SpyroWorld Exclusive: Interview With The Composers Of TLoS!
Not so long ago, on the fifteenth of January, I wrote to Becky Kneubuhl, one of the composers from The Legend of Spyro series. I asked her if she and her composing partner, Gabriel, would be interested in answering some questions about her work on Spyro and herself in general. She wrote back the same night and happily agreed to an interview. I thought up some questions and gathered some from fans around the Spyro forums and pieced it all together into an interview.
A few weeks went by and on February sixth I returned an email to Becky with the completed list of questions. I hadn’t heard back from either Becky or her co-composer on Spyro, Gabriel Mann, so last evening I wrote to her to see how the answers were coming along. It turned out that they had sent the answers back about a week ago and wondered why I hadn’t notified them of receiving the answers. I never got the answers, so it was good I asked. They re-sent their responses and now here they’re for everyone to enjoy.
From here on out, any questions we asked will be labeled as “SW”. Becky’s answers will be marked as “B” and Gabriel’s as “G”. All questions answered together are marked as "B&G". Enjoy!
__________________________________________________________
SW: Sorry that nearly a month has gone past since I asked to do the interview with you. I gathered questions from fans, added some of my own and finally have a list of interview questions that's longer than expected but hopefully not too long. :)
I hope you both enjoy answering these questions, if you don't feel comfortable answering one that's fine. Anything you'd like to add about your processes or Spyro work you can throw in there. I look forward to hearing back.
B&G: No problem - if we run out of gas we'll just skip to the important ones. :)
SW: And now...the questions:
SW: Is this what you wanted to do/thought you'd do as a kid?
G: Sorta. I wanted to be a rock star and a doctor. So this is kinda close to being a rock star, but not very close to being a doctor.
B: Sorta. I didn't really know there was a career option called 'composer', so I didn't really write music until college. I thought I’d be teaching music or conducting choirs. I’m pretty sure I never wanted to be a doctor.
SW: If you weren't composing (etc.) music what would you be doing?
B: I’d stay home and play with my kids.
G: sitting on a beach or working on a farm.
B: Becky doesn't think Gabe would last 2 days on a farm.
SW: Do you have a favorite work out off all your own that you've done?
G: I still have a fondness for the original Crash Twinsanity soundtrack. It was really fun to record and produce with Spiralmouth, and there isn't another game score like it out there.
B: I’m partial to bits and pieces from lots of games, but I think the flying level from ANB is one of the best things we've done together.
SW: What's your favorite soundtrack or composer from another videogame?
B&G: We don't listen to game scores except to sometimes reference how things work from a technical aspect. Most games require music that is fairly static in intensity for the duration of the players' state at the time, except for cutscenes or FMVs. So it's hard to get inspiration from a 1 minute clip that never changes. We listen to a little bit of film music, particularly Howard Shore and Elliot Goldenthal.
SW: What's your favorite band and/or genre of music?
G: Elvis Costello. I’m partial to genius singer-songwriters.
B: I really don't have a favorite. I fall in love with certain things and listen to them obsessively for a while, but it could be William Byrd one day and Rufus Wainwright the next.
SW: What genres or bands most influence your work?
It really depends on the game. For Timeshift, for example, the producers wanted a dark and modern soundscape, so we referenced a bunch of industrial bands. We wound up with something that was kinda nine inch nails with some orchestral elements. And some singing.
SW: Why aren't you two married?
B&G: Well, we are married. Just not to each other. We met while singing together in Spiralmouth, and ran Asylum Studios together with Becky’s husband, and when Twinsanity happened, we realized that we work together pretty well. But we'd be a terrible married couple. Just think, our kids would look like Andy Dick.
SW: Do you ever fight or disagree about the way a song should sound or feel?
B&G: Sometimes. Not really fight, but occasionally we'll have disagreements about something really stupid, and realize we've spent a half hour arguing over 1/4 of a bar of music which will go by in less than a second. Then we get over it when we realize we have like a hundred years of music left to write.
SW: M+M's or Skittles?
B: Gabe says M+M’s, but he lies, he steals snickers.
SW: Do you give each other nicknames? Gabe and Beck? Or is it strictly business?
B&G: No nicknames, but we're the exact opposite of strictly business. We’ve been friends for a long time.
