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What Does Fear Sound Like? · The Killscreen Podcast

• Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves, Scoring Fear Transcript (Verbatim) Recorded Oct 13, 2026, Riverside. Jamin Warren with Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves. Cross-Conversations: Horror, presented with MUBI. Source: Riverside MP3 export of the cleaned edit (Magic episode 01, revision 7, 60:10), transcribed in Google AI Studio. [00:00:06] Jamin Warren: Well, welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for for joining us for this conversation called Scoring Fear. We got two wonderful people here with us today: Ryan Holladay and Jason Graves. Just a housekeeping note before we get started. This is going to be the first of three conversations this month, so it's also being recorded, so it'll go up on on killscreen.com. You'll get an email afterwards as well with the recording. Cross-Conversations: Horror is presented with MUBI in celebration of Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is now streaming exclusively on MUBI. There those three three free talks that I mentioned this month, it's going to be putting people who make horror films and horror games in the same room, and you get 30 days of MUBI free at mubi.com/killscreen. So many thanks many thanks to them. [00:01:03] Jamin Warren: Let's talk about our guests. Ryan Holladay is a composer and sound artist based in Los Angeles. With his brother, Hays, and director, Zach Cregger, he scored Weapons. With Hays, he scored this year's Resident Evil, which opened in September. Before the film, the brothers made a location-aware album called Bluebrain, which starting with The National Mall in 2011. We actually wrote about it way back then on Kill Screen. This had music where that only plays where you stand. And he's right now working on a scoring a game called Abelina as well. I've played that demo. It's great. You should definitely go check it out. [00:01:42] Jamin Warren: Jason Graves is the composer behind the original Dead Space trilogy, which won the BAFTA for Original Score in 2009. He scored Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, including this year's Directive 8020, and Still Wakes the Deep, which we'll talk about, which built a around which was built also around a custom metal sculpture shaped like an oil rig called The Rig. [00:02:06] Jamin Warren: Maybe just to start, Ryan, in just to go back a little bit, you you did this project called Bluebrain, which involved which you walked through The National Mall and you would hear music through an app, and you said that that project actually came out of game sound and Myst in particular, where sound kind of grows as you walk it. 15 years on, curious about, you know, how that maybe that early experience kind of scoring something that it was designed to be moved through space maybe prepared you for some of the work that you're doing compositionally in the future? [00:02:38] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for having us, and it's such a pleasure to be doing this with Jason. And really exciting. You know, everything my brother and I have done has always come from sort of a spirit of experimentation, and a new tool comes along, or a tool that we that doesn't exist that we want to build. It's always kind of like, "What does this thing do, and how can we break it or change how it's it's used?" And for so for the location-aware music stuff, it was around 2009 when the iPhone had been released and they had just allowed third-party developers to make their own apps. And no one had really done There'd been some music apps, but they were kind of like novelties, and and more kind of like toys for making music, or like Yeah, really novelty kind of things. And we were like, "This is a pretty powerful thing that you have in your pocket in the sense of it has GPS enabled, and it has this audio engine, so we could we could almost" [00:03:36] Ryan Holladay: The way we kind of approached it was, what if we took a actual physical space like The National Mall or Central Park, and mapped it musically like you would a game? So as you approach one area, this piece starts, and then that's time synced to this other area, so when you sort of walk between them, you are the thing that is triggering sort of the mix of these different elements. And then so you could put little Easter eggs throughout the the space. And so it just kind of became a an immersive audio experience that was really wasn't available before then. I mean, there were artists like Janet Janet Cardiff who had done like location-based music, but it wasn't until the iPhone came along that people had like the average person had this level of technology in their pocket, so. Yeah, I guess the way Was your question how [laughs] Sorry, I just kind of went on a tangent, but [00:04:26] Jamin Warren: How How maybe how maybe that prepared you for I was curious like how maybe that prepared you for like doing work related to games and also doing, you know, dipping your toe also into scoring games as well. [00:04:36] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, I think it just it was just that spirit of experimentation, and what can this thing do? And it did kind of it whetted our appetite a little bit for how how music can interact with with space, whether that's physical, real space or, in the sense of a game, a a virtual space. So, yeah, that was a that was a fun sort of first experiment in that. [00:04:59] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Jason, just a background question for for you. You started as a as a drummer, and I was curious if you saw direct, you know, is there something special about maybe drummers or having a percussive background that makes you positioned you well for like that first demo when you you tried out for this EA gig and, you know, were able to move on to Dead Space? [00:05:18] Jason Graves: In in retrospect, being a drummer is amazing, and I love it. And I can see how it has a major influence in the way I write, and especially the way I think about approaching a score. But in the moment, for probably the first 15 years of my career, and when I was in high school, college, grad school, and before I started the career, I always felt like being a drummer was the the weakest link in my repertoire, because I had friends, music majors, right, that played piano, or played saxophone, or they were into electronic music and they had a sampler. And I was just always sort of "Jason bang drums good. I can play vibraphone. Does that help anybody?" And I didn't feel like it was a serviceable, usable skill. [00:06:00] Jason Graves: But thanks to technology, especially, and just doing something like Dead Space, which was the original lightbulb for me thinking, "Being a drummer is actually kind of interesting." I was able to lean into rhythmic melody, for lack of a better word. I didn't want to have any themes, I didn't want to have any chord progressions, didn't really want to have anything that put the player at ease or made them feel at home. I wanted everything to be off-putting, and I leaned on just crazy permutations of time signatures and and rhythm to do that. Sorry, are we good? I'm getting little windows popping up in Riverside. Are we good? [laughs] [00:06:36] Jamin Warren: Yeah, I I can I can hear you I can hear you fine. [00:06:38] Jason Graves: Okay. Yeah, so I pretty much approach anything from rhythm. Unless there's going to be Now, even if it's a melody, like a love theme or something for a scene in a film or a game, I'm still thinking about the rhythm of that theme, where the notes are playing, and sort of the harmonic rhythm of the chords. I love the way classic composers like Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams would write just not block chords every four beats, they would have a a rhythm to the chords, where you could almost hear the chords without the melody and it would paint a picture of that particular theme. So it's been I think the only way I can appreciate it is retrospectively, and I wouldn't have answered this way 15 years ago, right? I'll probably answer slightly different 15 years from now, knock on wood. [00:07:24] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Well, I I think that first thing, and I wanted to talk about the creating that the feeling of the feeling of dread. You know, tension is something that's built before the scare. Maybe, Ryan, you can go first. You know, on Resident Evil, you've said, you know, that these there's these quiet passages of something I noticed from seeing the