In his latest installment of The Comet blog Top Score, EpicBattleAxe founder Daniel Kayser interviews composer Michael McCann about Deus Ex: Human Revolution – from infusing the original score into marketing efforts surrounding the game to how the overriding theme of transhumanism was translated into masterful pieces of music.

The biggest game in interactive entertainment at the moment is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a title that’s been in the making for about four years at Eidos Montreal and one that has hit the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC with nearly a decade’s worth of anticipation.

This after the franchise’s most recent installment, 2003’s Deus Ex: Invisible War, left the majority of players with a sense of disappointment by not living up to the lofty expectations produced by the critically-acclaimed series debut back in 2000. So, there’s a lot riding on the success of Human Revolution, but ever since I saw the first teaser trailer for the game in 2007, I knew the team was on to something special. Partly because of the intriguing story and focus on player choice within the game play, but also largely due to the immensely atmospheric soundtrack that would help solidify the game’s distinct artistic vision and emphasis on immersion.

Recently, I had the chance to go one-on-one with the composer on the game, Michael McCann, to reveal some rather intriguing details on the project. From infusing the original score into marketing efforts surrounding the game, to the use of “mood boards” throughout the creative process, and how the overriding theme of transhumanism was translated into memorable, masterful pieces of music, McCann shares a wealth of information with anyone interested in composing or Deus Ex in particular.

Plus, I got some additional insight from Michael regarding his career and his thoughts on the ever-evolving state of video game music. Check out the interview below and augment your perception of what it means to be a relevant, influential, and successful game music composer like Michael McCann.

Regarding Deus Ex: HR, how did your role on the project come about?

I was brought onto the project in the fall of 2008. Much like when I worked on Splinter Cell: Double Agent, I had pitched music for the game alongside other composers, and after talking with audio director Steve Szczepkowski about the style and direction for the game I began working right away. 

You worked extensively on the Deus Ex: HR CGI trailers. Can you give us some insight into the creative process and how quickly you realized that you had created something special?

The trailers became a really important part of showcasing the musical style behind the game. It is more common these days that licensed music is used for trailers, and Steve and I were very adamant about showcasing the game’s soundtrack in as much of the advertising as possible. We began looking at the very first outlines of the E3 2010 CGI trailer at the end of 2009, and although I was well into the score by then, that trailer was the motivation to really look at a main theme for the game, and create something that would represent the musical direction. The reaction to that first trailer really pushed us to look at all the rest of trailers as extensions of the game, rather than just an advertisement to put music to.

The choice of music become very important, as each trailer shows a different side to the game. For example, the first in-game trailer shows Heng Sha, China, so almost all the music is from that location in the game. Another trailer shows the ‘multi-option’ style of gameplay, so we use the same dynamic style of the game’s music throughout that trailer – to mirror what’s trying to be explained visually/story wise. I think every time a new trailer was released the feedback was helping us see if each style of music for each part of the game was totally missing its mark or actually merging with the images. 

What insight into the story and world of Deus Ex: HR were you given prior to working on the soundtrack?  

I was given one of the early drafts of the script, as well concept art, and as many stills of the early production of the game as possible. More importantly, Steve had compiled what he called ‘mood boards,’ which were videos of still images showing everything from concept art to real life photographs that influenced some of the art direction, lighting and atmosphere in the game. These mood boards were great to start brainstorming with, as you could just watch them on a screen while experimenting with musical ideas. This definitely helped define and focus the initial music direction. 

Deus Ex: HR deals with some pretty heavy issues in regards to societal division, human augmentation, and corporate greed. What type of effort went into ensuring that you were capturing the right tone of the game within the score? 

One of the key themes in the Deus Ex world is transhumanism. Much of the story in Deus Ex: Human Revolution revolves around the conflict / controversy of using technology to push humans beyond our physical limitations. Everything from genetic engineering, enhancements of the mind, prosthetic limbs, stem cell research. Many of these evolutions in science cross the barrier into moral, philosophical, economic and religious debate. Transhumanism is obviously an extremely rich theme to pull from musically – and there many different ways this theme was applied to the music.  One way I approached this was to represent each of these sides with specific instruments. The religious / spiritual side is represented by vocals, the technological side with electronic instruments, and anti-scientific advancement side with acoustic instruments. As the score progresses it definitely shifts from one side to the other – where the first 1/3 of the game is more electronic, the second third being more acoustic, and the last third being a hybrid of the two.

Prior to Deus Ex: HR, you had a lot of success with your work on Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Going into that project, what was your creative thought process?