SW: How do compositions come to you? Do you sit down and just begin working until something comes out or is it more random – you're in the car and boom – new melody forming?
B&G: Typically we have pretty clear instructions about what we're doing on any given project. We’ll have a working list of tracks that the developer needs for certain levels, and we might have a general roadmap of how to get there. It’s rare that we're just sitting here saying "ok, what now?" When we start on a track, we're usually sitting more or less together at the keyboard and protools, and we'll sort of talk through what's going to happen. So if it's a big action track, we can determine right off the bat that it's probably not going to be slow, and it might need to be kinda bombastic, and as soon as one of us hums or sings or plays something that jumps out, we both say "yeah, that one." And then we'll flesh things out for a while, and then typically spend some time listening back to make sure we're going in the right direction. We’ve done this enough times to be able to finish each other's sentences, so to speak. We don't always work exactly the same way on every project, but once we've laid a bit of groundwork on each track, we work very quickly.
SW: If you could have been asked to compose for any one game, released or to-be-released what game would it have been and why?
B&G: We've been lucky that the games we've worked on have covered a wide spectrum, musically. We get to write all kinds of music for all kinds of things and that is very satisfying; as long as we get to keep doing that, and stretching our compositional muscles, we'll be very happy.
SW: How'd you get asked to work on Spyro?
B&G: The producer for a new beginning was the associate producer on Crash Twinsanity, and we'd had a good experience working together, so he called us for the new Spyro series.
SW: Has any of your work for the Spyro games gotten scrapped or unused in the final game and now resides in a deep, dark, secret vault somewhere?
B&G: Very little went unused with Spyro. A few things didn't work because the levels didn't play out as they'd originally thought, but for the most part, they used everything. We wrote a demo which didn't end up getting used, but the theme showed up all over the place in other tracks. In other games, we've had lots of tracks get revamped to the point of unrecognizability from the original, but that's par for the course...in any creative endeavor you don't always hear things the way the producers do. Sometimes that music finds a home elsewhere. Some of our favorite pieces of music are demos for games that got cancelled.
SW: Where did you find the inspiration for the music and lyrics for “This Broken Soul”, and at which point in the game's development did you think that you would add a vocal track for the end credits?
B&G: We talked about doing a song right at the beginning of working on Eternal Night. The producers liked the idea, and we were excited to do it. It was a nice way to incorporate some of the other strengths we have into the big orchestral stuff. The inspiration from the song came from Spyro’s relationship to Ignitus, and on how we imagined he would feel having crossed over into 'dark Spyro.' But we also wanted to create it from a universal standpoint about our own selves; everyone has a part of them that doesn't always do the right thing. Sometimes our darker nature takes over, despite our best intentions. Ultimately no one wants to stay there, so we look for guidance and ask for help, and a way out.
SW: Have you seen the YouTube Spyro music videos made with your song This Broken Soul? Fans are in love with it!
B&G: Yes, we've seen them. And our favorite is the girl who sings with her cats.
SW: Besides the number of music videos made to compliment “This Broken Soul”, one Spyro fan had a cousin who was in the air force fighting in Iraq. He died and the family suggested songs for the funeral. Out of 20 suggestions, Broken Soul was picked and played during the burial ceremony.
G: Becky read about this on one of the Spyro forums (yes, we do read them!) and was incredibly touched by this. Sometimes we write in a vacuum and it's surprising and wonderful to find out there are people out there who are listening and are affected by music we've written.
SW: How much did you know about/of Spyro before becoming the composers for the Legend of Spyro trilogy?
B&G: Not much. And we were loosely instructed not to do too much "research" because the producers really wanted to take Spyro into a new world, creatively, both in production values and story. They were looking to make the game much more epic, so it didn't seem appropriate to reference what had come before.
SW: Does a song ever annoy you after a while working on it? You hear it so many times through while tweaking it you finally form an aversion to it?
B&G: Every day. Gabe never remembers what we do 5 minutes after we walk out the door, and Becky has it stuck in her head all night.
SW: How does it feel to have the A New Beginning soundtrack on iTunes? How does that happen and how come The Eternal Night soundtrack hasn't made it there, yet?
B&G: It's great, and we're anxious for the TEN soundtrack to come out as well. It takes some time to be released once the tracks have been submitted, but it should be very soon. (Basically, we give Sierra the music, and they take care of the rest.)
