Michael Curran:  I met Geoff during the production of Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. We were recording the menu choir music at a studio in Baltimore, and Geoff was interning there. He prepared the vocal score for the choir from my MIDI parts and did a great job. I was extremely impressed with him and decided then, that I wanted to work with him again. When we were looking to expand the audio department at Firaxis in 2008, he was hired.  I write in MIDI with orchestral and ethic instrument samples, and don’t really have the skills of an orchestrator. Geoff happens to be a great orchestrator, so it has been a perfect collaboration for me. He orchestrated all of the music that I composed in Civilization V for the live orchestra recordings.

Geoff Knorr: Scoring a game like Civilization V is an amazing experience.  The development team at Firaxis is phenomenal, so during the project, you know without a doubt that the final product is going to be excellent – and knowing that pushes a composer to rise and meet the challenge of composing music to truly match the game. 

One of the more personal challenges I felt with this project was the immense popularity of some of the music from Civilization IV.  Christopher Tin’s “Baba Yetu” used as the opening menu music for Civilization IV is a fan favorite around the world – it is apparently among the most commonly performed contemporary vocal pieces in the world – and an amazing composition.  It certainly raised the question for me as a composer, “what do I do now in Civilization V in the context of this immensely popular piece and all the fan expectations that might come from it?”  The answer was, basically, look at what’s in front of me – a brand new Civ game with new art, new gameplay mechanics, a new game engine, new AI, new everything...and therefore it should have new music to match the new game.  I think the popularity of “Baba Yetu” challenged me all the more to write excellent music, but, simultaneously, I didn’t feel like it had to be in a similar style – this is a new game.
 
I also really felt the support of the Firaxis team and 2K Games to take the music in direction Michael and I did for this iteration of Civilization, and I think the final results work wonderfully with the game. 

Michael Curran:   The audio department here is pretty diverse in terms of the software we use. We each have our own way of putting the music together. I write in MIDI with Digital Performer on a Mac and Geoff writes in Sibelius and sequences his music in Logic. Ian Smith writes in Logic, and Roland Rizzo is now using ProTools to sequence MIDI. When we began writing, we didn’t know for sure that we were going to be able to record with a live orchestra, so we sequenced MIDI to sound as good as we could get it to sound. When we knew we were going to Prague to record with Andy Brick, Geoff began to prepare the scores for his compositions, and do the orchestrations from my MIDI sessions.

Michael Curran: There are two ways that soundtracks can work to support the narrative of a movie or a game. One is very interactive and hugs close to the rise and fall of the image or emotion - or both. The other is more passive - it supports the mood in a big picture kind of way.  In writing music for film, the composer has the luxury of always knowing what is being paired with the music. It’s the same every time. In games, the narrative is interactive, so the music must be able to support the action as it evolves in a variety of potential directions. In Civ V, we were looking for music that would support the general mood but sound like movie music. 

There is something about the pairing of music and images - basically what happens in the mind of the spectator/viewer, when music is juxtaposed with a moving image – any moving image. The mind makes it make sense to a large degree. It’s crazy, but true really. I come from a film background, and this is something I learned back in college with my student films. I would take some music that I thought fit fairly well, and drop it in the soundtrack, expecting to have to move it around endlessly or cut between different musical pieces to follow the narrative – but it wasn’t like that. It would just fit somehow, no matter what happened on screen. The eye works with the ear and mind to justify all of it.  In games we can take advantage of this.  I've seen in a couple of forum threads about the soundtrack fitting so nicely, and changing to the events in the game. It really is the result of the right music and the player’s mind helping it along at critical events. In Civilization V, the score is interactive by its region, and by whether the player is at war or at peace with his neighbors. The rest is provided by the player himself, and a little divine chance.

