[Originally written in 1997. As of now (2001), Bjorn is still working for Team 17, soundtracking all their games, most recently games such as "Worms Pinball" and "Stunt GP".]

Recently, I was lucky enough to grab an interview with Bjorn Lynne. Most game musicians are a shadowy breed, and a lot of them are simply anonymous. But Bjorn is one of the better known of them, having started by composing 'demo' music for public domain distribution on the Amiga. From his 'fame' as early as 1989 as 'Dr.Awesome' of 'The Crusaders', he was picked up by Team 17 Software in England, and moved there from his native Norway.

Team17 had become the Renaissance men of the Amiga games scene, and Bjorn worked on such titles as Alien Breed 3D and the spectacularly fun (and consequently massive) Worms.

Nowadays, Team17 are still one of the quirkiest and most interesting developers around, and. Bjorn recently completed the soundtrack to the Playstation shoot-em-up "X2", and this was released as a separate audio CD. He's also released a number of non-game CDs, both under his Dr.Awesome moniker and his own name. He's currently finishing up the soundtrack to Worms 2 and a new pinball game, both of which will come out on all major formats, and his webpage, for anyone interested in finding out more, can be located at http://www.bjornlynne.com :)

Anyway, enough of the wind-up, here's an interview with the man, especially focused on what goes into making music and sound effects for computer games.

h0l: What made you want to be a game musician/sfx-er?

BL: Well, I love music. And I love computer games. What better job is there? Seriously, music was a hobby of mine ever since I was a kid, I just happened to be lucky enough to turn my hobby into my job.

h0l: What practical tips can you give to anyone who wants to break into doing computer game music?

BL: The thing to do now is to give up mod trackers and General MIDI, and put everything into full CD audio music; that seems to be where it's all headed. Having said that, it's still useful to have a background from the modules, because on the consoles, we sometimes have to make the music in a similar format. Also, try to learn how to handle all styles of music, rather than specialising in a specific genre. Versatility is probably the best asset you can have if you're serious about game music. Oh, and if you send out demos to software companies, always send a CD as opposed to a tape. And never, ever, just call up a software company's music department asking for work, without sending a demo. It really annoys me when people do that to me. Do they really think we would talk about giving them a job, without even having heard if they can put together a simple tune?

h0l: How much freedom do you get when composing your tunes, or do you find you're told to stick to a certain style?

BL: The style of music that a game needs is often decided between the producer, the programmers, the artists and myself. If I find myself out-voted, I pretty much do what I'm told. I like to think my vote counts, though. I'm not afraid of doing what I'm told though, as indeed I have done many many times.

h0l: How closely do you look at a game before composing tunes for it?

BL: Very closely. The music has to reflect many things in the game, including the background story, the pace and action of it, the look of the graphics, and so on. So it's vital to get a good feel of the game before getting seriously into the music.

h0l: Do you think music is treated with the respect it deserves in the context of computer gaming?

BL: Well, let's face it. The make-or-break of a game is always going to be the design and the code. The music is, and will be, an extra. There are a few "game music freaks" out there (and I'm one of them) who finds the music a very important part of the game, but to most people the music is a very minor part of it. So I don't have any delusions about the game musician being the most important part of a development team, or anything like that. I used to think so, but I'm more experienced now. I never really stopped to think about how much "respect" I get anyway - if I get an email from someone saying that they enjoyed my music, that makes me feel good. That's all the respect I need. I'm not royal or anything, just because I happen to have a knack for writing music.

h0l: How difficult do you find it finding sound effects to fit a particular game? What kind of sources do you use?

BL: The sound effects can often be more difficult than the music. At Team17 Software we have the entire Sound Ideas sound effects library containing about 200 CDs full of sound effects from Warner Bros, Hanna Barbera, Lucasfilm, Universal, etc. but even this is often not varied enough. Many of these sounds also seem just too realistic, not "over the top" like in the movies. So I often find myself looking all over for particular sound effects. I was adding sound effects to one of the FMV-animations in Worms2, and I needed the sound of a hand grenade slowly rolling along a wooden table. I really, really, needed it to sound like a grenade, with the bumpy edges and all. After days of looking for the sound, I finally found a jar of pickled onions in a friend's fridge. It had the perfect shape; generally round, but with a bumpy outside. It was heavy as well. I promptly stole the jar of onions, brought it into my office, rolled it along a heavy wooden desk, and hey presto. Sometimes, though, I just use samples from the library :-)

h0l: Which computer game musicians do you particularly admire?

BL: Hmm... Well, I guess I'll have to say Chris Hulsbeck, Andrew Barnabas and Allister Brimble, because those guys are all mates of mine, and they're good blokes. :-)

h0l: Are there any particular titles that changed your perceptions about how soundtracks could be used in games?

BL: I know what you're getting at, you're thinking about interactive soundtracks that change with the action in the game. I wouldn't say that my perceptions have been changed, though. Interactive soundtracks is something I've been thinking about, and looking into, for a long time.

h0l: Do you think the computer game musician will continue to exist, or will well-known pop/rock/techno musicians take his place as gaming becomes more and more mainstream? Or will game musicians cross over the other way? (games => mainstream.)

BL: I don't think there will be that much of a cross-over. Mainstream pop musicians tend to work for chart positions and record sales. Also, there's still a considerable technical aspect to writing game music. Just because you can write a good tune with a guitar or a piano - or if you can make umpteen dance-remixes of an old song, doesn't mean you're ready to start writing game music. There's file formats, RAM limits, channel limits, polyphony limits, different development kits, horrible developers-tools, dodgy software, and many other things that you need to have a good grip on, to get the music built into the game. When the game uses pure CD audio tracks, much of this doesn't apply, but it still seems that software developers prefer getting their music custom written for the game, rather than licensing something off a pop CD. It may sound cool, but it just isn't game music, is it...?

h0l: What's the future of computer game music? Will it be ever more interactive and malleable, as in Sega's "Nights", or will it stay as steadfastly linear as ever?

BL: It's going to get more interactive, but there are still things to overcome. On all the hardware platforms out there today, real professional sounding music can only be done by playing the music straight from CD. So if you want the game to really sound as good as, say, Babylon-5, then the music will have to be played from the CD, and since the CD tracks are very linear indeed, there's no way to make it interact. (Unless you want to skip to a different CD track every few seconds, which, let's face it, isn't a good solution.) The alternative is to have a bunch of samples in RAM and play it as "chip music". That way you can make it interactive, but it just won't sound that professional. I mean, a platform like the Playstation only has 512 kb of sound RAM, and the Saturn even less. Not exactly a lot of room for good, varied samples.

It's a matter of choosing really: do you want it interactive, or do you want it sounding really big... This will be the dilemma, until the gaming platforms get enough sound RAM to make it possible to do "chip music" that sounds as big as CD music. There's one other problem as well - many developers start writing the game without a thought of the music. Too often, the game is as good as finished when someone suddenly finds out "hey, we need some music in this game", and by that time it's just too late to start building interactive music into the game engine. If you want interactive music, it really needs to be in the plans all along, and sadly this is often not thought about until it's too late. There are exceptions though, I'm writing an interactive soundtrack right now, for a Team17 Playstation game called Fun Dazzle Magic Land.

h0l: Thanks Bjorn.. :)