film, you know, the abandoned house, there's you know, there's sort of that the that that there's just like this blackness or this the negative space that kind of gets filled in, and that's kind of what creates that sort of that creates that sort of sphere that fear. Could you walk us through like how you plan unease when nothing is happening on screen? Because Resident Evil, it's a travel film, so there's often these sequences where the character is walking. Yeah, tell us a little bit about like planning for those moments when things are going to be a little bit slower. [00:08:10] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, gets filled in, or doesn't get filled in. I mean, that's a big part of it is like Zach, you know, Zach, I think, I've said this before, his his approach You know there's that that term minimum viable product? I think his approach is often minimal minimum viable score. [Jamin laughs] So whatever the least amount to do the job is, and that that's especially true when it's like a dread moment or something. There's a lot of times where we'll build something that we're really excited about, we're really proud of. You know, in Resident Evil, there's there's a moment where he's walking through the woods with his with his camera as his flashlight, or his phone as his flashlight, as you have up there, and he's looking for something. I don't want to give any spoilers away, but he's looking for something that [laughs] he just caused to happen. And we had built this kind of whole collage out of out of brass, out of horns, and it sounded cool. And then one day Zach was like, "What if we mute this?" And it was like, "Oh, that's scarier." [00:09:10] Ryan Holladay: There's a number of times where we'll kind of go really big and and or or put a lot of time into creating something that's very layered, and then ultimately we come back to, actually, it only needs this one element. And, you know, I think a lot of with that kind of stuff, with the dread, we can we can kind of prepare and and make all these all these cool things that we think are going to work really well, and ultimately, if it doesn't work alongside the picture, it's going to go or it's going to get changed. But I think a lot of times for Zach, if it pops out too much, if it's if it's drawing too much attention to itself, it's not working. [00:09:44] Ryan Holladay: There's a scene in Weapons that I remember Zach sent me a review that mentioned this music moment, and it was it's the scene when the mother comes out of the house with the scissors, it's like a long one shot, she walks to the car, and the and the the review was very was praising the scene, and it said, "And the whole thing plays out in total silence with no music," which is not true, there is music there, but he was like, "This is the best compliment you could hope for [both laugh] is that no one noticed that there's music, but they love the scene." And that's kind of that's kind of Zach's approach to score in general, but especially those moments that are just supposed to be dread. It's if you're noticing it too much, you've kind of overplayed. So. [00:10:22] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jason, is that is that something that you've found? Does that, you know, what what Ryan's talking about, has that does that have crossover with, you know, the way that you maybe approach building that sense of dread in in your work? [00:10:33] Jason Graves: Absolutely. And I'll just I'll just split the fence down the middle of the property, and I'll speak more from the game perspective, and Ryan can speak more from from film, although we both are currently working on both of those particular genres. [00:10:47] Jamin Warren: Sure. [00:10:48] Jason Graves: The biggest upside and downside to games, especially with scary games, is trying to provide that sense of tension over an indetermined amount of time. So a lot of that comes down to unfamiliar types of sounds, I feel like, and just as important, as Ryan just mentioned, knowing where the music isn't going to play, knowing when the music is going to play. And games like Dead Space actually have music playing throughout the entire score, but a big part of that score, and I think this is probably a similar approach that Ryan was just talking about in the scissors scene, a big part of that ambient music in the score that's layer one, we called it, out of four layers that's always playing, is mostly just a full string ensemble almost playing just random notes. I would get the whole entire string section, the music would say, "Play any note, ppp, you know, sul tasto, muted." And you just kind of give them a indicator, and they [00:11:43] Jason Graves: you get this beautiful, tense, impossible to write unless you had 50 staves, one for each musician, almost jazz chord. But you kind of get them to go up and down a little bit, you'll say just randomly do little things here and there and notes poke in and out, or you can say, "This is all aleatoric stuff," which means having the players decide when they're going to do something. "Do a little bit of a trill here, do this, do that," and you can get a couple of minutes of music that really sounds more like room tone than anything else. And that's the the bed of most of the Dead Space stuff. I didn't do that necessarily for a lot of the other games, Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures, we took a different approach, because every game is different, just like every film is different. But a lot comes down to preparing the viewer or the player for what may or may not be the scariest moment in the in the film or or in the game. [00:12:38] Jason Graves: The original audio director for Dead Space said, "I want you to write music so that as we're walking down this hallway, it gets so tense that a little floppy stuffed bunny rabbit could jump out like in cartoon form and go, 'Hi, guys!' and you would still throw your controller across the room and scream, because the tension had been built up so much, it didn't matter what the end reveal was, and then that way the game can take care of everything else." And that was a big lesson for me with scary stuff was, musically, how to how to represent that, and then also how to how to program it from an interactive standpoint, so if they decide to not go down the hallway and they turn around and leave, the music can respond accordingly. [00:13:17] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you do you find, you know, it does seem like some some of these, though, I mean, this is true of horror in general, that people have different triggers for themselves. Is there a like a, you know, a universal language for for that feeling of dread, like some things that you've been able to lean on that you feel like will kind of be spooky to everybody? You know, I was thinking about, you know, just watching Resident Evil, it's like you watch that film as a as like a parent. For example, I have a I have a four-and-a-half-year-old, and there's, you know, there's notes of, you know, there's obviously notes of like parenthood throughout the film. You know, Jason, I think, certainly like with your work, like you know, with if you have a I don't know, a nostalgic attachment in The Dark Pictures Anthology, you know, with Until Dawn, like a nostalgic attachment, you're going to maybe approach the way those types of films are hommage you know, homages to, you know, you know, past slasher films and things like that. Musically, are there elements that you find are universal that create that sense of, you know, that sense of dread that you can tap on, or you can lean into from even though even though every project is different, there are some things that you can feel like can, you know, create a good base for you? [00:14:16] Jason Graves: Go ahead, Ryan. No, please. I want to hear you first. [00:14:18] Ryan Holladay: Well, I mean, look, there there's so many fun, creative, original-sounding things that we put in this movie in both of these movies that I I'm really proud of, but sometimes, you know, a a string glissando just works, or a a weird like plucky You know, there there are things that are tropes for a reason, and there are times where, despite trying to reinvent the wheel, it's just like we can try five different approaches, and then ultimately, actually, just a string riser here is kind of what's needed. And, you know, [laughs] unfortunately, not everything can be a completely genre-bending approach to sound, and sometimes there's there's things that just work, and so, yeah, I feel like we really tried [00:15:00] Ryan Holladay: It's funny, the