Geoff Knorr:  I believe the workflow for the original music in Civilization V is the first time a Civ game has followed a more film score method of having specialized tasks in the music department divided amongst different teams/individuals.  On previous installments, it was the composer’s responsibility to write the music, record the music (if necessary), mix the music, and master the music.  For Civ V, most tasks had their own specific team or individual.  For large scale video game and film projects on a relatively tight schedule, the end result is inevitably of a higher quality, because you have so many pairs of ears, in parallel, listening, critiquing, correcting, and tweaking.  Not everything was assigned to a different team or individual though – for instance, I was responsible not only for the composition of around half of the music, but also all of the orchestration, the copyist work, and the Pro Tools session setup.  It all worked out fine because we had the time – however, if we were on a tighter schedule, we would have certainly needed a few more people to get everything done on time.  

The musical style we were after for Civilization V was also influenced by film scores.  We sought to create a kind of refined cinematic musical style consistent through all the music, no matter what its particular cultural flavor might be.  The ethnic influence in the pieces needed to be more prevalent than the grand Hollywood influence though, and in many of the film scores we listened too, just the opposite was true – it was mostly a grand Hollywood sound with just a little ethnic mixed in. 

Michael Curran:   The lead designer, Jon Shafer, and art lead, Dorian Newcomb were involved from the beginning, helping to set the tone and direction for the whole audio design including the soundtrack. We began meeting with them back in the summer of 2008, and continued to meet on a weekly basis for about a year. By the fall of 2008, the first leader music was being written, and toward the end of the year we started putting potential licensed music before them. We would all weigh in on what we thought worked or didn't work and why. Geoff sat in on many of these meetings as well before he came on to the project full time in June of 2009. I think that everyone involved is happy with how the soundtrack and sound design works in the finished game.

Michael Curran: The idea of basing the leader music on existing melodies has been part of the music design of the Civilization series going back several iterations. When we set out to write the leader music in Civilization V, we definitely wanted to continue this - it gives the player a real sense of place, and helps to further drive the virtual identity of playing as a particular leader. The research involved in this is something that I have enjoyed immensely. This time around we tried to be as authentic as possible and we were able to find at least fragments of melody for every leader in the game – something we were not able to achieve before. Aside from authenticity, we were looking for really strong melodies - so in cases where we found many to choose from, we went with what we thought were likely to be most memorable.

Michael Curran: With Civilization in particular, I feel that the possibilities are endless – as limitless as the scope of the game itself. As source material and inspiration, we have all the music ever created anywhere, from the beginning of time and into the projected future. What more could a composer ask for? There are many musical styles that we have only scratched the surface with in a Civilization game - but who knows, if the right design comes along, any style of music is potentially there to explore. Civilization IV: Colonization is a good example of a game that allowed me as a composer, to focus on a very unique and specific style of music. I played a harmonium to mimic the Early American melodeons and reed organs of the 19th century. I had a lot of fun with that.

Michael Curran:  I think Civilization V has the most beautiful landscape that has ever been created for a game. I just hear Aaron Copland when I see it.

Michael Curran:  I think that there is an educational value to the music, as there is to the game itself. Civilization players are very diverse in their musical tastes, and I feel that since the first Civilization game, we have been able to introduce many musical genres to players that might otherwise not have been exposed to such a wide range of music. Although we were not looking to be historically accurate above all else, it was important that we understood the historical context of the music were adapting. The most important goal of course was to create a soundtrack that fit the game, and contributed to the overall experience. I also feel that we have created something very special and enjoyable as music outside the context of the game and I am very proud of that.

Michael Curran: This is the first soundtrack I have worked on that has received this amount of press coverage, and perhaps that is a reflection of the growing interest in game music. I also believe that we have created something very special and unique for Civilization V. I am very proud of the work we have done on this game and it has been a pleasure to discuss it in detail for the fans. 

Michael Curran:  Right now I am working on music and sound design for some of the Civilization V DLC packs that are coming. I’ve also been collaborating with Andy Brick, who was the conductor for the Filmharmonic Orchestra Prague recording sessions for Civilization V. We are putting together a suite of music from Civilization V to be premiered in Vancouver, Canada at the “PLAY! A Video Game Symphony” concert on December 6, 2010 with the Vancouver Symphony and Chorus.  Andy is going to orchestrate the suite of music, and will be the conductor at the world premier and as it tours in 2011.