Editor's nook...

An Interview with Carl Leon

About a week ago, Carl Leon, the composer for Siege of Avalon, stopped by the offices at Digital Tome. Leon’s normally in San Antonio because he plays guitar for the two-time Grammy-nominated Tejano and country band Emilio. Emilio’s been on the Billboard Latin charts several times and has toured 38 states and 4 countries. I got to interview Carl Leon about his work on gaming soundtracks.

Leon’s first game was for Evel Knievel. He got his first computer in 1998 and as a big Evel Knievel fan, he immediately checked out the web site. He wrote to Knievel’s manager, suggesting that Knievel put out a video game and that as a composer, he was available to write the soundtrack. As it turned out, Evel Knieval was already involved with a video game but they hadn’t hired a composer yet. That was such a lucky break that Leon named his new company Lucky 7 Music.

Since April 1998, Leon’s done 13 soundtracks and is currently working on three projects, one of which is Siege of Avalon. Siege has really intrigued him because it’s his first score in the symphony orchestra mode. He’s also responsible for the game’s sound effects.

Because Siege is downloadable, it presented a unique challenge. Leon thought about how to provide quality music while keeping the file sizes down so that they could be quickly downloaded. He said Siege is his first game to be totally in mp3’s.

And I suppose if there isn’t any technology blocking you, you could find those mp3’s on your hard drive and play them like any other mp3’s. But, most likely, that wouldn’t constitute the grand impressive soundtrack cuz all of it’s been cut into itty bitty pieces and used within the game. Leon’s pretty happy with how the music is in Siege of Avalon.

The music in Siege is very atmospheric and by that, I don’t mean space-rock, but that it gives you the feeling of being someplace. It’s not flashy because it’s not the main focus of the game. What it does is add to the game by making it more enjoyable or heightening the tension.

To compose the music, Leon gets detailed descriptions from the developers and looks at the artwork for inspiration. The sound effects are culled from libraries or he makes his own.

Leon says the following about Siege of Avalon: “People are always talking about ‘the future’ or ‘the future is going to do this.’ People rarely take a step towards the future and the ones that do change the world. This is one of those situations. The gamers out there who are going to buy this game are actually moving us into the future.” If you couldn’t tell, he is psyched about this game :)

Many thanks to Carl Leon for taking the time to do this interview.

Til next time,
Sande
listening to Cetu Javu “Southern Lands”