Composer Code Matt Kenyon

What the composer of Ori and the Blind Forest and Halo Infinite taught me about making music for games.

Jason Graves is a game audio veteran with numerous AAA titles under his belt including Dead Space and Tomb Raider (2013)

Eric Buchholz is a talented composer and orchestrator who offered a glimpse into his illustratious career as well as valuable orchestration principles.

Sydney Kjerstad is a talented pianist, arranger, entrepreneur and VGM geek with tons of arrangement and business wisdom. Listen to our conversation now.

Tom is an ASCAP winning and MTV VMA-nominated composer who’s been in the biz for a long time and has an impressive list of both TV and game credits including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Red Steel 1 and 2, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein Youngblood, and the Halo Anniversary Edition soundtracks. 





In our conversation we discussed the importance of having an R&D period in your mind before you begin composing, what he calls the “sandbox” phase of composing, where he allows himself to just play, incidentally sort of tricking himself into composing (this is a huge pro-tip for composers, you don’t wanna miss this).



He also offers some really practical advice for building meaningful relationships in the game audio space.



As all my guests always do, Tom brought a ton of value to me personally and whether you’re just starting out making music for games, or you’re a seasoned pro, I guarantee you’ll find something helpful in this conversation.





Resources from Tom:



Tom's website

Tom's SoundCloud

Tom's TEDxTalk

Darren Korb is a game composer working for Supergiant Games. He's composed the soundtracks to smash indie hits like Transistor, Bastion, Pyre, and Hades. 
His upbringing as a singer/songwriter and bedroom producer laid a foundation for his work in game audio. He boldly challenges the mostly-instrumental world of game audio by infusing narrative lyrics that tell rich stories and expand the lore of each game world.
We talked about how he got started, the art and science of writing non-cheesy songs for video games, and why Logic Pro X is his favorite DAW.
Darren's soundtracks are incredible, and can be found anywhere music is streamed or sold.
Enjoy the conversation!