I began writing this post as a review of the LA Philharmonic’s recent premiere of Peter Eötvös’s second violin concerto, “DoReMi,” but it has expanded to something a bit more soul-searching. I was preparing to rather casually assert a belief which, on reflection, demanded a far harder look. So, if you’ll indulge me …

As a composer, one of the things that is always in the forefront of my mind is managing so-called “Musical Parameters.” The manipulation of these parameters is basically all that composing is. The most obvious of these are melody, harmony and rhythm, but likewise I would include form, range, density, rates of change, etc. One of the most fundamental of all, and what I’m thinking about today, is color.

Color (a.k.a. timbre) is simply the combination of the physical means by which a sound is made, with the particulars of its overtone series (this wikipedia article offers a nice overview of the acoustical physics of timbre).

When music (in Western Europe) started to reach the levels of complexity that produced the concept of orchestration, initially color wasn’t really the main concern. Orchestras were growing in size to match increasingly large venues, and the various instruments employed were usually used in very formulaic ways. Even as late as Haydn and Mozart, the coloristic use of the orchestra appears to have been mainly pragmatic, and less expressive. Beethoven was a central figure in the pivot towards color-minded orchestration, notably using trombones in his 5th Symphony during the finale only (a historic first, sometimes disputed but which I feel confident in defending), or employing voices during the iconic “Ode to Joy” of his 9th Symphony (which was also a historic first). Through the century which followed coloristic choices abounded.

Herbert Von Karajan, one of history’s greatest conductors, with his legendary Berlin Philharmonic

With the arrival of the 20th Century, color became as critical as melody, harmony and rhythm in the ears of many of the greatest composers. The utilitarian concerns of centuries past weighed only gently as composers tried to concoct increasingly adventurous palettes. One of the earliest to do this in a way which to my ears still sounds utterly modern, was of course the archetype of French Impressionism, Claude Debussy:

Valery Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra

In some instances, color became not just a primary concern but the actual focus of the piece itself. Melody had long been the chief arbiter of musical form and progression, with harmony eventually rising to a close second in the 19th Century. With the rise of all the various “-isms” in the 20th Century (ImpressionISM, ExpressionISM, Neo-ClassicISM, etc) color now found itself an object of obsession. One of the earliest great works for which this is true is Shoenberg’s 3rd of “Five Orchestral Pieces” from 1909:

I am unsure which recording this is. Read this for a specific look at this technique of “tone melody,” aka Schoenberg’s invented technique known as ‘Klangfarbenmelodie.’

In the context of still-widespread use of Classical forms, a piece like that was considered immensely radical. Personally, I think one of the only reasons why this particular work has endured in the orchestral repertoire (though it’s certainly no staple for most orchestras or audiences) is because of its novelty; Color for its own sake was, at that point, basically unheard of. Of course, creative use of color (and incidentally, also a fantastic treatise on rhythm, which had been equally under-developed until that time) came in 1913 with Stravinsky’s towering “Rite of Spring,” which I believe sits at the apex of the entirety of music written in the 20th century:

As the 20th Century continued, experiments in color continued with ever more daring. This was not isolated to the classical music traditions of Europe and the US; jazz and all manner of pop music (Doesn’t get much better than this!) also saw color as a primary compositional consideration. That said, this belief was still pervasive: a piano reduction MUST communicate the essence of the piece. In other words, removing all the coloristic gestures must leave behind music which retains its fundamental integrity (in fact throughout history most composers have composed orchestral music as a ‘piano score’ first, and later adding orchestration as a second, nearly self-contained step).

In the middle of the century, a new voice emerged: Gyorgy Ligeti. He is probably the greatest example of a later composer who wrote music often expressly *about* color itself, and with brilliant results:

It is important to distinguish for a moment this notion of adventurous use of color, versus something being expressly about color. In Ligeti’s case, he meticulously crafted his music to make the evolution of its color communicate the actual arc of the piece, whereas in an example like “The Rite of Spring,” Stravinsky is using color to maximize the arc which is otherwise being achieved via the more conventional parameters of melody, harmony and (perhaps above all) rhythm. First with Shoenberg, and later (and far more significantly) with Ligeti, composers everywhere seem to have accepted the notion that color is an equal musical parameter with the others.

