Did your gaming experience have any impact on how you approached making game soundtracks?

No. I approached the game scores the same way I do on film and TV scores, in that I play the story and support the emotions. The shift came in making the music seamless. In a film the story is linear in that it starts somewhere and ends somewhere. In a game, anything can and does happen. The story changes as the player responds to the game. The hard part of game scoring, I believe, is to design the score so the music can shift easily, yet not draw attention to itself in the process. That is not an easy task.

Let's talk about the process of making a soundtrack for a game. What are the various steps that you go through?

The process involves making appropriate music but that comes as a result of taking care of several other aspects first. I have to first listen to the producers and what they want. These guys have lived with it for a long time, usually years. They can tell you a lot. I have to be a really good listener. Then you take note of everything you can about the game, its story and characters. Next, you ask how you would like the players to feel emotionally and where in the game it should occur. Music functions on an emotional level. Music can help to create or stimulate emotions, so you need to understand what the goal is. With all this information I can begin to write some basic thematic material and come up with a style or genre that most helps to support the goals of the game. With the specific information I have collected I can direct my composer brain to come up with the right music.

Most game producers pick the composer in a typecast way. They find a rock guy or an orchestral guy. I am far more eclectic in my styles. I can score in any bag possible. Some people think of me as an orchestral composer, others a Jazz guy, others think I am avante-guard, some think I do songs, and some think I only do animation music. They are all right, but I do many styles and kinds of scoring. I do whatever is right for the project. This is how I have been trained and how I work. Being able to score in many ways makes it hard for people to label me. So what? I have worked with the best and I know my craft inside and out. I am proud of being able to score in diverse ways. It beats getting stuck in a loop, doing the same thing over and over.

How do you feel about the modern reality of music in video games, where pre-recorded sound is practically all you see, as opposed to the early years, when composers had to rely on on-board sound chips with very limited capabilities?

Well, it sure improves things when you can hear the music as the composer intended rather than output through a crappy substitute for the real thing. Who wants to go back to those days? I don't.

When you were working on the Star Trek games, what did you do to try and make the games 'feel' like the show? Did you concentrate mostly on instrumentation or themes?

Yes to all the above. The Producers needed to create the same feel for the games as people had associated with the Star Trek films and TV shows. There was a standard of quality that had to be achieved. That was why they asked me to work on the score. I knew how to get that sound and feel because I worked on the show. They had the rights to use the Star Trek music themes and I did use them a bit, but each title I scored for Interplay needed new themes. I created a whole new set of themes, but scored them in a similar style and texture as the original scores. The players could say, "Great, this is Star Trek, but wow, there are some new themes here". There were new characters and situations. This demanded some new material.

You've only worked on license-based games that have a solid foundation of past work to draw on, but also a stylistic bent that can't be easily deviated from. Are you interested in doing scores for non-licensed games and what kind of options would that open up to you?

Yes, I am very interested in creating a sonic world from the ground up. I am still scoring projects for TV and film, but I am trying to get more projects in the interactive game genre. I feel that traditional TV and film are becoming very stale. There has not been a significant shift in film making in recent times except in the digital/technological area. The revolution is only in the tools that are used, not in the structure. Non-linear forms like games are where the new things are coming.

Also, very important is the role of the Internet. This is and will be the most powerful platform of this new century. Why? Because of its availability and access. Producers can create content free of Hollywood. Anyone can say, "let's make a movie today" and upload it for the world to see. That is power. We will see rebel games emerging that will be done by small independent studios that will challenge the big corporations. It is already happening. This makes for greater expression, creativity and artistic growth. Everything is rapidly blurring; soon there will be no difference between a movie and a game - they will be part of each other.