As you may have gathered by now, I had the honor of meeting Tallarico on a more personal basis prior to the main show. I contacted him online several months before the show and talked to him a bit, eventually asking if he would allow me to interview him. He was an extremely approachable guy, and was more than happy to set aside a half hour of his time to talk to me. So I drove to New Haven five or six hours early, picked up backstage passes for me and my girlfriend, and went to meet Tallarico. As anyone who has ever done an interview knows, there is never enough time or space to ask every question you might have, but I managed to get a good lot of them in before he had to leave to help set up show. And he's a very experienced interviewee, which made the process a whole lot easier on me. And so, without further ado, I present to my interview with Tommy Tallarico.
Max Nichols: You've been in the industry for a long time; how would you say it's changed since you first started?
Tommy Tallarico: Well, when I first got involved in 1990 the first game I worked on was Prince of Persia, the original Prince of Persia. Back then it was just a bunch of bleeps and bloops. The technology really limited what we could create, and how we could create it. Then in the mid 90s, 94ish, CD-ROMs came out as a storage medium and all the walls were broken down. And we were now able to create real music and use live musicians and use live orchestras, and that's when the quality really started to change.
Max: What was the first CD-ROM game you did the music for?
Tommy: That was the Terminator, on the Sega CD. And that was actually the very first video game to ever use a live guitar, in... 1993.
Max: Which of your soundtracks are you the most proud of?
Tommy: I would say Earthworm Jim was a really fun one, also from '93, '94. The original Tony Hawk Pro Skater, which drove that genre crazy, was fun to work on. Metroid Prime, I'm proud of the sound design and stuff we've done for that. Spider Man, just because I was such a huge Spiderman fan. But from a musical standpoint, probably Advent Rising, where I used a seventy-two piece Union Orchestra in Hollywood, all the same people who do all the movie scores, recorded on the Paramount Picture stage, had an academy award-winning engineer and mixer and an Emmy award-winning conductor. I wrote it as a 13th century Italian opera, something that I always wanted to do my whole life. So for me that was, musically, one of my favorites.
Max: Yeah, no surprise there, that game had a really great soundtrack. Do you have a preference for what sort of games you like to score, genre-wise, or...?
Tommy: Yeah you know, I like the action-adventure stuff, because it's more in-your-face foreground music as opposed to... you know a lot of RPGs, or MMOs, with hundreds of millions of hours of gameplay, where the music has to be more in the background, ambient almost. I like more action-adventure, in-your-face kinda deals.
Max: That makes sense. Have you ever written a piece that you felt was really great, you loved it, but it just wasn't suitable for the game you were making?
Tommy: No, I always put them in (laughs). Even if it doesn't make sense in the game I still get it in there. Because there are a lot of people who may say "well the music has to match exactly what the thing is or else it's not working..." I have a different opinion and theory on all that. I want people to remember the music. As a composer, if the level sucks, but the music's great, it will help them to think the level's better, you know. And I want the person to want to get to the next level just to hear the next piece of cool music. That's my goal. I've been involved with some games, Terminator on the Sega CD being one of them, Skeleton Warriors is another one, and even Advent Rising itself, where people thought the game wasn't that great but they remembered the music. So if I wrote the music as to what I felt of the level or the game every time, some of my greatest soundtracks might have never been. Because you know, I've gotta write crappy music because it's a crappy level (laughs).
Max: I've been a huge fan of video game music all my life, but I've never really been able to describe why that is. I've never been able to say what it is about video game music that's so special.
Tommy: I'll tell you (laughs). I'll tell you why. I think first of all it's a generation thing, we grew up playing games, they've become the anthems of our generation. Super Mario Bros., Sonic, Zelda, those are games and scores that we grew up in, we associate with our childhood, the thing we remember most musically as a kid. There's Star Wars as well, another big one, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tron maybe, but no, this is the soundtrack of our generation. The other reason is that video game music gets compared a lot to movie soundtracks. The big difference is that dialogue drives movies. 90% of a movie is dialogue, right, and telling a story. Whereas in games, it's action, 90% of it is action and 10% of it is story. So the music that is written in games is all big, in-your-face action type of stuff. Whereas music in films, they might have a chase scene here and there or a title theme, but movie music is all in the background. A lot more in-your-face, big, adventure tunes you'll find in video games, more than anywhere else. So that eventually is going to create some hits.
Max: That actually makes a lot of sense. Next up I have some questions about the actual music development. How early in a game's development cycle are you brought in to start working on music and sound?
Tommy: Well in the old days we were brought in at the very end, so it'd be like, "oh the game's over, we have no time, no money, no space left on the cartridge, here, create some sound for it."
Max: (laughs)
Tommy: And that really sucked. So we quickly changed that, it was one of the things I was very instrumental in. I know early in my career saying to people, "Look, we've got to be in there from day one, because these engines that are created, the music engines and the way they stream in graphics or level information affects us in the end. So it's important that from day 1, when you start thinking of a project, you've got to start thinking about the sound and the music first. We've got to be hand-in-hand right from the beginning." Nowadays it's very much different, so yes, when a designer starts to sit down and think about a game, the next thing he'll think about will be the music.
Max: This must have been different in the past, but these days, how closely do you work with the game designers when trying to decide the mood of levels and environments?
