It’s one of the tunes that has a lot of ‘me’ in it, and less other composers-although it’s still heavily influenced by Duke Ellington in spots.įinding a great teacher helped. My favorite tune, ‘Pyramid Peril,’ is like that. Then ask, what style is the tune going to be? What are the chords? The structure? As I got better, I was able to rely more and more on my own creative instincts and confidence. It was literally just sitting down and taking one step at a time. I was flexible, and not bound to any ‘rules’ that they teach in school. I literally had no idea what I was doing when I started, which ultimately, I think, is a good thing. You mention in the soundtrack credits that you had to learn to write and orchestrate ‘from scratch.’ Was that a recent development? I did find myself reading some books related to game soundtrack composing-for example, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music by Winifred Phillips, and the Koji Kondo 33 1/3 book-but we really wanted to approach this from a very different angle than typical game music composition. We really approached things with more of a ‘let’s create a great overall vibe’ philosophy, as opposed to the more common approach of building layers that mirror fight progressions. I also actively avoided playing any games to see how their music functioned. All I really looked for in those old cartoons was how they approached the intro and title card sequences. Typically, the music had more of a ‘cartoony,’ orchestra kind of sound. I watched very few vintage cartoons along the way, since Chad and Jared knew early on that they wanted a big band soundtrack, which is something that was not often used in old cartoons. Were all of your influences from the world of music and vintage cartoons, or was it instructive at all to play other games and see how their soundtracks operated? Listening, reading, listening, studying, listening, working on theory, score study, finding a great private teacher…listening. What kind of research did you find yourself doing in putting this game together? You credit artists from Jelly Roll Morton to Wagner in explaining Cuphead‘s musical influences. I feel much more prepared now to tackle any other projects that come up, similar or not. I never envisioned myself writing early big band tunes, but it’s been as good an outlet as any to get the ball rolling. I’ve wanted to write for a long time, but I’m not someone who can just sit down and create-I really need specific projects to work on.

Was composing for games something you’d seen in your future, or someting you actively pursued?

But they persisted, and eventually I ended up writing a few midi mockups. They came to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re making this very small game, eight to 10 bosses, max-do you want to write music?’ I promptly and eagerly said no thanks, that it was very outside of my realm of experience. I’ve been friends with Chad and Jared Moldenhauer since around grade five. I was brought on board fairly early on, around late summer 2013. Yeah, this is the first game I’ve written music for. This is, I take it, the first game you’ve ever made music for? Can you tell me a little about what stage the game was at when you first came on board, and how you got involved? Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track As he notes, it was originally pitched to him as a relatively modest undertaking. Toronto musician Kristofer Maddigan, a seasoned classical and jazz performer and composer, is the force behind the project. The soundtrack, made with the help of over 40 musicians and running nearly three hours, is not only essential to Cuphead’s singular gameplay experience-it stands up well on its own. All of them sound like products of the early part of the last century.

The backbone of Cuphead’s musical accompaniment comes from woozy big band numbers ripe with clattering percussion and appropriately cartoonish energy: some tunes bear the influence of Latin music (“Floral Fury”), others are inspired by early silent film (“Forest Follies”). The game’s pitch-perfect soundtrack-which features everything from tender piano ballads to barbershop quartet tunes-is an accomplishment itself. But the visuals and gameplay weren’t the only massive undertakings required to create Cuphead. The result is a stunning combination of two golden ages: fluid and beautiful early animation, and innovative but brutal home console gaming. Its creators hand-drew over 120,000 frames of animation the old-fashioned way-pencil drawings inked on a light board-before transferring them to digital form. Cuphead, the video game, is a momentous achievement.

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