The Score

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The Score

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The Score is the fifth segment featured in Until Dawn’s Bonus Content. The segment is about sound production and how music has been used throughout the development of Until Dawn. Composer Jason Graves talks about the process of composing the score.

Preview

Graves explains how he got involved with Supermassive Games and the production and Until Dawn itself. Regarding the game’s main theme, he elaborates that it establishes the mood, atmosphere and character of the music and how it’s going to be playing in the background. He describes his passion for horror-themed music as sounds that know no rules, something that really attracted him to composing the audio for Until Dawn.

Transcript

[Jason Graves] My name is Jason Graves, and I'm the composer for Until Dawn. I've been involved with Until Dawn for about a year now. Originally, I was contacted by Barney Pratt, the audio director. I think that had something to do with my lineage of horror games, and hopefully not the fact that my last name is Graves, although a lot of people seem to associate my name with scary music.

One of the things that was really exciting about working with Barney and the team at Supermassive is they really wanted something unique for the music. They wanted the music to stand out and be a character on its own in the game.

When I'm first starting on a new score, and it doesn't matter if it's film, television, or games, I always end up going to the main theme. Sometimes the developer or producer isn't even necessarily interested in the main theme at the beginning. I just want to do it for myself, because for me, the main theme is the identity of the game. It establishes the mood, the atmosphere, and the character of the music and how it's going to be playing in the background. And that's what we did with Until Dawn. That was actually my demo pitch to Supermassive Games. I put a main theme together, recorded all the instruments at my studio, and sent it to them, and they liked it. We actually ended up recording that exact theme, all the instruments and everything live here at Ocean Way probably nine months ago. And that's what we've been using in all the demos for the game, and that's the final version of the theme that is the main theme that you'll hear on the menus and in some key pieces of gameplay.

I seem to have made a name for myself in horror, and there's something about scary music. I think it's maybe the lack of rules. The biggest rule in scary music is there are no rules, so you can do anything you want. And actually, if you end up doing things that don't feel like they would work out together, they kind of clash, and it ends up being even more effective for scary music. So that's what really drew me to Until Dawn was the textures, plus writing thematic material that is interwoven with the scary textures. I haven't really done anything like that before. Usually it was just all tension all the time, and that's fun, and it's great, but I'm actually at heart a very melodic composer. That's the kind of music I love listening to, and that's the kind of music I love writing. That's the kind of music I got to work on in Until Dawn.

[Jason directing orchestra] Very nice. Same thing?

Video

Until Dawn "The Score" (Bonus Content) Composer Jason Graves Behind the Scenes