Not all music is created equally. You may love the soundtrack of your favorite film, television show, or video game just as much as you enjoy Beethoven's 9th, but you may not know how deliberately the score from your favorite form of entertainment was composed. Elliot Callighan, independent composer and sound designer, joins the Curiosity Podcast to reveal how musicians in the 21st century write for media that didn't even exist when most of history's greatest composers were alive. Elliot Calligan is a classically trained violinist and pianist, metal guitarist and electronic music enthusiast, a Soundpost Co-Chair for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Overture Council, and an adjunct faculty member in the Film & Game programs at DePaul University. His work has been featured in campaigns for United Airlines, The Chicago Advertising Federation, GMC, The Godrej Group, Chevrolet Motors, The Goodman Theatre as well as many independent films and games. Additional resources discussed: Ramova Music, Elliot's web site Native Instruments Komplete 11 Software Suite Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 Newzoo Global Games Market Report MPAA Theatrical Market Statistics 2016 Report High Score: How Video Games are Offering New Opportunities to Composers, Producers and Orchestras National Endowment for the Arts Research Report #58, January 2015 Musical chord preference: cultural or universal? Data from a native Amazonian society Your culture—not your biology—shapes your musical taste To learn more about this topic and many others check out Curiosity.com, download our 5-star iOS or Android app and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and everywhere else podcasts are found so you don't miss an episode!
Not all music is created equally. You may love the soundtrack of your favorite film, television show, or video game just as much as you enjoy Beethoven's 9th, but you may not know how deliberately the score from your favorite form of entertainment was composed. Elliot Callighan, independent composer and sound designer, joins the Curiosity Podcast to reveal how musicians in the 21st century write for media that didn't even exist when most of history's greatest composers were alive.
Elliot Calligan is a classically trained violinist and pianist, metal guitarist and electronic music enthusiast, a Soundpost Co-Chair for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Overture Council, and an adjunct faculty member in the Film & Game programs at DePaul University. His work has been featured in campaigns for United Airlines, The Chicago Advertising Federation, GMC, The Godrej Group, Chevrolet Motors, The Goodman Theatre as well as many independent films and games.
Additional resources discussed:
To learn more about this topic and many others check out Curiosity.com, download our 5-star iOS or Android app and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and everywhere else podcasts are found so you don't miss an episode!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/21st-century-composing-scoring-music-for-film-and-video-games
CODY GOUGH: I'm curious, how does a person get into composing a musical score for a film or video game or other media versus writing for a symphony orchestra?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: The vast majority of game music is completely done on a computer by a person with sample libraries and tools that knows how to use them. Technically, you don't ever have to leave your computer to write music for media in general. You just have to be obsessed and passionate about it to just make it happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CODY GOUGH: Hi, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer from Curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Today, we're going to learn how music is made for film, games, and other media.
ASHLEY HAMER: Every week, we explore what we don't know because curiosity makes you smarter.
CODY GOUGH: This is the Curiosity podcast. The chances are every day, you're exposed to music from film or television or video games. Today, I want to get into where movie and game soundtracks come from and what goes into writing for them. Elliot Callighan is an independent composer and sound designer. And not only will he talk about what he does, but you'll also hear some samples.
Yes, we have music this week to make it really clear why a composer controls a lot more than just the audio when it comes to your favorite media. And hey, if you're interested in composing music for media, Elliot will give you a couple of pointers on where to get started.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can follow along with an interactive transcript of this episode on Gretta.com. That's G-R-E-T-T-A. Visit gretta.com/curiosity to share your favorite clips with your friends while you listen.
CODY GOUGH: I'm here with a composer and sound designer who has released a number of albums under the electronic moniker Ramova as well as a faculty member at DePaul University in Chicago. What do you teach?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I teach courses dealing with sound in the film and game departments there.
CODY GOUGH: Sound in the film and game departments specifically. And you've also scored music for film and games.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's why I'm interested to talk to you. Do most composers today write for film and games?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily most composers do it. I mean, there's still a large number of composers that are very much in the concert hall space I guess. But I've always been drawn more so to media creation and I guess anything and everything outside of the concert hall space, so I can't speak more on it than that.
CODY GOUGH: Sure, it just seems lucrative as an industry because there's film and games everywhere. I mean, everyone seems to be making a video game these days.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, the democratization of all the tools to make it are-- there's a lot of opportunity right now.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, there is. Video games especially have been tearing up the marketplace lately. According to market intelligence company Newzoo, the global revenue from video games hit $101 billion in 2016, a 10% increase from the year before. That positively dwarfs the film industry. The Motion Picture Association of America reports that box office sales only reached $38.6 billion the same year, just a 1% increase.
