What It Takes To Get Started And Succeed As A Game Composer – Insights From Peter McConnell:

Want to make it as a game composer? In this interview, you'll hear what it takes to get started and succeed in composing for the game industry, from multi-award-winning composer Peter McConnell, known for his scores on Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone: The Boomsday Project, Double Fine Productions's Broken Age Act 2 (2013), and Double Fine's Psychonauts 2.

As a composer at LucasArts, he also worked on legendary series like Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, as well as Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle.

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By Jennifer Walden and Asbjoern Andersen, images courtesy of Peter McConnell

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The Composer Success Series is dedicated to helping you succeed as a composer – offering inspiration, advice on getting started and advancing your career, creative tips and tricks, helpful resources and lessons learned, from some of the industry’s most successful composers for film, games and beyond.
 

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More interviews in the Composer Success Series:
Charlie Clouser • Sherri Chung • Cindy O’Connor • Inon Zur • Pinar Toprak • Nainita Desai • Jonathan Snipes • Gareth Coker • Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson • Daniel Kluger • Jason Graves • Ronit Kirchman • Zach Robinson • Alec Puro • Winifred Phillips • Ronit Kirchman • Zach Robinson • Alec Puro • Ariel Marx • Matthew Earl • Christopher Thomas

Peter McConnell:

Award-winning composer Peter McConnell is a member and former governor of the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy, a member of ASCAP and a founding member of G.A.N.G., the Game Audio Network Guild.
He was born in 1960, the oldest in a family of five. His father was a Presbyterian Minister. Growing up, they lived in Switzerland, Kentucky, Kansas, and New Jersey before Peter went to college at Harvard, taking a couple years off along the way to complete the switch from physics to music. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990, married to a teacher, and has two children, ages 13 and 15. Everyone in his family is a budding musician in one way or another. Peter loves all kinds of music and his favorite instruments to play are electric violin, acoustic guitar and 5-string banjo.
Learn more about Peter’s work and awards at petermc.com

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• How did you get started in the composing industry? What was your first game score and what was that experience like for you?

I got started kind of sideways. More than 30 years ago, I was just out of college, where I had started out studying math and physics and ended up graduating with a music degree. Mostly on the strength of the math background, I got a job writing audio software for Lexicon, a Boston Area-based maker of high-end effects boxes for musicians and studios. I was later joined by my friend and classmate Michael Land, and Michael and I played in a band together, along with Michael’s childhood friend Clint Bajakian. We came up with a loose plan to go out to San Francisco and start a band.

Mostly on the strength of the math background, I got a job writing audio software for Lexicon, a Boston Area-based maker of high-end effects boxes for musicians and studios.

Michael got to the Bay Area first, and landed a job at what was then called LucasFilm Games, to start their audio department. By the time I got to the Bay Area, the band idea had kind of fizzled out, but Michael needed help developing a new music system — and to write music for it. I jumped on the opportunity: imagine, not only doing cool audio tech, but actually getting paid to write music!

As LucasFilm Games grew into LucasArts, I transitioned to writing more and more music and doing less technical work. My first game score was Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge , released in 1992, which was a collaboration with Michael and Clint, and featured Michael’s iconic themes.

That was followed by musical collaborations on Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis, and Sam & Max Hit the Road. My first project as lead composer — and my first work with Tim Schafer as Project Leader — was Full Throttle in 1995, followed by Grim Fandango in 1998.

…my career grew out of a very slow process of building on working relationships to take on increasingly challenging composition projects.

I left LucasArts in 2000 to compose independently and work on an internet media startup with Michael. The media startup failed spectacularly, but I was able to compose music for Psychonauts 2 for Tim Schafer, who had also left LucasArts in 2000 to form Double Fine Productions. I also wrote music for Sly Cooper 2, 3 and 4, Brutal Legend, Kinectimals, Plants vs. Zombies 2and PVZ Garden Warfare, and I continue to write music for Hearthstone.

In short, my career grew out of a very slow process of building on working relationships to take on increasingly challenging composition projects.

 

• Any advice you’d share on how to land a composing job in the game industry?

Obviously things are a little different now than when I got started. In the early ’90s, if you said you wrote music for games, people would say, “Oh, you mean bloops and bleeps.” Nobody says that any more. The stakes are so much higher: the production value, the budgets, the size of the teams, and the list goes on. Thus, the ways to enter the business have become more formalized, and the hurdles more numerous. So it can be daunting now in different ways than it was for me.

…the path to success may not be obvious. Know what you bring to the table and be on the lookout for any situation that allows you to play to your strengths.

The good news is that there are also many more developers than when I got started, and opportunities abound for young composers to work on small indie projects. And if you are in that position, bear in mind that the path to success may not be obvious. Know what you bring to the table and be on the lookout for any situation that allows you to play to your strengths. Or as a very successful performing musician friend of mine once said: there are as many ways to make it as people who have made it.

 

• What were some essential lessons you’ve learned throughout your career?

