BY PHILIP SHEPPARD AS TOLD TO CHRISTOPHER LEON, GLOBAL SERIES COORDINATOR
Philip Sheppard co-composed Sony’s Detroit: Become Human, a new video game for PS4. In this story, Philip discusses the character for which he invented a new soundworld – Kara (pictured in-game above). The composer has worked with stars ranging from David Bowie to Queens of the Stone Age – but it is perhaps his passion for artificial intelligence that provides the biggest influence on his latest score.
The path to how I became involved in Detroit: Become Human is not what you would call a traditionally linear path.
Over the past decade, I have scored over 60 film, TV, and theatrical scores. And whilst it is the best job in the world, I knew I wanted a different kind of challenge; something that would push me both technically and artistically.
The industry around music for video games has grown exponentially in the last few years, and is beginning to overtake Hollywood in terms of sheer production size.
About two years ago, writing the soundtrack for a video game became a primary ambition of mine and I began to plan how to approach the major gaming production houses in order to pitch my interest. I’m a great believer in regularly writing down my goals and ambitions. I fill notebooks with handwritten lists; things I want to do, but that seemed out of reach at the time.
Writing things down in the past has resulted in some crazy results including my music played in space, working on Star Wars, and being a producer at the Olympic Games – so it works! Mainly because you put yourself in a frame of mind where you’re prepared for things to happen, by which I mean technically ready.
Luck is preparation meeting an opportunity, and, so long as you’re over-prepared you can probably attract, or spot, an opportunity.
So, my goal list two years ago was headed up with: Write a soundtrack for a video game. I have it written down in a notebook here.
Unbeknownst to me, a Parisian PlayStation developer, Quantic Dream, had been using my music to promote a forthcoming major project; Detroit: Become Human. And David Cage, the game’s director, called me out of the blue to see if I would be interested in collaborating with them on the actual game. Needless to say there was absolutely no hesitation on my part…
The great thing about working in the documentary world is the opportunity to collaborate with people who constantly exceed the bounds of human endeavour. My first movie, In the Shadow of the Moon, introduced me to most of the men who first walked on the face of the moon. It was somewhat surreal to realise that all those years of practising in a conservatoire had formed a direct pathway to meeting people who had actually stepped outside the Earth’s atmosphere and onto another landmass that few humans have or will ever experience.
Kara is an android in the video game Detroit: Become Human, so in that sense she does exist in a ‘different’ kind of human frontier. However, through necessity, she is thrown into the very human role of mother. [Editor’s note: This video introduces you to Kara – but we’d recommend parental guidance if the kids are around, folks. The blog continues below.]
I had originally thought that her soundworld would originate from electronica into some string instrument elements, but the further I got into composing, the more emotional the music became, and by necessity, more analogue too. Her story was one of human spirit, and though she is mechanical, everything necessary to bring her alive in the context of the video game is soulful.
There’s so much precedent for this in classical music, whether one looks at the musical representations of Prometheus or Olympia, so I suddenly felt a pressure to make this mean something, and to be truly moving if possible.
When I started composing music for Kara, I initially thought that was going to be about finding a voice from a machine; a kind of mechanical, clockwork fantasy.
Very soon, I realised that the key to her sound was all about the progression from having no soul, to becoming a mother. That’s a vast leap. And it meant aiming for a way more organic approach. Musically, I wanted to create a sense of strength and yearning whilst trying to find something simple enough that could work quietly – as well as transpose into large, violent, stressful moments for the fights and chase scenes too.
The key was simplicity and feel. Writing simple music is really very hard. It taps into that dichotomy of beauty requiring less, but knowing what to leave out is a skill only acquired over time.
In the end, I whittled it down to a two-note theme over a flickering kind of riff. All 55 pieces about Kara feature these elements – some obviously, some more concealed – but they’re always there.
Unusually for a dramatic form of writing, my job in Detroit: Become Human was to write purely for a single character, Kara, which meant I got far more deeply involved at an emotional level with representing her internal conflict and it made me very defensive of her, and a little bit protective.