It's no wonder that many composers are getting into the gaming business. Tom Salta, who composed for Prince of Persia and the Tom Clancy series, Gordy Haab, composer for the Star Wars video game franchise, and Austin Wintory, the composer for games like Flow and Journey, all got their start in film composition.
CODY GOUGH: How long have you been composing for film and games? Is that where you started or did you start elsewhere?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: In terms of writing music, I guess I started because I wanted to be in a metal band that would take over the world.
[LAUGHTER]
And then when that didn't pan out, I said, well, sure, I know how to write music. What else am I going to do? And that was when I was in music school and I'd had a new appreciation for film scores and whatnot because of the education I'd had in writing music. And then from there, I began to pursue film scoring as well as just music for media in general.
CODY GOUGH: So what's the difference between the concerns of a person composing for an orchestra or a symphony versus composing for film or game music? What's similar and what's different?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: There are a plethora of caveats to this. And I'm going to oversimplify it by a lot right now by the way I'm going to answer this question.
CODY GOUGH: All right.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So preface my answer with this is wrong lots of times. But for the concert stage, you essentially have concerns with instrumentation, aesthetic. And you probably have a length requirement as well like whatever commissioning entity says we want you to write a thing for the concert.
They say it should be roughly this long, these instruments. And it should have evoked this type of emotion or be in this vein of composition style or technique. For a media composer, you've still got those concerns. But rather than it being, hey, it should be roughly this length, you probably have to make it an exact length to a thin, on the verge of milliseconds in terms of accuracy.
And not just in total length or duration, but there are specific points throughout the timeline of what you're writing that you have to have specific musical gestures or specific shift in moods or instrumentation or something that accentuates the visual.
And then talking specifically about games, you then have to think about how is it going to be played back. If it's in a film, 20 minutes into the film, the same thing happens. You're seeing the same thing every time. And in games, you, for the most part, don't know when the player is going to do certain things.
So you have to think about how it's going to be played back, so it still is appropriate for the experience for the player. So when your music is being played back, it's not going to be played from front to end. It's going to be played back, so I guess all the different ways in which you can play back music that you write for games.
You can have something that loops. You can have a set linear sequence or maybe a cut scene where it is more similar to film, where it's going to be the exact same amount of time, and you can score to that specific visual or something. Players can make different choices, which can then lead into different sections of the piece of music that you're working on.
You also have options with interactive and adaptive scores where depending on the activities in the game, like there are more enemies now, and they're trying to kill you. So because of that, you have other instruments that are brought up in the mix or are now present so that you can actually hear them.
While when it's a bit more calm, maybe you've only got three instruments playing, but when you've got a ton of enemies attacking, maybe now you've got 10 instruments playing, but they're all composed to be the same piece of music. And then there are other options where you can have A, B, C sections, but you can randomize and select how often in terms of the randomness.
Certain parts are played and what instruments or passages for each grouping of the A, B and C section are played. And you can randomize all of it. You can give certain weights to how often certain instruments or sections are played. Like the possibilities are ridiculous. And it's incredibly fun to nerd out with all that stuff.
CODY GOUGH: That's a lot of options.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, it's a lot.
CODY GOUGH: A big mystery to me has always been, how do you make the music tolerable for long periods in the looping sections?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Oh, don't suck.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: There's no secret. There's no magic formula. There's no mathematical equation that you go through to say, OK, if this person listens to these 32 bars for two hours while they're playing a dungeon or something, they're not going to get sick of it?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Well, I think that randomization component of it plays a lot because even though you're hearing what's essentially the same musical idea for a long period of time, having those slight differences between every loop or playback helps to kind of hide the fact, or at least it makes it feel as if you're not hearing the same exact thing over and over again.
So it kind of creates the illusion of a piece of music that is evolving and changing, even though it's really kind of just the same thing. So I think there's that. I think there's an execution component of it where depending on how you create the audio files that you're putting in the game, you can let things like reverb tails actually play out so it sounds very natural and nothing seems very sudden or cut off.
And then the third thing, which I think is really where composers are able to use the title composer, is they just don't suck, and they write something that is enjoyable that people don't mind listening to over and over again.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
ASHLEY HAMER: Here's another reason you don't get annoyed at hearing the same music over and over. Your brain secretly likes it. Most of us really underestimate our tolerance for repetition since study after study shows that people enjoy familiar stuff way more than they enjoy new things.
There's a phenomenon called the mere exposure effect that makes people feel a preference for things just because they're familiar. Choose your favorites in a list of random words for instance and chances are they'll be the most common ones in your language.
