The lush live orchestral score for Hidden Expedition: Amazon was the latest creation of SomaTone Interactive Audio, one of the big names in the industry when it comes to game audio. Once again, we speak to Kane Minkus of SomaTone to learn more about the music of gaming.

CR: What’s your name and what’s your role in SomaTone?

KM: My name is Kane Minkus and, I am the Executive Producer of all the music that comes through SomaTone Interactive Audio. My partner Nick Thomas, who oversees our SFX and VO team, and I run the company together.

CR: What games have you worked on in the past?

KM: I have worked on close to 500 games between Console, Downloadable, Online, Handheld & Mobile. Some titles that might be most well known are Peggle, Mystery Case Files, Diner Dash Series, Chocolatier Series, Virtual Villagers Series, Dream Chronicles Series, Dream Day Series, Wedding Dash, Luxor 2, etc.

CR: Hidden Expedition: Amazon has a very cinematic score. Did you use any other film composers or scores as influence or inspiration, and if so, which ones?

KM: We spent a lot of time looking at John Williams scores as the initial creative approach was to go with sort of an Indiana Jones flare. But we also worked with some references from the Scores for North By Northwest and Casablanca and a few other obscure films that dealt with the topic of being on a journey through the Amazon.

CR: Did you get a chance to see any of the game’s visuals while you were working on the sound design?

KM: We got a handful of pictures and animation backgrounds to work off of, but because of the timeline of the music, it needed to be written concurrently as the game was getting finished. Ultimately we were impressed seeing the final game, because we had not gotten a chance to see all the final animation until the end. However, this is not unusual. Since any project – like a film, TV show or game – must all come together at the same time, we are often working with very limited perspective while crafting a soundtrack.

CR: What was it like to work with the German orchestra (The Deutsches Film Orchestra)?

KM: Working with an orchestra in general is awesome, but working with the German orchestra was really amazing. We actually have studios and a team in Munich, so we work frequently with German audio profesionals. All of the good stereo types were so true in this project. The gear and their technical approach was superb, the studio, microphones, instruments, timeliness’, and accuracy was unbelievable. And we had like an entire orchestra and studio staff full of perfectionists. Even the janitor was yelling out if he heard something that was not 100% dead on. It was unbelievable, we could not have been more delighted by how passionate the orchestra and studio engineers were taking on this project and making sure it came out as great as it could. The conductor, who is a major component in the music being expressed well was superb and let nothing get to tape that wasn’t really dynamic. Everything went quite smooth and we had a tremendous amount of music (and tough music at that) to get done in a short amount of time. In fact the orchestra musicians commented that they really enjoyed playing this music because it was so thematic and dynamic all the time, versus Film music which can often be very mellow and background. The Deutsches Film Orchestra was the orchestra we recorded with, as they are the orchestra that records much of the Hollywood style movies coming from Berlin and Germany (which is a thriving mecca for film in Europe). So their ability to sight read the charts was pretty amazing. The musicians only saw the music minutes before they started recording it (which made me a little nervous honestly), but they were used to recording like that and had no problem getting through all the music.

CR: Did they bring anything special to the music of the game? Well, besides a very live feel – being they were all live players?

KM: Mainly the quality and precision of the players with the orchestra really landed well to difficult passages and unique experiments that might have sent other orchestras reeling.

CR: Which piece of music in the game are you most satisfied with?

KM: I personally love the Main Theme because I think it really sets the tone of the game perfectly and opens the whole experience with excitement and anticipation. It was a very fun piece to record because the musicians really enjoyed the melodies and you could see they were really getting into that piece!

CR: Which level is it on?

KM: This is the opening piece to the game as soon as you load it up.

CR: What kind of game have you yet to work on, but would like to?

KM: Wow – that’s a hard one, as I feel like I have worked on almost every kind of game at this point. A game style that we don’t see that much of that I think would be really fun would be a magical fantasy adventure – almost like a “Never Ending Story” style game. I think creating a soundtrack for that would be really magical and fun!