SW: People who listen to Gabriel say they also listen to the police which is ironic as Stewart Copeland, of the Police, scored the first four Spyro games.
Did you listen to any of Stewart Copeland's work from the first three games before starting on your Spyro music or were inspired by it in anyway?
Similarly, did you listen to any of the other Spyro game soundtracks besides Copeland's work or did you go into the writing process of A New Beginning with your own ideas, not needing to listen to the series' previous musical entries?
B&G: Not really, though we do love The Police. As we said, the score for the recent trilogy was meant to go in a whole different direction.
SW: Did you play either A New Beginning or The Eternal Night once it came out?
B&G: Neither of us are very good at it, so we watched other people play. Our gaming skills are rather limited, but we're workin' on it.
SW: How did you settle on a sweeping orchestral score for these games, especially when the series had a jazzy/pop-infused alternative style before your work?
B&G: Again, this was primarily dictated by the more epic feel of the game. Vivendi really wanted the music to have a darker, weightier feel, so the orchestra and choir seemed like a natural way to go.
SW: Did you listen to other epic orchestral scores from films such as Lord of the Rings before beginning on your own work?
B&G: A little, but not extensively. We listened to Stravinsky, and Arvo Pärt’s choral works. It wasn't our intention to make any specific musical references; we wanted to get into that world, but not to the point of emulating another composer.
SW: How does the work on Spyro get split up between you? Who does what aspects? Who composes? Who mixes? Or do you both dabble a little in each area?
B&G: We both write all the music together, pretty much, with rare exception. Gabe is heavier on the mixing, Becky heavier on the choral arranging, but we're both sitting here in the same room basically all the time.
SW: How's work coming on the The Legend of Spyro 3 soundtrack or has the process not begun yet?
B&G: Hmm...what’s Spyro 3? :-)
SW: How soon in advance do you get to play a prototype of the game (prior to its release and/or official press announcement) in order to score it?
SW: When scoring a game, are you watching it played on a screen or playing it? Do you write as you go or get through a whole section of the game and then begin writing music for what you just saw?
B&G: Answering these both together.
We don't generally play much of the game along the way. (If it was a requirement that we be able to play through a game in order to score it, it would take us a year to score one game. we're really good musicians, and really crappy gamers.)
For the in-game level music, we typically get assets from the developers like artwork and video captures of the game being played. Sometimes we'll go to the publisher or developer and watch bits and pieces of it. Combined with some more specific instructions from the developer or publisher, that's more than enough for us to work from, and then we'll make changes as necessary.
For the FMVs, those are scored just like any film or television show. We get a video capture of the scene, throw it into protools, and score to the picture. We’re watching video playback the whole time, in the same software we're writing the music.
SW: What band would be your dream band to open for, Gabriel?
G: U2.
SW: If you could meet any one musician, dead or alive, who would it be, Becky?
B: This is a nearly impossible question to answer, but I’d rather Gabe opened for Radiohead than U2.
SW: Gabriel - has anyone ever told you that you look a little like Andy Dick? I included an awesome picture for reference.
Comedian Andy Dick is on the left, Gabriel Mann is superimposed on the right.
B&G: Ok, that's a little scary. Ignoring the fact that Andy Dick is a total psycho, we'll give you the similarity on the glasses.
SW: Anything either of you'd like to add/say to your fans, about Spyro or your work in general?
B&G: Just want to add how much we appreciate all the support and interest in the music and we hope the Spyro franchise lives on for many years! :-)
SW: Thank you both for answering our questions. We appreciate your time and keep up the good work with Spyro, it's truly amazing!
__________________________________________________________
Thanks go to Charlie Miller (Griffinluna), RaidonMakoto, Bev Wooff (Rexy), Chris (Spyrofan2000), Daxton Hatch (K4RN4GE) and Chris. O (Ignitus's #1fan) from SpyroForum and Sierra Forum for your question contributions.
Rebecca Kneubuhl and Gabriel Mann compose music for movies, TV shows, video games and more. They are the official composers for Spyro: ANB and Spyro: TEN. Their work is critically acclaimed - often considered the best aspects of these Spyro games.
Their TLoS: ANB album is available on iTunes.
Here's their site:
Official Site
There’s more information about the duo there as well as music samples and links to other sites for yet even MORE information about them.
