Interview with C&C 4 Composer Jason Graves

[Sonic 296]

HeXetic at Planet CNC has posted a new interview that he had with Jason Graves, one of the composers for Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. In this interview he discusses his work on Command & Conquer 4, Dead Space, as well as other past and current projects. In case your wondering, Jason Graves composed the GDI portions of the C&C 4 soundtrack. Here's a couple of questions.

 

HeXetic: In your own words, introduce yourself to the C&C fans of the world. What was your specific role in making C&C4 come alive?

Jason Graves: I got my start writing music for television, film and trailers in Los Angeles about fifteen years ago. I've been composing for games for about eight years now. I've worked on all kinds of titles in different genres, which is one of the things I love most about games! Star Trek, Dead Space and Command and Conquer to name a few of the more recognizable titles. For C&C4, I was the composer responsible for the GDI portion of the campaign.

 

HeXetic: In Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, players are dropped into a world falling apart at the seams, plagued with an all-consuming alien substance, wracked with factional fighting, and recovering from a full-on alien invasion. How did this setting influence your approach to the game's music? How much direction did the C&C4 design team provide for the musical direction of the game?

Jason Graves: EA came to me with a very specific idea for the music. C&C4 Audio Director Nick Laviers already knew he wanted me to compose the GDI portion of the campaign and had a really good idea of the overall sound of the score. We knew we were going to record with a full orchestra and that the overall tone would be fairly dark. We also wanted to make sure the whole thing didn't get too dark, so Nick made sure to plan different points in the game that had a little bit of "not-so-dark" breathing time, to break things up for the player.

 

Nick was really great at throwing different things at me for different portions of the game. A lot of times he would give me a bullet point breakdown of the specific mission, a QuickTime movie of the gameplay and an MP3 of a piece of music. The music examples were always suggestions for the general direction of the mission and Nick was clear they were mere starting points for me to take under consideration. They included things like New Age synthesizer tracks, Messiaen flute solos, modern Steve Reich minimalism, cinematic sci-fi orchestral scores and everything in between. It got to where I really looked forward to "the next assignment" because I couldn't wait to hear what he came up with!

Click here for the full interview. And watch out for an interview with James Hannigan, another composer who worked on the Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight soundtrack.

[Gben 20]

Great interview.

Insightful questions and good answers.

GJ Hex.

[dbjs2009 25]

Nice interview ..

[PurpleGaga27 40]

I thought all the C&C4 interviews are done. But once again, another great interview.

[recover 2]

Good one.

 

Does anyone remember the official music blog posts that were posted a while ago? There were two trivia questions with prices. Anyone know what the correct answers were?