Mother 4 | Interview With The Composers
Following my Shuffle or Boogie article on the music of the Mother series, I had a chance to interview Shane Mesa & Dani Person who are hard at work on the music for the upcoming fan-made fourth entry in the series, Mother 4. While I decided not to badger them for a release date, the answers they gave were both promising and inspiring. It seems the music of Mother 4 is in safe hands.
Mother 4 will be a free game available on Windows, Mac & Linux. The release date has been pushed back many times but the team seem to be making good progress and post developer diaries regularly. You'll find the interview below along with a few more links to some brilliant music:
http://shanemesa.com http://daniperson.com
https://soundcloud.com/shanemesa https://soundcloud.com/dani-person
Danny first found the project through Starman.net and was looking for projects to work on. He stumbled upon two projects that were claiming to be the Mother 4 project and decided to reach out. From there, he and Shane started working on the game during its very early stages and have been with it for many years.
At the beginning of the project, the composers lacked stylistic choices and used a lot of default voices from the Reason libraries. However, as they continued to develop their own style, they tried to redefine what they were supposed to be doing as composers for the project and make it their own by adding their own artistic nuances or choices to the series. This led to a lot of unused music that was a learning experience for them.
One interesting point that Shane brought up was that sound design is mostly his department. They explained that there is a lot of work done from scratch in creating the sound effects and that it's unusual for composers to work on such a complete sound design.
They also discussed the challenges involved in creating specific sounds for sound design, using the example of the motorcycle sound. The process involves brainstorming and experimenting with different instruments and sounds, and it can be challenging to find the right sound, especially if the goal is to make something that sounds low quality.
The conversation turned to the power of sound design and Shane shared an experience they had while watching the movie Antichrist. The sound designer who worked on the soundtrack of the movie created an entire soundscape by using little things like rubbing two blades of grass together. The simplicity of the method was an inspiration and made them realize the potential of sound design. They believe that taking something simple and making it into something unexpected is what makes sound design powerful.
When asked about their favorite video game soundtracks, Shane mentioned his love for the minimalistic soundtrack in the game "Fez," while Danny pointed to "Super Mario Galaxy" as one of his favorites. He described the melody as moving, strong, and versatile, with a clean and tight orchestra. The soundtrack’s energy and complexity were compared to that of film composer John Williams.
Danny also expressed his desire to push the boundaries of video game music and make it a respected medium of music. He wants to match the music of a game to a specific environment or situation, and he is constantly looking to refine his craft and build a portfolio to go to grad school. Both Danny and Shane believe that video game music needs that next step to propel it to being a respected form of music, and they hope to be a part of that movement.