things that we set out to kind of avoid are the things that maybe we knew we would be coming back to. I mean, we said in the beginning we weren't going to use synth. Now synth is like all over the score. We kept coming back to the The Thing and John Carpenter and like But originally we were like, "Let's do all of this with brass." Same with strings. We're like, "Let's Let's not do any of like the rising strings." Well, of course, sometimes it's just like that's what that's what's needed, even if it's just like a layer underneath there. So there are sounds that we associate with horror or with dread that are that just work, and they kind of work on our nervous system in a a way that maybe we don't even understand. But despite trying to change that [laughs] and reinvent it with every new project, sometimes you just come back to those things that work. [00:15:42] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah. How about for you, Jason? [00:15:44] Jason Graves: I have a very methodical and researched for the past 20 years [Jamin laughs] three-prong answer to this question, and it's everything that Ryan just said. But because I did this first Dead Space game and then they asked to do a second one, and then they asked to do a third one, and then that extrapolated into more scary things, I've done a lot of soul-searching and pondering, and number one, the unknown is always scarier than the known. This would be like the shark fin under the water or the hand that you see under the bed, right? If you're watching a scary movie, it's always the scariest until the killer or the killer monster, whatever, is revealed, because once the audience sees something and can attach physical recognition to it, it's like, "Oh, okay. So," I mean, in the '80s it was it's just a guy in a suit. Now it's, "Oh, it's just a CG monster." The the tension's released, so it's not as scary. [00:16:34] Jason Graves: So I try to make, just from a very upward level looking down in miniature, try to come up with sounds that are really unfamiliar, because unfamiliar is scary, right? And it can be from a synthesizer or a thing of coffee cup, right, tapping it and putting something into the computer, just making it different and unique, plus that's fun. The second thing that really is a trigger for me is that kind of baby crying register of sounds. We have a puppy right now, and he's adorable, but he has this like high A natural or B flat, like really high when he barks, and it makes me jump even if he's in the other room. I have this visceral response to it, because it's just this sight-piercing sound. So now we're talking about screechy violins, you know, the the the Psycho string stabs, anything in that upper register, especially if it comes at you really quickly, just puts humanity in in an uncomfortable position, because, especially if it's kind of like strings or something, [Jamin laughs] sounds like a baby crying. [00:17:34] Jason Graves: The opposite end of that is any big, low, massive sounds, especially if they kind of hit and and go away, and come back in some sort of a regular rhythm, because now we're This is all prehistoric stuff, right? Now we're talking about giant creatures are going to eat you and your family. Same thing with any kind of, you know, big [roars] kind of big roaring-type sounds with a synth, or with an orchestra with low brass. It's just coming up with prehistoric versions of these sounds that tap into our survival instincts for ourselves or or for our family. Okay, that's [00:18:10] Ryan Holladay: It's such an awesome answer. I I need to be taking notes. That's like a [Jamin laughs] this is a masterclass. I mean, Jason, you've been doing this for so long. I mean, it's it's amazing how how you've had so many years to iterate and build on this franchises and and and just your approach. I mean, it's amazing how you've how you've dissected this. And and you become a father in this time, right? So you [00:18:31] Jason Graves: Oh, yeah. [both laugh] Kids and animals everywhere. And and I'm a drummer, so that leans into basically me just banging, right, as as much as I can. And while we're while we're doing this real quick before we started our talk, I was complimenting Ryan on Weapons, which I thought was just such an incredible film and such a wonderfully creative and and effective score. So this is this is me geeking out just as much. Thank you. [00:18:56] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that does, you know, separate the you know, the two the two different sides is a sense of the sense of control. You know, how much control you have over the sequence over the sequence. You know, in in games, those are are generative and, you know, I famously I mean, I had a conversation with with Will Wright a bunch of years ago. I was asking about comedy specifically, and it was like, "Well, it's really hard to deliver comedy in a in a game, in part because comedy requires you to set up expectations, to set up the joke, so to speak, and then to pay it off, and players come into different, you know, different environments with different perspectives." You know, in film, you do have that ability to kind of control things along the way. You know, Ryan, could you talk a little bit about about maybe some of like that that maybe maybe some of the process stuff that you're working with with Zach on with with Zach? My understanding is that there was almost no no temp music. You know, say there wasn't something that was there before. You're working at the against this kind of this this sort of the silence. Tell me a little bit about that sequencing. Like how did how did you go through that process of being able to sequence things in a way that you felt like would would set things up in a way that worked well for Zach, but then also worked well for some of the scoring work that you've done? [00:20:06] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. I mean, we have kind of a unique process or what I think is is unique, which is that we start with him very early. I mean, for both Weapons and and Rez, we did Hays and I do a ton of pre-production, so that's one part of it is we do we write a a lot of stuff in advance, knowing that when we start the film, it's going to be happening very rapidly, and there's going to be changes all the time that are happening. And so the cool, esoteric, weird ideas that we want to get out of our system, we start those very early, so we have kind of a bank of things to draw from. But the way it works with Zach is that, as soon as they start the edit, we actually move our whole studio into the post-production house. So it's kind of like on one hallway we have like the edit, the VFX, and us. And so Zach kind of jumps between the three rooms, and all of these things are advancing simultaneously. And so we're seeing the earliest edit of the film with very placeholder VFX, and we're starting to write to it. [00:21:07] Ryan Holladay: And so the edit is changing, the look of the movie is changing, and the music is changing, so there's never a point where it's like, "Okay, this isn't a good place for you to start composing." We're literally creating that from the very beginning. And so the the benefit of that is that we Yes, there's no there's no temp score. So as we're writing something that's kind of working, they're they're changing the edit to that. And then the flip side is they're still kind of carving this movie out. So there might be something that we're pretty we're pretty excited about how this this kind of evolves, this piece of music. This cue goes exactly the right Now that scene is way shorter. And actually, it goes here, and it goes, you know, that shot has changed. There's all this stuff that that is kind of evolving. So it can drive us a little crazy on a on a process side of things. [00:22:01] Ryan Holladay: But I think the the the benefit is that, when we get to a place where things are starting to come together, it's all locking into place simultaneously. So it's like, "Oh, wow. Now this scene really makes a lot of sense, and the music is is is making sense with it." And so with Weapons and with Rez, by the first time the studio saw a cut of the movie, it was like pretty much there was no temp music in it. It was all original score. And so we kind of, from that point on, it was just like, "All right, we're just refining. We have the big rocks in place." It's harder up front, but I think for us it works well, because by the time we've found it, it's so locked into the picture that that, you know, they're they're really married at that point. [00:22:41] Jamin Warren: Yeah. And you were in a