My own initial compositional experiments (as a kid) were largely piano based, so by the time I started writing orchestrally I had a built-in notion of thinking in terms of abstract notes, harmonies and rhythms to which I would later apply color. However, during my college years as I underwent a formal training, I quickly saw color as a genuine compositional device. Its own full-fledged musical parameter (exposure to Ligeti had a somewhat radioactive effect on me). My score to flOw is basically my first genuine stab at that technique:

Thus  do I arrive (and I sincerely hope you, dear reader, along with me!) to my review of the recent world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s second violin concerto, “DoReMe.” This piece, in many ways, is a wonderful representative of much of the recent concert music written in the last few decades. The dictatorship of academia over what is considered ‘proper’ has come and gone, though some strains of it remain. To this day, in 2013, piles of new music are written which leave audiences feeling cold, seemingly as a result of composers afraid to genuinely emote through their writing. I happily say this is not the predominant trend anymore, but it’s still quite common. I am not familiar with most of Eötvös’s work (his most famous probably being the opera “Angels in America”), but this felt a bit like a residual piece of that prior era.

Aaron Copland’s wonderful little book “What to Listen For In Music” has a discussion of how best to listen to new, challenging music. The main takeaway is that a single live performance of a work can never properly do a piece justice, even a masterpiece. So if you find yourself skeptical or even outright hating a new piece, his task for you is to seek it out and listen again, and again and again. And if after many hearings it still doesn’t seem to work, you probably will have arrived at very sound reasoning why. Of course therein lies the composer’s dilemma, since repeat hearings of a new work, if not instantly popular, are not very likely. Jazz and pop artists have the same problem. If it’s not a hit out of the gate, it’s likely to be instantly forgotten.

So in short, I did NOT like Eötvös’s “DoReMi,” despite an impassioned and genuinely entertaining performance by Midori (I say ‘entertaining’ in the best sense: she is a lively and animated performer who is captivating to watch play ANYTHING) and seemingly masterful control by visiting conductor Pedro Heras-Casado. It seemed to suffer mainly from an issue I feel plagues most music lately: a lack of large-scale architecture. I didn’t feel an arc spanning the piece, justifying the progression from section to section. It was seemingly just a series of moments, and those moments felt like nothing but explosions of color. Unable to hear the piece a second time, I sought out additional materials. First was this, Midori offering a few words about the piece:

She makes a key statement in there, revealing that so much of the piece is “about the sound.” In other words, color? In fact the piece is SO obsessed with color that the musical exploration of the main motif (a simple major-key Do-Re-Mi) seemed secondary. I felt a constant sense of trying out new settings without making them a means for taking me somewhere. Of course not ALL pieces are about traversal. There definitely is meditative, non-developmental music that I enjoy (though admittedly it’s about a 100:1 ratio of works like this that don’t hold my interest versus those that do. But that’s not necessarily a failing of the composers).

If this piece was supposed to be emotionally static in that sense, I think it failed on a grand scale. But I don’t believe that was its goal. I think instead its emotional messaging was simply unclear in the face of such massive technique. Eötvös is clearly a master orchestrator; the colors were magnificently explored. I even heard a few of those very rare and special moments wherein I legitimately had no idea how he had produced a given sound. But, as a musical narrative, there was almost no dramatic contrast at any moment in the piece, and thus virtually no emotional progression. My favorite moment came, ironically, when the orchestra sat silently during a duet between Midori and the principal viola.

The LA Times’ review by Mark Swed seemed to agree. Strangely, Bartók’s final masterpiece, the “Concerto for Orchestra,” was objectively far less colorful and yet left the impression of being far more so:

The 20th Century seemed to suggest that color was an equal musical parameter to melody, harmony and rhythm. And yet the contrast between “DeReMi” and the “Concerto for Orchestra” revealed my long-simmering suspicion that that isn’t actually the case. Long had I clung to the belief that it was, and I think part of my desire to do so was because so much new music I heard had nothing to say except for experiments in color. I wasn’t ready to accept the idea that most of what I was hearing was utterly un-moving and unexciting, simply because it wasn’t adhering to the age-old model that a piano reduction (removing the color) would retain its integrity. For a while it felt uncomfortably conservative to fall back on this notion, leaving me with the fear that I was rejecting something which might otherwise prove inspiring. But yet I wasn’t feeling overly inspired. Most new music felt like “just color,” and that wasn’t adding up to a great musical experience. A wonderful term I picked up at some point was David Rakowski’s OLAMBIC: Orchestrated Like A Motherfucker But It’s Crap.

