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Karl Magi: How did you first get involved with making music?<\/b><\/p>\n
John Robert Matz: I initially got involved in music because of my parents. My father was a trumpet player and my mother was a classically-trained soprano. They were both involved with music at our church; one thing led to another, and I found myself involved as well, singing with the church choir. Educationally, I was homeschooled all the way through high school, but I was fortunate enough to be part of a large homeschool fine arts group with a fantastic band program, and a wonderful director. They let me join a year early and, following in my dad\u2019s footsteps, I took up the cornet, eventually switching to trumpet in high school.<\/p>\n
Along the way I developed a passion for music theory, and, when the opportunity arose my senior year of high school, I began to teach music theory to the youngest grades in our homeschool music program. \u00a0Combined with the inspirational teaching and mentoring of our band director, I was pretty firmly set on the path of becoming a music educator.<\/p>\n
I went on to study music education in college, and, along the way, I started to cultivate my compositional brain. I had written a lot of music for the various ensembles that I\u2019d been in through high school, and, after four semesters of collegiate music theory and oral skills, I finally learned the labels for things that I\u2019d known instinctively from a lifetime of playing. \u00a0The difference was, now I had actual words for them and an understanding of how to apply them to the music I wrote. I knew not only what they were, but why they worked the way they did, and that sparked something in me. I started to compose more seriously at that point.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a friend of mine had gotten very deep into filmmaking. He\u2019d always done small projects, fun short films, documentaries, etc., but on this occasion, he, my sister and a bunch of their theatre friends decided to tackle something much more substantial. Being huge fans of The Lord of the Rings<\/i>, they poured months of work and hundreds of man hours into a massive undertaking: an adaptation of a story from J.R.R Tolkien\u2019s The Silmarillion, \u201cThe Tale of Beren and Luthien\u201d.<\/i> All their labors produced an hour and 45 minute-long fantasy adventure, and like any good brother and friend, I got roped into helping out on the project. I acted. I built costumes and props. And, naturally, I wrote the music. When all was said and done, the film was probably 90% complete, but a handful of VFX shots that proved impossible to execute on kept the project from being formally released. \u00a0Though it was never quite finished, all of that work on writing music to screen and learning how to score to picture had an indelible impact on me, and pushed me further into the world of composition.<\/p>\n
A year later, that same friend wound up getting a job with a big independent film project, and when the movie had progressed to the point where they were looking for composers, he suggested me to the director, sharing some of my work I\u2019d done previously. The director was apparently impressed enough to invite me to pitch something, which I did, and I got pretty darn far in the audition process, only losing out to someone with more experience at the very end. But, along the way, I realized that I liked writing music for films. There was something special, magical about telling a story with music.<\/p>\n
I pushed forward in college with my music education focus, but continued to compose, writing music for band, orchestra, small ensembles, and soloists during my collegiate career. When I graduated and got a teaching position, I realized I couldn\u2019t quit writing, and decided to spend some effort and time and re-focus on composition. That led me to an interesting opportunity, and getting my very first video game gig: scoring Artemis: The Spaceship Bridge Simulator<\/i>.<\/p>\n
KM: What first started you with composing for video games?<\/b><\/p>\n
JRM: I always enjoyed playing video games as a kid, but I came at it from a PC gaming standpoint. I didn\u2019t have any video game consoles growing up; they didn\u2019t have a purpose outside of games, and were therefore, \u201cinessential\u201d. My parents were much more OK with spending money on something that could be used to write book reports, or do research, than something that just played games. That didn\u2019t stop me from playing console games, NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 at friends\u2019 houses, but it did mean that they weren\u2019t an integral part of my childhood the way they were for my peers.<\/p>\n
Instead of Mario Kart, I played Falcon 3.0. \u00a0Instead of Zelda, I played Star Wars: Dark Forces. I always thought the musical scores of the games were cool, but when I was playing in bands and orchestras a couple of times a week, Ad Lib-powered MIDI stuff just didn\u2019t do much for me. Some of the coolest stuff that really stuck with me were the games coming out of LucasArts, dealing with their brilliant \u201ciMuse\u201d system which was this interactive music system that stitched fragments of music together, padding things out, or switching music up to match the gameplay.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d started playing in pit orchestras in high school, so the whole idea of \u201cvamping\u201d a segment or repeating a section until the player does something was just like what you\u2019d have in a stage show. The idea of a multi-layered, branching interactive score getting woven together from these constituent pieces was kind of mind-blowing, but it still sounded like MIDI music being played through a soundboard, and lacked emotional impact.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d grown up listening to and loving film scores by Ennio Morricone, John Williams, Alan Silvestri, and the like, and hearing those wonderful, emotive performances. Video game music of the late 90\u2019s was compositionally on a similar level, except it didn\u2019t have the production quality, the emotion of those live performances. It couldn\u2019t. It took a game that came out in 1999 called Outcast <\/i>to show me that video game music could be even more. Lennie Moore, an incredibly talented composer (whom I\u2019m now proud to call a friend), wrote an absolutely lush, fully-orchestrated score for this weird action\/adventure\/RPG game set in a parallel dimension on an alien planet, and had it performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.<\/p>\n
