What does The Broken Hourglass sound like, and why? Rob Howard, the game's composer and honorary director of the Mal Nassrin Symphony Orchestra, explains. A new music preview is included in the article.

PWG: How do you view the role of music in games?

RH: The way I look at it, scores of games fall under two big categories: They can be very tuneful, with strong melodies, or very ambient and try very hard to stay out of the way. There's merit to both approaches, but I believe in the more tuneful approach. The way I can help a game is that when the player is not playing the game, those melodies stay in their head. I wanted these songs to sound like tunes you could play in your car, and it would make sense to listen to them that way. When I say ambient, I mean that the music is really in the background. You almost forget that it's there.


PWG: How did you know what The Broken Hourglass should sound like, musically? How did you begin?

RH: The process early on involved Planewalker giving me a list of different influences they wanted in the music, and it was an interesting set, so the first thing I did was check those influences out. And we had to decide what instruments would be involved. There's a good example of how that happened early on in the process. Because of some of the influences I was asked to follow, the very first drafts for the theme of the game have a rock-and roll-instrumentation, but Planewalker said it wasn't really what they were going for. So it became clear that I was not going to use any really modern instruments.

I wanted to use ethnic instruments throughout because the gameworld is supposed to be roughly like the Byzantine area of the world. One of the dominant sounds became the cümbüş [a sort of "Turkish banjo"]. Jason (Compton, producer) kept saying, "Man, I want to hear more of that," so it became dominant in the score.

We say there are two types of songs--the ones played by the "Mal Nassrin Symphony Orchestra" and the songs played by the "street band." The orchestra was something that made a lot of sense from the start. When you play an RPG with an epic feel to it, you want the power an orchestra can give. The street band came about as one of those happy accidents. As I was working on the residential music, the music that plays in the various residential areas of the game outdoors, I imagined a little street band. I had spent some time traveling in places like Italy where you see things like that all the time and I thought it would be a cool thing to represent in the game. So the street band plays some songs you might expect to hear in a neighborhood, or in somebody's home.

 
PWG: Were any segments of the music particularly challenging?

RH: The best example is the Makarios theme. The character has a romance, so I had to write a lovetalk theme for him, yet the description was a violent, firey sort of fellow. How do you reflect that romance in a lovetalk and have it be firey at the same time? It seems contradictory. As one might expect, that was one where I had to submit many, many drafts to get it right.

When I finally did get it right was when it clicked in my head that I know of someone who fits the description of the character. I'm a huge fan of Jeff Beck, and I would describe his personality like Makarios' personality-a romantic guy, but aggressive. So I listened to a lot of Jeff Beck music for ideas.
 
I was taught by other composers that you never want to be too married to an idea, so committed to the notes on the page that you resist changing, and I think that attitude helps with revisions. Music is one of those things where you can change a small detail but it changes the whole character of the composition. If doesn't fit the whole theme you're going for, sometimes it doesn't require a whole rewrite, just a change in tempo, and I can remember a few times where that was all I had to do.

Click here for an excerpt from Makarios' theme.


PWG: How does composing music for an interactive game compare to composing for more linear media, such as an album or a film, where the songs will always be experienced in the same order and at the same time?

RH: What I try to do to solve that problem is try to make the tracks so good, melody-wise, that the player doesn't mind if they hear them over and over again. When I think of my favorite game soundtracks, they have that in common--you can have that track hammered into your head for countless hours and you don't get annoyed the same way you would if a song you hate was on the radio for hours while you're at work.


PWG: Are there any particular game composers you consider personal influences?

The first person who comes to mind in game soundtracks would be Koji Kondo, known for his Mario and Zelda music. He really did succeed in creating music that didn't necessarily drive people up the wall when you heard it over and over again. On the American side of things would be Jeremy Soule--he does ambient scores really well. If I were to compose that way, I would want to do what he does. And Tommy Tallarico does great work.


PWG: Any final thoughts?

RH: I would like people to know that I want them to dig this music in such a way that it makes them really anticipate finding new areas in the game that might have new music. That would be the greatest compliment I could get.


More of Rob Howard's music is available at www.robhowardmusicproduction.com .