band with Zach, is that right? That's that's my understanding, as well. [00:22:44] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. So Hays and I played in a band with Zach for We grew up We all grew up outside DC, so we've kind of come up together, like, you know, working on different creative projects, and playing in a band was a big part of our lives, and Zach was the singer. You know, so there was [laughs] there was a little bit of a you know, I think a band is, at least in our case, was a, you know, it's a democracy. Everybody has a voice and a say. In a film, by you know, definition, it it is one person's vision that we are all in service of. And so there was a a little bit of recalibration just with the three of us, like realizing, "Oh, this is not a everyone everyone's vote matters equally." It's like, "No, no, whatever We can all we can all throw things at the wall, but ultimately it's what one person thinks is going to work. That's what the direction we're going for." [00:23:31] Ryan Holladay: Which can be freeing in some ways, because it's like you can try as many different things, but you know that there is it's not just about, you know, matters of opinion. It's really about what one person thinks is is going to make the best film, make tell the story the absolute best. So we're all just kind of like rowing in the same direction. [00:23:50] Jamin Warren: Yeah. [00:23:50] Ryan Holladay: But it's yeah. [00:23:52] Jamin Warren: Jason, you you're dealing with players who are moving through a world with different speeds. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the Yeah, some of the tricks that you've that that you've some of the things that you've learned along the way in terms of like, how do you how do you account for the interactive element, you know, the interactive the interactive element for for games? I understand you've built some, you know, really interesting or done some really interesting work on the interactive audio side to to make that work well for players and feel like very natural. [00:24:20] Jason Graves: It's always a a wonderful challenge, because every game is obviously different, just like a film. However, there are also always tried-and-true ways to get interactive music to work a certain way. And most people are either using something called Wwise or something called FMOD. The bigger the bigger games with bigger teams usually use Wwise, and I'm familiar with both. So a lot of it comes down to, literally, I'll have a developer say, "Hey, so this scene in, you know, a Dark Pictures game, that the character does this and the music does this, how did that happen?" And sometimes I can answer, and sometimes I can't, because in the case of something like like Modern Warfare 4, that's coming out in a week or something like that, I did all the multiplayer music for that, but I did not by any means do any of the implementation, because it was too big of a project, there were too many things going on. It was a team of four or five people just doing music implementation. But that's a little off topic of what you were asking. [00:25:18] Jason Graves: A big part of of implementation is trying to avoid repetition, because you don't want the music to be looping if the game play is constantly moving forward, or if you turn around and go back to a different place, maybe you don't want to necessarily have the exact same music play again. This is a very cinematic approach to game music as opposed to a more a Nintendo-fied, for lack of a better word, you know, where the music's very short and recognizable, and you hear it all the time. Usually with horror you don't necessarily want that. So a big part of interactivity is how scary or how intense the music is, and it's come a long way. We can pretty much do anything now in these third-party apps, like Wwise or FMOD. And we could put a little tag on a creature, or on a doorway at the end of the hall, to bring up that previous example I was talking about, or on a timer, or on a just a specific location, and then you can tell the program, "So as the player gets closer, like as their distance changes to either this creature, maybe, that is approaching you, toward to this door that you're approaching, or to a new region in the game, maybe a new level that's going to unlock, do the following things." [00:26:26] Jason Graves: And it can be making the music scarier, making the music more simple. Sometimes dialing the music out all together and getting it really, really quiet is the most effective way to build tension. We have a thousand different ways that we can implement a lot of this music, and the wonderful thing about games, very much like what Ryan was saying, I'm usually involved from the beginning, so I'm creating music and doing suites and ideas of things as the game's getting made, and a lot of times the developer will be listening to, even if they're just demos that I've sent, and working on a level, it might influence the lighting, they might hear something and think, "That would be really cool if that that jumpscare plays, that gives me an idea for this thing that could happen, and and pop out around the corner." And most of the time we're running parallel, and a little times the games will get ahead of me, other times I'll get ahead of the game, but we're always sharing information, and it's very much a team effort. Usually with the audio director, so I'm not talking to the the director of the game or the producer, there's an audio director who is herding all the audio cats, sound design and music and everything else. [00:27:33] Jason Graves: And it's just a matter of trial and error. Put it in the game, see if it works, we can play it, so we can I can get literal feedback after it goes into the game the next day, and just figure out how to reassemble the what? The pizza, for lack of a better term. It's like I made this beautiful pizza, but now I have to take all the ingredients apart, give it to the developer, they have to reassemble the pizza somehow, and have it be interactive. Interactive pizza. [00:27:59] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is there a You mentioned like objects having kind of like a weight to them. Is there a favorite object of yours in from a game that you've worked on, like a maybe something unexpected for players that triggers a sense of, you know, unease or or dread that you can think of that was maybe unexpected for players and maybe maybe not noticed by them directly? That's not the big bad monster, you know? [00:28:19] Jason Graves: Right, right, right. The very first time, the What comes to mind immediately is the very first time I was visiting EA and we had original music that we had recorded with the live musicians implemented into the game, and I hadn't even written anything yet. It's just EA was there at the recording session, they took all the Pro Tools sessions, I took all the Pro Tools sessions, and they were just implementing raw takes of of strings and brass and things, and all they did was just assign a couple of very basic state variable music bits, quiet strings, louder strings, and then loud brass, and it would just kind of fade in as you're standing on a very tall building with a bridge, and it's all smoky and misty, and there's a Necromorph approaching you, which is the bad guys in Dead Space, and as he it gets closer, those states ramp up, and the music builds, and they basically programmed it so that Necromorph would come up and do some little crazy thing and then sort of not see you and turn around and go the other way. [00:29:15] Jason Graves: And they played that for me. As soon as I got there, the audio director was really excited. I didn't even know it was my music. I thought they'd used like some Penderecki or or something, and that was when we realized that this interactive, multi-stage music tier attached to a specific thing would actually work. As far as I know, no one had done that yet, because this was a proprietary engine that EA had built from scratch for a previous game, and it hadn't really been used to 10% of its potential. So we were stress testing it and just pushing it every way we possibly could. And that's When you talk about interactive music, that's the first thing that I I always think of. It's very tried and true now, but we had never We didn't even know if it could be done, so it was super exciting. [00:30:02] Jamin Warren: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's strikes me as interesting is also like when we think about you know, within like in film, for example, like, you know, John Williams or, you know, like we sort of associate