Can you write this music in an hour?

Hey music producers,

If you were given one hour to write new music for a video game but in a style you've never made before what would you do?

Despite the peculiar specificity of that question, I can tell you exactly what I'd do because I did it just yesterday!

This past weekend was PAX West, one of the biggest events in gaming. PAX is filled with panels, concerts, game demos, and, now for the past three years, one particular music game show.

Myself and four other video game composers participated in the 3rd Annual Composer Sports. The premise is pretty straightforward: a panel of composers is given exactly one hour to write brand new, original music for a video game based off of a randomly assigned prompt.

Since 2024 is the 20th anniversary of PAX, the theme for this year's Composer Sports was "Games from 2004." I was given the task of re-scoring the final cutscene of Shrek 2 (perhaps the most inconsequential game released in 2004) in the style of another famous sequel, Half-Life 2 (maybe the most consequential game released in 2004).

Today, I want to talk about how I prepared for the event.

When you only have an hour to compose and produce a new piece of music your margin of success depends on two things: efficiency and simplicity. In essence, the fundamentals.

Efficiency comes down to production fundamentals. When you only have an hour, every minute you spend searching for plug-ins and listening to presets is lost time. Having every track ready to go with the basic tools I know I'll always use and need (like EQs and compressors) saved me precious time.

Simplicity boils down to music theory fundamentals. When scoring a scene (and in such a short amount of time) there isn't really time for fancy cowboy shit. If I can't clearly convey the right emotion, the scene will fall flat for the viewer. Confidence in my ability to manipulate the elements we often take for granted - like scales, key signatures, rhythms, and chord progressions - were the key to successfully moving through the various styles used in a game like Half-Life 2.

At the beginning of this newsletter, I posed the question, "Can you write this music in an hour?" There isn't any way for you to know without answering this question first: How confident are you in your grasp of the fundamentals?

If your answer to that question is "not very confident" then come back next week. I've got something for you.

Til next time,

ZW

P.S. If you want to practice some of your Ableton Live sound design fundamentals, sign up for my free course, Simpler Sound Design, where I'll teach you the ins and outs of Simpler, Ableton Live's fundamentals-focused sampler. See you inside!