I hope you all have enjoyed reading this interview. Is there anything you would have asked them that we missed? If so, tell us what it was in the comments section by clicking on “comment” below.
We enjoyed having the chance to interview these two who have so greatly impacted Spyro with their beautiful work.
A few weeks went by and on February sixth I returned an email to Becky with the completed list of questions. I hadn’t heard back from either Becky or her co-composer on Spyro, Gabriel Mann, so last evening I wrote to her to see how the answers were coming along. It turned out that they had sent the answers back about a week ago and wondered why I hadn’t notified them of receiving the answers. I never got the answers, so it was good I asked. They re-sent their responses and now here they’re for everyone to enjoy.
From here on out, any questions we asked will be labeled as “SW”. Becky’s answers will be marked as “B” and Gabriel’s as “G”. All questions answered together are marked as "B&G". Enjoy!
__________________________________________________________
SW: Sorry that nearly a month has gone past since I asked to do the interview with you. I gathered questions from fans, added some of my own and finally have a list of interview questions that's longer than expected but hopefully not too long. :)
I hope you both enjoy answering these questions, if you don't feel comfortable answering one that's fine. Anything you'd like to add about your processes or Spyro work you can throw in there. I look forward to hearing back.
B&G: No problem - if we run out of gas we'll just skip to the important ones. :)
SW: And now...the questions:
SW: Is this what you wanted to do/thought you'd do as a kid?
G: Sorta. I wanted to be a rock star and a doctor. So this is kinda close to being a rock star, but not very close to being a doctor.
B: Sorta. I didn't really know there was a career option called 'composer', so I didn't really write music until college. I thought I’d be teaching music or conducting choirs. I’m pretty sure I never wanted to be a doctor.
SW: If you weren't composing (etc.) music what would you be doing?
B: I’d stay home and play with my kids.
G: sitting on a beach or working on a farm.
B: Becky doesn't think Gabe would last 2 days on a farm.
SW: Do you have a favorite work out off all your own that you've done?
G: I still have a fondness for the original Crash Twinsanity soundtrack. It was really fun to record and produce with Spiralmouth, and there isn't another game score like it out there.
B: I’m partial to bits and pieces from lots of games, but I think the flying level from ANB is one of the best things we've done together.
SW: What's your favorite soundtrack or composer from another videogame?
B&G: We don't listen to game scores except to sometimes reference how things work from a technical aspect. Most games require music that is fairly static in intensity for the duration of the players' state at the time, except for cutscenes or FMVs. So it's hard to get inspiration from a 1 minute clip that never changes. We listen to a little bit of film music, particularly Howard Shore and Elliot Goldenthal.
SW: What's your favorite band and/or genre of music?
G: Elvis Costello. I’m partial to genius singer-songwriters.
B: I really don't have a favorite. I fall in love with certain things and listen to them obsessively for a while, but it could be William Byrd one day and Rufus Wainwright the next.
SW: What genres or bands most influence your work?
It really depends on the game. For Timeshift, for example, the producers wanted a dark and modern soundscape, so we referenced a bunch of industrial bands. We wound up with something that was kinda nine inch nails with some orchestral elements. And some singing.
SW: Why aren't you two married?
B&G: Well, we are married. Just not to each other. We met while singing together in Spiralmouth, and ran Asylum Studios together with Becky’s husband, and when Twinsanity happened, we realized that we work together pretty well. But we'd be a terrible married couple. Just think, our kids would look like Andy Dick.
SW: Do you ever fight or disagree about the way a song should sound or feel?
B&G: Sometimes. Not really fight, but occasionally we'll have disagreements about something really stupid, and realize we've spent a half hour arguing over 1/4 of a bar of music which will go by in less than a second. Then we get over it when we realize we have like a hundred years of music left to write.
SW: M+M's or Skittles?
B: Gabe says M+M’s, but he lies, he steals snickers.
SW: Do you give each other nicknames? Gabe and Beck? Or is it strictly business?
B&G: No nicknames, but we're the exact opposite of strictly business. We’ve been friends for a long time.
SW: How do compositions come to you? Do you sit down and just begin working until something comes out or is it more random – you're in the car and boom – new melody forming?
