Mike Morasky’s composing work on Portal 2 is quite fantastic. If you haven’t yet, you need to download the full soundtrack and give it a listen apart from the game. The OST is free of charge.
There are two recent interviews with Morasky, one by GamesRadar and another by Podcast 17. From aesthetic and technical standpoints, his work is incredibly intriguing.
There are many conceptual elements at play in the Portal 2 soundtrack, but one of the key ideas is that of “artificiality” and the transition from organic to synthetic. As such, many of the cues and the score as a whole, transition from “acoustic” sounding instruments to purely electronic ones. There was also an attempt made to keep most of the compositions somewhat artificial sounding, as if they could have been created procedurally by Aperture Science. A lot of stiff arpeggios, math-like voice leading, odd rhythm patterns and whole tone scales. Interestingly, the only actual recording done was Ellen’s voice [Ellen McLain voices GladOS], which as GladOS and the turrets are also probably some of the most expressive. Everything else is either purely electronic or at least sampled, nothing acoustic or organic was used and really, even Ellen’s voice was heavily processed, and in some cases turned into samples before being reassembled via a sequencer to mimic a cheap form of synthetic singing.
But over the course of the first two acts, Wall & company did some remarkable storytelling with sound, both for player-controlled sequences and for cut-scenes.
There isn’t that much background for how much I work with the piano. I took some classes in high school and college. It was alot self-taught playing and fooling around on the piano. Really I am a timpanist/percussionist by nature. What about composing?
I actually compose often, but most of whats out there for people to see right now is arrangement. I know that by my youtube page people must think I only do piano tracks, but I do orchestration and composition often as well. I would love to compose more often, maybe for some sort of game project or something and I am always up for collaboration.I think I have two compositions up on my youtube channel right now. If people are interested in my piano pieces I have “Forgotten Keys” available online. That song part of an eight part suite called “Images for Piano” based off of different photographs.
When did you start playing video games and when did they become an influence on your musical life?
I am fairly young so video games have almost always been there. It wasn’t uncommon to turn on the SNES and have Donkey Kong Country 2 or some other game playing in the background on loop purely because the song was so good.When it really started affecting my musical life was around when I was 14 years old. I got into Koichi Sugiyama and Nobuo Uematsuin particularand my game music discoveries just never stopped.That is also around the time I started transcribing songs. As for specifically what most influenced my piano music its a mix of classical and video game music. I listen to the Okami and Kingdom Hearts piano collections as inspiration whenever I am drained, because they have such clever ideas from an arrangement standpoint that they are bound to spark an idea in my head after a while. On average, how long does it take to transcribe a video game song?
It’s hard to say. Usually I do a single song in one night, but that is start to finish from scratch on a piece of paper to final arrangement.I also tend to do the whole process in one swoop.I think of a basic idea, then I will transcribe a bare bones version of a small section on a notepad at the keyboard. After that I open up Sibelius and write out the actual arrangement, then go back to the piano and repeat. Overall I would estimate 5 hours from start to finish(with plenty of time for coffee breaks and other things) What has been the most difficult one so far?
The Undiscovered Waters Concert Solo from Aquaria was a nightmare in all aspects. It would have been a hard arrangement to work with in the first place but I sat there working out this arrangement for a couple hours changing and tweaking things until I was finally happy with the idea. That was when the notation program decided it would be fun to close on me and of course I was working straight through and never thought to save. So I had to start over again trying to remember everything I had thought of before. Every time I did something it never quite seemed as good as the first one. I ended up reworking it many times before I was happy with it again. What game music are you hoping to transcribe for the future?
Well, Super Meat Boy is going to continue as the main project right now. Other than that, I have formed multiple ideas that I have been throwing around. Those include tracks from Grim Fandango, Dragon Quest, Star Fox 64, Banjo Kazooie, and more from Plants vs. Zombies and World of Goo. Have you ever considered playing live performances? Or have you done so already?
I tend not to do live performances because I am not a pianist by nature. I can’t always just do one of these songs on demand. The main reason why I don’t show me playing things on my videos is because I have noticed that people immediately start paying attention to the performance and stop thinking about the arrangement itself. In the end that is what I am presenting, an arrangement.
And if you don’t mind answering, how do you make a living right now?
I am still a student, but I am a drum teacher on the side. Maybe some day I will end up in game audio, who knows?
