Star Citizen Live: Let's Talk About Pedro

4 June 202101:08:281,847 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hi everybody welcome to star citizen live let's talk about pedro i'm your host this week and most weeks uh community no what's my i literally forgot my title there i've had so much creative content lee jared huckabee and joining us on the show it's a good start already immediately to my left here a man who probably needs no introduction but we're gonna do it anyway this is composer for star citizen mr pedro camacho pedro how are you doing man thank you very much for the wonderful introduction uh not sure if i'm deserve it but yeah i'm doing very well thank you and how are you jared i'm all right you want you want to you want a better intro i can do a better intro hold on let's see yes hold on hold on let's see
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i don't have i don't have a drum roll or anything our guest this week on star citizen live composer extraordinaire yeah roger the soul of art corp the heart of loreville the spirit of microtech pedro camacho uh this is live it is live we're live i'm wasting time right now oh my good time right now oh no no nowaday i'll lose all credibility now i think what the hell is this guy doing is this guy doing the music i thought he thought he would be more like you know white beard like gannel for john williams or something you know not yet not yet those are the two options a white beard like gandalf
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or john williams that's how you know you're talking to a composer right now because it's like it's like who are the wisest people i know gandalf and john williams because i'm a nerd i'm a nerd and i like music that's it i'm with you so if you've never seen star citizen live before it's where we take about an hour out of our art of our fridays and we chat with some member of our development team and discuss their development today's show's going to be a little bit different it's it's it's we're going to talk about the music that pedro's composed for star citizen but we're also just going to we're also just going to hang out with pedro and just get to know pedro um some folks who have been following the project for a long time like if you've been following the project since 2012 whenever you've probably seen a show or
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two with pedro on it in the past i had our data solutions guys run some numbers like like how many brand new star citizens have joined the project since the last time we had pedro on and it was it was like 1.1 million citizens since that have joined the project since pedro was last on so some of you old timers maybe some of this is going to be familiar maybe some of this is going to be old hat but you know what we're gonna do it anyway we're gonna we're gonna get to know we're gonna we're gonna get to dive deep we're gonna peel the onion that is pedro and learn what makes him tick yeah yeah yeah don't peel me that's not not a good a not a good idea but anyway thank you very much my name is pedro and and yes i've been doing music for star
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citizens for quite some time now it's been a i mean huge pleasure it's uh it's a wonderful game i love the game i love the ideas on the game i love the art in the game i love the audio in the game i love the community manager in the game you know who knows who whoever knew it that would happen sorry that i really like it's a very very kind person and um and above all i really like i mean to be honest i never experienced and i can't kind of feel a bit uh shy or something that don't feel 100 comfortable with uh by the community community is awesomely kind to me and i mean i think to everyone but to me i've experienced quite a lot of kindness and a lot of great words and i don't know if i really
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if i if i am if the credit is due just to me in many of them or if um i'm not sure if i that important that sometimes it seems the words appear to be but i'm grateful uh to have you supporting the project and and and just ending encouraging me you know so i always feel that each year in star citizen i have to kind of try to reinvent myself be better than i was before and you know to make the game sound better than than or as good as i can that's that's that's that's the point well um let's talk about that let's let's go back to the beginning here
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let's go back to the beginning it's when did you come on board the project was it was 2012 was it 2012 yeah it was from 2012. tell me how you how you came to star yeah i can tell you it's it was it was just wonderful it was uh i was i was still not a father and uh my kid uh he was i was going to the the echo with my wife you know to hear the first heartbeat of my son that was the first time it was still october 2012 and i remember that i i went there i went i was curious and i heard his heartbeat for the first time and i mean that's
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i mean i don't know how many of you that are here hearing this are fires but uh i mean that really struck me deep like wow there's a human living being there which is not me or my wife and um and at the in same day i i read about star citizen and about uh because i was a huge wing commander fan when i was very little i played wing commander one many times and uh also my father did he really liked it and i say my father did because he meanwhile he passed away at at that point in time and that's when i decided to to write music and he was curious then when i i myself
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was going to become a father i felt that i should you know email uh chris roberts to say hello something like that i don't know i don't know what i wrote there's no good words it's just a bit of a luck and and whatever happens and for some reason i i wrote him an email i just it was very short it was high and it was better on that i really liked what what i saw about you know there was a couple of the images on the internet on kickstarter's page as well and i would love to you know to pitch for your project i think it's uh i think it's a wonderful idea to do this just just rang a bell inside me uh like really want the strong one for some reason
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uh it was a coincidence but he actually replied the email you you took your shot man yeah i took my shot took my shot of course i did i hadn't started that day i had i i actually just had a major concert concert piece premiered so and it was a beautiful footage of the orchestra with the choir was a requiem in this castle which i wrote in 2000 early in 2011 and it was premiered in 2012 early 2012 so i showed him that which was i think he also enjoyed that and so that helped as well and um yeah so the journey started there and it's curious that even though my task was to write
