The Manic Tempo of the Gaming Music World!

Written by Phil Robertson

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An insider's studio musician perspective

Being involved in the world of video gaming music has been a fascinating one from my standpoint as a session drummer. My involvement started with Electronic Arts in 1999 with that year's NBA game. Epic energy and aggressive funkiness was what they were looking for from me which more often than not is what most gaming music producers are looking for. I live and work in a city (Vancouver BC) that houses one of the largest EA centers in the world.

Music producer Traz Damji and engineer Ken‘Hiwatt’Marshall were looking for someone to bring that to the table and had heard recordings of my playing and invited me to be a part of their team. Some of you may recognize those two names as now being ‘The Humble Brothers’ based out of LA doing absolutely pasted to the wall remixes for the likes of Linkin Park, Deftones, Filter, Static X and on and on.. These guys were a contractual on - staff producer / engineer team for EA. This would mean that as an active studio and live musician I would never hear or know about them unless I worked for EA. And these guys were tremendous! You want to talk about talent! But no one would ever know about them because they'd basically never come out of the complex. For those interested in being gaming music producers and writers, be aware that deadlines and long, long weeks are standard.

Traz told me on one of our last games before he left for LA that he'd put in 3 weeks straight without a day off to come in on time for that particular project. And as it was he could work very fast. Matt Ragan from the Seattle branch of EA heard my playing on the NBA series and wanted me for the Need For Speed and Motor City USA projects that were being produced out of EA Seattle. Matt also told me similar stories of being cranked and having to be able to deal with the stress of upcoming deadlines.

Having said all this, as a hired session player of any instrument you have to bring something strong to the table. As well you have to be able to read well and having great ‘time’is fundamental. You have to have tons of attitude in your playing and none in your working demeanor. Your willingness (and it better be a willingness) to take direction is also essential. You also need to be able to change directions or gears very quickly. One thing to keep in mind is that with big gaming companies with money literally to burn, their on-staff people are not hacks! These guys are really damn good and they're young too.

You need to be absolutely up on what's current and hip from a player's perspective and you need to be able to work quickly under different and perhaps unusual parameters. These producers are so often running on fumes that they're interpolating what the music is going to be. I wouldn't even say they're writing it ‘on the fly’ but they're getting the required input from you as a player before they've committed anything 'to tape'. So you have to be completely natural and undeterred in your performance.

For one NBA game Traz decided that he wanted to have complete control from an edit-ability standpoint and had me play just segments all by myself with no music.
He'd tell me what he wanted on each component very precisely and then we'd do it at different tempos. Traz is essentially a keyboard player and as is often the case his ideas are amazing from a drumistic standpoint and very creative but not always natural from a drumming standpoint. At times they were completely unnatural so that presented real challenges. For another game I was brought in with a percussionist to track. There was no music written at that point. They would tell us what the vibe was going to be and we had to imagine it and play it balls to the wall. All there was was a click track.
So these were situations where in both cases I had to make adjustments quickly to be able to formulate and play the ideas at a high level and with conviction.

Anyone who has done a lot of session work knows that this is at the crux of being a good session player. It's not easy and it can be very intimidating especially if you feel like you're not getting it and the clock is ticking. I would say that putting yourself as a player in positions that are not entirely comfortable for you is a really beneficial thing.

Finally, one thing that I both enjoyed and appreciated and continue to, is that in these environments these guys are up and excited and personable. So if you’re called to be a part of some intense gaming music, bring those same attributes to the workplace.

Cheers and best of luck!

Author Credentials

Phil Robertson has been playing in studios for 24 years, the last 10 or so as a first call session player and online studio drummer. He has played on many albums for Warner, Polygram, Electra, EMI, Atlantic, Sparrow, Reunion and Word records as well as countless jingles and soundtracks. He played on 3 multimillion selling NBA games for Electronic Arts with their intense and burning soundtracks as well as Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2, Motor City USA and The Simpson's Road Rage.

Visit Phil's website at www.e-studio-drummer.com. Outsource your drum tracks to an EA, Label pro studio drummer with a track record! Listen to the audio and check out the client raves.

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