If composing is like cooking, wherein we take given ingredients to make something new, then color (i.e. orchestration) is most akin to adding spice. And when was the last time you ate something consisting entirely of spices?

Simply put, spice isn’t food.

And yet Ligeti in particular gnaws at me. I have refused to consign color to a lesser spot on the parameter hierarchy because there is at least this one shining example of a composer who can write a piece *about* color and achieve success doing it.

I asked my dear friend, fellow composer, and all around brilliant thinker Jeremy Howard Beck what he thought and he had several interesting responses.

First, on color in the broad sense:

“I think, in a way, color is the most important and most fundamental musical parameter. The quality of a sound is the very first thing you hear. I think, even before you register harmony, you register that, say, it’s a piano… I think color in music is the surface, the primary interface with the listener.”

I am often fond of saying that no person in history has ever heard a composer’s composition, they’ve only heard a performer’s performance of it (or a recording playback). This is basically the same idea. You hear the execution, which comes in the form of color, but that color is the babel fish of sorts, translating this purely metaphysical concept into something discernible to the human ear. It is not, however, the music itself.

In raising the idea of OLAMBIC music, Jeremy replied:

“It’s like the body of a car. If you have a killer muscle car body with a rinky-dink V4 in it, the body is meaningless. But if you plop a supercharged V8 in my old 1987 Volkswagen, there’s a total mismatch between the performance and the aesthetics.”

In that analogy, the conceit is that color is the dressing. It’s your first contact yes, but it’s more like the gateway to the actual substance. It’s that thing which connects you in the mortal world to the music as it exists on some etheral plane.

If the fundamental musical value of something is strong enough, it often seems transcendent of color, and hence the whole notion of an artist ‘covering’ the work of another. Music wouldn’t be coverable if the core musical DNA couldn’t survive the transformation to different settings. Does that not also consign color to somehow a lower rung? As less fundamental to the music’s expression?

Jeremy, whose music is consistently VERY coloristic, defends color as an equally-weighted parameter to melody, harmony and rhythm, and yet his own car body/engine analogy seems to confirm my suspicion that color is somehow lesser (in his words, color is the “jumping off point,” from which he generates material, and is therefore inseparable from the musical concepts of a work. This would theoretically make his works un-coverable, but I absolutely think they could be). So, now convinced by all of this that color rests lower in the parameter hierarchy, I asked him about this troublesome exception of Ligeti, writing genuinely beautiful music expressly about color. He replied:

“Yeah, don’t try that at home.”

So while I didn’t love Eötvös’s work (despite admiration of his technique), I do feel I owe him a thanks. The mere act of dissecting my reaction to his concerto has led to a fairly confident belief that I was up ’til then unconsciously struggling with.

Of course I can’t help but notice that I wrote “fairly confident” …

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PS that nice image at the start of this post came from this site: http://www.musicalcolors.com/tst/home.html

Well, the need to come up with more impactful words just got a whole hell of a lot more severe. Never have I felt this genuinely speechless. On Wednesday December 5th, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) announced the 55th annual Grammy nominations. In the category of “Best Score Soundtrack Album” my score to Journey was named alongside recent film scores by John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Ludovic Bource and Howard Shore. The complete list of nominations can be seen here (I’m in category 57, down the page just a bit).

The outpouring of love and support and encouragement on Twitter, Facebook, via emails, text messages, carrier pigeons and all the rest has been overwhelming. I could never thank you enough but please know that it is for you all that I do anything. My earlier post “The Real Reason Why” has only escalated in truthfulness since I wrote it. You all have continuously redefined the outer limits of my gratitude.

So please forgive my failing eloquence in trying to really communicate that gratitude. It feels akin to when I’m struggling with a piece of music, and notes as I’m hearing them in my head aren’t seeming to translate into the notes on the page. It can feel maddening. But regardless, as with composing, I shall try endlessly. Even if in vain.

So, one more time: thank you.

I have more posts coming shortly on a variety of topics …

Meantime, I am also thrilled to say that Journey picked up three more awards last night (Friday, December 7th) at the Spike TV Video Game Awards: Best Original Score, Best PS3 Game and Best Independent Game. The latter brought producer Robin Hunicke to the stage for the below acceptance speech, including a shout out to me for which I am deeply moved and *sigh* … thankful!