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some uh what would become the main theme for star citizen that uh you many of you must have heard by now and um it's curious that my first i think that was my first real test because up until that time i was just making some pieces that weren't being shown to anyone but uh the internal team was when the 300 the first 300i commercial came up i really liked it i remember it was uh was me hannes appel uh the cinematic director and chris roberts and uh sound design and um and and and and the music was to be done one week before my kid was
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going to be born so it was very emotional i literally finished writing that cue and sent and then i became a father so i think the stars in journey started in a very special moment in my life so i mean it became even more special maybe because of that i don't know so so everything i i try to in this i mean you know every project but in this in in particular is very close to my heart so and uh that's so it was a very long conversation sorry no no that's what we're here for it was very uh sentimental i mean i think that that's the music music is about feelings in my opinion so and that's that i think you know and for some
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reason the commercial was quite quite so quite not because of me but also a little bit because of me perhaps the commercial was quite successful uh the funding and in the game increased a lot after that commercial and then other commercials uh came after that and i think i think it's i think it's been the the project grew into something much larger and much more fantastic in my opinion than um than i initially imagined it will be so it's been i mean honor to be to be with you and it's i have to say this before ending this long conversation after seeing people that after all these years still uh
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after each track that i've been making they some people at least say oh this is my new favorite track or something it feels it feels good because it gives me a pressure that i don't want to give the feeling that each track that comes feels like you know like a something generic or something i really try hard and i really have a lot of effort to try to make each zone and each location have like a soul that's what i try to do it's uh never use recycle or reuse the stuff that's been done in cinematic music or at least avoid it at at all costs and just try to create something unique and that people enjoy eventually i i enjoy it uh when you started did i i know the
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first thing that went out that people heard was the 300 series commercial is that the first piece of music you actually wrote for star citizen or did you start with that main theme first yeah i start with the main theme that was the first uh first track i wrote still in midi but that was the first one and then uh and then it went on and on and it was eventually played in 2013 by with an orchestra recording along with other pieces and i think yeah still one of still some of the best music i wrote is there i think the what's what was the name of that track it's not star citizen main theme what was the name of that track it is it is it is it just starts in the main themes on youtube is uh if you write that at least it will
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come up i never found there was a i did write other themes for something a bit later on which i gave some names so we would know one of the one i enjoyed a lot and i think jared also enjoyed was a a homage to the 80s sci-fi which we called it arena commander theme you remember i think i was very cool as well i love that one i felt it gave me i went back to my roots i mean all the movies that i saw that really inspired music as a kid and probably chris roberts as well star wars uh the last star fighter which was a great movie as well i really loved that one because i also
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loved games i always i've always been a gamer and what else star trek a bit as well but you know more star wars last star fighter well those movies were very influential for me star wars yeah probably yeah that was yeah you don't hear any last star fighter at all in the arena commander theme no no influence at all no i don't think so i never i don't i don't remember the music from from last star fighter at least but probably there is here or there some but i thought i when i did it i thought it felt a bit also it has a bit of
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superman influence from john williams i mean it's not direct influence it's just you know the tone the um the contour of the music let's talk about influence let's talk about influences though so it's it influences sometimes they're intentional and so and sometimes the you you just you can't help the work with the things that we create uh you know come from us the holy original from us but we carry with us the influences that you know shaped us as as we go you listed off you know many things there uh one of the questions we put up a thread in the in spectrum earlier this week to collect and one of the questions was um what uh what inspiration do you have
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that might surprise people like we you know obviously we're a space school so people people think you know star wars star trek glass star fighter stuff like that but do you what influences do you have that people might not expect or assume okay uh i don't know if if you if any of you ever played games on amiga but i i that was a very fun memory i had with my father uh yeah sorry sorry i mentioned my father i mean it's been quite a long time but he was a music fan he was a game fan he was a sci-fi fan a very high like a nerd he and but he never composed or playing anything but his passion passed on through me so but i studied and i was
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able to execute what he loved and uh and he loved amiga we played together so many hours of amiga games commodore amiga and i mean one of there are a couple great stuff from that time for example shadows of the beast that's something that comes out of my my mind right now it's was an amazing soundtrack at the time you have to see there are limitations on commodore amiga but it was quite uh astounding for for for the time that we were living in and um actually it was in amiga as well that i started writing music i i wrote my first track was written on on amiga and my father was able to hear the first track only in his life and um i remember another a reference that i used actually using
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stars which i really loved was a game was called chaos engine which was a beautiful shoot-'em-up game with two characters at the same time we could play with two players i used to play that also with my father and with friends and there was something there that when you fired up a note you would say like node activated node activated something like that with a very particular uh tone and character in the voice so when i did the music for for the first racing module on star citizen i called it speed activated and that that was the name of the track and the music when you get to the to the to the climate climatic part in the start before the music starts with with the kick and and i actually uh tried to uh i actually pronounced that
