That’s intriguing to hear, that you’ve had to have recovery periods in the past. Going off that, in the press release that was given, you noted how you’ve spent the last 15 or so years working on other franchises and thus having to stay within those established musical sensibilities more or less. Did you ever intend to spend that long in the non-indie realm?
[laughs] Well, you have to remember that 15 years ago there was no indie scene. When I started in games 20 years ago, the closest thing there was to an indie scene evolved in sort of the late 1990s, and that was the mod community. Like, I guess the most famous mod was Counter-Strike, which was a Half-Life mod. But that was it. There really wasn’t anything else at the time. Certainly not a sense that mods were going to be anything commercially viable.
And so, I would say the indie scene didn’t bloom into what we know it now until the advent of the iPhone came around, and the App Store made it so that anybody suddenly had this really easy publishing platform. And then other things came around like Steam and Android and all that stuff. And then came the Unity engine, and the fact that it was even a thing: the fact that you could license an entire engine. None of that stuff existed when I started.
I didn’t even have a concept of thinking like “gee, I wonder, do I want to work on indies or do I want to work on big name stuff?” It was just I wanted to work on games, and it happened to be what it was. Indies came along later.
Well I’m glad that the indie scene has grown to the point where you’ve been able to expand your range into it. And I remember reading in that interview you gave Flickering Myth that you’ve done games that ultimately never got released. What’re your feelings or reactions towards outcomes like that where you invest all this time and the game doesn’t see the light of day? Have you worked in the industry long enough to throw it aside as “just business”? Or do you ever think back on them?
Oh, I think back on them all the time. It’s heartbreaking when that happens because you pour yourself into them. And I mean, I’ve worked on enough things that kind of never got out of the starting block, those are easy to let go of. But the hardest thing is when you’ve worked on a project basically until its end and for whatever reason it ends up not coming out.
I’ve had a number of games like that. In fact, one of them was a game called Caveland, and that was at LucasArts, and I worked on that with Villa Gorilla’s [Designer Programmer] Jens Andersson. And it was that game in particular that made him want to work with me on Yoku’s Island Express, because he really liked the score to Caveland and wanted to try and have a similar vibe to it and a similar approach to the music as what I’d done in that game. So he reached out to me and we went forward with Yoku.
Oh okay. I’m sad to hear that some of those games don’t get released, but at least it did lead to you doing Yoku, so as one door opens another one closes. I just have to ask, I noticed for Thrillville you have a voice acting credit as a singer. If you don’t mind me asking, what was that about? [laughs]
[laughs] Right, on Thrillville the resident audio lead at LucasArts, friend of mine named David Collins, he and I wrote a number of songs together for that soundtrack, and my main instrument when I was studying music was voice, and David’s also a singer. And when it came time for us to do the vocals for the songs that we were writing, he and I both just tackled a lot of it ourselves. We brought in a couple of singers for some of the tracks, but for the majority of them it was just the two of us. And we had a blast. I don’t even think it was originally our idea to do this. I think what happened is, when you’re writing a song, you need to do a vocal, like a scratch vocal, in order to be able to show it as a proof of concept to people so that they can see what it sounds like.
And so I had recorded a scratch vocal for something, and David had recorded some acting vocals for it. And I think we showed it to people and they were like “this is great, you guys should be the vocalists.” So the scratch vocal became the real vocal on Thrillville, and we just sort of went on from there.
Okay, I’m glad that you had fun with it and got the chance to use your major.
Yeah, it was a blast.
My second to last question, I know you are the composer for the two Star Wars VR projects, Secrets of the Empire and Droid Repair Bay. Not to go too deeply into them, but I’m curious what your thoughts are on VR as a whole and the different challenges they present, if any, to video game composers down the road.
At the moment, I would say that VR, in terms of what it represents to the composers is that, if you’re a game composer, you can totally do VR because what I’ve found is that they’re the same. They’re literally using the exact same tools. They’re using things like the Unreal engine and they’re mixing it with a sum amount of interactivity. There are things you can do with layering music and look triggers and all sorts of stuff that, as game composers, we’ve been doing for like 10-15 years already with Unreal.
So if you’re a game composer and you’re wondering “what do I need to know in order to do VR?” The answer would be you already know how to do VR. If you’re a film or TV composer, you’re going to have to learn all about it in order to switch over and start doing it.
Oh okay, I didn’t realize you all were using the same tools, but I’m happy that it’s a natural transition, and I hope that more people take advantage of it. Finally, one question I just like to ask all composers I speak to is what are three pieces of music that have had the largest impact on you as a composer? They can be other video game OSTs, band albums, movie soundtracks, etc…
Let’s first go with Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem as one of them. I happen to think that Gabriel Fauré is one of the greatest melody writers of all time, and the melody in his Requiem is particularly gorgeous. In fact, I’m working on a piece that is a Requiem-inspired, so I have already been thinking about Fauré’s Requiem.
Second, it’s hard to not say the score to The Empire Strikes Back. When I was a kid, I used to listen to that soundtrack on vinyl over and over and over again, and this was in the early 80s. We didn’t have a VCR. And so, for me, who had gotten to see The Empire Strikes Back in the theater when I was 4-5 years old, listening to the soundtrack to it was the way for me to relive the film. And so I listened to it a lot and really internalized it a lot. And obviously it was a big influence on me being able to then land my job on staff at LucasArts.
And for a third one, let’s pick the music from Mega Man 2. Because I always loved the music of the games that I was playing when I was a kid, and Mega Man 2 in particular stands out to me as doing a tremendous job with how technically restraining the NES was versus how expressive and diverse the music in that game is. The tone is suspenseful. When you beat the game, there’s this very thoughtful, intensive piece that plays over the end credits. There’s a wide…let me just call it cinematic because, though it’s not cinematic in the sound, it is in its emotions. And that game left a big impact on me, not only as a musician, but, before I wanted to become a musician, I wanted to become a Disney animator. And I remember that I used to play Mega Man 2 and I would just hit the pause button on it and draw in my sketchpad themes out of it, just to practice drawing, practice cartooning and whatnot. So that game had a really big influence on me in general.
That’s a wonderful story. I actually bought the Mega Man Legacy Collection.
Yeah, I bought it too and I’ve been playing it with my 5 year-old and he really loves it, so that’s been a lot of fun for me to be able to revisit it again and sort of see it afresh because I can see it through his eyes now.
For sure. And I just have to say Mr. Harlin you’re a great composer as well. You’ve been a big influence on me because I grew up playing a lot of the Star Wars games you composed for, so thank you so much for talk with me.
My pleasure, thanks, I appreciate it!
Flickering Myth would like to thank Mr. Harlin for sitting down with us. Yoku’s Island Express is available on Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Special thanks to Greg O’Connor-Read of Top Dollar PR for arranging this interview.
Red Stewart
