Kent:
Hey everyone. This is Kent with Alibi Music. We're back here again. Uh, and I'm here with Guy Jones, uh, who is actually a co-host today. And, uh, we have the privilege to, uh, have a chat here with, uh, Darren Korb. Uh, Darren Korb is a game composer. He's done four titles with Supergiant Games, um, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades. And he's also got a great band called Control Group. Uh, so check, check out his band on Spotify and all the usual places. And, uh, Darren, how are you today?
Darren Korb:
Doing all right. Have about yourself?
Kent:
Doing just fine. Um, yeah, so this, uh, series, as of, you know, it's all about helping game developers learn how to work with music and audio a little bit better. So if I was working on my first game as a game developer and I came to you and I said, "What advice and what knowledge, or what information would you would you share?"
Darren Korb:
Yeah, I mean, (laughs) it's one of those things where I think there's a lot to learn when you start trying it, no matter what you... What experience you bring to it. I know for me, I really learned a lot on the job, on my first gig because I hadn't worked on a game before Bastion. And so, uh, I feel like don't be afraid to experiment is sort of is, is a way to, to convert that sentiment into advice, I guess. Uh, (laughs) you know, don't be afraid to dive in, uh, so you're over your head a little bit and, and figure out how to do it kind of trial by fire style. I think that at least for, for some people, myself included, that really helps me learn very quickly how to do something, is when the stakes are high and I have to.
Darren Korb:
Uh, (laughs) so, you know, I think that's, that's something that is really, um, is really helpful is to just, you know, get in there and see what works. And, uh, you know, from a, from a sound design perspective, iterating a ton and just making stuff, putting it in the game, seeing how it feels, and figuring out what's missing. Why isn't it, why isn't it the way I want it to be and trying to analyze that and that process. That cycle of making a thing, putting it in, figuring out what's missing, you know, that, that, that's sort of the, the main part of the process for me from a sound design perspective.
Darren Korb:
And then, you know, as far as music goes, I really like to try, and, um, at the beginning of a project, defdefine the tone, and the style, and the palette of, of the music of a project. And, uh, and I think that's really helpful for me as someone with a non-traditional background in composing. I, you know, I come from a rock background and a production background and a songwriting background. So especially on my first couple of projects, didn't feel that I had the sort of traditional composer toolkit of leitmotifs and, you know, the ways to sort of weave themes back into the... So I wanted to find a way, an alternate way, to unify the music for a project.
Darren Korb:
And so I figured, well, if I just sort of set up a genre pallet style for myself and had all the pieces just live within this genre for this game, they'll have that connection and they'll feel related, uh, hopefully. So they won't just feel like a bunch of random pieces of music.
Guy Jones:
That's really interesting. I'm, I'm really... That you've kind of summed up exactly why I wanted you to be on this. Because I remember I've, I've watched, uh, a bunch of your interviews where you've talked about starting. I think it must've been Bastion, which was like, was that your first game?
Darren Korb: Yeah.
Guy Jones:
And they, they brought you on not just as a composer, but to kind of audio directorate really, which is a bit more of an accurate description of your job role within Supergiant Games anyway, isn't it?
Darren Korb:
Yeah.
Guy Jones:
So you're kind of audio director, and I'm assuming at that point with Bastion, you were audio directing yourself. So you were doing pretty much everything. And I've seen kind of the [inaudible] and everything.
Darren Korb:
I still am. I still am pretty much. Yeah.
Guy Jones:
So it's since that started you haven't kind of brought on extra people to help with any of that?
Darren Korb:
I basically, at one point during Transistor, I had a kid, so we needed to outsource some of the sound design. So I did, you know, I directed some other people, uh, for a little bit on that project. And then I have somebody who I brought in during Pyre and on Pyre and Hades to edit dialogue basically. So I have a dialogue editor that I work with, um, and that, and that's pretty much it, Greg [inaudible], who's who I've worked with the entire time is the creative director and he'll do implementation stuff and we'll work together on casting and, and all that, the VO side of things. But, um, but yeah, it's pretty much, pretty much just me directing myself. (laughs)
Guy Jones:
So, so when? Can you remember back to that, that first game? So you were, you had been working and composing a little bit and you were approached by Supergiant, or somehow you made that connection with super giant and you wanted to work with Bastion, uh, you were going to work on Bastion. You hadn't worked on any games up until that point, so you didn't know how it all went together. And this is very in sync with why I contacted you the first time, I was just like, "I'm starting a video game and I do not know what I'm doing, help me."