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sequence but said uh uh what um speed activated and you can hear me see saying that but i eq it a lot so it would sound like uh like from the game from chaos so i think that's a very and all always i like to bring it into every piece that i do and starts a little something that is uh kind of a small secret for me or something i mean it's uh on that one that's that's it so that's why it's called speed activate so yes i think that's that's uh i enjoyed doing that also in that particular track i wanted to bring in the composer from chaos engine to have i wanted to use the the kind of base he had in his um in his in his original soundtrack but sadly he passed away
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uh quite many years before so i actually spoke with his brother but you know since he passed away wasn't i couldn't use anything so i had to do it to do but anyway i actually but at least i said speed activated so that was a reference homage to it to great amiga game uh other great amiga games that i love but that one i still haven't used any direct reference but i will once we get a game inside sergeants it looks like it and maybe it will never happen but it was speed ball too i don't know if anyone knows that game speed wall to arm that was that was for bitmap brothers as well it was a fantastic game um other good reference that are very strange to to
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to realize is um i like math a lot so i've always been a mathematic i always love math at school so i always try in the music i did to not always but many times create some patterns on melodies or rhythms that have a meaning on on on on math as well i can i can remember the r curve theme that i wrote uh the music uh i i noted down the upward intervals in in the melody and the sum of the first two which are prime numbers gives a second number which is also a prime number so i want to since uh our corp was such a perfect city
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it's like mathematically perfect city fills the globe with uh with um with construction and it requires a lot of engineering um to to merge all this stuff together sorry i'm always touching my mic sorry and um sorry about that and um so i thought it was a cool way in in a melody to also reflect that mathematical perfection if you will on the music i don't know you don't have to think about it if i like the melody by itself without the math but it also has a map i think uh i think that was cool i wrote that in in the description in some youtube video or something it's just so because that was a very i think
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no one will ever get that one if i didn't explain it because i think i think it was too nerdy but other but i enjoyed doing that and so has some strange references perhaps uh let's go ahead and jump into some of the questions that that came in uh how do you manage to make your songs sound both sad and hopeful at the same time that's i don't know i seriously don't know but but i feel but i feel that um i don't know do they feel sad my goodness i don't know i think it's about to be emotional it's
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it's kind of i think that state between the sad and the happiness and hopeful is is the state that you are passionate and hopeful about something there's a bit of sadness about being passionate and i definitely feel feel passionate about about um about this game and music in general but also about it and i mean everything that i go into i i usually have to feel a lot of uh you know passion otherwise um i don't think any good music will come out of it so i so maybe that's why i think i think i think the secret is to be delicate but sometimes less is more so that's at least that's a bit of my motto i mean
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i can i can go be big in songs really big but i try to to try to say the most with the least elements as possible so when that fragility of the least elements possible kind of give that event i don't know i don't know maybe that gives the slight um the the very slight passionate uh and and passionate sadness or whatever i don't know yeah i think i think when it comes to there is of course the emotion that an artist is trying to infuse into it but the wonderful thing about about music is there's also the emotion that it elicits in other people and they're not always
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one one you know so so you know you're obviously the person who submitted this question is going through a broad range of emotions when they're listening to your you know and that may not necessarily be what you've infused in but it elicits that response in those people and i mean as i come from a family of of musicians and that's all you can ever really hope for it's yeah you you you hope they get the emotion that you infuse in it but you know at the bare minimum you hope that it creates or engenders some emotion in them on its own exactly above all i think the worst thing that can happen is when you write something that doesn't ring a bell to anyone he's just here and then like oh yeah it was cool but uh i was i was kind of what i always try is to never co tr i
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really try hard to never come up with the or reuse recycles that have been used tested and true or at least i avoid them or if i am requested to use summary size i try i try to reinvent them in a new way and because if you give something people listen to something new and above all truthful from you it has music has to be um has to come from you it doesn't it cannot be something that you just have to do just to fill the agenda because you have to do this and that and that well sometimes it has to be but it's absolutely i think for star citizen it will be a disaster if the music came out as as just music that you heard oh yeah i usually hear this in here and there
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and there and and doesn't give you a a connection so because it's different you get more attention because if you get more attention maybe it emotion and and makes you feel different or paint and makes you think about something i don't know but that's good well thank you for i think that's a good compliment i like i like the description to being both sad and hopeful i think that's that's not a bad description at all it means you have range yeah uh we got some questions here that are more process based like like how you work um when you're composing uh what do you what are you given like what what do you begin with do you get guidelines or like a paragraph description
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do you uh how how much is prescribed to you and how much do you discover on your own well it depends on who i'm working with star citizen had along its way some different uh audio directors and there is also the cinematic scene from the commercials which also have directors and directors have an a completely different way of thinking about music from audio directors so when i'm working with audio directors they tend to be a bit more uh more clinical in terms of oh i think it will work this thing and with this ingredient and this ingredient in this ingredient so can you please can you please try to make something with these ingredients