In the early days of Detroit: Become Human, I was convinced that Nima, John, and I would end up in the studio together composing some of the major action sequences. We each occupy a different soundworld in our own work, and I was honestly looking forward to this (unusual) aspect of the process.
However, as we each developed our unique palettes of sound, the music team realised that our working in isolation was creating exactly the kind of nuances of difference in the characters that the video game needed. So, we continued in isolation until the very final stages of mixing the music.
The music editors, Mary Lockwood and Aurelien Baguerre pulled off an incredible feat in breaking down our cues down to a granular level and rebuilding them into stunning interweaving pieces for scenes where the lead characters actually interact.
I’ve always felt hesitant about releasing the individual components of any finished piece of my music, but upon hearing the sonic artistry of the Quantic Dream audio team, I had no doubt that what would come back would sound amazing. And it did.
Throughout the process, my profane French language skills expanded, and I had the joy of inviting Mary and Aurelien into Abbey Road for a few days of the most intensely enjoyable recording.
On artificial intelligence and machine learning
At the outset of Detroit: Become Human, I was sure that I was going to be drawing on my fascination with the early days of computing for inspiration. Early circuit boards hum and click and have a warmth all of their own. I’m such a geek about such things that the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley offered me a job as a docent at one point. (Something I’ve been slow to admit!)
However, the music required was far more about the emotions between a parent and a child, so I drew on my own (far closer to home) experiences, and started composing from the heart more than the brain. Being the father of three very strong daughters it wasn’t difficult to tap into parental emotions!
Detroit: Become Human fits into a passion I already have for systems intelligence and machine learning. I’m not a gamer myself, so playing the video game isn’t something that will necessarily have a big effect as I simply don’t have time! However, it’s provoked some great discussions with friends who are pioneers in this field. I do spend a lot of time hiking and chatting with Tom Gruber – who is one of the brains behind Siri, and he’s been following the progress of what I’m involved in pretty closely…
The compositional process
I wrote 55 separate pieces of music for Kara over a year, which in my world (of movie composition) is a long long time.
In order to find the key themes for the Kara character, I spent a lot of time walking, hiking and locking myself away in isolated locations in order to really find some depth to her sound. I finally stumbled across her theme whilst staring into the flames of a fire in a log cabin, snowbound in Montana. Research can be cool…
In production terms, I used everything from a 17th Century cello, to my favourite orchestra (the English Session Orchestra), a treble viol, my electric cello, Ableton push controllers, a broken Speak and Spell machine as well as old radios and even a pressure gauge from an RAF plane to generate sound. We brought everything together in Abbey Road Studio One, where miraculously it fitted together, and (I think) sounded okay.
Secrets in the music…
Marvin Minsky was the godfather of artificial intelligence. One of the modern world’s greatest thinkers, Marvin had had a profound effect on the future of science, as well as the popular consciousness. He designed the concept of HAL for Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and taught Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Feynman.
Marvin was a dear friend of mine – a great raconteur, dinner party companion and fellow musician. I had met him through his friend and student, my friend Michael Hawley – the polymath and amazing impresario behind the EG conference.
After Minsky passed away, his family shared Marvin’s musical archives with me. It’s maybe not a widely known fact that Marvin was a fantastic composer and pianist. (I honestly think there was nothing he couldn’t do). He had composed many short piano pieces directly onto reel-to-reel tape, hand splicing them with a razor blades and tape, recording them at different speeds to create pitch effects. It was a real treasure trove. One of Marvin’s pieces sounded so beautiful, I decided to write a musical frame for it – a sort of concerto accompaniment around his recording.
I took Marvin’s tape into Abbey Road Studio 1, and recorded the musicians of the English Session Orchestra around it using The Beatles’ microphones – I mean – why not?!
I realised that I simply had to get the music into Detroit: Become Human.
Philip has just released his sophomore solo orchestral album Fall from Earth featuring the English Session Orchestra, conducted and recorded at Abbey Road. Read the story behind the album on Philip’s website.
Learn more about Detroit: Become Human in this interview with Philip’s co-composer Nima Fakhrara.
Images supplied.
