He’s one of the pioneers of modern music notation and actually invented many of the symbols and techniques that are used for extended performances on orchestral instruments. At other times, it’s incredibly beautiful and sensitive. At times, his music is amazingly visceral and horrific.

The second composer was Krzysztof Pendercki. Ligeti would expand these parts into 30 or 40 different lines in order to treat them as individual instruments as opposed to a section of 20 or 30 players. All of his scores were written with traditional music notation, which must have been an amazing exercise in patience because he wrote every instrument line out, sometimes including 40 or 50 string players! By the way, in traditional orchestral notation the strings are written on a total of five staves. One was Gyorgy Ligeti, whose music was definitely more textural and nature. Two composers immediately caught my attention. I researched and listened to as much modern orchestral music as I could find in the music library and online. Where there any particular composers that really inspired you? The extended instrumental techniques for example. Even then, sometimes the scores were so abstract and graphically written that there was actually no music to read! I can hear a lot of influences from 20th century music. The research itself didn’t actually require much classical training aside from simply being able to read music. On the other hand, I was really learning performance techniques and notation from scratch.

So on one hand, it definitely helped to be classically trained. However, I knew there was a lot I still had to learn in regards to performance techniques as well as music notation in order to get the sounds I wanted for the score.

So in many ways this was like “going home” to me. It’s probably not a coincidence that my classical composition background is, in fact, in 20th Century music. There was an extensive amount of research that I did before I began the score to the original Dead Space. I understand you’re classically trained? Did this help when approaching the score for the Dead Space games?Ībsolutely. Jason Graves is responsible for creating the innovative, unique soundtrack for Dead Space, which has become Electronic Arts’ best-selling original title and called “the scariest game ever made.” Jason’s groundbreaking score has been hailed by critics as a “truly original soundtrack” and “the best score of the year.” I talk to Jason about writing the music for the sequel Dead Space 2.

Dead space 2 performance mods