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and came up with a nice dish for me to taste which is kind of a challenge and it's great i also enjoy it but it's always a challenge because you are kind of restricted to those ingredients but you know they have been working a lot with the team and they speak with the with the art team and they know best what's what works because in the end of the day i'm i'm i'm here to serve a project and to make the project be successful in a way that uh for them so the artists and chris roberts sees that the creation that's being done is actually what they want so so that's good when i work with the cinematics team uh at least more easily uh i i'm given a freedom the the descriptions are more
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like i want to this to be hopeful and to be sad or to be dangerous or to be adventurous and do your magic and let's see what happens which is uh it's a bit you have more options so you get uh you get you get wondering what ingredients will i use but but i choose the ingredients which is also good in a way so so for example when i when i scored the reunion uh though which was a very long one a very hard one to score i really it was not a direct request it me i really said okay i think i'm in that point in my life that i i believe that i can
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kind of even though it was made in midi so maybe at some point we'll get uh live recaster for the commercial but not not right now uh i wanted to be a writing that was consistent enough to be compared with like uh the likes of john williams or something i really wanted it so it was like a chance self-imposed challenge but i felt i felt it it really make made sense because it was a commercial on uh on a ship that had a kind of a star wars vibe into it so it just made sense i didn't want it to sound like star wars that because so i literally tried to avoid the trumpet staccatos for example those kind of ingredients that really speak loudly star wars you know so because so that people don't think it
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means oh this is a tower something like that or or something like i would definitely it's well it's a it's a it's a it's a wonderful device that creates tension and but it really became really linked with star wars so so so that's those are depending on the person when i work with chris roberts it's pretty much what uh it's different i i really like it really like it he's a the way he works is more like uh he gives me also the feelings he wants like a director because he's a director after all but he also gives me some cool stuff which is some oh i would love if we could feel like um out of africa
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from john barry mixed with whatever from zimmer or whatever from jablonski or whatever from you know kind of film scoring he wants a mix of two or three movies together which is not a great it's like it's a complex group of ingredients and you have any kind of kind of puzzle game and see which ingredients from each of them kind of come together and work well and and serve the purpose of what he wants and so it's also very cool if you had to describe the musical style of star citizen like what's what is star citizen music and and then like versus like what isn't that would country have a place in star citizen is is is star citizen
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uh you know you know how how would you describe to somebody like if you were if you suddenly had other composers on a team and you had to explain to them what the vibe of stuff yes yes i know i know exactly what what i try to do in a very simple way what i always try to uh bring stars into uh of course it always depends on the people who are in charge and what they want so remember that the composer is not free to do whatever he wants in a project or any project at all he has a hierarchy of people that need to be say okay so we moved on to the next phase but uh what i feel like starts is the most is space for me uh i've i've been more and more
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focused on working on locations that are planetary based but space itself is orchestral it uh in uh that's what uh that's what my initial uh goal was and i still hope that we can push it into uh more and more orchestral because i think spaces eternal is grand and i've and i really believe that when i'm in space i i want to hear that lush orchestra that feels a bit a bit like a modernized john williams vibe sort of of course there are some scenes that go with it so it's a little bit of a modern um spice around it but not i will never consider it to be
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completely synth or something like that or hybrid score when you're in locations that's i think that's the opposite so i try to bring in much more hybrid uh much more with more alien elements of the orchestra in because you have the culture of the place mixed with the space from the orchestra sort of like that so as if there is orchestra everywhere and each dot which is a place or a zone has the other elements and they mix in into a bottle and become like a a cocktail of of different elements so uh i hope that once we get some of the most important hero locations done i hope that once i score uh much more the space element of of our game um it really becomes evident of course
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there will be sense and some some have accused because of you know out of you know diversity but in general that you feel that when your space there is an orchestra going with you that feels for example like et you know like uh it feels i like also i like when ambient music feels a bit more traditional or a bit more contained maybe that's where you get the sad slash hopeful feeling because that's what we feel from the 80s but once we go into more action it really goes into a very modern action score that that we'll hear from uh from a big budget or modern movie like uh like transformers or or or are interest i mean so so that's
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that's that's why what i feel of course depends when you remove system maybe for example when you go to virus system this won't be exactly true because in pyro i believe it should feel different not very orchestral probably but at least in the in the system that we are working on right now most with most locations it should feel more orchestra that's one of you now more processed questions here how far ahead do you work you just mentioned pyro are you are you composing stuff for pyro right now or is does that come later like where in the process where in the overall process do you come traditionally uh in in video games audio is very downstream i'm talking