Darren Korb:
Yeah.
Guy Jones:
And I remember you came back with a bunch of answers about F Martin helped me there. And I was like, "I still don't understand, but I'm going to be polite and just say, thank you and just kind of roll with it and try it."
Darren Korb:
Yeah.
Guy Jones:
Um, and it is, is I think in every area of the industry, it's a trial by fire and just trying to get through it. But when, when Bastion approached you to begin with, uh, how, how did you approach that project then as a, as a fresh? Because that's, that's quite a unique position to be in where you're approached by a game and all of a sudden you're thrown in the deep end and you all of a sudden have to work out how to put music to this new form of media. Can you remember what your process was at the beginning?
Darren Korb:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, on, on Bastion, I thought a lot about one of my things, one of my goals was to try to make music for a game that, uh, was a type of music I hadn't heard, I didn't recall hearing in a game. I wanted to do something that wasn't one particular thing, but it was a lot of things, if that makes sense, stylistically speaking. Um, so that was something that I was interested in. Another sort of explicit goal for me was it had to be something that I could achieve convincingly in my apartment by myself. So no live drum kits, no real stream sections, whatever, you know, and all that stuff. Like it had to be something that I could execute right, with no help essentially.
Darren Korb:
Uh, so that constrained what the style would be, and it, and it helped drive some creative decisions because of those constraints. I knew I needed to have fake drums, right, for example. So I was leaning into that and, and I decided, well, you know, I have a lot of access to these cool kind of trip hop sounds and samples and stuff, let me do... I'll, I'm going to do that for the, for the percussion, you know, and I have, I have sort of, you know, I knew I had information about the setting of the game, that it was going to be like a frontier Z sort of fantasy thing.
Darren Korb:
So, well, I play the guitar. I've got, you know, I can record an acoustic guitar convincingly in my apartment. Uh, you know, so, so, you know, one component of the music was this sort of Western frontier Z vibe illustrated by the sort of open tuning, you know, acoustic guitar thing, and then there's that sort of trip hop component, the sample beats, and then, and then there's a sort of like world music component, which is, is meant to sort of place the player in a new locale that there may be unfamiliar with, with sort of sounds that are juxtaposed with these other sounds to try to, to have it, have it, have a unique feel and place the player somewhere they've never been before, was, was the thinking behind it.
Darren Korb:
Um, and as far as the sound design goes, I had a lot to learn. I mean, at first I didn't even know how music was integrated into games, I just had no idea how that worked at all and had to learn that (laughs) step-by-step from our, our very patient, uh, engineers who held my hand through that. (laughs) Um, and, and we were working at the time with this free middleware, which was not a robust, uh, not very fully featured, let's just say. (laughs)
Guy Jones:
Yeah.
Darren Korb:
And, uh, and so I had to, you know, it was just software that was clearly not made by anyone who did audio, it was made by programmers who didn't like, you know, it was just totally incomprehensible to someone with my background. Um, so I had to, had to have that taught to me basically. But, but I noodled around and, and figured out how to make cues and how to, you know, add randomization and to pitch and add a bunch of different takes and stuff into, into, uh, into a particular queue. And, uh, and so for, for the sound design stuff, I started from a place of, you know, well, realism. Well, what does it sound like when you hit a box with a hammer? You know, let's just, let's just make that sound. And then, you know, when you do that in the game, it's not really satisfying, (laughs) it's not like the thing that you want it to sound like. It's not what you expect to happen, uh, based on years of playing games and watching movies and things like that.
Darren Korb:
So, so you want, you want, you know, you want a heightened sense of, of what's happening. And so I quickly realized that, well, I should start as, I should start big and then dial it back if it's too big, probably, (laughs) uh, instead of starting small and increasing it. 'Cause, cause it's usually just too small. Uh, you know, when you, when you swing a hammer in real life, it doesn't make a giant whooshing sound or whatever, but you want it to do it in a game because you press the button, you want something to happen, you know, uh, you want there to be, uh, some, some feedback for that. So I learned that it's important to provide the feedback and not, you're not just going for like total, uh, total realism, especially.
Guy Jones:
That's, that's really interesting. Hearing you talk about that whole journey, it sounds like they gave you an awful amount of freedom, creative freedom. So from sort of, if we think about this from a game developer, if the Indie Game developers are listening to this or watching this, how important was it for you, especially as a new video game composer where you're getting into grips with how it's all goes together, how important view was it that you had that creative control and you had a bit of freedom, and also just the trust from the clients who are Supergiant to do that as well?
