Music of the Dead Space series

Dead Space Original Soundtrack
Soundtrack album to Dead Space by Jason Graves
Released	November 11, 2008
Recorded	Bastyr Chapel, Seattle Skywalker Sound, Redwood Shores, California
Genre	Video game music
Length	61:07
Label	Electronic Arts
Producer	Jason Graves, Rod Abernethy

Graves remembered in an interview that sound designer Don Veca spoke about the team's intention for the score, describing their wished-for music as dark and "Aleatoric in style", ranging from eerie sounds to loud cacophonous sections.[17] Graves joined the project during early production, when the game was a quarter of the way through development.[18] During their requests for composers, the team cited the work of Christopher Young as a reference for applicants. A later direct inspiration was the score for The Shining.[18] Using the available guidelines, Graves put together a sample demo, which both got him the job and greatly impressed Veca.[13] The game credited both Graves and Rod Abernethy as composers, but Veca clarified that while Abernethy was involved early on, all the music was composed by Graves.[19] Abernethy had worked with Graves on several earlier scores.[20] According to Graves, Abernethy helped with the project logistics and was present during the early brainstorming sessions.[12]

When Graves got the job, he was told that the team wanted "the scariest music anyone had ever heard". As part of his research, Graves listened to a lot of modern experimental orchestral music.[13] His early samples followed science fiction action conventions, which was not well received. Electronic Arts staff asked for it to be more "terrifying", and Graves complied.[21] Graves and Veca shared a common music source so they both understood the end goal.[12] One of the key challenges for the score was creating a musical and sound experience equivalent to linear horror movies within a non-linear game environment.[22] To create the horror-styled environment, Graves thought about the situation through the eyes of protagonist Isaac Clarke, then used modern contemporary instruments to make the score "as NON-musical as possible".[23] He based the musical style on the name of the enemy Necromorphs, with "Necro" meaning "death" and "morph" meaning "to change"; he wanted to make a musical version of that concept.[24]

His being on the project from such an early stage greatly influenced the style and pacing of the music. He was regularly sent movies of level playthroughs as reference for his work. Rather than creating character themes and bombastic pieces, Graves created a score based on moody ambience. The few setpiece tracks were composed for boss encounters or scripted chase sequences.[18] Many of the ambient elements were created by Graves having recordings for string or brass sections allowed to each play any note they wanted, then he would take the resultant sounds and mix them.[13] One of the samples played during the game's credits came from the sample demo which won Graves the job.[18] The final score, settled upon by all parties, was described by Veca as "a modern, aleatoric, orchestral style".[22] An exception to this approach was the theme of supporting character Nicole Brennan, which followed Graves's more traditional musical tastes and was "very traditional and very thematic" in its use of cords.[25]

The entire score was recorded using a live orchestra, but Graves recorded each section separately so the elements could be adjusted based on the in-game situation.[18] The score elements were performed first by the Northwest Sinfonia at the Bastyr University Chapel, and the following year by the orchestra and choir of Skywalker Sound for the final score.[12][17] The music had four different interactive layers prepared, interacting depending on the in-game situation. This element made Graves nervous, as both the sound he was creating and how it was being integrated had not been done before in gaming.[25] At one point, he was afraid that half their recording budget would be spent on elements that could be scrapped as unworkable.[24] The final in-game score for Dead Space was three hours long and recorded over five months, several times more than Graves had composed for previous video game titles.[18] Graves described it as the most challenging and enjoyable composing job he had undertaken for a game, praising the amount of freedom he was given by the sound team.[17]

An official digital soundtrack album, Dead Space Original Soundtrack, was announced in October, shortly before the game's release.[17] Originally slated for release alongside the console version of Dead Space on October 14,[17] it was eventually released by Electronic Arts on November 1 through its own music label.[26] A general digital release followed on November 11.[27] Graves self-published a second album, Dead Space original soundtrack recording, on August 30, 2009.[28]

Video Game Music Online's Simon Elchlepp cited the music as unlike anything that had been heard in video games before, but felt that the constant tension became wearing after prolonged listening, and felt that Grave's style was better realised in Dead Space 2.[29] Robert Halvarsson, writing for Original Sound Version, praised the ambience and constant tension invoked by the score, but noted a lack of subtlety in later combat-oriented tracks.[30] Rick Damigella of G4 praised the soundtrack's overall quality and called it "truly original", saying it had encouraged him to try out the game despite his dislike of the survival horror genre.[31] Both Halvarsson and Damigella positively noted the naming puns for several tracks.[30][31] At the 2009 British Academy Games Awards, Graves and Dead Space won in the "Original Score" and "Use of Audio" categories.[32] The game also won in the "Audio of the Year" category at that year's Game Audio Network Guild Awards.[33] The track "Welcome Aboard the U.S.G. Ishimura" was later included on the Amazon release of The Greatest Video Game Music, a compilation album of video game music.[34]

Dead Space 2 Original Videogame Score
Soundtrack album to Dead Space 2 by Jason Graves
Released	January 25, 2011
Recorded	Skywalker Sound, Redwood Shores, California
Genre	Video game music
Length	60:22 60:15 (Collector's Edition)
Label	Electronic Arts
Producer	Jason Graves

