Josh Carro: I think the support that they gave me though was really encouragement to try things out and not worry too much about failing. That's kind of what it takes to break new ground. It's going to be hard whether someone encourages you or not. But when you're encouraged, you're kind of given permission that it's okay to make the mistakes you're already going to make. Host (Wesley Slover): This is The Collab Collection, where we collect stories and useful insights about creative collaboration. I'm Wesley Slover. I love video game music. I grew up listening to soundtracks like Final Fantasy 6 and ChronoCross. And as games have become more complex, I find the interactive nature of the music and the way it imbues a game with emotion incredibly interesting and satisfying. Now, I'm lucky that some of my work involves composing music for games. So, I keep an eye out for composers who share valuable insights into their process. One of these people who I follow is Josh Carro. He's the in-house composer at Gearbox Entertainment. Gearbox is probably best known for the Borderlands series of games. He has a really rich perspective on music and creative collaboration at large. So, I reached out to learn more about how he found his own voice as an artist and how he brought that voice to the team at Gearbox. Josh started his musical journey really young. His first memory of music is a video of the legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich. Josh Carro: Here he is, the prince of darkness. Buddy Rich. In 1987, I saw a video of Buddy Rich playing a solo on the Johnny Carson show. Now, I was only five at that time, but I remember seeing that and being like, "What is that?" When I looked at the drum kit, I just saw this like monstrosity, you know, and that kind of set me off into this obsession. Host: When Josh was nine, he got a drum set and started learning to play. Josh Carro: All throughout middle school and high school, I was in every music thing that I could join. You know, I was in drum line, I was in jazz band, um, marching band. In college, I was doing the same thing. I think being a percussionist or a drummer, the heart of it is very improvisational, so you're you're kind of learning to compose in a sense. So, I think that that's where my composition background was born. The thing about percussion is that it is a noise instrument. And so that definitely informed, you know, being a composer. I don't think that, you know, to be a composer, it's just based on pitch and harmony. You know, it's it's it's an organization of sound. Unless you're playing timpony or something, you know, they're not specifically pitch-based. When you grow up thinking that way and listening, you do start to develop an ear where you are hearing melodic material within noise and sound. Host: This gave Josh a perspective on composing music that was less traditionally western. He was drawn to composing experimental music. Josh Carro: My time was spent creating a lot of modular graphic scores for chamber musicians like solo or small or large orchestra. And my scores were not like any other scores. They weren't linear. They were sort of follow your own adventure. Host: In traditional western music, musicians are given sheet music that is played from beginning to end. But in these modular compositions, the musicians were given a stack of postcards. Postcards with musical ideas on them, and then they get to choose which ones they want to do. Josh Carro: I designed the system to work no matter what you do. It creates these surprises, and that's where the music comes out. To me, it's it's less of an egotistical, narcissistic uh type of composing. Not that that's bad. I'm not saying that it's bad, but it's it's approaching it from let's see what we can do, you know, rather than this is my vision of what music should be. Host: You know, I think this is a really fascinating form of collaboration where Josh would provide a framework for musicians to play together while creating an experience that's largely spontaneous. That piece of music can only exist in that time and place because it'll never be played the same way again. Josh was involved in a wide range of music including Indian classical music, electronic and metal. He was composing, performing, and experimenting. And one day saw a job posting at Gearbox, a video game studio known for the Borderlands games. Josh grew up playing video games and really enjoys them, but he hadn't set out to become a video game composer. Josh Carro: I read the requirements and it was it was really strange because it was like everything that I do like this sounds like like everything I do, you know. I applied to it and I got a call back and um they're like, "Yeah, we would like like to see if you're interested in doing some contract work. You know, uh we need some music for one of these levels." And I was like, "Yeah, awesome." So, it was a month of contracting and, you know, sending music back and forth and feedback and all that stuff. And the month came up and they're like, "Would you like to do three more months?" I just had a great feeling. The feeling of like Yeah, this is like this is going to go somewhere, you know. Host: He didn't know at the time, but Gearbox's music director, Julian Peterson, had been following Josh's work online. Josh Carro: We went to the same school, like we went to ASU when I was doing my undergrad, and I think he was either doing a PhD or he was doing his masters. And we like knew of each other, but we we weren't in the same circle of friends. The reason the position was so tied to what I do is because he saw all the stuff I was doing online and he said, "You know, we should come up with a position for a person like this." Host: Josh and Julian hit it off and from there they hired Josh for the full-time position he had applied to. Josh Carro: I think the interview process really was that contract work. That's usually what it is. It's kind of to see if you're able to hang and see if they like working with you. I went through the interview and all that stuff and they offered me the position and then I started working on Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I was really excited and I felt like this is definitely something paramount for me. It's only going to get better or at the very least this is this is a part where I'm going to stay. I'm never going back. Host: You know, while Josh hadn't set out to work in video games, he realized it was an amazing opportunity to write some interesting music with a team that was making something big together. It was also just way more financially stable than his previous work. So, when Josh told me this, I thought it was really interesting that Gearbox wasn't necessarily looking for someone with a background in video games to be their video game composer. Game composition is notoriously competitive. There are tons of people pursuing this career that has relatively few positions. But it actually makes a lot of sense that there's benefit to bringing someone in from outside of the industry. Josh didn't realize it at the time, but his skills composing these choose your own adventure modular music scores aligned really well with video game composition since the music in games responds to players. In games, this