Interview No. 90

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Here we are at the 90th interview for The Interviewer. This one took a long time to do, mainly due to technical issues, confusion, delays on writing questions and delays on receiving answers. This interview was planned back in November, however the holidays came up on my end and so I could not get the questions written that I wanted written. Then I got sick, so that delayed this interview even further. I finally got around to getting the questions written and sent off to Matt Wiesen, he is better known here on Newgrounds as @DarKsidE555, so that he could send them off to those I wanted to interview as part of this group.

He got the questions sent off to one person and then my laptop's monitor decided it was going to unhinge itself and not work. It also didn't help that Matt's computer was having technical issues as well, so I had to take matters into my own hands, send the questions off to the others myself and await the answers. That time has now come.

The following members I am going to interview are all Newgrounds musicians, but they are a part of a group that dedicates themselves to offering commercial music for big companies as well as those within the independent gaming movement. They are Selcuk Bor, who is the Founder, Acting Manager, and Composer, he is also known on Newgrounds as @MaestroRage. Zach Striefel, who is the Assistant Manager and Lead Sound Designer, he is also known on Newgrounds as @ZStriefel. Nick Perrin, who is a Composer, he is also known on Newgrounds as @NickPerrin. And last, but certainly not least is Mihai Sorohan, who is a Composer, he is also known on Newgrounds as @sorohanro. These four musicians an elite core that are part of The Symphony of Specters.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

ANSWERS WILL BE POSTED BENEATH THE _A:_ DUE TO TWO PEOPLE BEING INTERVIEWED PERSON ANSWERING WILL BE NOTED AS SO.

Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?

A:

MaestroRage: I found Newgrounds waaaaay back in early 2000. I didn't actually make an account there until about mid 2005. I joined simply because it seemed like a pretty fun place to hang out and spend some time.

ZStriefel: I found Newgrounds through my brother when I was about 9 years old. I made an account way back then, but I have no clue what the login info was. I made a new account in 2009 with the intention of posting some music and talking with some other musicians, and hoped to work on some flash games/movies.

NickPerrin:

It's so long ago now that I can't even remember! Haha. Newgrounds was always this site with the funny and inappropriate animations when I was much younger, something we'd load up in middle school in the computer lab when the teachers were gone. I never knew about any audio portal. I suppose years later I found it amidst the wide variety of free audio communities, but having some familiarity with the site already, decided to stay a while...

sorohanro: Some years ago a friend told me about some funny animation, some guy with salad fingers... Googled, found (the classic) and there was a link to some awesome website where you could share your music and people would use it in their movies and stuff...

Q: Some of you are fairly new to Newgrounds, others have been here for a while, while others have been here even longer. Could you tell us of two of your experiences here on Newgrounds that you will never forget?

A:

MaestroRage: Winning the Musician of the Year award is going to be my peak hands down haha! I had never actually won an award before then for something I started on my own and pursued on my own. So to be given such an awesome prize was simply mind numbing. My second moment was my first big project which I had worked on being uploaded to NG. Dark Cut 3. I was running around rampantly showing it off and beaming at how awesome it looked on NG's front page and how it should stay there forever and ever... my opinion regarding this has not changed over the years.

ZStriefel: Talking to Marsume (Dylan Meville) for the first time during "talk like a pirate day" would definitely be one of em. We hit it off pretty well, and still work together today.. The rest of my memories are blurs of people trolling and freaking out on the BBS.

NickPerrin: Firstly, submitting music. The first track I ever submitted was "The Belmont Legend," a symphonic arrangement of two classic Castlevania tracks. This was a significant moment because it was my introduction to writing orchestral music, and putting material out to the public that I thought was actually worth listening to (having made admittedly worse music before that I mostly kept to myself or close friends. In fact I encourage this practice, don't always share your very first batches of music... unless you're an automatic genius, it's going to be garbage, and no one wants to hear that haha). From that point onward I kept creating in multiple genres, but orchestral music took its hold.