Brain scans of people listening to music show that the brain's emotion and reward centers are more active when hearing a familiar tune. And a 2013 study found that people experienced greater emotional arousal after hearing a familiar song, even if they didn't remember hearing it before. Your brain loves what it knows. Embrace it.
CODY GOUGH: So I'm not going to say something like a video game music isn't just bleeps and bloops anymore because that would insult our audiences intelligence. It's 2017. I can still imagine probably a dozen news anchors on network news stations that would say something that stupid, but that's not the way it is.
Clearly, video game music's evolved. Where are we at with public perception? How do people respond when you say I compose music for video games? Do you still get those really outdated reactions? Or do people think it's as cool as I do?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I think it depends on who you're talking to. There are people I'd say around our age or younger and a little older too that they're like, oh, that's really cool. That's awesome. And you still have kind of a crowd that's not as informed or doesn't play video games. Like it's never been a part of their activity list ever, and they're not really as taken by it.
But that's because I don't think they've ever played The Elder Scrolls and listened to that score, so they don't know what the capabilities are. But I think it's changing, and I think it's heading in the right direction. And yeah, I think it's just on par with the vast majority of all concert music and film music now. It's at the same level.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, I know a lot of symphonies around the country will do a Lord of the Rings concert or a Harry Potter concert, and now for years, we've been seeing that. There's The Legend of Zelda, Symphony of the Goddesses. There's the Final Fantasy concert series. There's Video Games Live. Have you seen any of those?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, I've gone to Video Games Live twice. And I actually went to the CSO's Lord of the Rings performance this-- was it last weekend or two weekends ago at Ravinia?
CODY GOUGH: Oh, wow.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So yeah, I go to that stuff all the time because deep down, like, it's my job, but I'm also just a huge nerd.
CODY GOUGH: Are you a big fan of those?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, me and my one friend when the-- I'm going to nerd out right here. When the fellowship is all getting together, and Aragorn is like, you have my sword, and Legolas is like, and my bow. And then me and my friend both just scream out in the middle of the crowd, and my axe.
[LAUGHTER]
And then everyone looks at us like, really? And we're like, yeah, that happened.
CODY GOUGH: Well, you get some diversity in demographics of the audience with these shows because I've been to-- I went to a Zelda symphony, and a lot of the crowd is your traditional concertgoers. They're more prim and proper, and they're dressed up nice. And then you've got people cosplaying and dressed like Zelda.
And you've got people that as soon as they start to play a certain character's theme, people are screaming in the crowd and things like that. So really there's a big range there. Where do you-- so you fall more into the side of I'm just going to kind of go and enjoy myself?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, I mean, anything that brings people together or makes things more accessible in whatever shape way or form, I couldn't support more. So the fact that it's displaying these works and it's playing to the video game crowd, but it's making it acceptable for a more prim and proper traditional classical music goer to experience it and hopefully appreciate it is great, fantastic.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's nice for video game music to get some symphony cred, but the symphony needs it just as much. According to a report from the National Endowment for the Arts, only about 9% of US adults attended a classical music concert in 2012, down from about 12% a decade earlier.
At the same time, the number of seniors who attended classical concerts actually increased. Video game concerts could be a way to infuse some youth and diversity into classical music's quickly aging audience.
CODY GOUGH: You mentioned that you were going to take over the world with your metal music.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Would you consider doing a live DJ set of your video game music somewhere? Do you think that would work? Or do you think that it's only certain genres? Oh, you hadn't thought of that before.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Well, I mean, I think it depends on the projects you've been able to work on. If you were part of the fallout music theme, that's very kind of stoic and kind of dark and a bit heavy and slower.
And I don't know if that necessarily lends itself to an electronic show. I mean, I think it's a possibility, but I have not worked on any games that I think would lend well to that at least right out of the gate. I'd have to sit in my composer cave for a while and see what the possibilities were.
CODY GOUGH: All right, cool.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Let's talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts. Let's talk about some projects that you've worked on. And we'll start with some of the games. So you worked on Space Scavengers.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And that was made during a global game jam. What does that mean?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So there are game jams and there are global game jams. Global means it's just worldwide simultaneously, but a game jam is essentially a 48-hour, die-hard game development session. People make teams of four to eight people. And then very early on a Saturday-- well, they'll know the theme going into it. And then they're given some other parameters that they have to fit within, but then in 48 hours, they have to make a game.
CODY GOUGH: Like a 48-hour film festival.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Exactly, same exact thing.