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about all audio you know not not just the music the sound effects because they're waiting for art to finish their stuff and environment to finish their stuff because they want to see all the pieces and then audio is that thing that that fabric that thread that ties all those pieces together so it de facto ends up being very downstream is is that the same with the music yeah yeah it's it's mostly the same with the music when i get to make the music it's pretty much well sometimes less sometimes more but no usually it's pretty much already 80 90 done basically so so uh so yeah so i'm not still working on pyro uh at least
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i'm not well i've thought about it well i did work a little bit yeah it's percolating i did work on it on the citizencon demo uh quite quite a bit and um and that's so but but apart from that we've been focused on other locations under moons etc so i think it would be cool that it's it's very cool and very unique that each moon will have uh at least i've been scoring a lot of moons that it will have their own score and which i think it i think it's um well they was done with a lot of heart each of them so i think the visit to each moon is not just because of the sake of seeing the graphics hopefully it's also because you want to hear the what what the music score is
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there i hope at least so along with that question uh one of the most common questions that came in that thread it came multiple times was about composing music for the different alien races now i'm going to say it's probably the same they if we're not we're not finished with pyro pyro is not 80 to 90 percent finished so you're not beginning your work our alien races are not 80 to 90 percent finished so i'm going to assume that you're probably not working on the alien race stuff yet either yeah well we about the alien uh i did i did did some stuff when i worked uh on the reunion because there was mass i can't wait to to know what happens to mass my goodness i'm i can't wait i know what happened we have to make oh
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no sorry there are there are there are six people who know um i i i can tell you after the show if you want i tell you after this wait i can't no don't tell me okay okay you will have to tell me i'll ask you if you want to know again after the show yeah but i can't wait so but there's a glimpse jeff senelli did a wonderful great job on a commercial for for um uh for a ship that for an alien chip ah what was his name jesus christ now i'm nervous i'm live i'm nervous so that's why i'm trying which one jeff did uh we're just curious because it will also ban you uh i think uh it will be very interesting that in the end it will be a match of both
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i think will be a match of both me and jeff's work that would define sometimes things just come along the way you know the definition i had from star since the start is a bit different than now because it's much larger the game the planets are much much richer than i ever thought they would ever be i mean who would ever think a narcotic planet would ever exist in a game my goodness i certainly didn't expect that not even the planet tech i would expect but certainly not a planet like arc so so you because i remember initially i thought the location would have a kind of a score which would be much more minimal compared to space but then when you see our code we say oh holy holy moly this is wonderful i mean i love space but this
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is also astronomic astronomically beautiful so it has needs to have a grand music also so so depress i mean also will depend on um i really love the design from banu and from all the alien races i think they the team did a wonderful design so so it's really inspiring and uh i like i like what what came out by a bit of without thinking too much on the reunion trailer the the woodwinds very subtle with some synth i liked it but i don't know if if it will stick i mean remember the company has many people and many impor many uh very good uh thinking hats thinking
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people so and i mean it's not just me and ideas so it's not just me i mean i have just i'm just one guy having ideas so many good ideas and i i take them to my adventures that's why i say it's not fair sometimes to take credit because you know i mean sometimes from a simple conversation someone will say oh you know i really love what this kind of music for this and then i see it this is great that's it that's what i've got to do that's that's what needs to be done sorry so uh for those who uh have maybe joined in the last two three four years uh you don't know uh jeff sinelli is the composer for squadron 42 our single-player campaign uh we did a show with him a reverse the verse
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back in 2017 or 2018 i think that was the last time we had him on so maybe if there's a mod in the chat you can drop you can drop a link to that in there so folks can watch that afterwards if you if you want to learn more about uh jeff and his compositions for squadron 42 what else do we have what are the tools that you've got back there what tools do you prefer to use to create the awesome music you create well first of all thank you so much for enjoying and saying it's awesome that's very kind i mean that's one of i keep repeating this but that's one of the best things this game has it's community i mean just such so supportive computer community i mean thank you a lot the tools i use i i personally use cubase because um because i i started using it in 2008
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and uh i up until now i still i've see all the music i've done until now which i'm still doing is on pc so it's a like a beefy pc like really big one i have two if you want to go to details it's like a fast core i9s with 128 gigabytes of ram each with um i have to check how many but i want i can i can see it right now in my because i lost count but so it has how many ssds yeah it has 12 ssd drives so in a total of only only 12 ssc so and but it is like eight tera at terabyte uh
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m.2s so so so it's like so it's kind of that it's not all m.2 is like four and dot two this is mechanic one two three four m.2 and the rest are uh ssd's normal ssds all they all have large capability they're pretty much a 70 percent capacity are filled with libraries that are running contact that connect with cubase this is a bit of a nerd talk but those who know what i'm speaking about so they are they're all connected to content and content connects to cubase and youtube base handles everything not just content because i have a lot of sense also um also i use uh just like jeff has his own private orchestra library that is from hanzima i also recorded two private orchestras for myself
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so uh which is good also of course we always prefer to use live musicians and i always intend to have everything recorded with live musicians but sometimes for you know because of uh deadlines or etc is not always possible so to get a bit more realism uh even though i do own all commercial libraries that exist basically almost everything that exists and they have a lot of strengths and i use them i use every every single one you know can he think about uh i mean so many spitfire customer tools vienna um samples ato uh i mean there are there are so many good i'm just speaking about your castle bar right but i also recorded my stuff