Secondly, and this happened this year, was winning first place in the NAC2012 Orchestral Contest. It felt like everything had come full circle from that first full symphonic track I had ever released there years ago, to being recognized as one of the best symphonic artists on the AP. It also helped me produce what I believe is currently my best orchestral track - hopefully to be topped soon if I can manage it! You can hear the extended cut of the track at http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/473691 .

sorohanro: There are many things... my first review, by Bad Man Inc, the congratulation thread for my wedding, winning MAC Flight In Freedom...

Q: How did you discover music?

A:

MaestroRage: Purely by fluke actually. Most people I tell this part to have a hard time believing me but until about mid 16 I actually hated music believe it or not. I used to think all things musical was a waste of time and how dare it interefere with my coding. I was hard core into game development then. Then one day I opened up Fruity Loops 3. Made a few pretty bleeps and bloops. Then I made more pretty bleeps and bloops. About 8 years have passed and I am -still- making pretty bleeps and bloops, albeit on a more serious level at this point.

ZStriefel: I have no idea.

NickPerrin: This is another really tough one to remember. In our global culture it's pretty much impossible not to be exposed to lots of music, all the time. That said, like most people I never really listened to music but just "heard" it for years. Later in life I was introduced to metal through my brother (who now heads up my favourite metal band in the world, regardless of familial relation - check them out at www.quietus.ca !), a genre that contains so many different styles, as well as bands that could still be considered popular music but took a very different approach to the creation process than the mainstream artists of the time. I was hooked, and the music required more investment on my part, more attention to what was going on. I began to develop a whole new way of listening to music that only became more and more in-depth and eventually led to me trying my hand at creating music. While I listen to and compose in many different genres now, and metal is really not my foremost genre for listening or composition, it's the genre I really began trying to compose in years ago. I have an old project called "Haunted Era" with those early tunes, if anyone wants to Google that. It hints at the symphonic music to come...

sorohanro: As a kid I used to hum and sing all day. My mom thought that I am retarded and wanted to put me in a special school but my grandmother said: "NOOOOooooo, this would be a shame, put him in music school, he sings anyway".

Q: What first inspired you to make music?

A:

MaestroRage: People are going to go "ew really?" on the answer to this one. But honestly it was RPG Maker and anime soundtracks. Both of which I was really into when I was younger and every single RPG game I made I was always spending hours upon hours trying to find the perfect song. I am proud to say to date I am still the only person (that I know of, maybe this has changed) who created a seriously complex music management system in my RPG's. Truly adaptive music depending on what was happening in the game. Sadly none of my games ever reached conclusion and so all those stories and engines fell to the sands of time. Arguably for the better. I wasn't a good story teller when I was young. As for Anime soundtracks, to this day I still listen to X TV's Sadame (look it up, it changed my life). These powerful songs moved me to try and write songs like this. Even today I have marked Sadame as my magnum opus. I will write a song as good as that and then I can die happy.

ZStriefel: Nirvana.

NickPerrin: In respect to the previous question, it was the process of finally becoming really invested in music as a listening experience.

Before music I'd had the approach to many creative endeavours that if I enjoyed it very much as an audience - whether reading it, playing it, hearing it, etc - I would want to try my hand at doing it myself. I did this with drawing, writing, beatboxing, game modding, and other things in smaller capacities. Music was just another addition to the heaps of things I'd tried, the difference being that it really stuck.

I'm not sure how much of its permanence compared to my other interests can be attributed to some kind of intrinsic "calling" that I finally found, or to the influence of my brother (got into music as a musician before I did) and the deep depression I went into around 2007-2008. This was a strange and tough time in my life. At that point music was just a hobby, but that year I invested myself so heavily into it that my progress shot forward faster than before and I found I wanted to keep doing it as long as I could. Things got better and the love of music stayed, and over the years has become less of a starry-eyed dream and more of a focused, disciplined craft where I seek a better understanding as well as I can.

I just want to note, a lot of people note "self-expression" as their motivation to make music, and while this helped to create some work I've done, I mostly create music for the inherent aesthetic value that it has. Music doesn't have to tell a story or mean something (does a sunset mean anything? No, it's just beautiful)! I like to explore many emotions whether or not I can relate to them.

sorohanro: Chicks. With bad and good. LOL

Q: What is in your opinion the definition of music?