Suddenly you had this great music played well by world-class musicians. It was \u201creal\u201d for me in a way that it hadn\u2019t been before. I\u2019d always loved playing video games and now that the door was open to this sort of musical score, it was transformative for me. The emotional content of the music could now be carried by real performers and I realized that might just be something I could do.<\/p>\n
KM: How do approach the process of composing for games?<\/b><\/p>\n
JRM: I want to know two things when I start a new game project: I want to know what the game world is like and I want to know what the gameplay is like. The world will tell me how the music has to feel and the gameplay will tell me how the music has to function.<\/p>\n
If I can get concept art that depicts some of the characters and environments, or some of the story treatments from the writing team, I\u2019ll stew on it and come up with an idea of how the world sounds and what instruments we\u2019ll be featuring. Is this a sci-fi thing? Is this more of a fantasy feel? Is this something unique, something we haven\u2019t seen before? The answers to those questions will help form the palette that I\u2019ll be working with and maybe even some of the themes and motifs that I\u2019ll use throughout the score.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the gameplay and systems of the game, though, that will radically determine how the score is going to be paced and how it\u2019s going to be structured. If the game, for example, is a turn-based RPG where you have all the time in the world to decide what you\u2019re going to do and you do the thing, that\u2019s score is going to be very different from that of an action game where you are twitch-responding to enemy attacks. You have to take those elements of gameplay and pace and figure out how you\u2019re going to make the score work to support them appropriately.<\/p>\n
KM: Where does video game music fit into the broader world of contemporary music?<\/b><\/p>\n
JRM: Video game music and video games, for that matter, are more mainstream than ever before. I\u2019m very much a \u201cclassical\u201d musician; I grew up doing things in a \u201cclassical\u201d vein. My world is maybe staid than most, but I feel like the best \u201cclassical\u201d music that\u2019s being written these days is being written for video games.<\/p>\n
As the classical concert world has become more avant-garde (which can be terribly interesting, if not always approachable), there\u2019s been a neo-Romantic renaissance in video game scores. Austin Wintory\u2019s scores for Journey<\/i> and ABZ\u00db<\/i> are fantastic \u201creal\u201d modern classical orchestral music. Nobuo Uematsu\u2019s Final Fantasy<\/i> scores are popular enough to support multiple touring concert series. Video game music is not only intelligent, but is accessible. It can be performed in a concert hall and pull people in who might not want to come and just hear traditional classical music. \u00a0To me, reaching new audiences like that is super important.<\/p>\n
KM: Tell me more about your non-video game related compositions?<\/b><\/p>\n
JRM: I\u2019ve written a fair few pieces of concert music; a lot of it is for wind ensemble, but I\u2019ve written some solo pieces and some orchestral pieces as well. It\u2019s a world I always like to go back to, but I\u2019m busy enough with video game music nowadays that I don\u2019t get to do it as much. I\u2019m also a bit lazy, and I only tend to write something if I know it\u2019s going to have a shot at being performed. Thankfully, I\u2019ve had some fantastic opportunities to have my work played by some wonderful people over the years.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, I wrote a program piece for wind ensemble, based on Norse myth and legend, called Gods of the North<\/i>. Each movement focused on a different God or Goddess, from a different snapshot of their mythological lives: Odin, Frigg, Loki, <\/i>and Thor. \u00a0<\/i>I followed that up with a work called Theseus<\/i>, based on the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur from Greek mythology. Both of these program pieces gave me an exciting chance to bring some of my video game scoring techniques to concert music.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m actually working on something right now that\u2019s halfway between concert music and video game music. It\u2019s a musical theatre project with the working title of Project ESPER<\/i>. It\u2019s a musical theatre\/audio drama adaptation of the classic JRPG Final Fantasy VI<\/i>. It\u2019s shaping up to be super cool, and my co-composer Jeff Swingle and I are fortunate to head up a wonderful team of writers, sound designers and and a fantastic cast of voice actors and singers. Getting to adapt themes and motifs from Uematsu\u2019s wonderful score into song is a real treat, and we\u2019re very excited to share more with people in the coming months.<\/p>\n
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