La connaissance, c'est le pouvoir

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PATRICK J. COLLINS

Interview part 2 :

An artist and the work …

5/ For the game Revenant (Eidos), you composed the entire music. How was it ? What’s especially the process of the composition of a videogame soundtrack ?

No, actually.. I teamed up with Ronny Moorings, the songwriter from the band “Clan of Xymox”. We had met back in 93, and while I was working for Disney, I knew that Eidos/Cinematix Studios was looking for music for one of their games, “Total Mayhem” so I hooked them up with Ronny and he gave them music for the game. The next project they had was Revenant and they contacted me to see if either Ronny or I wanted to do some music for it. So I thought it would be fun to work with Ronny as I was always an admirer of his Xymox music. So we signed the deal, Ronny came to LA, and we split up the tracks, I did 4 and he did 3. (Three of my four tracks are available on mp3.com at http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/504/collinator_studios.html )

6/ You were a student of the California Institute of the Arts, can you explain the kind of teaching they provide ?

I studied classical piano and voice there... There were skills classes where you have to be able to sight sing music using relative pitch (relationship from one tone to the other), various rhythm training skills (being able to read complex rhythms and feel them, being able to subdivide and do poly rhythm), music theory courses... All kinds of stuff, and then when you get into classes that deal with your own instrument, there were all sorts of jazz improvisation courses, accompanying studies (playing piano with singers or other instruments), figured bass studies (the baroque techniques of being able to improvise an accompanying part for a written out bass line) and then there were many concerts during each semester that you get to perform on. I did very little of my own composing while I was there, I just focused on my performance skills, and definitely was very happy to be developing the skills to properly play all the classical music that I love so much.

7/ Back to the video game world, can you give some advice to a young composer who wants to break into the industry ?

It’s all about who you know... If you don’t know anyone, its very hard... So my advice is, start making friends-- and keep developing your craft.. Make quality work and share your work with the people you meet, and if your stuff is good.. You will eventually get something.

8/ How do you see the entertainment industry now and in the future ?

Well, I have my issues with it. I think that for a while, it seemed like everything was seriously lacking substance and it was all very shallow. I saw it in the video games, the music industry, cartoons/kids programming, network TV, -- and some films.. But there were always good films in there too to balance everything out... I think during the time I left Disney, I was really burned out on the game world because everything was 3-D and all about graphics, and had no element of fun. This really left me stuck in the past, where the only games I really have played recently are the 11 coin-op arcade games I have in my house. But, I recently saw some games on PS2 that were really beautiful, although they were still 3-D and I really hate the interface (lack of control, and knowing where you are, being able to really see what's in your immediate space) --- I was willing to say, ok this is cool.. and much better than what I had seen last. As for the rest of the entertainment world, I don’t really watch much tv.. But I think the cartoon world is improving as I saw hilarious programming on the cartoon network’s “adult swim”.. That left me feeling that maybe there is hope and that creativity and quality will go back to the level it was at in the 80s.

Partie 3

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