like their work, and it's You mentioned the Nintendo kind of like You know, with Nintendo, it's like, you know, Koji Kondo, you can think of like The Legend of Zelda scores or Mario. Those are like identifiable like sequences. It's interesting, because like what you're doing is it does seem sometimes it's harder to assign the same type like the same type of Players feel it in a more holistic way, but they may not be able to kind of like point to a specific like Yeah, they may not point to things in a specific way that you might with like a film or another game that more explicitly kind of like loops something. Yeah, I was just curious. How How do you feel like your your your your thumbprint gets communicated to to players, because you've chosen this more dynamic, interactive approach to to to to to making to scoring scoring games? [00:30:57] Jason Graves: That's the kind of thing I'm trying to think if there's any A lot of times, I'm sure Ryan has the same experience, it's a very mutually creative He mentioned throwing things at a dartboard. That's that's very much the idea with implementation, as well. So a lot of it just comes down to how the game how I feel like the game play feels, like the the kind of vibe that it's giving. And I think the only way I can answer your question is I do have a specific example with a a series of games called Moss that was very much not scary, and the company originally wanted to have more of a Nintendo-y kind of approach to it, where if you won a trophy, it would play a little, you know, [sings fanfare] kind of thing, and if you died, it would go [imitates descending tones]. And they wanted the music to be very kind of regionally, "Okay, you cross this border, this 60-second loop's going to play, and we want it to be very recognizable." And I did a little bit of that at the beginning, but it just It was a VR game, and it was very immersive and beautiful, and one of my favorite projects to to work on, an incredible game developer, and it felt like the music was just doing too much. [00:32:03] Jason Graves: It didn't need to do all of that, and I said to the audio director after we did an initial test, "What if I just write like an eight-minute piece of music that sort of goes through the vibes of what this level's all about? If there's a swamp and you're in a boat, I'll do a couple of minutes of that, if you're in a forest and it's raining, I'll do a couple of minutes of that, and I'll just give you all the stems, and we talk about how we can implement it. But I want the music to, if it's okay with you, I would want the music to feel more like a cinematic soundtrack that's just in the background, just gently guiding you, as opposed to knee-jerk reacting to everything that you do." And the best answer to any question for a game composer is, "Let's put it in the game and see if it works," you know, "see how it feels." And that's what we ended up doing for the whole score. Not that I don't think the Nintendo thing would have worked, but it would have given the game a much more kind of, you know what, like kind of tongue-in-cheek playable, like Not that it's not fun, but yeah. I mean, Ryan, do you You know what I mean? Like taking a step back and painting with a broader brush as opposed to being up in your face all the time, right? [00:33:08] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. And it's, you know, I I'm working on my very first game, Abelina, with with Gabe, and Jamin has has worked on it with us a little bit, and, you know, I took that approach mainly because I just didn't know the tricks of of everything that you could do with these engines, and kind of did that approach of let's I I just kind of write long suites of music that could be played in this world. But what's amazing is how often it just works. I mean, just playing the game, it's like, "Oh, that actually feels like it's triggering that, and that's" And it's just It's It's funny that like sometimes I I I remember my friend in college, this is kind of a funny my roommate in college, you remember that like where if you watch Wizard of Oz and play Dark Side of the Moon [00:33:50] Jason Graves: Dark Side of the Moon. [00:33:51] Ryan Holladay: at the same time, all these things link up? He told me he was like [laughs] he we did that, fell asleep, and woke up, and it was just Dark Side was just playing to whatever was on TV, like commercials and stuff, and he was like, "That album just goes with anything," you know, it's like [laughs] it doesn't really matter what's on the screen, everything just kind of works with it. [00:34:06] Ryan Holladay: And I feel like my approach was a little bit like, let me just write things that feel like they live in this in this biome, in this universe that that Gabe has built, and just see how it links up when you play. And the amount of times it's just like, "Oh, that actually works regardless of where I am, if if if the spirit of the music kind of compliments this world, it did kind of work." But I am so curious about how you, I mean, that that that experience you were talking about where when the monster's approaching and the music is I mean, and they you were saying they took music that you didn't even write for that and was placed by Was it like a music editor or somebody that kind of chose that? Does that happen a lot in games where things that you might have written for another area were then kind of repurposed and Yeah. [00:34:50] Jason Graves: Yeah, it it can, for sure. Especially I mean, from a big game, like Call of Duty, all my music got completely taken apart, and different stems are played at different parts of all the multiplayer stuff, even to a smaller game, like Still Wakes the Deep, which is Chinese Room, they're they were an indie developer at that time, and it was just three of us, the audio director, and one guy doing all the music and sound effects editing. But they had something to give a illustrated point, at the very end of the game, all these story lines were coming together, and I hadn't written anything for it yet, and the editor said, "Hey, check this out. I actually I took the cello thing that was playing this theme, and I pitched it down in in Wwise, so it's twice as slow and an octave lower, and then I took the other things that you used from this thing from the main character that's now evil, or whatever, right, and I put it underneath it, and pitched it up a little bit so they're in the same key," and he played it for me, and it was just like, "That's genius. That that totally works." [00:35:49] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. [00:35:50] Jason Graves: And it's always done with respect, right? They're not trying to jilt you out of composing for the game, it's a team effort, and they're just trying to They were trying to help me at the time, because there was a lot of music. I'm always overly ambitious, I want to write a lot more music than maybe they're prepared for. So, yeah, you can mix and match stuff. Especially, I do a lot of stem delivery, like a lot of times it's every instrument, right? If it's an orchestra, if it's something like Until Dawn, there's probably 50 or 60 stems, so nowadays, you know, pitch and time stretching and all that is almost you can't even tell that it's happening. And then you've got all the real-time controls in games with reverb, and pitch and time stretching, and distortion, and filtering, and it's insane. [00:36:36] Ryan Holladay: That's so interesting. Yeah, we've had that experience a little bit with our our music editor, Scott Hedrick, who would take things from We have a folder just called "Sandbox" of just things that we've thrown in there that we've written from the very beginning of a project, and it's cool. I mean, it's really nice to have somebody else kind of bring things in and and even combine things in ways that you wouldn't expect to do, or you think to do. And, yeah, there's a number of times where it'd be like, "Oh, goddamn it. They put in some Marco Beltrami thing," or some like, "Now we got to match that. Oh, that's actually ours. Oh, okay. I forgot we wrote that. Cool." [Graves laughs] "Okay, so we can actually use that." That would happen a bunch where it'd be like we would kind of hit a wall, and not [00:37:16] Ryan Holladay: And having somebody come at it from a fresh perspective and bring in things, or combine things, or slow things down and hear it in a different way was hugely helpful. And I'd imagine in a game where there's so much music, having having somebody be able to do that and know your stuff, and and and that you give sort of creative license to, obviously I'm