A:

MaestroRage: This question is impossible for any musician to answer in my opinion. What is the definition of the question? Do you explore Genre? Style? There can never be a single definition for music is like a language. You cannot say what is the definition of language for each language has strengths and weaknesses, and all languages together co-exist across the globe in various forms filling a need all humans (and to a lesser extent other species) need.

ZStriefel: Music is a lot of things to a lot of people. I really have no answer, myself.

NickPerrin: Music was historically an extremely rigidly defined practice, and not even in the sense that it followed particular tonal "rules." It simply wasn't conceived in the same paradigm as today, where most see it as being an expression of self, or expression of other sentiment and emotion. And with the advancement of electronics and experimental music, the definition has gone beyond even that, with often stunning results. As such I believe that the definition of music, as a subject of ongoing evolution, now becomes a really amorphous thing that will squirm its way out of any definition you try to hold it in. So I'll leave it at this - any collection of pitch, timbre and rhythm, intended for other human beings to hear and regardless of any system or lack thereof used to organize the aforementioned characteristics, can be music. Whether or not one enjoys it is another question! Of course the birds singing in the trees aren't doing it for humans and it's still music to my ears, but I'm talking in the practical sense of human-created sound, for humans - you don't see many artists trying to get emotional rises out of birds!

sorohanro: ??? Still don't know, but here's a deal: when I will know I'll tell you first

Q: When was the Symphony of Specters originally created?

A:

MaestroRage: SoS was created about mid 2006. The three founders at the time were David Rathbun (our system administer today), myself and Mandi Nittinger. Mandi left us long ago however some of her work still lives in my old MaestroRage account, engraved in Newgrounds servers exclusively as a tome of history.

ZStriefel: 2005 or 2006

NickPerrin: I believe it was in 2006. Our "god and creator" Selcuk (MaestroRage) decided to approach music as career and wanted others with similar goals to work together so we could all share the burden of this seemingly impossible task. It's very cool because I remember meeting with him in Toronto years and years ago when I was just about starting out on NG, when MilkmanDan came to the Sutton Hotel and we all collaborated on a piece (that I never heard the end result of!). At that time Selcuk was just pursuing music as a hobby, but I guess like myself he felt it grab him and knew it had to be more than that. And aren't we all glad it worked out that way! As far as the rest of the Symphony's history goes, I'm not quite up to date yet. We're making it as we go, glad to be part of the ride now.

sorohanro: Ask "Maestro" (aka Selcuk), I think everything started from his idea.

Q: What is the purpose of the Symphony of Specters?

A:

MaestroRage: To create custom audio to developers across all gambits and scales. We've worked with indies without a penny to their name to large corporations like Coca-Cola and Disney. We just want to make pretty sounds for things, we are always looking for those things to make pretty sounds for.

ZStriefel: The original purpose of SoS was to provide a "brand" for composers/sound designers to join under to get decent credits to build their portfolios, so they could go on to bigger and better things. But SoS is slowly becoming that bigger and better thing. So now we're just doing what we do. Providing custom audio for games.

NickPerrin: The Symphony of Specters was actually created by the almighty god Zorthan who wanted some really kickass, epic tunes for his celestial ipod, so he gathered the elements of the Earth and from each created a different composer to satisfy his every aural need.

Seriously, bottom line, the purpose of our group is to create music for all media we can get our hands on. A lot of us are gamers, and love games and game music and scoring for games. We also love film, film music and scoring films. We also love... you get the point. We all love to create and appreciate music, we love being involved in fantastic creative projects with artists of other disciplines, and we all want to do it for a living. For me, and I can probably speak for the rest of the group too, there's nothing better.

sorohanro: Have fun, make some good music, get paid for what you like to do

Q: Out of all the games and movies you have worked on. Which one was your favorite to work on? Which one are you most proud of? And which one was the most difficult to work on? And why?