CODY GOUGH: OK, but with video games.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: But with games, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And you scored music for that. So did you get to see the game at all before you worked on it?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: No, not at all. They sent me a description of what they-- very early on a Saturday, they said we think we're going to make something like this and then sent me a couple graphics of celestial settings like stars and, like, universe, and it's so beautiful. And from there, said that we need a main theme music for this. And do you need anything else besides this?
And I was like, well, there's more I would like, but I can do something with this. So I also ask them for a number of key words that they would use to describe kind of the aesthetic that they wanted. And they used I think mysterious and beautiful and also wondrous.
And wondrous really stood out to me because I have this other pet project of mine where I'm kind of creating a personal musical encyclopedia where different chord changes or harmonic progressions are connected with specific words and descriptors.
And so the idea being that you move from this chord to this chord. And that creates this type of emotion or this word describes what that sound or harmonic motion is. And the first chord movements that I assigned to any word was the movement from a minor I or a minor tonic to a major IV, which to me sounds like the musical personification of the word wondrous.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So I, at that point, had a description of what they wanted the game to be like the setting. I had a bunch of graphics and photos of various celestial star and universe-type of settings. And I knew that I wanted to make this one harmonic progression the focal point of the composition. And then from there, I just wrote it.
CODY GOUGH: I do have a clip of Space Scavengers, the theme song. I'll play it for just a second, and we'll see how wondrous it sounds.
[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]
That gave me goose bumps like actually--
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: In space.
CODY GOUGH: --it's really good.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Thank you.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, that sounds pretty wondrous to me. You were pretty happy with the project. Everybody was pretty happy with the project.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, I sent it to them, and they were like, yeah, this is exactly what we were looking for, like good.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: That's not bad. And you had just happened to the first word in that encyclopedia-- it just happened to be wondrous? And you did that before this project?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's quite a coincidence.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Well, I'm trying to make it, like, to some extent work.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So I'm glad that it did. But I want to make a point that I don't think it's any sort of musical infallible encyclopedia that this is how you write music. It's much more of a way to begin a conversation with someone or to begin experimenting.
And it's very much personal to me. It's not something that applies to everyone. Someone else might hear the same chord progression and think it means and feels like something totally different than me.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's surprising how much your culture can influence the way you hear music. You may have heard that major chords sound happy and minor chords sounds sad, for instance. But when researchers play these chords for people in remote cultures who have never been exposed to Western music, they rarely have the same emotional response as someone who grew up surrounded by it.
Even something as seemingly obvious as dissonance or the sound of wrong notes changes based on culture. In 2016, MIT researchers showed that when they played a series of consonant and dissonant chords for the Tsimane people, a culture that lives in the Amazonian rainforest of Northwest Bolivia, they showed zero preference for consonance over dissonance. Your upbringing shapes you in ways that aren't always obvious.
CODY GOUGH: That makes sense because if you hadn't had that chord progression already kind of in mind for wondrous, where would you start? If somebody says, well, we think it'll be kind of like space, we'd like it to be kind of maybe some piano synthy, maybe an orchestra, like it's kind of vague, and you can't see any of the game, that's crazy to me.
Even film composers I'm guessing if you've scored-- because you've scored some commercials and films and things, you typically see those products before you're composing for them, right?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, usually you're able to get at least a fine or hopefully a final cut for a film. And then everyone's process is different, but I usually will then create what I call color palettes or I guess you call them overtures or just pieces that try to sum up the musical aesthetic of the overall film.
And it's essentially my way of asking the director hey, how about this? Do you want to take it in this direction? Or how about this? Do you want to take it in this direction? Because there are lots of different ways that you can interpret the same thing. So it's my way of testing out a direction to take it without scoring for hours upon hours and days and weeks before the director says, I want to go somewhere else.
CODY GOUGH: We won't go through one by one of every project you've ever worked on, but there's another one that you've talked about, and that's Project Frequency. And I believe the note that you were given was that the world needs to have music that's got a kind of a solitary mysterious feel.
And it's going to sound-- because we'll play some shortly, but it's going to sound very different than what we'd just heard. So talk a little bit about what you were given and how you turned that into where you started once you got those notes.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Sure. Yeah, the initial conversation I had with developer-- they talked about having a mysterious solitary tone to it. And they also mentioned the game Silent Hill 2 as a reference. So the first thing I did was I went back and listened to the soundtrack for Silent Hill 2, which if any of the listeners have a spare chance and you want to hear some crazy, dissonant, amazing, ugly stuff, go listen to the soundtrack to it. It's awesome.
CODY GOUGH: Terrifyingly awesome?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Oh yeah, exactly.