is called adaptive music, and it's what makes modern video games sound really natural and fluid. Josh also explained to me the importance of developing yourself as an artist by pursuing a range of different musical experiences. He was able to find his own voice that he thinks separated his work from composers within the video games industry. Josh Carro: In my opinion, there's too many people trying to do the same thing. You do have to have technical skills. But I think that's where students and just people in general need to uh put more effort into and develop. What is my artistic process? Like who am I as a person? Am I not writing the music I think because I'm afraid people will think it's stupid or I'll make mistakes or I'll fail. You know, that's where real uh artistic discovery grows in my opinion. Host: By discovering himself as an artist, Josh was able to bring fresh perspective to the team. Josh Carro: I wanted to show people things I that they didn't know they liked. And I tried to put every single musical genre in there that that I love from minimalism to doom metal to like, you know, avant-garde to experimentalism and electro acoustic, you know, like goes on and on because I think that, you know, there's a lot of room for risk and experimentation, especially now in these bigger games because they're sort of becoming a a machine that pumps out things they know people will like rather than risking creating the new thing. Host: While he lacked some of the technical skills for working in video games, he was in a great position to learn. The music director, Julian, had a lot of technical skills and he was able to help teach Josh. Josh Carro: He has a background in music composition, but he was mainly working as an audio programmer and a coder. That's his wheelhouse. Designing music systems and understanding code and how you can integrate that sort of thing into a technical landscape. You know, I think the cool part of our work together is that um he has a lot of a lot of technical skills that I don't have and I'm able to implement those things when I'm creating the music. When you involve yourself with implementation and you see how it's done, it will completely influence how you write the music. Host: I should explain implementation real quick. Implementation is the technical process of getting music into a video game. This can be as simple as plugging in an audio file with instructions to play that song when the level starts. But with modern games like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, the implementation can get very sophisticated. Sometimes composers are involved in implementation, but other times composers will write music, then give it to someone else to implement. Josh gave me an example of the mega hit, incredible sounding game God of War for why he thinks it's really meaningful that he learned to implement and be hands-on with it. Josh Carro: The folks at PlayStation did a talk on how they implemented the music for God of War and they did an absolute insanely amazing job on that and it really is a seamless experience. What they had to do was so so complex, but it was only complex because the music that they got written for it, the person didn't know anything about implementation. They basically just wrote a suite of music and said, "Here you go." And then, you know, they had to go back and forth. Not that that's a bad process, but you can understand that it's like an instrument. You know, Wwise is like an instrument. And if you learn the instrument, you can implement it into your writing. Host: Before this job, Josh had never implemented music in a video game before. But he was encouraged by the team to learn. Josh Carro: They knew that I hadn't before cuz they asked and I was like, "Yeah, I haven't." But, you know, part of my whole thing is just because I haven't done something before doesn't mean that I'm not willing to do my best to learn it and get the job done. They showed me some resources and I learned, you know, the basics of what I had to do to get the job done and and that led me onto a path where I could expand on that. It was very scary at first, but I think the support that they gave me though was was really encouraging to try things out and not worry too much about failing. That's kind of what it takes to not just to learn things, but to break new ground. It's going to be hard whether someone encourages you or not, but when you're encouraged, you're kind of given permission that it's okay to make the mistakes you're already going to make. Host: Josh finished the score and Gearbox shipped Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Then they started work on the upcoming title, Borderlands 4. At this point, Josh had collaborated with the team on Wonderlands for a few years, and now they got to work together to come up with totally new ideas for what Borderlands 4 could sound like. It's both a very fun process because there's a lot of thinking and creativity. It's also really important because those decisions lay the groundwork for years of development. So, I agree with Josh that culture of encouragement, it's hugely important. It's certainly not an uncritical environment, and it's not without fear of failure, but it's one where everyone is pushing themselves and working together to succeed. Josh Carro: I do a lot of mentoring and stuff like that and I've been exercising this sort of philosophy of encouragement and it and it works. I think that creative people can find their own way and encouragement is like the most efficient way to get them to be able to do it if that makes sense. It's it's hard to explain. Host (in conversation with Josh): No, I I think it makes a lot of sense. I think Um, I don't know. It like takes courage to be creative. Like even now I'm, you know, 12 years into my career, every time I post a round one of any piece of music or sound design or whatever, there's this like anxiety of like, oh gosh, what if this is totally wrong? Josh Carro (in conversation with Host): Yeah. No, totally. I mean, I I totally agree. I think about that all the time. And I think that's actually a really important trait to never lose because it's kind of evidence that you really care. Like no matter how good you get and how like it doesn't mean that you don't have confidence in your own skills, but it means that you're that you haven't lost yourself. You know what I mean? Um I'm sure that you know you could think of a few people who have maybe lost themselves. Maybe they're very egotistical or they think that their crap doesn't stink and like, you know, I don't know how to say it, but um having that trait that you just said is like proof that you're an artist. Host: This episode was written and produced by me, Wesley Slover, with help from Jake Merritt. It was mixed by Trevor Richardson. Our artwork and branding was created by Audrey Havey. She's a phenomenal collaborator, and I cannot recommend her highly enough. If you have any thoughts on collaboration, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at the collab collections dot audio. The collab collection is a project of Sanctus Audio, a sound and music design studio. Hear our work at sanctus dot audio. And if you could use a sonic collaborator, hit us up.

Ver todos los episodios