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Frank Klepacki Interview from Arcade Attack

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As part of their Retro Gaming Blog, the Arcade Attack recently posted a new interview with Command & Conquer music legend, Frank Klepacki. The interview covers how Frank began his career in the gaming industry and discusses his work on the Command & Conquer soundtracks and other games he has worked in the years since. Here's part of it....

 

Arcade Attack: You are a true legend of the gaming and music world. Could you explain how you first got into the video game industry?

Frank Klepacki: You’re too kind, thank you. I began as a tester, and eventually moved into the audio dept after a trial period of proving myself capable. I’m very grateful to have had that opportunity, and fortunate that I had foresight at a young age to learn about recording, performing, and computer audio. It gave me a starting point of skill to be able to learn and adapt quickly.

 

Arcade Attack: You are probably best known for your stellar work on the Command and Conquer games as you mentioned there, how did you gain inspiration to go about creating the now iconic soundtrack for these games?

Frank Klepacki: The most important thing I can stress about that process was that I was encouraged to experiment and tap into a wide variety of influences. That in itself allowed for me to stretch as far as I wanted in any direction and see what worked well and what didn’t. Most of it was used, especially in the first C&C, the only ones that weren’t were the most extreme genre explorations, everything from thrash to rollerskate music, lol. By the time we got to Red Alert there was a feeling of honing in on style, so it was more refined from that point forward.

 

Check out the full interview right here.

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Frank Klepacki got into games at the right time, it would be difficult to have a career that rivals his. I really like the Dune II melodies and the track "airstrike" which is featured in the Tiberian Dawn credits. Those tracks have a good musical quality, they're focused around scales and proper musical technique. Most tracks nowadays are made on a computer not that it's always a bad thing (the Wolfenstein title is quite bass-heavy but it serves the purpose of being an ominous title track) If a person learns to play guitar they're 1000x times more likely to prefer music that can actually be played live with a real instrument.

 

Klepacki's guitar is an eye-sore, I'll stick to my strat-style Jackson. I had this conversation with a friend a few years ago and I didn't need to prompt my friend to dismiss Klepacki's guitar upon seeing it :haha: .............. I suppose a custom guitar is like a tattoo. Your tattoo might like awful to other people but if you like it yourself and if you can conceal it under your sleeve then that's all that matters ^_^

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