sure you come back come in at the end and and and then, you know, refine it, but it kind of gives you a a an inspiration, something that you might not have come to in that way, because it's a fresh set of ears. It's interesting. [00:37:45] Jason Graves: Yeah. And having that trust with the people [00:37:48] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, totally. [00:37:48] Jason Graves: that are mangling, for lack of a better word, and I mean that in the best way possible, mangling your music, makes a big difference. With with stingers, [laughs] I mean, I must have done 150 different stingers for the original Dead Space, because they were all, you know, high intensity, medium intensity, low intensity, and I sort of drew shapes, you know, is it this kind of a stinger? Is it that kind of a stinger? Is it this kind of a stinger? And now I just do buckets. I just call it stinger buckets, and for Still Wakes the Deep, it was just high, medium, and low elements. So a high element might be a [makes sound], like a real rattly sort of sound, and there'd be 25 of those, right? And then a low one would be some sort of a distorted low synth, or something. [00:38:29] Jason Graves: But any of them could go with any of the other ones. And it gave the audio editor, music editor a lot of variety, and he could just use a single one, or he could filter them, and distort them, and combine them, and it's really more music arranging at that point. But it makes the little tiny bit of music that was written for all of that go really, really far. And that originally started with Dead Space, because I wanted the stinger to play differently if you walk down a hallway and get killed and have to start over and you walk down that same hallway, I wanted a different music stinger to jump out when the creature jumped out, so that it felt like a slightly different experience. [00:39:07] Jamin Warren: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one last set of questions, and then we'll open it up to the floor if there's any Q&A. One last thing I wanted to ask about was was texture, and about maybe some of the physical process stuff that you have done to like physical objects. You know, you were talking, I think, before our call about like how much you can do on computers now, but there is something really wonderful, obviously, about working with like physical objects, live instrumentation. Maybe to start, Jason, do you want to talk about the talk about The Rig, the the metal sculpture for Still Wakes the Deep, and that might be like a good a good a good place to a good place to start? [00:39:42] Jason Graves: I can give you the 15-second byline, as well. So I was working on a game called Tomb Raider about 15 years ago, and I wanted some metal things that I could manipulate, and I called, eventually found a local blacksmith. I was talking to him on the phone, turned out he was half a block away from my house. I lived in a downtown area at the time. And over the period of a year, he built an entire sculpture for me that was called The Instrument. And he's got pictures of it online. But all the UI interface of the game, all the UI sounds, and the entire first level the sound of the game were nothing but this metal sculpture. [00:40:20] Jason Graves: So fast-forward 15 years, I'm working on a game that takes place on an oil rig in the late '70s. So, of course, I think, "Late '70s, I need to buy a Moog," which I did. You can't see it, but it's sitting right here. I went to Moog, who are in North Carolina, famously, the manufacturing plant is here. So I got a Moog, and I contacted Matt, the sculptor, and just basically said, "I need another sculpture, but it doesn't need to be the size of a refrigerator. I need something small, and you know what I want to do, Matt. I just want to bow it, and like rub a Super Ball on it, and tap it, and and make different sounds." And, oh, it's a little heavy, but it's not that it's not that big. Matt built this for me. Now, I know I've got a super busy background, but it it looks like an oil rig. [laughs] [00:41:01] Ryan Holladay: That's amazing. Oh, my god. [00:41:02] Jamin Warren: And that was intentional, right? That was intentional. [00:41:04] Jason Graves: Yeah, yeah. He he completely, if if you look at the game, it looks just like the oil rig from the game. But it's got like a spring here, and it's got holes in it, so you can fill it up with water and kind of do a waterphone-y thing if you want, and all of the different rods are different pitches, of course, and everything it's just it's very very resonant, and makes just all kinds of of horrible, wonderfully horrible sounds. [00:41:31] Jason Graves: So that was probably two thirds of the game is that sound sculpture. And I also recorded a lot at 192. I don't know if you've done any quite musical sound design stuff like that yet, Ryan, but I met someone at a conference who turned me on to that, and sound designers have been doing it forever, but you get specific mics and you record at a really high frequency, and you can drop it twice as low, and it makes it four times as long, and you're uncovering all these frequencies that we can't hear with the human ear. So even something like me just tapping that spring, you drop it down two octaves, and there was this [makes sound]. It was originally about 130 Hz or something, and it pulled it down to, you know, our audible range, but it sounded like someone screaming through a distortion pedal into a giant metal room. [00:42:26] Jason Graves: And I could recreate that, and ended up building sample instruments out of it, playing it on the keyboard, playing a lot of it live, and most of the music from that game, when I get asked about, "What's that sound?" I know before I even see what they're talking about, I'm thinking, "It's The Rig." Because it's this completely unknown, nontraditional sound element that makes everyone feel super uncomfortable, but also is interesting, because it hasn't, literally, ever been heard before. And it was fun for me to work with people, super fun and inspiring as a as a percussionist to get those kinds of sounds out of it. And it's just the it's the melding, it's like the Venn diagram of all the best things. And it inspires me, which gets the team excited, and then they ask for more things, and that gets me excited, and yeah, it's a it's a wonderful, you know, snake eating itself kind of thing. [00:43:10] Ryan Holladay: That's amazing. And it's so cool, cuz nobody else has those sounds. That's like completely unique to you. Yeah, we we kind of learned on Weapons to record very high quality, because you never know when something's going to sound way better slowed down. And sometimes, yeah, talk about sound design tricks, that is like the best one. If you I mean, how how many cool sounds are just something that sounds pretty pretty simple, not even that complex, but then you slow it down and it reveals all of these hidden undertones, and just beauty or terror within these sounds. Yeah, recording at high quality and slowing it down is such a such an amazing trick. Yeah, that's that's very cool that you you have that that sound sculpture there. [00:43:56] Jamin Warren: Ryan, do you Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jason. [00:43:58] Jason Graves: No, I was just going to say, I'm addicted to it now, because I have a pair of mics that record high, so no matter what I'm doing around the studio, I have them going through a separate interface and I can record it to my laptop, so when my studio isn't at 192, but exactly like what you said, be, "Oh, maybe" Some of the things that I think will sound really cool, it's like, "That just sounds like a cow. That doesn't sound interesting at all." Other things that seem completely innocuous and innocent are the, "Wow, I wouldn't have expected that." [00:44:25] Ryan Holladay: Totally. Yeah, you have no idea what it what it's going to be, [Graves laughs] but you're right. So many of our our favorite sounds are just something that we've like a little snippet of It might even be like a little bit of sonic detritus at the end of something we thought was going to be way cooler that wasn't, but it's like, "Wait a minute, actually, when you left the room from doing that cool thing you thought, and you closed the door, that sounded pretty cool." [both laugh] You literally never know what the thing is going to be. But wait, so you're saying you have a set of mics set up, is it running to a different DAW that is just recording, and so you can literally at any point start throwing stuff in there that's outside of your session? [00:44:57] Jason