Lawrence Lee Interview: Composing for Hanako: Honor & Blade
On September 15th, Hanako: Honor & Blade launches, with immersive online multiplayer combat experience set in Feudal Japan. Hanako: Honor and Blade is a passion project that has been in development for over a decade. The game’s art and backstory of the game serve as a symbolic tribute to the late mother of team lead, Matt Canei, an industry veteran currently at ILMxLAB. Players will play as one of two clans and seek to defeat opponents through multiple game modes and maps, with each game level presenting unique obstacles and mechanics that will require strategy and teamwork to defeat enemies. For this interview, I spoke with the composer and sound FX designer, Lawrence Lee, asking him what his experience was like working on Hanako: Honor & Blade.
How did you get involved with Hanako: Honor & Blade?
While I was working towards my bachelor’s degree at Berklee College of Music in 2011 or so, I was involved in a video game scoring class where we collaborated with SCAD Atlanta’s gaming program, and I provided music for their game. When I started studying for my master’s at Berklee’s Valencia campus in Spain, our final project involved composing a theme for either a film or a game, so I chose to do a game. My final project took us through the entire production process of a score: composing, arranging, and recording/mixing the final product. Looking for a game to score, my first thought was to call my previous SCAD team to ask if they need any music for any of their upcoming projects, mentioning that they would have three minutes worth of live symphony orchestra, on the house, paid for by the college. Their team lead hooked me up with Matt Canei (+Mpact co-founder) online in late 2013, and I’ve been working with the +Mpact Games team since.
Was this your first time scoring for a video game?
Yes, this is my first score for a video game, same for doing the sound design, and I hope it won’t be the last.
How did your time at Berklee College of Music prepare you for this soundtrack?
For both my bachelor’s and master’s, I’ve pursued orchestral studies during my time at Berklee. We’ve gone over the technical abilities and limitations of each instrument, techniques of blending specific instruments, the philosophy of how to approach specific events in a film or game (e.g. deciding what instrumentation to use, etc.). This would also involve working hands-on with live players instead of just being confined in the classroom. We’d write etudes with each instrument, then write in blends throughout the curriculum, followed by writing for full symphony during our finals. I’ve also focused on the production side of things during my time at Berklee: mixing, mastering, using synthesizers, and elements of sound design (i.e. a lot of Foley).
One of the most important things I’ve learned is how different it is to compose for a video game vs. a film. For the most part, interactive music is a completely different ball game compared to pure linear composition, with the exception of cutscenes. The approach to in-game music is much more technical in my opinion. All of the music is controlled based on the events that are occurring during gameplay in real-time. You are in essence creating a mechanical musical contraption that functions on its own in comparison to composing directly to picture.
Also, it’s insane how far game technology has come, especially considering that I started out playing games on DOS and NES and have seen it all evolve from there.
I can most definitely say Berklee College of Music has been very excellent preparing me and its student base for the industries we all wish to enter. Berklee always has a focus on staying current with industrial trends so that their students have learned relevant skills by the time they graduate.
Had you ever worked with ethnic Japanese instrumentation before?
This is the first time that I’ve worked with ethnic Japanese instruments, and I most certainly hope to do more in the future. I’ve always wanted to compose a Japanese epic and am so glad to have that opportunity composing for Hanako: Honor & Blade! I’ve always been a fan of video game scores and a bunch of anime scores as well—Jou Hisaishi and Kenji Kawai scores to name off a couple and Hans Zimmer’s “The Last Samurai” is also a score I deeply enjoy and appreciate as well. Internet research has most certainly helped in learning how to compose for shakuhachi and koto, and I have a friend that is knowledgeable about the shamisen, so I was able to learn a lot from him.
I noticed that a few tracks were recorded with a live orchestra. Could you describe that process?
Recording with the live orchestra was a part of the final project for my master’s at Berklee. I was recording the opening theme for Hanako: Honor & Blade at the famed AIR Studios in London, UK. It was all part of the academic curriculum to do all the work throughout the process of creating a score: composition/conception, arrangement, recording, and mixing. We made software mockups of our piece, followed by placing all the instrumentation on paper/notation for the entire 55-piece orchestra.