Right from the beginning I knew this was going to be a very different project. One big difference is that the actual music system in Double Agent was very elaborate, with up to 20 streaming musical elements at once – where every instrument could be treated separately. With DX:HR it is only 3-4 layers, with each layer being a full piece of music that cannot be broken apart. What this means is that if there is a strong melody, say, in the ambient, it will repeat over and over again for as long as you’re in a certain location. The challenge this creates is how to treat melody and repetition. The direction I went was not to create large melodic pieces, but instead create very rich layers of harmony, texture and rhythm where the beginning and end of the piece of music is hard to define. It makes the score much more atmospheric – almost as if the music is built into the environment you’re in rather than a soundtrack that sits on top of everything. For important story moments, or for locations that require more emotion or exposition in the music, then melody could be used freely. Also, for a 25 – 40 hour game it become more effective to use melody in specific places, rather than all over the score where it would eventually become over-saturated and ineffective. 

What types of things did you learn from Double Agent that you’ve applied to Deus Ex: HR?

One important aspect was how even the tiniest element in the music can drastically affect the psychology of the game. Playing the final version of Double Agent I was amazed at how extremely subtle musical changes could affect tension or mood. If a melody is too positive, or a rhythm too aggressive, it can mistakenly push the player to make a wrong decision or view the situation he is in incorrectly. When working on the music, you’re often outside of the game experience – composing, mixing, programming, with no sound effects or visual. Once you put the music in the game, and add all the elements in, the music takes a very different stage. Something that might seem very minimal outside the game, suddenly becomes loud or distracting in the game – or vice versa – something that seems too abrasive / aggressive outside the game may actually be too minimal when put alongside gunfire, shouts, ambient noise, or a very impressive visual.

Are there any specific video games that you regard as having influenced your approach to score creations, sound design, and implementation?

I’ve become a big fan of games that are using source music along with score. Good examples of this would be Bioshock and Fallout 3. With Bioshock, you have the Bobby Darin, Django Reinhardt style tracks playing from the radios, and that is contrasted with this incredible orchestral score. But I think what makes both sides of the music so interesting is the way they play off each other. I remember one scene in that game, after going through a long section with I think a Bing Crosby track playing, and you come around a corner and see this giant, beautiful glass room. The source music dies out and in comes the orchestral piece – a very minimal piece of music, but the contrast is amazing. It really draws you into the room. What I took from this into DX:HR was, in some locations, trying to bring the environmental music and score together – so that the score to the game sits on the edge of being both a traditional score that sits over top of the action, but also built from elements that exist inside the environment you’re in. For example, if there are street musicians, or cafes that might be playing music in a street in the Heng Sha, China, map, those elements would be incorporated into the score.

Speaking to the industry in general, are there any specific technical or creative obstacles that you feel are holding back the progression of video game related music?

I think the fact that almost every game has a unique music system, often catered to the game itself, makes it difficult to say where the technology is at any given time. I can only judge based on the games I’ve worked on. In the case of Double Agent, the music system was very sophisticated – allowing a great deal of freedom in the composition process. Whereas the DX:HR music system was very simple, which created many challenges – but out of those challenges came a degree of experimentation I wouldn’t have gotten if I had unlimited freedom.

What are your thoughts on the way that the gaming community treats game music? Is there enough respect given to the music’s contribution to the overall experience or do you feel that game music remains in the shadows of more obvious factors such as graphics and game play?

The more advanced graphics, A.I., gameplay, audio become, the less work music has to do to create the emotion and pacing of a game. In the past, with game’s limited graphic capability, limited dialogue / audio technology, and limited gameplay mechanics, music was almost always loud, energetic and in your face. It really created the pacing and the mood of the entire game, and for this reason, I think music was given a great deal of importance. Not to say music isn’t important now, but the treatment of music in this very sophisticated audio/visual medium today has to be very different than that past. You can see a similar transition in movies. In the silent era, where dialogue was a technical impossibility, and there was almost no environmental sound, music monopolized the audio (similar to early games.) As stories become more complex, acting become more important, and environmental sound became very sophisticated, music became much more minimal – and, in my opinion, much more sophisticated. The music of an early silent film vs. the music of a Hitchcock film are very different – not just because of the style of film making, but because all other areas of audio and visual had evolved immensely. The use of music as time went on become much more intelligent, much more modest, and I think much more powerful. What I find from the hardcore game community is a hesitation to have music take a lesser role in games – wanting the same kind of frenetic scores of the past – but interwoven with very story-driven, visually rich and atmospheric games. Although I don’t think game music should follow film music, as they are very different mediums, I do think games and game music fans can learn a great deal from the evolution of music / audio in movies over the 20th century.

Many people fail to forget about the technical difficulties that arise from creating a game soundtrack. Considering that, unlike film or television, the scene in a video games may play out in a multitude of ways, how do you address the development of your gaming soundtracks to keep the audio relevant to the ever-changing experience?