CODY GOUGH: All right.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So I went back and listened to that soundtrack. So I kind of had those sounds and textures in the back of my mind. And then I looked at the gameplay itself, and it's randomly generated. The landscape is the same, but the locations of all your enemies and items are totally different. And it's a zombie horror survival game. So you spawn in a building, in a home, and it's just try to survive.
CODY GOUGH: Sounds terrifying.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, and it's dark and ominous. And I love that sort of stuff.
CODY GOUGH: I was going to say--
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I was a metalhead for the longest time.
CODY GOUGH: So you enjoy games like that.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Oh yeah.
CODY GOUGH: So you get this project and you thought to yourself--
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: Sweet.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, but it's completely randomly generated. And because of that, even when nothing's really happening-- like usually when you play through a game, you play through an area or a sequence once and then you know what's going to happen. And because of that, the impact of when things happen in the game lessens whenever you play that sequence again.
For Project Frequency, since it's completely randomly generated, you're pretty tense the entire time that you play it because even if you've been to that same location, done these series of things, could be a room or building full of zombies or items or maybe a couple, the exact placement of them is different.
So you're tense when nothing is happening. And that kind of became my motivation for the music for it. I just wanted to have the player feel as helpless and uncomfortable as possible throughout it. I brought this up to the developer, and they were all about it. They said that's great.
And so we talked some more about how to achieve this. And one idea that came up was infrasonic sound or sound that is so low in terms of its frequency that's below the threshold of human hearing. There have actually been studies where they've had people in a space and ask them how they feel and their general mindset at that moment.
And then they play infrasonic sound very loudly into that room. But again, it's frequency is so low no one hears it. But roughly half of all the participants just said they just suddenly started to feel tense and uncomfortable in that space, even though to them, they didn't perceive any change in it.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, so that doesn't necessarily come across in Project Frequency unless someone has a suite sub that they're playing the game on. But we had a constant low-frequency sound as this kind of audio wall that is hitting you the entire time that makes you feel claustrophobic that we hoped created that sort of same tense, uncomfortable dissonant feeling.
ASHLEY HAMER: Like Elliot said, you can't actually produce infrasonic sound or infrasound on even the most high-end subwoofers. That's because infrasound is below the range of human hearing by definition, and stereo manufacturers have this weird tendency to make speakers that play sounds you can hear.
Anyway, an engineer named Vic Tandy may have been the first person to realize that infrasound could make you feel spooked. And there was no fancy sub involved. In the early 1980s, Tandy was working at a company that made medical equipment. One lab in his office just gave people the creeps. It made some feel like they were being watched.
And Tandy himself thought he saw a human figure in the corner of his eye at one point. One day, he brought a fencing foil to work-- don't ask-- and noticed that the lab was making it vibrate at precisely 19 hertz, which is just below the range of human hearing.
He eventually realized that the vibration was coming from a newly installed extractor fan. When he turned it off, the ominous presence disappeared. The ghost was just a fan all along, and it would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling fencer. You can read this whole story on Curiosity.com.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: On top of that, I also added a lot of seemingly random percussion just because you can't rely on certain things being in certain places all the time. Audio can do a lot to kind of help you feel less helpless. You can hear an enemy in the next room or you can hear where an enemy is in relation to you.
And I again, wanted the player to feel helpless and uncomfortable. So adding some seemingly faint random percussion in the music makes it so if somebody hears something to the left, they're not necessarily going to think it's an enemy. It might be the soundtrack.
And because of that, they may be less cautious, which can then put them in more of those situations where they're surprised by something. So it just really amps up that whole terrifying, uncomfortable, oh-my-God sense while you're playing the game.
CODY GOUGH: You're very sadistic, you know that?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Well, for this game, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, that almost puts you in the camp of being a game designer because what you're doing is impacting the player's play style so significantly.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Oh yeah. Well, I think that it definitely goes along with it. And anyone who's worth their salt in horror will tell you just how important the audio is to it. And that goes for film as well as games.
CODY GOUGH: Have you scored any horror film or in television kind of stuff?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Oh really?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And do you do the same kind of approach with that? I mean, you can't have the randomized elements.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: For the horror projects that I've worked on, I haven't taken the same exact approach, but the idea of creating suspense and tension and playing off of this sense of dread is the same. And depending on the project you're working on, you might go about it in a different way, but the goal is essentially the same.
CODY GOUGH: Did you have any anxiety while you were working on the project with that subharmonic frequency playing?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So interestingly enough, while I was working on it, no. But I recently upgraded my studio, so I could have a better quality sub. And I've been creating a game audio implementation class for DePaul for this fall.