Six years ago, very shortly after moving to Los Angeles, I attended my first Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Unsurprisingly, I thought it was great, but what struck me most was the audience response: raw and explosive energy. It was overwhelming and incredibly exciting to see a crowd that engaged. Something like 11,000 people all cheering and clapping for music which I had until that moment assumed only about 0.001% of the population knew or cared about. As a composer, at that point working on what would be my first true game score (thatgamecompany’s flOw), it was beyond invigorating to see that transplanting the music onto a stage was actually offering a meaningful experience to the audience.

In the intervening years, I’ve been fortunate enough to see my music performed live quite a few times, with some truly superb musicians and orchestras, and in some really great venues. They are experiences I will cherish forever, and models for concerts that I continue to pursue and develop today. Nonetheless, it makes me incredibly excited to announce this:

Thanks to the incredible and still-surreal outpouring of support and love for the music in Journey, I have been invited to contribute a suite of music from the score to the current tour of VGL. The madness will kick off on June 6th at the Nokia here in Los Angeles, where I will join VGL’s legendary founder Tommy Tallarico on-stage to conduct the music. Tickets are available here!

We have a few surprises planned so I won’t say any more about it (and I PROMISE to properly blog about Journey soon and include the full translation of the lyrics in “I Was Born For This”). I hope you can make it!!  If you don’t live in Los Angeles, make sure to check the tour date schedule (which is constantly being updated) to see when we’ll be in your city!

Finally, I had so much fun sending out the free Journey “Bonus Bundle” (here, in case you missed it) that I thought it was time to do something again sort of along those lines. So…. on June 6th I will tweet (@awintory) a reminder about the concert and anyone who retweets that will be entered into a drawing to get a free copy of sheet music from the VGL tour, autographed by Tommy Tallarico, a few other special folks, and me. There will be probably 5 sent out (and multiple RT’s won’t change your chances!).

(sorry this photo looks like crap; I promise it’s a very nice looking page of music!)

There are a handful of reasons why I write music. I started when I was kid, just past ten years old. The reasoning was simple: the joy of creating. At the time, music didn’t particularly stand out from my other creative passions (like writing stories, drawing comic books, etc). Of course pretty quickly I felt an affinity for it that surpassed those others, soon taking center stage in my life overall. But the point is making music was reason itself for making music.

At that time, corresponding to starting high school, my music-making expanded to composing for the school’s orchestra. Suddenly being a composer didn’t mean working out ideas alone at the piano, but instead sharing it with my musician friends (usually from the vantage point of the conductor’s podium). The motivation behind creating music also evolved and I found myself writing music because I loved sharing the experience with the orchestra. That collaboration and partnership between composer and performer was the central passion in my life, especially as I became close friends with many of them and would build aspects of their personalty into the DNA of the music. The music became a product of “us,” the musicians, and no longer “me.”

Shortly thereafter, during college, I started composing professionally (writing for no/low pay for chamber ensembles, student films, spec projects, etc).

My collaborators were now filmmakers, writers, game designers, visual artists, and other non-musicians, and I loved it. Of course my prior motivations were not lost: I still loved creating for the sake of it, and I still relished the musician-to-musician collaboration, but now I found myself writing music for the purpose of contributing to something bigger. I was working with others with the aim to produce a piece (be it an event, a film, a game, whatever) that was bigger than each of us, the sum of its parts. I had the immense honor of scoring some films early in my career like Captain Abu Raed and Grace, and of course thatgamecompany’s first game flOw, and these experiences really drove home this new-found motivation.

In the past several years I’ve been blessed, across the board of my activities writing concert music, film scores, game scores, etc, to receive some very flattering and complimentary messages about my music. Whether it’s a simple email or tweet, or being approached by someone after a concert or talk, the shock of having my music complimented never seemed to wear off or even dull. At some point, I came to this realization:

I do not have fans. My music has fans.

I make the distinction because in many ways (here drawing inspiration from my dear cousin Sonja Eisenberg, who everyone should spend some time beholding the work of), I can not explain how I compose. There is certainly technique and craft, but so much of it is trying to avoid those skills holding back the spontaneity of expression that separates art from Art. So whenever I manage to create something that resonates with people, I often feel that I’ve done this in spite of myself, thus the mantra above (this aligns closely with the wonderful conclusions of Elizabeth Gilbert).