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and it sounds really great it was done by the guy who now runs performance samples which is a great guru something guru and he did that for five one of them was done by him from me ma and other four people and then there's another one which was done just for me and um and really i think it makes a difference in the quality of the orca so far then you get the percussion which is a complete another world which hundreds of terabytes of percussion that i either recorded myself or i purchased and then our sounds which are they're hardware centered i've got here a mug one which i use sub 37 which i really like that's those are the only hardware stuff that i use i think those are i mean there are a couple better good
00:43:39
ones but these are the ones to feel more appropriate to my workflow right now so my family had a rule uh uh my family and musicians he goes when in doubt use a timpani is always great and i i actually did use the timpani with a lot of dramatic effect on uh on a commercial or commercial i was a reveal for the um what was the name the first time the planet tech was revealed oh from people's planet pupil to plan yeah people's planet and and i and i used that timpani you could definitely just start the roll and it was never ending until and the stars in logo i think that was
00:44:26
pretty cool i actually have a story about that i don't think i've ever told about it um sitting here we're we're about a week before the live stream where we debuted the the public planet uh it was not on the it was not on the schedule it was not part of the show it was it was it was nothing chris walks chris walks up to my desk with a flash drive and says plug this in and i'm like and like chris has walked up to my desk like a small handful of times it's like okay and i plug it in and it's got a it's got a really rough video file on it and you just play it and play it and it was the ver it was a very early very you know a rough version of pupil probably the same rough that was sent to you to get a score on it and i'm watching this he's just standing over my shoulder
00:45:14
he's just standing behind me as i'm watching this for the very first time and i'm like what the he goes and as afterwards goes do you think we should put that in the live stream and i'm like try to stop me so yeah so we ended up we ended up completely restructuring the live stream about a week maybe less than a week and i had to make and i had to make the score for that it had to be a very rush yeah because it came yeah it was very quick but i think it was awesome i i actually enjoyed this a lot of the score i did on that i was very lucky on that one really came out i think i think i captured the essence of that and in any and if you see that well people the planet it starts with you one year at the time we didn't i didn't
00:46:02
have the idea that would be so huge so it the music starts with a bit of a local traditional elements so it's like electric shallow in that case choir and yeah acquire and let i think it's square and electric shallow i think it's that's that's just it and then when it goes to space and it just goes to space the arc of stars just come in come in come in come in and the end is just the grand orchestra on space looking at it down in the plan really amazing i think i i mean i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw that to be honest but for the but for those who were like oh they must they were sitting on that forever i'm like no that was that was one of those things like like carson calls him goes hey i think i got something and we're oh okay so you just tossed all
00:46:53
not all the old plans but a whole bunch of the old plans we're doing this now it's like it's only a week away but yeah we're doing this now this is this is better this is better this was it was awesome i think that was the an end of the year it was fantastic fantastic end of the year that was i couldn't believe it and and yeah and the planet attack just kept getting better and better ah jesus christ it's just mind-blowing to me at least here's here's what's either going to be a very difficult question or a very easy one like there's nothing in the middle here how do you know when a when a track is finished oh i just know it you know i that's can't explain why how is that it it's no one tells me uh that's a good thing about
00:47:41
that's a good thing that every people i work with in in in a pu they never set me a boundary they just said oh around this but then they never said oh it has to be this not not not one second more or not 30 seconds less or something i think the the music speech just just when you're saying the sentence well i speak too much because i'm better at writing music not doing this as you probably guessed right now because i'm not that interesting while i speak but but it's just uh in music i actually know when to start and when to stop not not in this case so so i speak too much but when is when the music it just comes to a conclusion you know it's it's over because there's nothing else to be added
00:48:29
and you just and and personally i have to hear it a couple times and feel okay that's that's what i want to say it's a feeling that you feel inside like okay it's great feeling i feel great and it's uh well that's your superpower then that's your superpower then because i i i think most artists that i've encountered in life i it's what's the what's the phrase art is never finished it's only abandoned you know it's like you just come to a point where you just kind of have to stop but no no no no no that's probably my problem i only stop when i really think uh there's only one track one one thing that i which is from uh recommended castro i think i missed i still have to make a
00:49:16
revision on that one because there are two moments there that i should have placed the heart playing and i never place it just two moments well i mean i would try in 45 minutes out three seconds of music that is missing a harp there but apart from i hear it from start to end and i say i have nothing to add that's i that's that's it that's it i can always add more timpani uh let's look at let's look at some of the ones that from the chat so i have you ever considered making a heavy metal track of space music for star citizen i play in heavy metals bad you play in a heavy metal band that's a surprise for you that's very right i do play
00:50:03
it's a local band they it started because they just they just called me at uh two years ago three years ago asking me if if i could help them making the orchestra arrangements for them and i said oh okay well i don't i don't well i always love metal i really love metal i really love i'm a metal hat and i really love metal i mean i love all good music there's only there's bad metal and there's good metal i love good metal um and i there's there's a new band right now which i really really loved hearing the singer we're just spirit box that's freaking amazing i just love if you didn't heard her the singer you have to hear her she's freaking amazing
