Interesting POV. It really depends per project. But I don't think your statement about tracks 'falling behind creatively' is something you can apply across the board. I don't think anyone thinks Howard Shore had any bandwidth issues on LOTR! There's no way anyone can recall all 10 hours of music for the LOTR movies. The reasons some tracks feel ahead of others is because of the moments in the film/game/show they are attached to, yes the music needs to be memorable too, but don't underestimate the power of association. If every track tries so hard to stand out, then at the end of the day, nothing ends up standing out. It has to be cohesive. You can have this problem with visuals too, I've lost count of how many blockbusters I've seen where so much is happening on screen, and it all becomes a blur after a while. Too much for the brain to process. A soundtrack has to have pacing too. We don't remember every Star Wars track, or every Lord of the Rings track, but it's often the case that composers put just as much thought into the tracks 'in between' the tracks that people know / can recall. Most successful scores have pillars that are built around and they get recalled and expanded upon over time.
A lot of media projects will benefit from an artist's singular musical vision. There are also tons of examples where it's been also been a collab and it's worked out great (as Curtis, Joel and myself feel!). No hard and fast rules and I don't think we can really say one is better or more/less creative than the other.
Yes of course it can't be applied across the board! It definitely doesn't apply to Howard Shore, and not every track
should stand apart. There's no way I could apply that to LotR, every track in that whole trilogy is extremely deliberate. The bandwidth issue I mention
I don't mean as a universal issue with the lone composers, just as a hurdle I sometimes notice (but not on any Halo games so far, more commonly on fast movie releases where the lone composer was hired very late). But as the scope of these big projects increase it is something I begin to think more about. Fortunately that seems like something that will definitely not be happening here, due to both the time and creative resources available.
A unified vision is important, but for example, the many
visual artists all have to work to align their styles to fit together within the same direction. And the combination of those many minds results in a lot of exciting creative diversity, each brings something unique to the table. So along those same lines, I'm very interested in the idea of a similar process being successfully applied to this team of Halo composers all making significant contributions together.
There are definitely advantages to a singular artist's vision, but there are
also great potential benefits of collaboration. It can go either way depending on the project and the people involved. But the point is that I'm excited to see the fruits of your collaboration, so far all three of you seem to be matching together well stylistically while still contributing your own personal creativity.
Would you say that the larger scope of this game would be the main reason why all three of you were hired to collaborate on this game or were there other reasons/benefits?
