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Pyramind Studios Featured In January 2012 Issue Of MIX Magazine
PYRAMIND STUDIOS, SKYWALKER SOUND UP THE MUSICAL ANTE WITH HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY, KINECT DISNEYLAND ADVENTURES
January 2012 Issue, By Blair Jackson – As videogames have become more sophisticated and complex in recent years, so too have their music scores. Long gone are the days of simple scores banged out on solitary keyboards and integrated into the game at the lowest possible bit-rate. Orchestral scores are common for big-budget games, as are hybrid scores that use electronic and/or percussion elements, rock and other music forms, as well as orchestrated passages. With some top games requiring two or more hours of music, there has been plenty of work for large and small studios to keep up with the demand, and musicians and singers are finding a new source of income for their talents.
Take, for example, two wildly different games that were released on November 15 by Microsoft Games Studios for Xbox 360: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Kinect Disneyland Adventures. Both of these certain hits shared the same audio director (Microsoft’s Kristofor Mellroth), music production company (Pyramind Studios of San Francisco) and recording facilities (a combination of Pyramind and, for each game’s orchestral score, Skywalker Sound in Marin County, Calif.). Yet each project had so many unique challenges dictated by enormous differences between the two games, it’s difficult to make generalizations about what is required from a music recording standpoint at this upper level of what is known as Triple-A gaming.
Pictured Above: Recording Chanticleer at Pyramind Studios for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. From left: Peter Steinbach, Paul Lipson, Steve Heithecker, Matthew Oltman, Kristofor Mellroth
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is something unusual in the game world—a complete remastering and revisiting of a classic first-person shooter game. Bungie’s original Halo title was the flagship game for the Microsoft Xbox format, released 10 years ago to the day of the Anniversary edition. The new version, developed by 343 Industries, hews very closely to the original but with greatly enhanced graphics, plus improved audio and a complete reinterpretation of Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s famous score—so instantly recognizable to gamers for its chanting monks and driving synth cellos.