The simplest way to explain this is that game music is often built on levels. One piece of music can be split into multiple layers that are all used at different “states” of gameplay. Each game will have a different complexity to those levels, but the concept remains the same. The use of levels is done to allow the music to shift and adapt to changes in real time. For example, you have a character in a game peacefully walking through an environment. The music for that mood would be ambient and tension free. The character walks around the corner, and down the street he sees an enemy approaching. The second level of music would be a tension layer, that signals danger, and rises up in volume as the enemy moves closer. That second layer would eventually merge with the ambient (or replace it) shifting the emotion of the music from peaceful to tense. The next stage, the enemy starts shooting at the character and a fire fight erupts. A third layer of music is build on top of the ambient and tension layer to rise up during this action and provide the score for the fight. Each of these 3 layers (ambient, tension, combat) are the same piece of music – all built together as one track – but with the intent of splitting them up and using them dynamically in the game. That’s a pretty basic explanation – it can get much more complicated than that, but that’s an idea of how game music adapts in real time.

Your diverse career has also provided you with the opportunity to work on everything from films to advertising to television series. How do you approach each project to ensure that your contributions match the overall creative vision?

Each medium requires a different approach. Advertising and trailers are all about expressing ideas very quickly and powerfully. Movies and television series are much more about evolving and developing themes and emotions over the course of a long story. Games are similar in this respect, but with the added variable of interacting with the player at every step – where themes can be much more random and less specific than a film score. And within each of these mediums there are different approaches depending on the genre / directing style (comedy, drama, sci-fi, etc.) In the end, I don’t think there is any universal approach; every project is really a different animal.

Do you personally enjoy working on one type of media in particular? What excites you the most about a prospective project?

I really love the freedom to experiment in video games - it also helps that the production schedules are very long (at least in my experience) which helps to create a more personal relationship with the project. I love working in movies an television as well, as it feels much more intimate, and the subject matter can be much more personal and minimal, rather than the often grandiose / epic ideas of most games. I think it really depends on the story – I enjoy working on each medium equally if the story is great.

Since you obviously are tasked with providing a wide range of diverse music for various projects, what would you consider to be some of the core musical influences that inspire your work?

I am very inspired by other film / music / tv composers, specifically for the reason you mentioned. Working in many different genres/mediums can make music really chaotic, but it also keeps it very inspiring. There are composers who were incredible at being able to move all over the map. Someone like Ennio Morricone, who could score a horror-sci-fi (“The Thing”), a classic western (“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”), or a period piece about Spanish Jesuits (“The Mission”) and create a masterpiece every single time really blows me away. It’s definitely an inspiration – and it’s something you don’t see in any other musical medium. As for other influences, I’m a bit all over the place: Angelo Badalamenti, Massive Attack, Verdi, Public Enemy, Bernard Herrmann – everything from rap to blues to classical to electronic.

Do you feel your music is best experienced when tied to the particular project that it was created for or are you also trying to create music that can be enjoyed/appreciated when experienced alone?

Every project is different for sure. I’ve done TV themes (e.g. “ReGenesis”) where the track was written outside of the project, as a personal track, so it exists with or without the TV credit sequence. For something like Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the score is much more like songs, so (I think) does pretty well outside the game. For DX:HR, it’s the first project I’ve scored where I really think the music exists inside the game. It can definitely be listened to outside of it, but it is really built into the environments/location/art direction, etc. The sounds of the streets, the industrial decay, the art direction all interact with the music, so I think it works much better with all the elements together.

You’re not just a composer though, correct? Your skill set in the field is wide and varied and includes music editing and sound design. How do these combined skills assist you when setting out to work on a new project?

Definitely – I haven’t done exclusively sound design or music editing in quite a few years, but I still use those skills when writing music. I try to incorporate a lot of sound design in the soundtracks I create – often using sounds from the environment of a scene/location in the music itself. For example, in an underground sewer location in DX:HR, I’m trying to create music that feels like it comes from the sewer. The reverbs on the instruments, the metallic sounds of the grates and walls, are all used to create percussion beds, ambient textures, etc. and an overall production style that feels like the track is coming from the sewer. As for music editing, this comes in handy with things like the trailers – when you’re taking existing in-game music and trying to cut it into this very short action packed two-minute trailer. Music editing can be a really creative job – basically breaking existing music into pieces and re-arranging it to fit a scene (or trailer). I was glad I could do this with the Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailers, as I know the music really well and can experiment quite a bit.

What’s next for you after Deus Ex: HR?

A long vacation – Dublin, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam!

If you’re interested in sampling a bit of Michael’s work, including the Deus Ex: HR soundtrack, head on over to his official website.