Very simply, you want to be the person people want to work with.

Have a great attitude.

Be on time.

… do the very best you can for each and every project…

Be organized.

Know your tools.

Take criticism gracefully.

And do the very best you can for each and every project, given the resources available, because you never know who will hear a title with your work in it, no matter how small.

 

• Any favorite tricks and workflow tips that help when composing for games?

I think that tricks and workflows vary a lot from person to person. For me, much of it has to do with timing: knowing when I am most productive (usually first thing in the morning or late at night), setting up tracking structures to keep me focused on production work and away from busy work, that sort of thing.

I track all of my waking hours in a Google spreadsheet down to 15-minute increments.

I have to admit I am a bit obsessive on this last point, as I track all of my waking hours in a Google spreadsheet down to 15-minute increments. That’s all waking hours — every day, 365 days a year, including vacation time. I would be the first to admit it’s not for everybody, but it works for me. So much of being a composer involves things that aren’t composing.

Regarding my technical setup, I run Pro Tools 12 on a fully loaded 2013 Mac Pro, driving Vienna Ensemble Pro on the same machine. I got the spec from a friend in L.A. who is a composer for TV and film. In VE Pro, I run a number of Spitfire libraries, which are loaded with custom Kontakt scripts that allow me to switch quickly between articulations using MIDI controller switches on a little Korg Nano that I operate with my left hand while playing the keyboard with my right. That way I can switch between, say, legato, staccato and pizzicato strings without stopping the melody line.

…custom Kontakt scripts…allow me to switch quickly between articulations using MIDI controller switches on a little Korg Nano that I operate with my left hand while playing the keyboard with my right.

I got the basic flow from Beijing-based composer Seth Tsui, who used to work for Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control group, among other studios. He showed me how to set up the key switches in a Kontakt script. I have to say am not a big fan of key switches (they clutter the tracks and can cause confusion when it is time to orchestrate), so I modified the script to use controller switches instead.

 

• What are your favorite sites and resources for composers?

Vi-Control is a fantastic forum. It’s my go-to site when I have a problem and need the perspective of folks who are doing serious audio and composition work every day.

I also keep a copy of Rimksy-Korsakov’s book on orchestration handy.

Robert Puff has great blogs and columns on how to deal with orchestration in Sibelius.

I also have a network of friends who are musicians and audio engineers.

 

• What’s one special thing you did to become a successful composer?

One of my fellow engineers at Lexicon, who is a musician and concert music composer, once gave me the following advice: if you really love something, no matter what you are doing for work, be sure you do that thing that you love at least an hour a day — preferably the first hour. I took that advice.

As a footnote, that engineer went on to design the Phoenix Reverb and effects programs, which he recently sold to iZotope, and I’m pretty sure he spends all his time composing now.

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More interviews in the Composer Success Series:

• Charlie Clouser – composer on the Saw franchise, Fox’s Wayward Pines, CBS’s Numb3rs, & NBC’s Las Vega
• Sherri Chung – composer on The CW’s Batwoman and Riverdale, NBC’s Blindspot, and CBS’s The Red Line
• Cindy O’Connor – composer on ABC’s Once Upon a Time
• Inon Zur – composer on Fallout, Dragon Age, Prince Of Persia, Outriders, and The Elder Scrolls.
• Pinar Toprak – composer on the Captain Marvel, The Wind Gods, and The Tides of Fate
• Nainita Desai – composer on The Reason I Jump, American Murder, and For Sama
• Jonathan Snipes – composer on A Glitch in the Matrix, The El Duce Tapes, and Murder Bury Win
• Ronit Kirchman – composer on Evil Eye, and Limetown
• Zach Robinson – composer on Cobra Kai, Impractical Jokers, and Artbound
• Alec Puro – composer on The Fosters, Black Summer, and Mall
• Gareth Coker – composer on the Ori franchise, Studio Wildcard’s ARK: Survival Evolved, & the upcoming Halo Infinite.
• Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson – composers on “The Book Thief,” “Between the Lines,” & Disney Animation’s Olaf’s Frozen Adventure
• Daniel Kluger – composer on the play “The Sound Inside,” “Oaklahoma!” (2019), & “Judgement Day”
• Jason Graves – composer on Dead Space, Tomb Raider, Moss, and more.
• Peter McConnell – composer on Hearthstone: The Boomsday Project, Broken Age Act 2 (2013), and Psychonauts 2.
• Ariel Marx – composer on American Horror Stories on FX, Children of the Underground mini-series on FX, and the Roku Original docu-series What Happens in Hollywood.
• Matthew Earl – composer on Virtual Reality games/experiences such as the Star Trek: Dark Remnant and Men in Black: Galactic Getaway VR simulation rides.
• Zach Robinson – composer for the Evermore Adventure Park, Knott’s Berry Farm, Queen Mary Chill, Dreamland (UK), Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, Dent Schoolhouse, and The Void 4D virtual reality games.