Tommy: Every designer's different, every project is different of course, but a lot of times I'll just sit down with the designer and we'll say "what's the emotion here?" As a composer that's what I like to talk about, the emotion. Not necessarily the level. "Are we in the jungle level? Oh, let's try a jungle beat." I'm more about is it a scary level, or is it a sad level? Is it anticipation, or is it victory? So I deal with emotions when I talk to designers and stuff. For me that's the best way to go.
Max Nichols: You've been in the industry for a long time; how would you say it's changed since you first started?
Tommy Tallarico: Well, when I first got involved in 1990 the first game I worked on was Prince of Persia, the original Prince of Persia. Back then it was just a bunch of bleeps and bloops. The technology really limited what we could create, and how we could create it. Then in the mid 90s, 94ish, CD-ROMs came out as a storage medium and all the walls were broken down. And we were now able to create real music and use live musicians and use live orchestras, and that's when the quality really started to change.
Max: What was the first CD-ROM game you did the music for?
Tommy: That was the Terminator, on the Sega CD. And that was actually the very first video game to ever use a live guitar, in... 1993.
Max: Which of your soundtracks are you the most proud of?
Tommy: I would say Earthworm Jim was a really fun one, also from '93, '94. The original Tony Hawk Pro Skater, which drove that genre crazy, was fun to work on. Metroid Prime, I'm proud of the sound design and stuff we've done for that. Spider Man, just because I was such a huge Spiderman fan. But from a musical standpoint, probably Advent Rising, where I used a seventy-two piece Union Orchestra in Hollywood, all the same people who do all the movie scores, recorded on the Paramount Picture stage, had an academy award-winning engineer and mixer and an Emmy award-winning conductor. I wrote it as a 13th century Italian opera, something that I always wanted to do my whole life. So for me that was, musically, one of my favorites.
Max: Yeah, no surprise there, that game had a really great soundtrack. Do you have a preference for what sort of games you like to score, genre-wise, or...?
Tommy: Yeah you know, I like the action-adventure stuff, because it's more in-your-face foreground music as opposed to... you know a lot of RPGs, or MMOs, with hundreds of millions of hours of gameplay, where the music has to be more in the background, ambient almost. I like more action-adventure, in-your-face kinda deals.
Max: That makes sense. Have you ever written a piece that you felt was really great, you loved it, but it just wasn't suitable for the game you were making?
Tommy: No, I always put them in (laughs). Even if it doesn't make sense in the game I still get it in there. Because there are a lot of people who may say "well the music has to match exactly what the thing is or else it's not working..." I have a different opinion and theory on all that. I want people to remember the music. As a composer, if the level sucks, but the music's great, it will help them to think the level's better, you know. And I want the person to want to get to the next level just to hear the next piece of cool music. That's my goal. I've been involved with some games, Terminator on the Sega CD being one of them, Skeleton Warriors is another one, and even Advent Rising itself, where people thought the game wasn't that great but they remembered the music. So if I wrote the music as to what I felt of the level or the game every time, some of my greatest soundtracks might have never been. Because you know, I've gotta write crappy music because it's a crappy level (laughs).
Max: I've been a huge fan of video game music all my life, but I've never really been able to describe why that is. I've never been able to say what it is about video game music that's so special.
Tommy: I'll tell you (laughs). I'll tell you why. I think first of all it's a generation thing, we grew up playing games, they've become the anthems of our generation. Super Mario Bros., Sonic, Zelda, those are games and scores that we grew up in, we associate with our childhood, the thing we remember most musically as a kid. There's Star Wars as well, another big one, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tron maybe, but no, this is the soundtrack of our generation. The other reason is that video game music gets compared a lot to movie soundtracks. The big difference is that dialogue drives movies. 90% of a movie is dialogue, right, and telling a story. Whereas in games, it's action, 90% of it is action and 10% of it is story. So the music that is written in games is all big, in-your-face action type of stuff. Whereas music in films, they might have a chase scene here and there or a title theme, but movie music is all in the background. A lot more in-your-face, big, adventure tunes you'll find in video games, more than anywhere else. So that eventually is going to create some hits.
Max: That actually makes a lot of sense. Next up I have some questions about the actual music development. How early in a game's development cycle are you brought in to start working on music and sound?
Tommy: Well in the old days we were brought in at the very end, so it'd be like, "oh the game's over, we have no time, no money, no space left on the cartridge, here, create some sound for it."
Max: (laughs)
Tommy: And that really sucked. So we quickly changed that, it was one of the things I was very instrumental in. I know early in my career saying to people, "Look, we've got to be in there from day one, because these engines that are created, the music engines and the way they stream in graphics or level information affects us in the end. So it's important that from day 1, when you start thinking of a project, you've got to start thinking about the sound and the music first. We've got to be hand-in-hand right from the beginning." Nowadays it's very much different, so yes, when a designer starts to sit down and think about a game, the next thing he'll think about will be the music.
Max: This must have been different in the past, but these days, how closely do you work with the game designers when trying to decide the mood of levels and environments?
Tommy: Every designer's different, every project is different of course, but a lot of times I'll just sit down with the designer and we'll say "what's the emotion here?" As a composer that's what I like to talk about, the emotion. Not necessarily the level. "Are we in the jungle level? Oh, let's try a jungle beat." I'm more about is it a scary level, or is it a sad level? Is it anticipation, or is it victory? So I deal with emotions when I talk to designers and stuff. For me that's the best way to go.