B&G: Typically we have pretty clear instructions about what we're doing on any given project. We’ll have a working list of tracks that the developer needs for certain levels, and we might have a general roadmap of how to get there. It’s rare that we're just sitting here saying "ok, what now?" When we start on a track, we're usually sitting more or less together at the keyboard and protools, and we'll sort of talk through what's going to happen. So if it's a big action track, we can determine right off the bat that it's probably not going to be slow, and it might need to be kinda bombastic, and as soon as one of us hums or sings or plays something that jumps out, we both say "yeah, that one." And then we'll flesh things out for a while, and then typically spend some time listening back to make sure we're going in the right direction. We’ve done this enough times to be able to finish each other's sentences, so to speak. We don't always work exactly the same way on every project, but once we've laid a bit of groundwork on each track, we work very quickly.
SW: If you could have been asked to compose for any one game, released or to-be-released what game would it have been and why?
B&G: We've been lucky that the games we've worked on have covered a wide spectrum, musically. We get to write all kinds of music for all kinds of things and that is very satisfying; as long as we get to keep doing that, and stretching our compositional muscles, we'll be very happy.
SW: How'd you get asked to work on Spyro?
B&G: The producer for a new beginning was the associate producer on Crash Twinsanity, and we'd had a good experience working together, so he called us for the new Spyro series.
SW: Has any of your work for the Spyro games gotten scrapped or unused in the final game and now resides in a deep, dark, secret vault somewhere?
B&G: Very little went unused with Spyro. A few things didn't work because the levels didn't play out as they'd originally thought, but for the most part, they used everything. We wrote a demo which didn't end up getting used, but the theme showed up all over the place in other tracks. In other games, we've had lots of tracks get revamped to the point of unrecognizability from the original, but that's par for the course...in any creative endeavor you don't always hear things the way the producers do. Sometimes that music finds a home elsewhere. Some of our favorite pieces of music are demos for games that got cancelled.
SW: Where did you find the inspiration for the music and lyrics for “This Broken Soul”, and at which point in the game's development did you think that you would add a vocal track for the end credits?
B&G: We talked about doing a song right at the beginning of working on Eternal Night. The producers liked the idea, and we were excited to do it. It was a nice way to incorporate some of the other strengths we have into the big orchestral stuff. The inspiration from the song came from Spyro’s relationship to Ignitus, and on how we imagined he would feel having crossed over into 'dark Spyro.' But we also wanted to create it from a universal standpoint about our own selves; everyone has a part of them that doesn't always do the right thing. Sometimes our darker nature takes over, despite our best intentions. Ultimately no one wants to stay there, so we look for guidance and ask for help, and a way out.
SW: Have you seen the YouTube Spyro music videos made with your song This Broken Soul? Fans are in love with it!
B&G: Yes, we've seen them. And our favorite is the girl who sings with her cats.
SW: Besides the number of music videos made to compliment “This Broken Soul”, one Spyro fan had a cousin who was in the air force fighting in Iraq. He died and the family suggested songs for the funeral. Out of 20 suggestions, Broken Soul was picked and played during the burial ceremony.
G: Becky read about this on one of the Spyro forums (yes, we do read them!) and was incredibly touched by this. Sometimes we write in a vacuum and it's surprising and wonderful to find out there are people out there who are listening and are affected by music we've written.
SW: How much did you know about/of Spyro before becoming the composers for the Legend of Spyro trilogy?
B&G: Not much. And we were loosely instructed not to do too much "research" because the producers really wanted to take Spyro into a new world, creatively, both in production values and story. They were looking to make the game much more epic, so it didn't seem appropriate to reference what had come before.
SW: Does a song ever annoy you after a while working on it? You hear it so many times through while tweaking it you finally form an aversion to it?
B&G: Every day. Gabe never remembers what we do 5 minutes after we walk out the door, and Becky has it stuck in her head all night.
SW: How does it feel to have the A New Beginning soundtrack on iTunes? How does that happen and how come The Eternal Night soundtrack hasn't made it there, yet?
B&G: It's great, and we're anxious for the TEN soundtrack to come out as well. It takes some time to be released once the tracks have been submitted, but it should be very soon. (Basically, we give Sierra the music, and they take care of the rest.)
SW: People who listen to Gabriel say they also listen to the police which is ironic as Stewart Copeland, of the Police, scored the first four Spyro games.
Did you listen to any of Stewart Copeland's work from the first three games before starting on your Spyro music or were inspired by it in anyway?