Graves: Yeah, I just have It's not hooked up right now, but I just have a little tiny Sound Devices stereo [00:45:02] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. [00:45:03] Jamin Warren: Oh, no. We lost him. [00:45:04] Ryan Holladay: We lost him. He left us with a [00:45:06] Jamin Warren: We lost him. [laughs] [00:45:07] Ryan Holladay: a tantalizing studio inside there. [00:45:09] Jamin Warren: With a with a with a with a cliffhanger. [both laugh] [00:45:11] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. He's back. [00:45:14] Jason Graves: I'm back. It kicked me out. [00:45:16] Ryan Holladay: That was cool, though. So you left us with So, yeah, you you have that that running outside of your session and you're constantly kind of capturing whatever you throw into it, which is so smart, because I feel like so much of the time I have like a barrier to just capturing something in the moment. It's like, "Well, I'm not really set up for that, and I have another session going, and I'll do that later." And, yeah, I like that idea. [00:45:39] Jamin Warren: Maybe let's we can open it up the to questions here. We have one here maybe is a good a good seg. "Most of these instruments seem to work well in dark movies and games in the lower end of sound space. Are these Are there also instruments self-created that works well for a genre as opposed to darkness?" That comes from Sudan Bhat [?]. Thank you so much for for that question. Yeah, for the two of you, although I guess maybe that might be more pointed towards Jason since, you know, with the physical object, but yeah, would what what do you think about what do you think about that? [00:46:09] Ryan Holladay: Yeah, like, did you use any of these sound sculptures for Moss, or anything that you any of the found sounds? [00:46:14] Jason Graves: No, not for not for Moss. That was all little tiny live instruments, because it's a little mouse, right? As silly as that sounds and sort of as cliché, I just want a little pub band in her village, and I'm going to make a score out of those tiny little instruments. I've I've used I think textures can be equally soothing or scary. And I'm sure you've done the same thing, Ryan. I could I could bow this metal thing and pitch it down and have it be really kind of distorted and gnarly, throw OTT or something on it and bring out a lot of that kind of nastiness, and then even put like a pitch drift on it, so it's very, very unexpected sounding, or I could take that same sound and put it some through some reverb and EQ it a bit, and put a filter on it, and suddenly I'm playing a pad, I can play a major chord. You know, make sure it's tuned, maybe it's a tiny bit out of tune, but [00:47:05] Jason Graves: it's it's how you warp the the samples. I played penny whistle on Still Wakes the Deep. I'm not a penny whistlist, but I just played it with a real fast vibrato and kind of tuned, and that's a big part of the pads that are in that game. I'm just doing minor chords, a tritone apart, kind of like old John Williams, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of thing, but that's sort of the sound for this this creature that's in the game. And they're actually quite soothing, because it's this even though they're pitched down, it's this very round flute, very airy, and it does have a little bit of pitch bend to it, but I'm using it in a harmonic way, and it just It sounds a little mysterious, but if I played a major chord, it could be it could be beautiful, but still original and and interesting, and maybe evocative of of something specific in the game, because I've done those happy accidents that Ryan talked about. I feel like my life is built on happy accidents. [00:48:02] Jason Graves: The flute just, you know, I make sure the flute plays when this character says something, the three times they come up at the beginning of the game, and then I can play that flute again later, and the audience is automatically, you know, gluing the music and the visuals and the story together. And even if they don't realize it, they're thinking, "Oh, right, that's that that's that person." [00:48:22] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We got another question here from from Sean Campbell. A question here from from from Sean Campbell was asking, oh, this is I guess maybe more of a Oh, nope, that was my question. [Graves laughs] Was a more personal question from Sean. Yeah, [laughs] that's my question in the chat. Oh, there we go. All right. He Sean was asking, "How do you how do you show How do you guys work on physically and How do you guys both physically and mentally manage working on games and films that are so emotionally intensive? How do you keep your nerves and psyche intact after spending hours on on horror?" Yeah, any personal personal wellness or self-care tips for people who work who who work on horror? [laughs] [00:49:07] Ryan Holladay: It's so funny, cuz I worked before doing a lot of this, I I I worked for a podcast company for years, and worked on a show for about seven years called Meditative Story, which is all about combining like first-person storytelling and very meditative music. So I I have a long history of writing music that is meant to calm your nervous system, so going the other direction. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I I feel like I don't know if this answers the question, but I I do feel like I learned on this film that like taking actual breaks, like ear breaks, not just for your not just for calming your nerves, but actually for like doing a better job at at scoring, was really important. I I kind of always had like, "Well, you I don't really need to do that." But I I I think I learned on this film that like there's a there's a point of diminishing returns, where it's like, "I can't tell what's good anymore, I can't tell what's scary, I can't tell what's too much, what's too" [00:50:03] Ryan Holladay: and I really need to walk away. And I will say this is where I I mentioned to Jason that, you know, I have not worked without my collaborator, Hays, pretty much for my whole life, and having someone else's ear to be able to I can kind of walk away and be like, "You play with this for a minute, you try it out, show me what you come up with." That's wildly helpful, cuz it's like having another set of ears that can come in and kind of like, while I am sort of resetting, he can he can be trying things out, and then I can come in with a fresh perspective. But I think just giving yourself time to reset, take breaks, have ear breaks, is so important for me. [00:50:39] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah. [00:50:40] Jason Graves: Yeah, breaks. I jumped into the first Dead Space game, I'd never done any horror before, so I had no perspective at all, cuz I was recording all these sounds myself, trying something that, as far as I was concerned, and couldn't no one else had tried, and recording all these crazy things with live players, and having to edit it and build the instruments, and cut all the things up. So when it finally came down to writing the music, you know, six months later, I felt all this pressure that I had to squeeze every dollar that I spent out of the recording sessions, and and make the music as intense as possible. And I built up a tolerance over time. I mean, it would just be the most awful, horrendous amount of [makes discordant noises]! That just like crazy stuff everywhere! And I'd go, "Yeah, I don't know, it seems kind of boring. Like we need to really need to amp up the tension." [00:51:33] Jason Graves: That was hard, but I also took every day took a break. I'd work from 9:00 to 5:00, and at 5:00 I'd I'd have my finished piece of music for the day, but I would turn everything off, I started listening to a lot of early like '50s Miles Davis, and I would have a glass of wine, and I needed about 45 minutes of, you know, I had little kids at the time, too, I couldn't I couldn't go to dinner and like socialize with people, I just needed to completely decompress. And I'd just sip a glass of wine and listened and I you know, Chet Baker and all that kind of '50s like West Coast jazz, really natural recordings with some nice stereo and very open ribbon mics. That that was my way of kind of cleansing the palate a bit, and then not think or work on anything that evening, and of course come back the next day, only Monday through Friday, but come back the next morning and knock out another two minutes of music or something. Perspective is so hard. I wish I had somebody, like a teammate, to bounce that off of. I didn't, unfortunately, but, yeah, it's Horror is