00:50:50
anyway sorry uh no no the the the family band that i used to tour with yes is a is a is a apocalyptic end of the world goth metal band from oh really yeah it used to used to tour through uh germany and uh germany was a big hot spot for us uh amsterdam sweden uh basically europe very small following in the united states it's a lot harder to make your mark in a lot united states in the european markets are much i think they're much more accepting and uh outgoing in pers in searching out smaller groups and stuff like that they're much more open to to different influences and stuff so for a year for years we made our living in europe
00:51:37
even though we were all here from southern california it's like okay it's time to go tour we'd go to europe that's where we'd make our stuff that's cool and what were the instruments who played what i my my uh oldest brother was the lead singer and my uh my uh second oldest brother was lead guitar and then um and then uh we had piano and uh we were yeah piano in a medal uh yeah an actual piano not synthesized like piano okay but uh yeah and then just bass and drums cool occasionally you know that was that was that was the basic live kit and occasionally we'd get a big uh for one tour we had a cellist go with this and she was she was phenomenal like i don't know i think more metal should have cello in it
00:52:24
i thought yeah and cello really links and just to wrap it up and so they asked me that and they said and they said okay send me the songs and well the first impression i had it was very unpolished you know the sound was very unpolished was they recorded it in their living room but they have a very deep meaning in each song you know basically the band leader let's say uh he's very kind and he did that because i mean has to do with his mom's death uh and so he created band and the first track that i that i got was a letter from him to his mother in heaven so it was kind of a medal by the medal with not just nonsense metal or a medal just to say
00:53:13
you know bad things not that i have anything about it but against that but right you know it was it was a battle with some soul in it and i really liked it so i i um i mixed it i mixed it it was terrible because the stems were not professionally recorded it was just and but i really mix it with all my plugins and i sent it to them with other casseroles just uh when it sends everything and they they really liked it because it sounded almost like already uh an album and i've been working with them and and i i we aimed we we yeah meanwhile they invited me in because they enjoyed what i've been doing with them when they invited me into the band i said i didn't want to perform i just wanted to be the side guy that would you arrange stuff but he really insisted me
00:54:02
so i'm a pianist so i actually play and played sen and piano on stage for them for so it's not a big it's not um i don't think metal should have a very big thing on p on piano it's kind of uh at least not in this band i think this band is cool with metal you know i think it's good to be there to give a modern edge on the sense and and the production to be modern i think that's that that's that's good stuff so so yeah surprise there was a videos of me playing with that band at some point i will share share them uh i think there was we will have a video clip soon or something but uh i i never had time to work with them for quite some time because i've been busy on star
00:54:51
citizen because that's you know that's our priority of course um but it's it's good it's good because it gives me a new perspective on how they think about some of them it's cool because one of a drummer is not too musically educated the bassist is now his son which plays very well and very musically educated singer is a coveted nurse so is i mean she was she she actually uh volley volunt was voluntary to be on the first uh nurses to go against covet stuff here which is i mean it's amazing because at the time no one knew how i i felt it was be it was a it is a big deal but i thought it was
00:55:37
even a bigger deal then i think i mean this is kind of it's it's a big deal but i it's it's felt worse on the news if you know what i mean it felt a bit worse but it is it's a big deal anyway she volunteered which is what which was uh amazing so it's nice uh and she's shy et cetera but when she gets on stage she's being she sings quite well and um yeah so there's a and the one of the guitarists is uh knows how to read music and plays well the other one just plays by ear so it's kind of interesting to see how all those musicalities work and uh you know i like to work in a team so that's a good team okay we are almost
00:56:26
out of time so i speak too much sorry no no no what we're here for that's what we're here for my friend uh let's wrap it up with two uh star citizen related questions here since we uh what was the most difficult track that do you remember working on the one the one that eluded you the longest the one that was the biggest struggle for you the biggest struggle was for with chris roberts on the track for the um mustang that was the hardest one i did i don't know 37 versions of this of the track i mean it's not just half versions many of them was where complete reworks
00:57:15
are super hard to nail it i think it uh one of the verses of the song is that um is that a song that many people nowadays like on stars is basically wasn't was just then used on south by southwest trailer um when the first song but that was actually initially made sorry for for for mustang but also i really love mustang because mustang has a really great line the the the narrative is wonderful i don't know who wrote that but it was wonderful i think that's that's basically the i felt it was chris's mind uh mindset that was written there because i like if you basically say if
00:58:04
you dream small you you'll never get anywhere and if you only if you stay out go outside your limits outside you maybe you can do something special and you know it's it's kind of a it's a commercial that has to describe what stars it is so it really felt special and it was very special to chris and i think the score was quite nice in the end i really liked it it was me playing the piano actually that one um and it was just beautiful i just loved it i that was the hardest one which one came together the easiest which one was the like just the the the easiest most comfortable birth you had it's like it just came out of you almost fully formed oh there was a star map music that that came out in just one hour or whatever i don't know
00:58:52
it was one yeah it was super fast there's no rhyme or reason to it when it happens there was there was just a subgroup of music was the music that sometimes i do for citizencon which is an horrible amount of a good amount of music which i love it but you know sometimes in a very short time because the demo is done of course but sometimes switches many things midway because suddenly a bug is free and then they can explore this whole area that was had a horrible bug and because as you know demos are actually played live on set so some of us know very well yeah so it's very stressful so sometimes it's like a few days before this show they say okay better we have like 25 minutes of more music to