A:

MaestroRage: My favorites to work on were always so odd people claim. To date my favorite is a tie between two difference games, both produced by Difference Games. One is called the Musuem, and the other called Moonlight. The music and the visuals to both these games were simply astounding to me, and the players were agreed on both accounts. In these two titles everything came together perfectly. I am very proud of these two, and though I fear I won't get a chance to work on such titles as we grow and expand I will hold them close for a very long while yet.

ZStriefel: I work on so many games every month it's really hard to even keep track of that I did 3 months ago, let alone of all time. But I think my favorite of all time to work on would be Larry. Simply because I have a lot of fun working with Jazza. The one I'm most proud of? Can't really say. I'm never happy with what I do for more than a week lol. The most difficult would also be Larry. There has never been a single time where I didn't have to cram a weeks worth of work into 2 days or less.

NickPerrin: As I've been finishing up school, I haven't had as much time to dedicate to work with the Symphony as I'd like, but there have been some good projects I've had the opportunity to score. However, as I have only done a handful because of my situation, I won't name names at the moment to remain impartial to all the clients we've had.

That said I'm proud of any work I do with SoS because generally, I ensure a level of quality that I'm personally happy with before sending audio to a client, rather than simply putting something together that is just good enough for them. While it's true I might not always have enough time (or funding!) to make the absolute best possible product by a deadline, it's also true that I could have spent less effort or thought on projects I've worked on because it's always easier to make a non-musician happy with music that you yourself as a musician wouldn't be pleased with. So this is a road I try not to go down, and that's part of what makes Symphony of Specters so competitive right now - we often produce audio at the highest standards, and charge substantially less than other composers and sound designers.

sorohanro: When I work on something, THAT is my favorite, after I finish it, the next one became my favorite and the previous one gain the "meh" status

Q: All of you have your individual Newgrounds accounts, but the Symphony of Specters shares a Newgrounds account. Why is this so?

A:

MaestroRage: So that we can have a place to store our collective work. Seperate we are impressive, together we can prove that we know our business and we've done it all, probably twice over. The work you see on Newgrounds is not even half the work we've done under the SoS banner.

ZStriefel: We all joined SoS individually. Selcuk, Matt & Charles are the only guys around from the beginning . I have my own account because I do stuff on my own sometimes and I still freelance on occasion.

NickPerrin: While each of us core members have been active in the NG community for a while, it was important to separate our own work and its achievements from the achievements of the group. The mentality is one of great teamwork, where we all lift each other up and benefit from working together. We want our achievements as the symphony to be recognized in this way. Of course, more practically, for marketing & business purposes it makes a lot more sense to have our organization represented not just on NG but anywhere on the web by a centralized presence through which all our business, correspondence and music flows. We have a web presence in everything from Newgrounds to stock audio sites to indie game advertising and beyond.

sorohanro: I guess to keep a common ground for all of us, to show Symphony of Specters as a group, like a band

Q: When it comes to the musicians in the Audio Portal, who there do you like and who there do you not like?

A:

MaestroRage: The first thing we learned in the audio forum is you never make lists like this. Or if you do, you never share them. People get offended, or they feel wrongfully singled out. I hate everybody equally!

ZStriefel: I don't dislike a lot of people. Just people who are rude to newcomers or are just generally pretentious. It's not any one person, but there's a couple people that tick me off every now and then. As for people I like, there's tons. I'd have to say my favorite musician on Newgrounds would have to be "Robomanus".

NickPerrin: I don't think there's anyone in the AP (that I've talked to at least) that I don't like. It's a pretty awesome community if you respect each other (and the forum rules)! I have to say I don't like musicians who think that music is as easy as pirating a popular DAW and pressing a few buttons, because in most cases they lack the work ethic necessary to truly advance their craft, and end up only doing it for praise and not for the music itself. If all you want is for people to tell you how talented you are, stop now and go learn something else. I like praise just like everyone else but it's not the driving force behind anyone who really loves to create music. Naturally, people like that can be found anywhere, not just in the AP.