In addition to composition, you handled sound design and audio production for Hanako. How did those processes inform each other?
The sound design element of the game would inform what instrumentation I should use and determine specific approaches of instrumental arrangement and also vice versa from time to time. This is important because it helps avoid the clashing of the SFX and music mixing-wise. It’s vital to steer clear of any frequency clashing between the sound design and the music. For example, the percussion lines and impact sounds would be a critical place to mix correctly as they would often share the same locations in the frequency spectrum, potentially becoming a wall of noise if done incorrectly.
Explain the differences between the exploration and combat themes. How did you handle those arrangements? What was the intent?
For the most part, my approach to the music was to create a non-combat/exploration piece, then either create a combat version of the piece along with its drum track. The only exception was the “Shiga Forest” track where the entire music track is stem-based, and I keep the exploration stem on indefinitely, then add the combat tracks over it. The majority of the tracks involved crossfading into a combat stem.
My intentions were to compose the non-combat track with ethereal ethnic vibes, so basically an ambient track. When your character comes into proximity of any opponents, the drum track of the combat music fades in, followed by crossfading into the combat stem with the drum track or having all stems activated while point blank with your opponents and engaged in melee combat. All the stems are triggered via proximity of opponents; the closer the radius, the louder the stems become. A rather simple mechanic, but it works extremely well in the context of Hanako, very much akin to DJ turntables.
Is there a particular track that you're most proud of?
It’s hard to say because I like each track for different reasons, but I personally like the tracks of “Hanako Village” and “Hanako Castle”. Those tracks were by far some of the most intense tracks to compose for because of what each of those maps represented from the point of view of battling cancer, the Hanako clan representing life and health, and the Yamai clan representing death and disease. It was intense writing the music for the latter two Hanako maps because they represented the cancer infiltrating deeper and deeper till the Yamai clean reached the Hanako stronghold. I wanted to illustrate battling disease in beautiful and scenic places, followed by an epic last stand.
What were some of the biggest influences for you when you were composing Hanako (video game and otherwise)?
The entire game is Matt Canei’s artistic illustration and tribute to his mother’s battle with cancer. He and I talked about each map in depth and what each one represents and how to describe that musically. Apart from my personal inspirations from other composers, like Hans Zimmer, Jou Hisaishi, and John Williams, of course, or locations like rural areas of Japan and Japanese history, I really wanted to incorporate the soul into the game directly from those who made it since the game’s core is a tribute to family and the struggle against cancer. I really wanted to know how Matt felt about each level and then do my best to illustrate those feelings and emotions as accurately as possible.
The music for the “Hanako Village” map would be a big example. Matt wanted to feel like his mother was spiritually present when he listened to the track. For that track, I focused on choir beds and string, probably the most ethereal and enchanting piece of the soundtrack. Previously mentioning the composers I’m a fan of, I’ve always loved how colorful their arrangements are and how strong they write their grooves. This really can drive a piece of music, from something as small as a solo violin harmonic to deep brass/wind swells. Being able to capture those moments like that through orchestration is something all of those composers do very well and has always been something I’ve tried to emulate.
If you could compose for any video game series, what would it be and why?
That’s a tough question because I’ve always been a fan of epic scores no matter what they are, sci-fi, traditional orchestra, all of it. If anything, I would love to compose for games like the Final Fantasy franchise, or Skyrim, even Mass Effect. Indeed, it’s a bit obtuse of a palette, yes, but somewhere along those lines is where I’d like to be if I had the opportunity to compose for such colossal epics. You’d have the room to compose dense, epic music and have the space to also be whimsical, airy, enchanting, etc.—the list never ends. I greatly appreciate the vast dynamics of such scores where you can, in essence, compose an entire map of emotion and not be confined to just one thing.
Lawrence Lee
P.S. As a special treat, here are 4 Early Access Steam keys for Hanako: Honor & Blade (first come, first serve):
7GXC5-7VLPW-JZ53Z
7H3YW-M0MZA-YA8VZ
7HFZM-79QPG-42N4E
7HIRG-JNICR-RMZME