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Gordy Haab is a multi-award-winning film, video game and television composer who has written music for many well-known titles, including most recently: Microsoft’s “Halo Wars 2, and EA’s “Star Wars: Battlefront II”, and “Star Wars Battlefront I”, which won Music of the Year, Best Interactive Score, and Best Instrumental Score at the 2016 GDC G.A.N.G. Awards, and was nominated for a BAFTA for Excellence in Audio Achievement.
He was kind enough to chat with me for Composer Code, and he brought some serious value. If you’re interested in writing orchestral music, you will learn a lot.
In our chat, we talked about:
- How Gordy Haab, a film composer by trade, found his way into the world of games
- How writing scores by hand improves your mind’s ear and reduces trial-and-error composing
- Spotting the picture and giving yourself composing constraints
- Gordy’s workflow from the piano to the mockup, to the finished cue
- “Hearing” the orchestration in your mind’s ear
- Gordy’s advice for composers who want to write orchestral music
- How to reduce a score step-by-step
- How to internalize the music of a symphonic score
- How John Williams breaks orchestration “rules” with clever doublings
- A simple exercise composers can do today to familiarize themselves with all the instruments/colors of the orchestra
- His favorite resources and books on the subject of orchestration
- Tips for breaking into the video game music industry
I originally discovered Gordy Haab through his GDC talk all about scoring the music of the Battlefront games. It has practical advice for all creatives and I highly recommend it. You can watch it here. (Gordy’s portion is on the back half, but definitely watch the whole thing.)
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