All of this said, Journey has crystallized for me a long-brewing further expansion of my “why.” Beyond the joy itself, beyond the endlessly stimulating growth through collaboration, the real reason I compose music is the hope of connecting with someone. The music itself is actually non-existent, instead functioning more like a synapse catalyzing a connection between people (either me to you, or you to another). Composing has become a vehicle for exploring life in all its facets, but ultimately coming back to a fundamental desire to bring people together. It’s another, higher form of collaboration: that between creator and audience. It’s no mere transaction: me on stage, you in below chairs with the music flowing a single direction. It’s a shared event in which both sides have equal claim. The motivation is not something by “us,” the creators, but instead something which is “all of ours.”

Journey has illuminated that sometimes one is lucky enough to actually achieve that. Here below are just a few of the messages I have gotten from people with regards to Journey.  I post them not because they compliment my music, but because they show Journey is not “mine,” (shared of course with thatgamecompany and Sony), but truly belongs to everyone. For having been part of that, for these quotes below, and for the many space won’t allow me to post, I am beyond-words grateful:

“This piece touched me beyond belief, especially now. On April 7th 2011, just a day shy of my birthday, my mother passed away from cancer. Hearing this song so close to the anniversary day of her passing makes me feel so hopeful–that despite all her pain she passed away into something ethereal. I’m so thankful for this song.” – imnikoolkan (via YouTube)

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“My mom works as a nurse at an assisted living facility for adults who are severally disabled both physically and mentally. Because of their disabilities some of the residents can be difficult to work with and act out. On Tuesday night my mom was working with one resident who gets frustrated and agitated quite a bit and tends to yell, a lot. Mom usually has music playing on her phone while she works, and that night she was playing the Journey soundtrack. When she set the phone down next to the resident she quieted down, and sat still for the entire duration of the soundtrack, smiling and giggling the entire time. She obviously enjoyed it very much.

For that short period of time your music brought light into her world. It’s a small thing, but I also think it’s a beautiful thing, and I thought you should know.” – Amanda Schulpius (via email)

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“The set of events that occurred next could not have been scripted more beautifully. As I turned to make my way to the exit, my lost friend who I had given up hope on slowly descended in front of the gate as I was about to approach it. Showing me that he was still there with me. This moment was a life changing one for me. It made me realize that no matter how dark it gets in life, and no matter how alone you think you are, the ones you love are always with you. They may not always be there in a physical sense, but what they have done for you is more powerful than any force on this planet. When my father passed away, one of the biggest regrets I had was not being able to hear his voice one last time. The experience I had with Journey, as stange as it sounds has allowed me to share a final moment with him, that I never thought was possible. It taught me more that no matter how much distance is put between us, that he will always be by my side.” – James MacEachern (excerpted from his review of Journey)

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“I’m composer and musical producer and you proved to me that my biggest dream is possible. To create a music that touch people hearts so deep that you even need a name for this feeling. You know that feeling is there, your body react for it and you become eternally gratefull to feel it.” - Vinicius R. Diaferia (via email)

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“I thought I would never experience something like this… this game has wiped all the hate from my heart.” – Bethy Fairbanks (via YouTube)

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Finally, this last one I have reproduced exactly from its source because I don’t believe I could have adequately excerpted, and also to preserve the original formatting. It is a succinct and perfect demonstration of everything I am trying to say here today:

“Never in my life, have I listened to such a song as Apotheosis.

The first time I listened to it, while reaching the top of the mountain. I had felt such a rush emotions. My chest felt heavy and my vision was haunted with the scenery.

This combination was such a shock to my senses.. That whenever I listen to it now, I can’t help but cry. Not the sobbing, or sniffling kind of cry. But more of the silent kind, where I forget I need to breathe and tears just flow out.

I could not describe the emotion I feel when I listen to this song. It’s not happiness or sadness. Not rage or forgiveness. Not envy or compassion. But if I could try to describe this to you, I feel like it would be emotion of knowing I am meant for something. That I have a purpose and a direction in which to go.

It’s like the feeling of knowing you are truly alive.

That I have a beating heart and a soul. That I am human. And because I am, I can accomplish great things. That I can create and destroy. I can build bonds or choose to walk in a different direction. That… I am able to love and be loved…  that I am able to give life to another.

I’ve never had this happen to me because of a song. Memories of my Journeys with strangers who I’ve come to love flash over and over through my mind mixed in with important events of my life here on this earth, an at the end, all I can see is the light on top of the mountain, knowing my own real journey is not over.