Similarly, did you listen to any of the other Spyro game soundtracks besides Copeland's work or did you go into the writing process of A New Beginning with your own ideas, not needing to listen to the series' previous musical entries?
B&G: Not really, though we do love The Police. As we said, the score for the recent trilogy was meant to go in a whole different direction.
SW: Did you play either A New Beginning or The Eternal Night once it came out?
B&G: Neither of us are very good at it, so we watched other people play. Our gaming skills are rather limited, but we're workin' on it.
SW: How did you settle on a sweeping orchestral score for these games, especially when the series had a jazzy/pop-infused alternative style before your work?
B&G: Again, this was primarily dictated by the more epic feel of the game. Vivendi really wanted the music to have a darker, weightier feel, so the orchestra and choir seemed like a natural way to go.
SW: Did you listen to other epic orchestral scores from films such as Lord of the Rings before beginning on your own work?
B&G: A little, but not extensively. We listened to Stravinsky, and Arvo Pärt’s choral works. It wasn't our intention to make any specific musical references; we wanted to get into that world, but not to the point of emulating another composer.
SW: How does the work on Spyro get split up between you? Who does what aspects? Who composes? Who mixes? Or do you both dabble a little in each area?
B&G: We both write all the music together, pretty much, with rare exception. Gabe is heavier on the mixing, Becky heavier on the choral arranging, but we're both sitting here in the same room basically all the time.
SW: How's work coming on the The Legend of Spyro 3 soundtrack or has the process not begun yet?
B&G: Hmm...what’s Spyro 3? :-)
SW: How soon in advance do you get to play a prototype of the game (prior to its release and/or official press announcement) in order to score it?
SW: When scoring a game, are you watching it played on a screen or playing it? Do you write as you go or get through a whole section of the game and then begin writing music for what you just saw?
B&G: Answering these both together.
We don't generally play much of the game along the way. (If it was a requirement that we be able to play through a game in order to score it, it would take us a year to score one game. we're really good musicians, and really crappy gamers.)
For the in-game level music, we typically get assets from the developers like artwork and video captures of the game being played. Sometimes we'll go to the publisher or developer and watch bits and pieces of it. Combined with some more specific instructions from the developer or publisher, that's more than enough for us to work from, and then we'll make changes as necessary.
For the FMVs, those are scored just like any film or television show. We get a video capture of the scene, throw it into protools, and score to the picture. We’re watching video playback the whole time, in the same software we're writing the music.
SW: What band would be your dream band to open for, Gabriel?
G: U2.
SW: If you could meet any one musician, dead or alive, who would it be, Becky?
B: This is a nearly impossible question to answer, but I’d rather Gabe opened for Radiohead than U2.
SW: Gabriel - has anyone ever told you that you look a little like Andy Dick? I included an awesome picture for reference.
Comedian Andy Dick is on the left, Gabriel Mann is superimposed on the right.
B&G: Ok, that's a little scary. Ignoring the fact that Andy Dick is a total psycho, we'll give you the similarity on the glasses.
SW: Anything either of you'd like to add/say to your fans, about Spyro or your work in general?
B&G: Just want to add how much we appreciate all the support and interest in the music and we hope the Spyro franchise lives on for many years! :-)
SW: Thank you both for answering our questions. We appreciate your time and keep up the good work with Spyro, it's truly amazing!
__________________________________________________________
Thanks go to Charlie Miller (Griffinluna), RaidonMakoto, Bev Wooff (Rexy), Chris (Spyrofan2000), Daxton Hatch (K4RN4GE) and Chris. O (Ignitus's #1fan) from SpyroForum and Sierra Forum for your question contributions.
Rebecca Kneubuhl and Gabriel Mann compose music for movies, TV shows, video games and more. They are the official composers for Spyro: ANB and Spyro: TEN. Their work is critically acclaimed - often considered the best aspects of these Spyro games.
Their TLoS: ANB album is available on iTunes.
Here's their site:
Official Site
There’s more information about the duo there as well as music samples and links to other sites for yet even MORE information about them.
I hope you all have enjoyed reading this interview. Is there anything you would have asked them that we missed? If so, tell us what it was in the comments section by clicking on “comment” below.
We enjoyed having the chance to interview these two who have so greatly impacted Spyro with their beautiful work.
