, etc.

In other words, emotional, but dark and organic styles. These in-game cues are heavy on washed out acoustic guitar, violin, dirty and deep ambiences, vocals, and sometimes heavy but slow drum parts.

The second part of the music design is “stress” and “fight” themes. These cues are to communicate immediate danger and are built to interact with infiltration themes in a way that pulls the player out of story and into the present action. The stresses are written to come out of the infiltration themes – but rely on static rhythms, bright flashes of percussion, effects, etc. This trend follows most of the maps as static rhythms and melodies mixed with slight random elements were very effective in contrasting the infiltration themes.

The fight themes break off a lot and communicate without a doubt that you are in danger. They are still acoustic at heart, but combine more traditional action elements into the score; big percussion, orchestra, guitar, dirty bass.

There is definitely the underlining spy influence but it was a lot of fun and cool to combine that with very heavy roots and unorthodox instrumentation.

Are you working on the music for the in-game cinematics as well?

Michael McCann: Yes, for the Xbox 360 and PC version I handled all the cinematics except
the “Main Theme” cinematic. The next-gen cinematics are almost all interactive, so it was important that I composed these, since the integration and musical direction had to be consistent with the in-game music as well.

Of course the cinematics are much more action=oriented than the in-game soundtrack – with skydives and map intros so they do have a more orchestral style and energy to them. I composed these on my own because they could move a bit off the in-game path and out of the organic and emotional color.  

Do you think about the end result of a track while composing? Where it will end up, and how people will receive it? Or do you just go in and say, "This sounds good to me," hoping that audiences will feel the same way?

Michael McCann: For each map I really tried to think of a single strong musical influence – something that was unique and interesting, but would also allow a common thread with all the other maps. This really helped in visualizing how the soundtrack would play when it was done. For example, the Cozumel map has two key influences – Portishead and the score for Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

I decided, even before composition, that I’d be using bright and vintage sounding tremolo guitar, really compressed jazz drums and bass, Theremin, brass, percussion and other elements. Combining these two influences and bringing in everything else in between really helped set limitations on where the music could go. I applied the same logic to most of the maps for sure. Ubisoft also had direction and influences in mind. Together, it was exciting to conceptualize a game soundtrack that went in unexplored directions. 

Of course, saying that, we knew that the music couldn’t veer off into an area that was inaccessible. Romain in Shanghai was constantly testing what I sent him to be sure we were on the right track. There were definitely cues where I had to pull back and move a little more into the center. But all in all, there was a definite risk in the musical direction, but for a story like this there had to be.

Keep your browser pointed to GameZone Online for Part 2 of our interview with game composer Michael McCann.