But all I know, is that when it is all over, whenever that will be, reguarless of my trials or however high the mountain..

I will not be finishing it alone.” – Monica Zavala

As a last thought, looking back at the continuous evolution and expansion of ‘Why I Compose,” a curious pattern has emerged. The very first comment I made was that I believe that what separates Art from all else is its unique ability to embody the subjective viewpoint of its creator and that I think that’s wonderful. I therefore find it strange, if somewhat paradoxical, that my own path has led me progressively towards removing my “self” from the process. In terms of why I write music, the joy of creation itself begat the joy of shared creation, which begat contribution to greater whole, and which has culminated in a truly shared experience that all but eliminates the boundaries between creator and audience.

How is it that what I value most from Art (its being a manifestation of the Artist’s perspective), is the thing I appear to be least motivated by?

Probably the most frequently recurring difficulty in discussing my work on Journey is the fact that the game is called Journey! That concept of a metamorphosis, or emotional arc, is at the core of everything in this game, including its score. You can imagine, with a title this succinct, that the puns are both unintentional and constant! The video you see here will give you a taste of what we’ve been up to and the joy that it’s been to create.

One of the inspirations for Journey was Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey.’ The knee-jerk assumption is that something this big demands epic music on the most towering scale yet my gut led me in the opposite direction. While there are definitely some big moments, I would actually describe it as intimate overall. The orchestra seen here is the Macedonia Radio Symphonic Orchestra, conducted beautifully by Oleg Kontradenko in the Macedonian capital of Skopje.

I set up camp in a mixing stage at Sony’s San Diego Studio with the Music team and Randall Lowe from the Santa Monica Studio, where we linked with the orchestra in real-time in Skopje. Meanwhile we were able to Skype together the core development team at thatgamecompany in Los Angeles, in addition to our producer Kellee Santiago who was in Virginia at the time, and producer Robin Hunicke and lead designer Jenova Chen, who were in Shanghai speaking at GDC China! This ended up being a wonderfully 21st century session: a spider web of interconnectedness spanning the globe! In addition to the orchestra, I also had the great pleasure of working with a handful of great soloists, including my dear friend and cello superstar Tina Guo. Their performances brought a vitality to the score that far surpasses the mere notes on the page.

And yet for how “high-tech” we were, this music is utterly unconcerned with technology. It is all about emotional meaning. This is part of what makes Journey itself so special. The game has no fluff, no filler. I think of it like a poem.

There is a famous story where Steven Spielberg, after first screening Schindler’s List for his long-time composer John Williams, asked, “so what do you think?” John Williams replied very earnestly, “Steven you need a better composer than me for this film,” to which Spielberg reportedly fired back “Yes, I know, but they’re all dead!” This is basically how I felt about Journey, especially once I got my feet wet and I started to feel that this was no ordinary game. The one advantage I seemed to have was time. By the end I had spent about three years on it. I was able to get around any issues of inspiration through sheer elbow grease, or so I hope. In fact, Journey ended up permeating virtually my whole output during that time. In April 2011, I wrote a miniature cello concerto for Tina (called “Woven Variations,” linked below) that we performed together in Los Angeles. The piece is not really a suite of my music from Journey, but more of an extrapolation. It’s an exploration of the material, taken to entirely different places. This ended up going even further the subsequent summer when I conducted a concert featuring the LA Master Chorale, where I created a single hour-long piece (based on the same ‘Hero’s Journey’ archetype) by stitching together various works in the repertoire and using my Journey music as the glue. Because Journey was still being actively worked on, I would then take the lessons learned from these concerts and apply them to the actual score. A peculiar process emerged from this, where the tangents started informing the core project, as if my career were a table of people all talking back and forth to each other, instead of a normal, forward-moving single file line.

I love writing in just about any genre of music you could name, and likewise there are basically no genres of games that I categorically don’t enjoy playing … and yet, if we were in an alternate reality where Journey did not exist and you asked me what my ultimate dream of a game would be (both to score and to play), I suspect I would basically end up describing Journey. Amazingly, we live in a reality in which this game does exist. I feel constantly in awe of what both thatgamecompany and Sony Santa Monica do, and consider it an almost surreal bit of luck to have been part of their … um, journey. You see what I mean???

Meantime, check out this recently-released “music trailer” for thatgamecompany’s upcoming title JOURNEY, on which I’ve worked for 3 years!