i had the privilege of being able to attend a Q+A with rich vreeland [disasterpeace] at berklee's video game music club (opens instagram). the interview was conducted primarily by the president of the club, with a public Q+A section near the end. last thing: a disclaimer! i *heavily* paraphrased everything and these exist more as highly condensed (arguably low quality) notes, hence the "mote cut." i cannot take notes at the speed of conversation, unfortunately. anyways, here are my notes!
Q: vgmc lore?
A: filipo, shota nakama, akash nakar, sean sincalir, qien hao all were there!
Q: berklee experience?
A: before berklee didn't have the language to communicate;
hyper-competitive atmosphere among performers, pivoted to EPD
Q: talk about fez music; what makes chiptune feel chiptune?
A: unfiltered waveforms, recontextualized those sounds to be more cinematic
Q: hyper light drifter; what inspired you to make it the way it is?
A: use piano to create a dichotomy. end of something is a great place to break rules
Q: anything else about synths that draws you to them?
A: expression; control over timbre is fun and highly expressive
played with nord modular synth software
Q: january; speak
A: game jam at MIT media lab, felt inspired to make something of his own
used flixl -- gradually built, getting more and more technical
if this note --> list of notes that work; highly probabilistic
Q: helped with working on mini metro?
A: went back to january, cleaned it up; people played it
mini metro devs wanted a procedural score!
Q: how has your process evolved, particularly with paradise marsh?
A: inspired by botw; phrase-based open world music
3 elements: pad bass keys; manipulate phrases in generative way
play with timing offset; transposition; reversal; FX
Q: rhythm game time; different process?
A: wife texted him, responded immediately
anyways, dont need to worry about motifs, have fun!
no strong external goal
worked on everhood: eternity edition
R: past the ambition stage, maximizing time
solar ash was a grind
Q: solar ash?
A: worked more on audio systems -- learning unreal engine technical sound design
Q: movies time; different process for movies?
A: process is as different as you want it to be
"what do you think the game needs?"
dont be overly ambitious -- interactive music is hard to do well
write something BEFORE prototyping generative part
film is painting by numbers -- fill in music more statically
film is more freeing because you do more music writing than coding
Q: how did you get here?
A: say yes to EVERYTHING
make mistakes to understand what you like and dislike
try as many things as you can
pick your battles
Q: writing standalone music; comparable to rhythm games?
A: yes, learned that he worked better with a concept
writing music for yourself is not necessarily like that, blank page is too freeing
latch onto a given concept
Q: genres, artists, other inspirations?
A: chrono-cross, koji kondo, flowx
picked up different influences along the way
interested in many different genres throughout his career
bernard herman for orchestral music
Q: circle back to berklee --> advice for what people should focus on?
A: had a busy musical life outside of school
didnt integrate well with school life
focused more on message boards and solo artist life
connecting with like-minded people
boston 8-bit, other outside school things
used classes to experiment
berklee is notorious for having a "berklee sound"
Q: worked with csound?
A: no, messed with max a bit
they live outside the middleware
dependency issues
Q: make a living just composing?
A: possible, its a creative field, so play to your strengths
dabbled in a lot of stuff, music is what hes known for
Q: website tags?
A: tag cloud; tag posts with different tags and arrange them by size
Q: how did you break in?
A: played shows with boston 8-bit, one in montreal
devs for fez were there
compilation originally, wheedled down to just him
hyper light drifter -- did shows with a drummer/game dev
drummer was friends with alex hirsch/saw hld kickstarter
connected!
Q: implementation: fmod or wwise?
A: fmod, wwise is too brutalist
HATE middleware
solar ash -- only used unreal, lots of downsides but very fun!
Q: creative blocks?
A: heart machine; block had to do with interpersonal issues rather than work
accept that work might be shitty
breaking creative blocks: copely strategies from brian eno
Q: it follows tech stack?
A: mostly massive, from berklee bundle
massive x SUCKS
Q: how did you get into live shows?
A: met berklee people through synth lab at EPD
those people helped with boston 8-bit
Q: favorite game?
A: too hard. top 3: morrowwind if it wasnt janky, old sports games
Q: favorite game soundtrack?
A: chrono-cross, mashinarium, yoshi's island