As with the original game, Graves was involved in the production of Dead Space 2 from an early stage. While the gameplay would become more action-focused and see character development for Isaac, Graves also wanted to make the score akin to an updated version of his work on Dead Space.[35] His work on the game lasted eighteen months.[20] Compared to the multiple guidelines given for Dead Space, Graves worked on Dead Space 2 without any guidelines.[21] Also compared to the original score's claustrophobic atmosphere, Graves wanted the sequel's score to "sound bigger and more focused than the original". To this end, he worked with a larger number of instruments in the orchestra to create that sense of scale.[20] To achieve the right effect, he drew inspiration from classical music from the first half of the 20th century, citing Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima as a point of comparison for the string focus in Dead Space 2.[21]

As with his usual work method, Graves began by solidifying the game's main theme, creating a tangible example of what the rest of the game will sound like.[35] As with Dead Space, Graves created between four and eight different layers of music, which would be activated by the game's sound engine in response to different events or situations.[20][36] The music was recorded across three sessions at the Skywalker Sound studio. The first two sessions were purely orchestral, while the third focused on choir. All the music and choir was performed by the in-house Skywalker Symphony Orchestra and Choir.[20] Each section of the orchestra, whether woodwinds or strings, had their own recording sessions and created samples that Graves later mixed together for each track.[36] He collaborated on the music and sound design with audio director Andrew Boyd.[20]

The main theme "Lacrimosa" was born from there being the time to create a concerto using a string quartet.[36] Graves created "Lacrimosa" on his own without input from Electronic Arts, but when they heard it they were impressed and Graves ended up working parts of it into the score.[20] Speaking about its tone compared to the rest of the score, Graves admitted that he liked playing against genre expectations, while also giving Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky as possible inspirations for its instrumentation.[36] The string quartet was used to represent Isaac's feelings and mental state, contrasting with the more bombastic orchestral sections. "Lacrimosa" also combined several different recurring themes from across the game, only having them coexist musically during the last few minutes of the track.[20]

Other recurring musical elements included Isaac's leitmotif, the theme of Nicole returning from Dead Space, and the new theme of the Marker artifact.[35] For Isaac, Graves kept the composition simple yet appropriate. He used the note order D-E-A-D—spelling the word 'DEAD'—and incorporating into the score at different points, resulting to usages that varied from unsettling to peaceful. To contrast against Isaac, the Necromorphs were represented using the grand orchestra.[20][35] Electronic Arts requested that the antagonistic Church of Unitology have a specific theme, and Graves created a choir-focused theme, along with additional instruments not used in any other connection within the soundtrack. The track "Come Rain or Come Convergenge" made use of Isaac's theme, but also incorporated the notes of the Marker theme as dissonant notes within the rest of the piece.[20] Dead Space 2 contained over three hours of layered music.[36] Graves described the score as a whole of running a gamut between intense action sections and quieter melodic moments, tying into Isaac's narrative.[37]

An official soundtrack album, Dead Space 2 Original Videogame Score, was digitially released on January 25, 2011 by Electronic Arts.[38] Graves also self-published a promotional CD, titled Dead Space 2 Original Soundtrack Recording.[39] A physical soundtrack release was included in the Collector's Edition of Dead Space 2.[40] Graves spent around three weeks producing the albums. Due to the large amount of music in-game, his biggest challenge was selecting which pieces and arrangements to pick for commercial release. For the Collector's Edition, the soundtrack's sole physical release, he included thirty minutes of exclusive music.[36] The soundtrack was praised by music critics as an improvement over the original game's score.[41][42]

For the soundtrack of Dead Space 3, Graves collaborated with Hannigan, in addition to the music shifting to accompany the gameplay's change towards action-based gameplay over the earlier games' focus on horror.[43][44] While there was a greater focus on action, Graves wanted to maintain musical links to the earlier games, so he blended the established horror-based sound of the Dead Space universe with "some modern, edgier appointments".[43] For the long space sections, while otherwise realistic in their muting of sounds beyond the range of Isaac's suit, Graves put in musical cues to emphasise the action.[45]

Hannigan was brought in around the middle of 2012 after being requested to provide test music by Electronic Arts.[14][44] Hannigan described his contribution to the score as focusing on moving the narrative along rather than creating atmosphere.[14] Speaking about the change from urban to natural environments with the Tau Volantis location, Hannigan compared the contrasting tones with how music was used to humanise alien locations by John Williams for the Star Wars film series. Knowing Grave's style for the series, Hannigan chose to mostly stay away from it.[44]

Graves and Hannigan mostly worked on different areas of the music or focused on specific chapters, though there were sections where both of their compositions featured.[14][44] Hannigan described the score as a whole as being "a little more high-tech" than earlier entries.[44] The live-action launch trailer used a remixed version of the Phil Collins single "In the Air Tonight".[46]

An official soundtrack album for the game titled Dead Space 3 Original Video Game Score, featuring selected tracks by Graves and Hannigan, was released by Electronic Arts on February 12, 2013.[47][48] The official album featured tracks from both composers, chosen to contrast against one-another.[14] Graves and Hannigan each released digital albums onto SoundCloud on February 6, featuring both their official tracks and unreleased or unused music.[49][50] The music recieved mixed reviews from music critics, with several noting its tonal changes from earlier titles in the series.[51][52][48]