EMPERIA SOUND
If you’ve played video games, you’ve likely explored, fragged, and looted to the music of Emperia Sound, a Los Angeles team of A-list composers and sound designers who combine the best of two worlds:
They have extensive backgrounds in scoring for films and TV, but are also gamers themselves.
CEO and co-founder Cody Johnson, fellow co-founder and composer Jeff Rona (who penned “The Reel World” film scoring column in Keyboard magazine), and independent collaborator Jesse Zuretti joined Polyverse for a deep discussion of the differences between composing for the “lean-back” experience of watching a film or TV series and the “lean-forward” interactivity of video games.
INTERVIEW WITH EMPERIA SOUND
First, could you each describe your pathway into game music and sound?
Jeff Rona:
I’d already been scoring film and television for years when someone from Sony PlayStation here in Los Angeles invited me for an informal visit. I got into an impromptu conversation with Stig Asmussen, the director of the God of War 3 release, which was under development at the time. He knew some of my music and asked to hear some more. He later asked if I would be interested in scoring the official launch trailer for the new God of War, and I was happy to do so. Stig and the PlayStation team really liked the theme I’d written for the trailer, and they asked if they could use it in the game itself. He also made it clear that there was already a small team of composers scoring the game and there was no room for another; they just wanted that one theme. However, one thing led to another — they asked for multiple variations of that theme — and it kept growing until I eventually had a place. I ended up writing quite a bit of the score, and that became a launching point for me to do more game scores.
Jesse Zuretti:
In late 2022 when I was commissioned to do a demo for a massive AAA studio that has produced games I’ve played since I was a kid. The demo took me on a side quest meeting someone at Riot who played in a band I loved, called Xerath. Mike Pitman (Senior Composer at Riot Games) rolled the dice hiring me to work on the game that turned out to be 2XKO.
Cody Johnson:
The separate pathways of gaming and music/sound existed in my life since I was single-digits years old – playing Warcraft II and picking up trumpet at a young age – but it wasn’t until I had already been working in the music industry that I got the opportunity to fuse those into one. The beginnings of my music career saw me producing for other artists, recording and performing my own music with bands, and then I landed in the world of music-for-picture until an opportunity arose to give gaming a whirl. I was working with my now business partner, Jeff Rona, and our studio scored Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, which fused a lot of my musical passions into one, and that led to back-to-back critically acclaimed Capcom projects: Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2.
Which current projects are you most excited about?
Jeff:
We’re always under NDA about work in progress. The project taking up most of my time has been an epic fantasy game based on a famous novel. It’s got heavy mythology, deep characters, and it’s phenomenally ambitious. It’s expected to go on for many more months, probably well over a year.
Jesse:
An upcoming 2-versus-2 fighter game is the first time I’m getting to exhibit a lot of my deeper musical influences. I’m working with some incredible musicians on my tracks. The whole thing has been an absolute dream — I love the team from top to bottom.
Cody:
After years of NDAs I’m able to talk about my work on the recently released Star Wars: Outlaws. Two years of intense labor went into the in-world music and fictional instruments. Outlaws was a way to dig a little deeper into the expression of in-world cultures through music. I’ve always loved ethnomusicology and this world features 26 alien galactic pop songs! I’m so grateful to have insanely creative musicians, not to mention tools from companies like Polyverse to create unique sound for the game.
Taking into account all of the “if-then-else” choices in a game, how is game music different from composing for a film or TV series?
Jeff:
The structure and workflow of writing for a game is unique. In film and TV, what’s on the screen dictates the structure and form of the score. Your music reacts to the edits and the dialogue. In video game scoring, that reactivity goes away. Instead, a composer gets to create the world in which the gameplay exists. The music contains all the potentials and opportunities that any given player could generate. The most interesting challenge is in the transitions — from soft to loud, exploration to tension to outright battle.
Jesse:
A lot of the time, video games use coding to trigger certain sounds, which often include music cue changes. Film is very preordained, and you’re likely to experience the music and the film in the same flow every single time. In a game, it could take six hours of playing to come across a specific area, character, or situation that triggers specific music.
Cody:
Some people have argued that “writing good music” is more than enough. I could not disagree more — writing great music is the bare minimum! Music and sound for games requires an incredibly acute attention to detail and a comprehensive understanding of game theory, player psychology, and the tools to actualize interactivity. Film and TV are “lean-back” experiences — they happen to you. Gaming is a “lean-forward” experience where you happen to the plot. By analogy, if you’d never seen a movie, how could you compose a film score?
What skills and approaches from composing music-to-picture translate best to working in games?
Jeff:
As a composer, you’re always wearing two hats, one for creating music and another one for producing the best possible recordings. In film and TV, you watch for how the music might clash with dialogue or other sounds onscreen. In video games, this is replaced almost entirely with the need to integrate music into the interactive gameplay. So, from the producing perspective, you take on a different relationship between what you hear and see, or what is spoken, and what is score. Also, post-production is different. When you deliver music to a film it gets mixed into the overall soundtrack and that’s that. In game scores, the music goes through rigorous testing to ensure it supports the gameplay itself. You may get asked to make revisions not because they didn’t like the music, but because in the context of the play there might need to be adjustments.