And so I've been working a lot with Wwise, which is middleware software that you use to put audio in into games. And I won't bore you with the details, but I was able to pump out some like 22-hertz sound just into my studio space just because I was like, I want to see this infrasonic impact on myself. And it worked.
CODY GOUGH: Did it really?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: It seriously worked.
CODY GOUGH: Even though you were aware that it was there.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I mean, I did know it was there, so maybe I'm preconditioning myself a bit. But I would just play a sine wave. And as I went down to like 16 hertz-- like the difference between hearing something at 30 hertz and then playing a sine wave at 16 hertz or something where I'm not hearing it anymore, but just there's just kind of this weight on my chest that was there-- it works. It's the real deal.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Terrifying.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Well, let's terrify our listeners with just a short clip of it.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: OK.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
CODY GOUGH: It's almost more like ambient sound than music. And there's not really a melody playing, right?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, it's more sound design-focused than it is necessarily traditional composition-focused. But that being said, there's one melodic line on top that kind of comes in and out throughout it. And all of the different tracks that I wrote for the game, I have that in there in-- it might be in a different instrument.
The timing might be slightly different, but that is the one kind of connecting thread between all the different musical ambient tracks in the game is this one little melodic element that just comes in for a second and then disappears every so often.
CODY GOUGH: Wow, that's advanced. It's quite advanced. How did you feel when they said to you Silent Hill 2 is kind of an example? When referencing other games, I mean, I can't imagine the director of Man of Steel went up to Hans Zimmer and said, I want something triumphant like what John Williams did, only different. Like is that kind of thing helpful or is it insulting?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I think it's very personal to each composer. I like to have a reference. That being said, I don't like to have the reference ever paired with the thing that I'm writing it for. So if I was to score a film and they said, I really think something along the lines of this other movie soundtrack would work well, what I would do is I would totally go on Spotify and listen to the soundtrack of that other movie.
What I wouldn't do is have a cut of the film that I'm scoring and play the other soundtrack while I'm watching the film that I'm scoring. I like having something in my ear in the back of my head. I don't ever want to create that visual connection because one is influencing while the other to me is dictating.
CODY GOUGH: Make sense.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: So with that said, talking about other composers, who are your favorite composers for music or film or otherwise, and why?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: If I had to pick a single media composer that is my favorite, I would probably go with James Horner. I think he's incredibly lyrical, and he can also be incredibly complicated and incredibly simple depending on what he's scoring for.
CODY GOUGH: What has he scored for?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So he did A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. He did Enemy at the Gates, which has one of the most amazing, like, symphonic overture openings to a movie I personally think ever. And I think it's incredibly underrated. He also did Titanic.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, right, I've heard of that movie.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, it's this little thing.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Leonardo something.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, something.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Some boat.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, there's a boat involved.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's all I know.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, he's up there. Other than that, the metalhead in me-- like I love Hans Zimmer, especially Batman Begins. Like I love specifically Batman Begins. There's a track on there called Molossus, which is just I think the most heavy, classical film score thing ever. And I love it. It's like a metal breakdown with an orchestra. It's so good.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, and then specifically about games, I think most other game people will cry heresy because I'm not going to go back and say one of the 8-bit or 16-bit composers or whatnot as brilliant as they are. But current composers for games-- I really like Austin Wintory. I think he's fantastic.
John Robert Matz-- he did the score for Fossil Echo, which won, like, Best Score I think this past year or something, which was an indie game, which means it was going up against all the AAA titles that year. And John just did it for an indie game and beat all of them. And it's beautiful. I actually was lucky enough to meet him a few weeks ago, super nice guy. And he wrote a great score. So I think that answers your question.
CODY GOUGH: Definitely answers my question, yeah. I wasn't sure if you were just going to say GWAR and leave it at that.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: GWAR for everything.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, you just leave it at that.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: So when you're given all these nodes, the clients, essentially a game development studio asks you to do X, Y and Z. So with all that feedback, how would you describe your style? And can a media composer have a, quote unquote, "style" that's distinct when it's so influenced by outside factors? How do you define that?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I very much view what I do as an art form, but I think you definitely have to be a craftsman as well. If all you can do is just one thing in the art form that you work in, that would be like going to a carpenter and saying, I want a table and then they give you a chair. And you're like, well, I said I want a table, then they give you another chair. Like that carpenter is not going to have a job for too long.
So I think that you have a specific style. And when you try to write in ways for different projects, your style still comes through or at least it's the interpretation of how you think of this thing, whatever that thing is musically. So I think your style comes through no matter what.
