La connaissance, c'est le pouvoir

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PATRICK J. COLLINS

Interview part 1 :

In a far beginning …

1/ When did you feel that music took an important place in you life ?

Always. I didn’t have much exposure to music when I was growing up. I know that I really loved certain films and cartoons, and now I am able to see that the music was a big part of what attracted me to those particular things. I also know that anytime I saw someone playing piano or keyboard I was very inspired to want to learn how to do that.

2/ When you were 15, you started composing music for Westwood Entertainment. How did you become an employee of this mythic company?

When I was in high school, I was writing a bunch of electronic music with my atari ST and casio cz-5000, and I submitted demos to Westwood’s audio department regularly and they always said that they weren’t hiring.. I ended up getting called one afternoon by their quality assurance manager who asked me if I wanted a job working in their department testing their products. I took that job, and regularly pestered the president of the company and the audio department employees. Westwood already had a composer who did nothing but compose for their projects, and so that really made it difficult for much of my music to be used. The director of the audio department was pretty supportive of me, and would give me sometimes a few weeks during down time just for me to compose whatever I wanted. When I left Westwood, I really was grateful that I had those years to develop my skills as a composer, and I had quite an arsenal of material that all belonged to me because most of it was never used.

3/ What are the methods to develop game music in companies like Westwood, did you work with several musicians and sound engineers or just alone in a dark room ?

At Westwood there were four of us. One dedicated composer, One dedicated sound designer, One manager (who did some of the technical work as well), and one of me.. who I guess kind of did a lot of different stuff from programming FM synthesis and subtractive synthesis instruments, to editing audio, syncing sound to video, as well as composing.

4/ After your work for “Lion King”, you have been discovered by Disney Interactive who hired you for their next games, tell us about that experience. Was there any change in the process of work ?

At Disney, it was much different. I was pretty much the only person there for quite a while. I was left to do all the work (composing, sound design, editing, etc). Disney was a great experience and I have a lot of fond memories about it. Unfortunately they did not know how to market their products well, and several of those products were just really poorly designed. I feel like I wrote a lot of music that I’m really proud of, that will probably never be heard... and I can never use it again because Disney would sue me if I tried.. Rather sad.

Partie 2

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