00:59:39
do like okay i'll probably sleep two hours or three in the next three days or something like that but uh so it's like it's it's easy but it's uh like because it has to be not because it was naturally easy it just has to be easy but sometimes i did some cool stuff i remember the music that people like from new babbage was done on that timeline just with a few hours last question before we let you go because we're in overtime already sorry yeah you don't have to apologize i'm just like i'm just letting people know you'll never have to apologize to me you send me tracks months before anybody else so you never have to apologize to uh you've talked about your hardest we've talked about your easiest what's
01:00:27
your favorite if you had to pick amongst your children i know parents are not supposed to pick favorites amongst the children but as my dad is fond of telling me you do anyway uh eric uh what's your favorite of all your children so far okay um i think the them i like many of them but i think one that has a lot of feeling to me was um was when i wrote the music for our corp because that we were in 2019 if i recall it or to late i am not sure too well that was not fast it was slow music that that took quite some time to be done
01:01:16
but then music when i did that music what i thought was not only the the confidence of cultures on that really big big big metro super like planetary metropolis but also came made me think a lot about the world as we exist and um how sometimes you know i don't know if you most of you must have felt that and that's not not what i feel when i'm doing star citizen that's why i love doing it is that you just go to work and come back to work and you just created um you become like a zombie you just you just you know there's like a huge city the idea of having like a huge city with millions of people and they almost never speak with each other everyone just going to their work doing
01:02:05
the thing they're coming back going to sleep or taking care of kids it's kind of a very you live on small villages on on and and also i remember thinking oh my that that track when i was doing that and i actually that's that's why i uploaded it to my youtube at that moment because i wanted to also i actually placed um uh time lapses of traffic going by on on busy cities because that was inspiration and and i remember thinking sometimes you need to stop and look at earth etc i don't want to get environmental here but you know kind of felt like well there's something that could go wrong if we sometimes doesn't and i accidentally you
01:02:54
know one year later there was you know the pandemic that we know it um anyway but it was very meaningful because the music tells the story of the soul of a planet loves if you will like there was a culture and if everyone worked together and so it could be something even bigger something like that so uh you know kind of i don't know i'm not very good explaining my music just tiny themes just small it's just uh but it was important to me it was very important to me also there was another track i have to say sorry to interrupt there was another one that was very important to me which i called it lullaby to kzb which actually there was a uh one of the backers on star season that uh he wrote on on a tweet saying
01:03:44
something like uh thank you for all the art he thanked stars in his general but he mentioned music as well because uh it's really making him a difference in the last few years that he's his his son of two years old had a problem in the liver and had to have a liver transplant and he almost i mean it was very terrible stuff and i actually reached out to him and i and i said hey uh thank you so much and and he shared some photos of his son i mean it was oh my goodness just i kept i thought about my children and it really made some strong emotions inside me so the next track i wrote was like a lullaby for his son to sometime
01:04:31
uh hear and a lullaby to his son casey so basically that was that was it and uh so it was very it's very important to me because uh uh well it act is actually on the game it's a in it's in is in um it makes sense in the game because it's part of um of uh oh oh my goodness now i just think i'm casey and i'm forgetting the names um gosh describe it sorry is yeah it was a very polluted planet with a big structure a big big big structure laureville of course lordville i'm very
01:05:18
sorry this is oh my goodness lordville and this is very bad i shouldn't forget but you know i'm very i just focus on sometimes when i'm i'm just nervous to be thinking to be thinking live but on laurelville um and the andes in in the uh in the like the that part where there are the the the the fancy part of flowerville where are all those uh uh displays of of the family that runs there and um and i thought that was the good place to place that track because the track is very sentimental and and i thought it's like you see something so beautiful in the middle of something that is very in a bad condition everyone lives in a bad
01:06:05
condition on that planet yet there's someone that lives in such a large life it's kind of sad situation like i said it's at counterpoint or something it's like like the life like a dad one looks at his children at his child and and he's not bad and his son you know when you're healthy and your son isn't it kind of it feels wow this shouldn't be like this it should be me or something at least i i like that i thought like that and when it went up to my son that i also had health trouble at some point was after i wrote this song so but so yeah so that's that that's one is very special to me as well and it starts in main theme that actually made it possible for me to be here which also but it's so obvious you have too many favorites pedro i'm cutting you off too many faces
01:06:54
that's the best three favorites of where i draw the line man all right uh pedro thank you so much for taking the time uh out of your day to be here with us on star citizen live uh folks uh thanks for watching uh thanks for hanging out uh if you if you wanna hear more about pedro and and even dive into the creation of some of those tracks he was talking about we've done we've got previous uh star citizen lives or i think it was even called reverse the verse live i think one was a happy hour live we go through branding here like tissues uh you can check that all out on on youtube just just type in pedro in our youtube and star citizen you can find them all maybe some folks in chat will link them if they have them uh but but you can we did we've done a number of shows where we dive in the actual creation like the
01:07:41
art corp theme was what a show we did once and stuff like that so you can check that out uh all right thanks a lot i'm pedro thank you very much no i'm not pedro i'm jared that was my first meeting was at three o'clock this morning so i'm already ready for bed i'll talk to you later everybody see you later bye i am a professional i do this for a living

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.