‘Pure horror in musical form’: Dead Space composer shares his unsettling secret | Toys

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What does “horror” look like to you? Is it the slow throbbing of the heartbeat that gradually quickens as adrenaline and cortisol begin to flood the nervous system? Is it the wet thump of flesh on metal because something, somewhere, is crumbling? Or is it less important–a soft whisper in the ear when you least expect it, half-heard inaudible footsteps, the suggestion of the breeze when the air is supposed to be perfectly still?

Dead Space, the horror game from EA and Visceral that launched for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC back in 2008, has managed to get in your head and under your skin. A Cronenberg-esque body horror sequel was a complement to the game’s Extraterrestrial, the mental deterioration of protagonist Isaac Clarke. Engineer stranded aboard the USG Ishimura. He is not a warrior. He is not a soldier. He’s just a guy, on a ship swarming with hostile alien lifeforms, whose poor little brain is starting to fall apart. Throughout the game, you will never leave his heavy, blood-soaked boots.

“There is a very simple technique that I came up with that, for me, shows the emotional state of Isaac,” explains Dead Space composer Jason Graves. “You can hear it at the beginning of track four on the soundtrack, Fly Me To The Aegis Seven Moon, and it’s used throughout the entire score. It’s a slowly wobbly note. It sounds very restless. This note takes shape and expands as the rest of the orchestra slowly dominates and overcomes it.”

Graves’ technique that makes you empathize with Isaac mimics what the audio engineers were doing with the rest of the game’s audio. Dead Space used breathing sound effects and a faint heartbeat in the background to keep you physically connected with Isaac. The lower your health, the rougher your breathing becomes. The closer you are to death, the faster your heart beats. You may not have consciously noticed these things…but your body likely did.

Dead Space’s goal was to push the boundaries of the horror experience in gaming, taking all the action beats of Resident Evil and Silent Hill and complementing them with the psychological thriller aspects of cinema. “Kubrick is famous for implementing classic recordings in his films,” Graves reflects. His use of Penderecki’s music in The Shining was my shining moment in Dead Space. I stumbled upon the “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typewriter scene one evening on TV and thought “This is what the score should look like!”

“The closer you are to death, the faster your heart is beating… Dead Space. Photo: EA.”

Graves explains the attraction of the scene. It was a normal acoustic sound – a normal orchestra performing their instruments – but the techniques they were using made the instruments sound otherworldly. He laughs “like musical masquerades”. “The key to this sound is musical serendipity, or vocal techniques.”

“The goal of funky music is to give the player the freedom to decide what to play within a given set of instructions. It might be ‘play the highest note as loudly as possible’, ‘play random open string notes very quietly’, or ‘play these five notes as fast as possible’.” As possible and as loud as possible. These types of trends are incredibly fun for musicians. They act like they’re back in school. He ruined many clips with laughter at the end.”

Despite not sounding like catchy music, it made perfect sense to stick to this technique in a horror game. It’s a horror game in particular that aims to feature the scariest soundtrack the world has ever heard. “I spent many months researching mid-twentieth-century scores and studying their techniques, convinced that this dissonant sound of cacophony and disorientation was the key to unlocking pure horror in musical form.” Graves says. “After all, what music sounds natural but comfortable repetition, proper form, tonal balance, tuned, pleasurable sounds? If you take away all of these things, you rob the listener of every core value that makes music comfortable and enjoyable.”

Graves was intent on making you, the player, as uncomfortable as possible. This will not be your traditional score; The original synopsis he was given, which requested a “modern Hollywood musical with some spookiness”, was abandoned. This was a cool new front now: “Nothing is duplicated, there is no tonal center – it’s literally every man and woman (in the orchestra) for themselves.”

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Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertisements, and content funded by third parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “Nothing is repeated, there is no tonal center – it’s literally every man and woman (in the orchestra) for themselves”… Dead Space. Image: EA

Dead Space was a passion project for Graves. He devoted more than two years of his life to it, and came away with “more than nine hours of technique on record from every single section of the orchestra”. Control over each element was essential to how the final product would look, and how the music would be fed into the game engine. “This kind of music hadn’t been done in games before,” he recalled. “EA was using their own music engine and really pushed the boundaries.”

Was it easy? No, was it effective? at all. Dead Space remains one of the most important horror games – influential enough to warrant a remake, which comes out next week.

“All creative people have their ‘trial with fire’ moments,” Graves says. “Projects transform how they approach and work creatively from that point on. This is what Dead Space did for me. Literally every decision on the outcome—the conceptualization, the recording techniques, the musicians, the recording studios, the execution—was up to me, for better or for worse… Constantly trying new things and pushing boundaries, that’s how you grow as an artist.”

The end result is an unsettling triumph, a coordinated action that drives the player in tension and a technique designed to get into your head and stay there, long after you’ve finished playing.

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