Jesse:
In terms of music-to-picture: dramatic “beats” (not rhythmic beats) and narrative techniques help with the cinematic aspects of many video games. Understanding how to let voice actors and animators have their moment really helps with creating the best music for the scene. I also automate so much that my automation lanes look like abstract art! Giving movement to otherwise static orchestral and synth sounds brings the music to life.
Cody:
Songs and TV/film scoring go hand in hand because, like I mentioned before, they’re lean-back experiences with a predefined arc. With gaming, we have to think a bit more multi-dimensionally with our music. Both vertically (stems), horizontally (resequencing an arrangement on the fly), and also in terms of narrative-branching for the music to adapt to players’ decisions.
What is the most difficult sequence or scene you have ever scored in a video game and how did you approach it?
Jeff:
That would probably be the battle music I did for Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5. On the surface, it is for one of the game’s main characters. Character themes are a typical approach at Capcom. It also needed vocals and lyrics, for which I collaborated with singer-songwriter Rachel Fannan. At base, this was a six-minute song that also served over an hour of gameplay, mostly instrumentally. Within those six minutes were about 35 different sections, each one with about 24 musical elements that covered all the permutations of energy, exploration, battle, and making the lyrics work within. There were thousands of ways for the elements in the stems to combine and be remixed in real time. What was very cool was that the better the players got at the battle, the more lyrics were heard!
Jesse:
For me, difficulty often comes in the form of expectations. Riot Games’ fans, to take one example, are highly critical of every aspect of their games and characters. I’d argue that they could even be contributing to the games’ evolution in a positive way. They take ownership of the characters and places. Their feedback, even when it stings, is supremely helpful in making players’ experience as engaging as possible.
Cody:
The one that sticks out in my mind is Devil May Cry 5. The music was driven by an in-game combat system that would promote or demote players based on their ability to execute creative attack combinations – starting with D tier, and climbing to C, B, A, S, and SSS (“Smoking Sexy Style”). Each combat tier had a unique segment of music that would play and they would all need to seamlessly transition between each other. We wanted to reward the players who were able to ascend the combat ranks, but we didn’t want to punish those who weren’t as skilled by only hearing the same music, and we also didn’t want the players who were so good and stayed at max rank to feel bored or fatigued by the music.
Video analysis of Emperia music in the game Devil May Cry 5 by Jeff
“This is a great video someone posted where they analyzed my battle score for Devil May Cry 5. It’s geared to the gameplay, not the music production.” — Jeff Rona
How do you keep your sound design compelling? It seems like people have heard every possible creature effect, spaceship whoosh, weapon sound, and so on.
Jeff:
Have they, though? I feel like the ability to make new sounds is infinite. The digital and analog tools just keep getting more interesting and useful. I’m not a sound designer in the sense of “sound effects” but I spend a good deal of time on every project developing a palette of new sonic ideas for my musical palette. We still have infinite territory to explore!
Jesse:
I break a lot of rules, and push things beyond what I’ve heard before — which I tried to do with my album Argent Shock, which came out in May 2024. It’s effectively a cinematic metal record, but fuses this with dense sound design and synth production. For example, how do you make distorted guitars sound uncommon again? You do weird things, like how musicians once pierced holes in their speaker cones to get intentional distortion.
Cody:
My secret weapon is a couple of things: I think very critically about the power of semiotic denotation that music can possess and how I can subconsciously evoke emotions or memories with the lightest gestures. While my music can feel and sound heavy handed, I make sure my sound design decisions are carefully considered and never add sounds or instruments that don’t have a 110% justification to be there. Plug-ins play an enormous role, and I’ve found that you don’t need to dig too deep if the combination of elements is not only novel but also supports the game narrative.
Emperia Sound Reel
What are your go-to composition tools and synths?
Jeff:
How much space do you have? [Laughs.] My DAW is Apple Logic Pro. I have a crushing number of sample libraries, synth plug-ins, and effects. I wouldn’t say I have a ‘go-to’ instrument because I like to rotate a bit through my core synths. I get a lot of mileage from Wide Blue Sound, Arturia, Newfangled Audio, Slate + Ash, Xfer, U-he, Orchestral Tools, Stretzov Sampling, KiloHearts, Moog, Noise Engineering, Silen Audio, Spitfire, Zynaptiq, and a plethora of small developers. Earlier this year I discovered Polyverse, and it has already become a staple in the arsenal.
Jesse:
For hardware synths, I love my Russian Polivoks Formanta because it’s the most cantankerous synth of all time! I also love my Virus TI2 and Korg Modwave.
Cody:
I’m obsessed with all sorts of wacky plug-ins, the crazier the better. While I might not ship the sound with an insane preset, I find that experimenting with outlandish sound design inspires me.
Describe your experience so far with Polyverse plug-ins.
Filterverse is mind-bogglingly versatile and cool
I just finished the theme to a BBC science show and used several Polyverse tools, including the then-public-beta of Filterverse, which is mind-bogglingly versatile and cool. Calling it a “filter plug-in” doesn’t do it justice. It’s an amazing sonic playground that can add so much motion and life to sound or even an entire mix. I also use the Comet reverb as well as Gatekeeper for additional rhythmic ideas. I love the consistency of the interfaces between all the Polyverse plug-ins. Once you know one, you pretty much know them all. Oh, and they sound amazing!
– Jeff
Manipulator is all over the songs from Star Wars
– Cody