As for people I like, well, many more! The SoS guys are of course great, and there are some great classical artists on NG with a lot of passion. I see some slightly younger artists who are really making strides and the community nurtures them. To mention everyone would take too much space, I'd probably forget at least one person so I won't name names, and they all get decent exposure these days. However, there is one artist who I haven't seen get much recognition, and his music is excellent, so I'll mention him - sinequanon (http://sinequanon.newgrounds.com/). His music isn't this big, obvious, blaring "epic" stuff that gets most of the spotlight and is less accessible than such work, so it gets less exposure. But it's real music with integrity and requires listener investment, making him probably one of my favourite composers in the AP.

As for other genres...I guess I haven't been keeping up on those on NG lately.

Q: You are all known for your wonderful music made not only for projects, but your individual works as well. When you joined the Symphony of Specters has it put a stop to those works, made it slower, or shown no change? Also would you say you have learned more since joining?

A:

MaestroRage: It has but nearly all stopped entirely for myself. I have not written a song for me in over 3 years and counting. There is simply no time and I say that with both a taint of sadness and happiness. I like to keep busy but sometimes you forget why you do it at all when you don't get to vent creatively. It's a balancing act I have yet to master. Have I learned a lot? The very short answer is yes haha.

ZStriefel: I don't think I've uploaded anything that wasn't a 1 min looped "wip" in quite a long time. Since I joined SoS it became a full time job and I really just don't have time or just don't feel like working on anything else lol. I have learned quite a bit since I joined. Particularly from Mr. Bor.

NickPerrin: Truthfully, I see all of these works as one and the same - original music created by myself. Having created music either of my own accord or to someone's specifications is still exciting and produces that same feeling of accomplishment if the job is well done, and it's why I know I can pursue music production as a full-time career and never feel like I've "sold out." It's nice to be able to create what you want, when you want, but in fact having a deadline really pushes you to be creative and much more productive than you usually are on your own. So joining SoS has increased my output, by giving me projects to work on but also teaching me to compose with more planning, fluidity and speed than before. Unfortunately with commercial work, I can't share the final product with NG like I can with my personal music, but they can always play the games that use it, many of which will end up on NG's flash portal anyway!

So yes, I've definitely learned more since joining. I plan better, work faster, and over the past year I feel my music has improved in terms of plain quality (but that is also owed to other study, through school and my own self-teaching in multiple music and audio topics. Musicians should always be honing their craft continuously...)

sorohanro: Somehow they figured out to give specific tasks to specific people who enjoy that kind of stuff, so, for me it is just a opportunity to get paid for what I do best because I enjoy it.

Q: We have interviewed a handful of musicians overtime who all aspire to be greater. What does it take to become a part of the Symphony of Specters?

A:

MaestroRage: Contribution. The symphony is far too small a company to take on somebody purely on musical merit alone. Every member to date has contributed to it's foundation in many ways, be it marketing, human resources, trailer productions, site maintanence. I used to do it all but it almost killed me. We want people to get involved and we want to see that they believe in the company. Too many people have signed up only to quietly fade away. Nobody has to time to babysit or to dedicate precious resources for the sole purpose of finding audio work. Audio work is only 50% of the battle and this is a point very few people understand.

ZStriefel: We don't really take applications or anything. To this day, everyone who joined was invited. Basically, we like honest, hard working, talented folks. Experience definitely helps, we don't really have an criteria though.

NickPerrin: First off you MUST be able to produce music on demand, in the required style, a skill which takes time to acquire. And it has to be up to a certain standard of quality within the timeframes you get. But this is all the usual for anyone working in the music industry. What really matters for Symphony of Specters especially, in my opinion, is the teamwork. We're all in this together, we all love music, and there's a certain camaraderie you get that most jobs wouldn't have because you are always prepared to do favours for each other and get excited about new projects. We circulate ideas as a group and everyone's opinions are equal. We brand all our "product" with the SoS logo, not using our individual names, so you have to leave egos at the door, bring a good work ethic, and work WITH people who love music just as much as you, rather than AGAINST them. And we all win in the end!

sorohanro: Sexy sexy music! Seriously, to do what you do at a high level, to work fast and to get over your ego when dealing with customers that want to change "your baby"... well, that's pretty much what you always need in freelance work.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]