But I think the real skill set other than writing is being able to get into the mindset of the person or the team that you are writing for because I very much view it as my job is not to write just my music. My job is to write someone else's music. And as soon as you embrace that, I think that's incredibly fun and makes for so many amazing possibilities that way.
CODY GOUGH: Makes you kind of a chameleon a little bit.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, you have to really get in the mindset of someone else. And I think that that's a whole other skill set on top of just I want to write music.
CODY GOUGH: Right, and a chameleon changes color, so nothing can eat it. And being eaten is really bad.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: And composers don't like to get eaten.
CODY GOUGH: Right, there you go.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Full circle. There you go.
CODY GOUGH: Full circle.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, because I was thinking about-- there's one other game music project that I know you've talked about specifically, Boats, High Seas Scramble. And for that, you have kind of a Celtic theme there, so way removed from everything. And that's its own style.
I took a couple of music classes in college and you learn the classical styles and things like that, but Celtic music-- its own thing over there or Middle Eastern-inspired music or East Asian music. There's such a wide variety. How do you learn how to compose for a specific styles like that? Like how do you even approach that?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, I think there's a fair amount of research and just listening on your own that you have to do. I think if you purely approach writing in a style that you aren't experienced with like in a textbook sort of way, that it's going to come off as very textbook.
But to research a style by reading the textbook and then listening to all of the different acts that live in that realm, in that world and get that in your ear, then begin to write, then it's not just I'm doing what the textbook says, but it's I'm doing my interpretation or I'm doing it the way that I would do this thing. Now you have that personal touch to it, which makes it good.
CODY GOUGH: And I've got to ask. Since you're an artist, how focused are you on the music that's playing when you're watching a movie or playing a video game?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: All the time. It's a double-edged sword. I mean, I love what I do, but I don't hear any commercial to watch any movie, play any game with music in it and not immediately start thinking about different chord progressions or how they took this section or melodic motif and did a variation or put it here. Or I'm always constantly dissecting things that I hear, which is a blessing and a curse, I guess.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, awesome and kind of terrible.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, I can't just sit back and enjoy anything.
CODY GOUGH: Wow, but if you're out at a bar or something, they're not playing the audio from the TV. Sometimes they're just playing a lot of Journey, and then you don't have to deal with it, right?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: And then it's even better.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, is that metal enough for you?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So metal.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, good. Well, what's the biggest misconception about what you do that-- your final thoughts on composing for games and film and media in general.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So I think the biggest misconception, and this is for just people who aren't involved in that world or the music world at all, is that there's some sort of bar for entry, and I think that's for both being able to write music as well as having the technical capabilities to actually execute it.
I don't think anyone's just born with it. And people are just good at this. Like it's a lot of time, effort, and commitment. And if you enjoy it and are obsessed enough to just do it all the time, you will get better and you will become really good at it. So don't ever think that it's, oh, I'm just bad at it and I'm always going to be bad at it.
The first couple of times I tried to write music-- like it was awful. It was really bad. But I did it for years, and I'd like to think I got a lot better. And that's what it's going to be like for everyone. So don't be discouraged because you're not amazing out of the gate. No one is.
And secondly, people also think that all of these things are done with people who have been playing the violin or some other instrument since they were very young. And the only way that they actually make a finished game is by working with someone who has that instrumental experience and is able to hire an orchestra to record this huge production for a game.
The vast majority of game music is completely done on a computer by a person with sample libraries and tools that knows how to use them. And it's a lot of time. And depending on what you get, it can be a fair amount of money to get yourself off the ground, but it's nothing like investing in an orchestra.
So if you have the drive, obsession, and passion to do it, technically, you don't ever have to leave your computer in order to write music for games. I think you can generate the skill set and you can get all the tools from your computer. You just have to be obsessed and passionate enough about it to just not sleep and not have as much of a social life and just obsess about it and make it happen.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, do you have a recommendation for starting software? What do you have your students get?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, for music at least, I say that in terms of sample libraries and whatnot, Native Instruments' Komplete spelled with a K is a fantastic quote unquote, "starter pack." I don't think anything you get in there is the best, but it all sounds good, and you get pretty much everything. So if you're just looking for a-- I want to begin writing music and I don't know where to start, get Komplete by Native Instruments.
CODY GOUGH: Sweet.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's very cool. They don't need a microphone or a keyboard or any of that set up. Just get it on the computer, start there and, then hopefully get a microphone and a keyboard.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: I mean, I would say get an actual MIDI keyboard. You can play it similar to a piano, but just in terms of the software and sounds that you need, yeah, Native Instruments' Komplete I think is a fantastic way to start or Omnisphere, which is made by Spectrasonics.