Darren Korb:
I mean, it was, it was, it was incredible. I think, um, I think I, I tend to work better when I can just do something weird, you know, (laughs). And I tend to, 'cause a lot of times, you know, even still I'll have ideas that are weird on paper, you know, and then, and then I'll tell Greg [inaudible] our creative director, "I'm thinking about putting this weird instrument out of context." And he's like, "That sounds crazy. I don't know, man." And then he hears it and he's like, "Oh, okay."
Guy Jones:
I got it.
Darren Korb:
You know, so, so I, I think I, I tend to be able to, when I can experiment and do stuff that is like seemingly weird, uh, I, I really like that and that's stimulating for me. And I, I think when you tell people about it, it doesn't, it's always... It's just not a good idea. Don't tell anyone, just do it. [inaudible]
Guy Jones:
It's tricky. And I think that, yeah, and I think that's what, what comes down to pair and a composer with, uh, a game developer or an audio team with a game developer, because I've sort of had, um, the sort of, I'd say the best of both worlds, but I definitely work in, uh, when it, when I can be more creative in my own mind and stuff, that sort of fairly tight a bit, whereas I've worked on a very strict project where, um, there were very strict parameters and they knew exactly what they wanted to do to the, to the detail as well.
Guy Jones:
Um, there was one, one where they wanted like a sort of really compressed guitar side and they said, "Oh, we can hear someone breathing on that." And I was just like, "Well, I'm playing guitar and I'm breathing a little bit." Like, it's, it's really, it's really hard for people to understand what the kind of to and fro of what you can do is, but having the creative control and the... A recent game I'm working on, he's, he's exactly the same. He just lets me do whatever I want, and I mean, within reason.
Darren Korb:
Sure.
Guy Jones:
But I mean, he'll... I'll throw an idea right there, we'll put it in the game, and he'll try it and either say, "That kind of sucks," or, "Yeah, that's really cool. Great." And we'll kind of go from there. And it's definitely more fulfilling as a creative to have that told to you and have that trust to experiment than have those really rigid kind of, um, sort of walls to work around, I guess.
Darren Korb:
Yeah. And, and again, you know, constraints are not bad exclusively, you know, constraints can be really helpful. So either, you know, whether or not you make those constraints, you know, different people I think have different, uh, environments in which they would flourish creatively. I think some people might do well to have those constraints imposed externally and some people prefer to do it themselves. And, you know, there's just, um, there isn't I don't think one particular right way. But I think for me, I, I tend to prefer, um, the sort of mental puzzle of making the constraints and, and figuring out a way to, to make it all work for my process and stuff.
Guy Jones:
Yeah. I think that comes down to creating a sound palette as well. And like, like you mentioned, you came up with a, a group of science and a group of science, uh, like a science palette that you could work from and then stay within that yourself. And I, I'm assuming you kind of delivered that to the rest of the team to say, "Is this cool to work within this kind of realm?" And they okayed it, so then you kind of know you're working with.
Darren Korb:
Yeah, for sure. On, on Bastion, uh, for the music in particular, you know, I made a couple of pieces just in this style that I was thinking about with the constraints that I mentioned.
Guy Jones:
Yeah.
Darren Korb:
And yeah, I mean, and that was basically it. I mean, they ended up, you know, the, the, I think the second piece I made or the third piece I made was, uh, in case of trouble, which, uh, is the sort of main theme for the Bastion area in the Bastion. And, uh, the file that we ship with the game is called town music rough. (laughs) Like I did that. There were no revisions. We just like, as you're saying, "Okay, let's keep going." You know, so, so, uh, that's the name of the file in the actual beautiful game. (laughs)
Guy Jones:
That's amazing. Um, and I, I think that kind of wraps or for that first section that we would want to get, right Kent? Like we... Are you happy with that?
Kent: Yeah.
Guy Jones:
I've got more questions if you want. I can go.
Kent: Yeah, it's like we could talk all day. No, this has been really great. And um, yeah, I really love, uh, the insights you're able to give us Darren.
Darren Korb:
Cool.
Kent:
Appreciate it.
Darren Korb:
It was awesome.
Kent:
And, uh, we'll, uh, this will close part one and, um, we'll have a part two, will be coming soon. So thank you again, Darren, for being here.
Darren Korb:
No problem