If you play a word association game, chances are “music" wouldn’t be your first pick to put with “id Software’s Quake.”  Rather, most gamers connect Quake with jaw-dropping 3D visuals and fast-paced action gameplay.  While the Quake series is definitely heavy on the action and visuals, music has also played an important role, especially with names like Trent Reznor and Rob Zombie contributing to the score.

For Quake 3, id tried something new by bringing together the talents of industrial rockers Front Line Assembly and Sonic Mayhem, the team behind the guitar-heavy riffs in Quake 2.   Late last year we interviewed Front Line Assembly about their contributions to Quake 3: Team Arena, and now we’re giving you a chance to hear from Sonic Mayhem’s Sacha Dikiciyan about his role in the game’s music.  In addition, Sonic Mayhem has written an exclusive MP3 to accompany this interview that can be download it at the end of the article.

Q: How did Sonic Mayhem come to be, and more specifically, how did you get involved with music for interactive entertainment projects?  Getting a gig like Quake 2 certainly was a big achievement for your first project.

A: Back in 1996 when the original Quake hit the gaming scene, I started to work on a soundtrack called “Methods of Destruction”, which I sold out of my apartment.  It was the first audio add-on for Quake, inspired by the original game soundtrack. During its production I called a friend of mine in and after a while we realized we work well together. Sonic Mayhem was originally meant to be a real band situation but we also had a strong interest in technology.  We figured, ‘Why not getting our music out by scoring video games?’ It seemed like a great idea and Quake II came about by me simply asking id if they were looking for music. As far as I remember, id had a lot of people asking to score Quake 2. So yeah, when we knew we had the gig, we were excited.

Q: After Trent Reznor had done the music for the original Quake, did you have a lot of trepidation about working on the sequel?  From what I remember Quake 2's music was quite different compared to the first game's ambient soundtrack.  Did you purposely try to go with a different musical style for the sequel?

A: Yes the music for Q2 was a totally different concept then Q1’s. But it had nothing to do with us not wanting to repeat Trent’s awesome ambient work. I never understood why people thought we should sound like Q1 or NIN respectively. The creative direction was more a result of what id wanted at the time.  The first demo we send to id was like something out of a Terminator movie. That demo had ambient elements and more orchestral influences -- no Guitars at all. We thought it really would fit Q2’s theme but id wanted something more within the likes of Metallica.  We ended up doing what id wanted -- they were pretty specific with their requests. In the end, we could’ve done any style of music they wanted.

Q: I know you wanted to comment a bit on what Front Line Assembly said about your music for Quake 2 in our recent interview.  Obviously music is a matter of taste, but I'm assuming you still feel looping CD audio tracks can be right for some action games, as opposed to more ambient sounds?

A: Everyone has a different opinion of what game music should sound like and what people wanted to hear in Quake 2. Obviously FLA has their opinion on how it should’ve sounded and it’s always easy to criticize someone else’s work. Producing simple ambient music, like FLA did in TA, would’ve been way easier and more cost effective for us. There’s one major difference between FLA and us with the Quake games: They got hired for the music they’ve been doing for years. We got hired to produce what id wanted. With Quake 2, I wished it would have been more orchestral and dark. Don’t get me wrong though, we are still proud of Quake 2’s music. Production wise, Q2 was top-notch stuff and was even #1 on the CDDB (www.cddb.com) database for quite a while. So a lot of people did enjoy it.

As for looping CD audio, at the time, CD audio was the only option if you wanted to have CD quality music. Direct music was still in early production and mp3 implementation was still a year away. Today it’s possible to cross fade mp3s in real-time, which I think is the best way to go in order to keep the music quality the best it can be.

Next, moving from Quake 2 to Quake III  >