The right musical score can really enhance horror, be it in TV, film, or video games. Think of the iconic Jaws theme, John Carpenter’s menacing Halloween score, or even the haunting guitar strings of Gustavo Santaella’s soundtrack for The Last of Us. They can do as much to capture a sense of the terror, atmosphere, and setting of the subject as writing or cinematography can.
The latest PS4 exclusive, Days Gone, has a score that truly puts across its post-apocalyptic wilderness setting almost perfectly, with a mixture of modern and folksy arrangements. We talked to the game’s composer Nathan Whitehead, who has previously composed scores for The Purge series among other things, about the choices and influences on the soundtrack, and of course, about horror.
Bloody Disgusting: Your score features slow strings and melancholia which seems to evoke a romantic notion of the Old West. How did you come to settle on that tone?
Nathan Whitehead: I love your description of the music and I think it’s spot on. I think this tone is inspired by Deacon’s character and by the game’s setting of the Pacific Northwest. I like the melancholia thread which runs through most of the score because I feel it hints at how much Deacon has been through. To me, it provides some context for Deacon – he’s fighting to survive like everyone else but he’s also thinking of his past and trying to find meaning. I also thought a lot about nature while writing the score. The setting for the Days Gone is really beautiful, but it’s also a deadly world out there. I think nature is awe-inspiring and encourages us to look inward sometimes. I wanted the score to reflect that and this made me to strive for a little more introspection in the music.
Did the score for any other post-apocalyptic game, film, or show help to inspire your own work?
In general, I found tremendous inspiration in the story and the beautiful visuals of Days Gone. There was a lot to chew on there. One score that did come up in conversation with my producers at Sony was Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score for The Road. That score has some wonderful, aching, lonely pieces of music. It also has really interesting instrumentation with these droning organs and intimate solo string parts.
You have some history with composing for horror before Days Gone via The Purge series and last year’s He’s Out There. Is it a genre you enjoy composing for?
I do enjoy horror. It’s not all I like to do but there is something special about working in the horror genre. With horror, I often find I get to be more adventurous with the score and really experiment with different sounds and textures in the music. I love trying to come up with a sound that is very evocative but difficult to place what instrument it is exactly. Horror is filled with those opportunities.
What’s your favorite horror score? Be it from games, movies, or TV?
I’m terrible at naming favorites because there are so many scores I love! I do think Garry Schyman’s score for BioShock was great and Disasterpeace’s score for It Follows was brilliant. And even though it wasn’t technically score, I’ll add Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. I first heard it when I was 8 or 9, I think. Also, I had not seen The Exorcist but thought it was creepy and thrilling. It’s also one of the first things I learned on the piano.
You’ve worked on scores for a wide variety of genres in several different forms of media. Does the process differ much between composing for a game and a film or TV?
I think the overall mission is the same for all media; I need to find the musical identity of the project and participate in the storytelling in a meaningful way. There are a lot of differences in the logistics of each one. TV is always breakneck speed turning around episodes every week. Film is all over the place in terms of schedule; I’ve done a film in three weeks or I might have four or five months. I worked on the score for Days Gone for over two years! Games are just massive projects. There’s much more music to write and the games themselves take years to develop. Another huge difference with games is writing music that will be interactive and respond to the player’s actions.
On Days Gone, this involved a lot of back and forth with the brilliant Sony music team. They would design these interactive systems and I would write music to fit in that system. For example, I would write music in layers so that all the layers together sounded like a cohesive piece of music but the game engine could selectively turn layers off or on based on what’s happening in the game. That’s a little oversimplified but the result was a score that felt more like it was scored linearly, like a film, but it was responding dynamically to the action. It’s a big additional layer to the process that film and TV don’t have.
You’ve worked on a fair few game soundtracks over the years, do you play games that often outside of work?
I do but not nearly as much as I would like to because I’m always in my studio writing music!