scary, cuz it's so subjective to a certain extent. [00:52:43] Ryan Holladay: Jason, do you listen to other music when you're when you're working on a project? [00:52:46] Jason Graves: I listen to other music a lot, but I won't listen to other music that could be any way associated with what I'm doing, right? So if I'm working on a vampire game, I'm not listening to any vampire music, because I I don't want to sound like Elliot Goldenthal or whatever, right? I'm usually probably listening to the opposite. I'll listen to show tunes, or like a a classical piece, or, you know, some classic like Dolly Parton, right? Like get as far away from whatever it is I'm working on as possible. What about you? [00:53:18] Ryan Holladay: No, totally. I think that can often sort of pollute the way I'm thinking of Like even just working on Resident Evil, there was a lot of there's a a lot of people would would would share songs that they love from the franchise, from the games, and it's like, and I I played the games and I know those, but I'm like, "I can't I can't listen to" I I mentioned to you we didn't watch any of the other films, and and haven't still. I think we're I think we're ready for it now. But I yeah, I I have to go 180 in the other direction just to like to reset. I can't And and other people say, "Oh, have you heard the Camp Miasma score? It's awesome," or this or that. It's like, "I can't I can't open myself up to that right now, not until I'm through this process." It's it's too it's too weird. [laughs] I don't know. [00:54:00] Jason Graves: Yeah, 1,000%. [00:54:01] Jamin Warren: Yeah. One last question for the two of you. We have one actually one quick one, just a practical one. Saswat [?] wanted to know about your workflow for sampling your sounds. This is probably a technical question, more technical question for someone who's who's hoping to do work like this. [00:54:17] Jason Graves: Well, I know as a quick as a quick answer that I don't have specific names, but you can buy handheld recorders now that record at either 96k, which is means you can transpose things down one octave, or 192k, and the the microphone's built in, right, the preamps are built in, everything is built in, and it's less than $500, and you've got your portable recording studio right there, and it even does eight channels, it'll record surround and all this crazy stuff. I would look into that, because that's going to be your cheapest point of entry. And then you just throw it into your computer, maybe do some noise reduction or something. I usually use RX, which is an iZotope product, to do my, you know, cleaning up and pitch shifting and all that stuff. But if anyone has any specific questions about that, they can always reach out and and ask. I'm sure Ryan, as well, but I'm always very happy to help people if they're looking for it. [00:55:12] Ryan Holladay: I might actually be one of the people reaching out to you. I feel like that's I I'm going to I'm going to copy so many of your your workflow things. That's amazing. The only thing I can contribute to that is that we So we were talking briefly, Hays and I use Ableton as our primary DAW, which is very I think kind of unusual in the scoring world, and I know there's a lot of there's a lot There's probably a lot of composers that that look down on it, but we love it, just because it's so snappy, and it's for for building up If you're working with samples and want to manipulate things quickly, it is it is a dream machine. I mean, we absolutely love it. We're always pulling things from other parts of the film, other cues, pitching things down, warping them. It's it's amazing for that stuff. So if you're interested in playing with your own samples, I mean, Ableton, even if it's not the primary DAW that you're using, I think a lot of composers use it almost as its own like free-standing tool, but we absolutely Is that how you work with Ableton, like as its own kind of standalone thing? [00:56:08] Jason Graves: Yeah. [00:56:09] Ryan Holladay: Totally. We love it. [00:56:10] Jason Graves: It's just super powerful. The built-in effects and everything are And I don't mean I mean the EQs and the compressors are great, but the the manipulative effects, what you can do with it. And a lot of times, I'll even The most recent thing I did was I recorded you can't even see it I recorded my drum set, there it is, recorded my drum set playing a thing, but I wanted to super overprocess it, and I put it all in Ableton, and did all the processing, and I linked Ableton to Cubase. So when I hit play, they would both play at the same time, which was super cool. A little a little laggy, but I could hear it all in real time, and I could see Ableton, and, you know, tweak the kick drum and a little more filter here, and it was very cool. Yeah. I love Ableton. [00:56:51] Jamin Warren: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you both so much. This was a wonderful conversation. It was great to be able to chat with you about your respective respective works. Before we move on, what's what should people be on the lookout for next for the for the two of you before we wrap up? [00:57:08] Jason Graves: You're working on a game that you can actually talk about, why don't you do that? [00:57:11] Ryan Holladay: Yeah. Abelina is a game that I'm working on. It's the first video game I've worked on with my friend Gabe. It's I think it'll be out early next year. I'm very excited about that, so wishlist that now on Steam, Abelina. [00:57:26] Jason Graves: That's really cool. How do you spell that, by the way? Cuz I want to look it up, too. [00:57:28] Ryan Holladay: A-B-E-L-I-N-A. [00:57:31] Jason Graves: Abelina, okay, the way it sounds. With games, they're usually super secretive, so you're never allowed to talk about anything. [laughs] But I did I've already mentioned it, Modern Warfare 4 comes out in a week or so, and I did all the multiplayer music for that. So that was that was super fun. And in the meantime, I need to shout out to Ryan again. I teach a class called Modern Cinematic Scoring, and we talk about film scenes and music, and emotion and vibe, and influences, and the students get a chance to rescore what I think are really important scenes in cinema. And in our horror module, Weapons is one of the films that we look at, and specifically it's the gas station chase from Benedict Wong's standpoint when he first leaves the house. It's about two and a half minutes long, and I just I love the film, and I also rescore all the scenes myself. I need to send that to you, just because it would be such a full-circle moment. [00:58:27] Ryan Holladay: I'd love to hear it. [laughs] Yeah. [00:58:30] Jason Graves: Totally. I did some 192 recording on it, right? I recorded like lots of breaths and tapping, and it's very tribal. It's basically just all weird recorded things and some crazy synths, but, yeah. I'm I'm doing that, so this is wonderful to be able to to meet Ryan and thank him for such a wonderful contribution to the hanra hanra? horror genre. [00:58:51] Ryan Holladay: [laughs] Hanra. Hanra. [00:58:53] Jamin Warren: Hanra. Yeah. [00:58:53] Ryan Holladay: This is awesome. Thank you, Jamin, for organizing it, and, Jason, it's such a pleasure to meet you. As I mentioned, Moss was like the first VR game I played, and it blew my mind, and I love the music for it, and I know that's not what you're known for, but I absolutely love it, and this is it's great. [00:59:06] Jason Graves: I It's so wonderful to hear, because that's probably some of the favorite music that I've written is for the two, three, four, whatever, however many there were, Moss games, yeah. Thank you. [00:59:16] Jamin Warren: Yeah. Great. Well, thanks, everybody. You'll get a a follow-up with a recording for this if you want to go back and and listen to all the all the wonderful things that the that we've all shared today. You'll also get a note. I put together a horror collection. There are eight games that I've put together with and worked with the the gamemakers for specials and sales, so you'll get that in your email as well if you sign up at mubi.com/killscreen. It's a nice little a nice little mix of mostly independent horror games that are a good a good complement. And stay on the lookout for some of the future yeah, the future talks that we're going to be planning over the next two two weeks. Yeah, I'll be announcing those a little bit later this week, but, again, thank you both so much. This was a this was a ton of fun, and, yeah, have a good one. [01:00:08] Ryan Holladay: Thank you, guys. Bye. [01:00:09] Jason Graves: Thanks a lot. Take it easy.