CODY GOUGH: Wonderful, great recommendations. Well, thanks so much. I want to teach you something now.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: All right.
CODY GOUGH: In a little bit, we call it the Curiosity Challenge. It's not necessarily a little, but it's average sized at the very least. Well, you taught me a lot about how music can affect our mood, especially the subharmonic thing was really cool.
So music can affect our perception of food. I don't know if you knew this. Can you tell me what kind of sounds might you want to hear that would make a toffee taste sweeter and what would make it sound more bitter?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: That would make it taste sweeter? I don't know. Probably some sexy saxophone or something like that make it sound sweeter. And bitter-- maybe something with a lot of percussion.
CODY GOUGH: All right, well, the sound of a piano does not just add to a restaurant romantic atmosphere. There was actually some research from Oxford University in 2011 that participants were given a piece of cinder toffee, a treat chosen for its sweet and bitter flavors.
They judged that is tasting sweeter when they heard a soundtrack that was electronically altered to include more high-pitched, piano-like tones, and likewise participants rated the toffee as more bitter when the same music included more low and brassy notes. And this could have big implications for wineries restaurants and everyone else where flavor is the focus.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: No way.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, so if you ever design for a food-eating app game or something, there you go.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: All right, well, that's good to know.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Well, thanks.
CODY GOUGH: You can learn more about the effects that music can have on the taste of your food on Curiosity.com or on the Curiosity app for your Android or iOS device. Hopefully that was a sweet treat for you. That definitely wasn't.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: It was not.
CODY GOUGH: The last thing I said was not. So now you, I believe, came prepared with something that has nothing to do with video game or film music that's outside of your field that is a fun fact, something you're curious about that you can tell me.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, all right, so what was the first military service of the United States?
CODY GOUGH: The first military service of the United States.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: The first one ever created.
CODY GOUGH: You mean which branch of the military?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: That's a yes, but my answer will kind of caveat off that, but sure.
CODY GOUGH: This is cheating because I know that you've served with the National Guard. So I'm going to say the National Guard.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: You are correct.
CODY GOUGH: Ah!
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, so my formal Wikipedia explanation of the answer is the Army National Guard was the first actual military service for the United States. Local militias were formed from the earliest English colonization of the Americas in 1607. The first colony-wide militia was formed by Massachusetts in 1636 by merging small older local units and National Guard units can be traced back to this militia.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: So yeah, when the Continental Congress was actually in session, the military forces that they had at that point were all National Guard units, so first actual service for the United States.
CODY GOUGH: Did you learn that when you enlisted or--
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yes, they taught us, but I had to look up the specific.
CODY GOUGH: Sure, a lot of history there.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: You'll know.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Cool, well, that's something I didn't know, and that's really interesting. I did not know that.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Well, cool. Well, thanks for coming in and going through all of this. This is a really fantastic conversation. And if people want to hear some more of your music, can they find that online?
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, they can go to ramovamusic.com or R-A-M-O-V-A music.com. And I have examples of my work there or I have 130 some tracks for all sorts of things on my SoundCloud. So if you just go on SoundCloud and type in Ramova, R-A-M-O-V-A, pop right up.
CODY GOUGH: Wonderful, thanks so much for joining me, Elliot.
ELLIOT CALLIGHAN: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
ASHLEY HAMER: I've got an extra credit question for you. And you should know the answer if you've been paying attention to the Curiosity app. This one's about blood types. There are eight common blood types and literally millions of varieties, but the rarest blood type is Rhnull blood. Here's your question. How many people in human history have been reported to have the rarest blood type? The answer-- after this.
CODY GOUGH: Do you like surveys? Well, I've got some really good news for you if you do. We want to hear your thoughts on the Curiosity podcast, so we created a super quick and easy survey. Please visit curiosity.com/survey and answer a few questions, so we can make our podcast better.
Again, that's curiosity.com/survey. It's quick and easy and will really help us bring you better content every week. There's a link in the show notes too, but one more time, that URL is curiosity.com/survey. We really appreciate the help.
ASHLEY HAMER: That brings us to today's extra credit answer. How many people have Rhnull blood? This blood type is so rare that only 43 people on Earth have ever been reported to have it, and there are only nine active donors. This stuff is characterized by a complete lack of antigens in the Rh system.
Because Rhnull blood can be considered universal blood for anyone with rare blood types in the Rh system, its life-saving capability is enormous. It's so valuable to doctors. Some actually call it the golden blood. To learn more about blood types and pretty much anything else you can think of, download the Curiosity app for your Android or iOS device.
CODY GOUGH: We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please leave us a five-star review if you get a minute. For the Curiosity podcast--
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.